Children construct their social preferences and behaviors based on their social interactions and beliefs about others’ behavior. Most studies that evaluate the influence of social norms on children’s sharing behavior has focused on sharing decisions, while no previous study has evaluated whether norms about generosity could change beliefs about others’ sharing behavior. In the current study, 4–10-year-old children (N = 101) played two dictator games; one as baseline and the other after being exposed to either a generous or a selfish descriptive norm. Our results showed that, after being exposed to descriptive norms, all children changed their beliefs about others’ sharing behavior. However, these norms did not influence children’s sharing decisions. These results suggest that children´s beliefs about sharing behavior could be more malleable than their actual sharing decisions. These insights might help to design interventions aimed to change beliefs and, in turn, model prosocial behaviors in children.
Background
The capacity to ascertain other people’s emotional states is crucial for establishing and maintaining social interactions. In particular, accurate recognition of facial expressions and beliefs about whether we trust what a face transmits are fundamental for guiding and adjusting this social behavior. Yet, although emotion recognition impairments are well documented in neurodegenerative diseases, the role of monitoring skills in this domain remains poorly understood in the field of dementia.
Method
We recruited patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD, n = 18), Alzheimer’s disease (AD, n = 27), and demographically‐matched controls (n = 38). Participants performed a classic test of facial expression recognition and, after each trial, they provided a confidence judgment about their performance. A monitoring index was calculated considering both performance on each emotion type and associated confidence ratings (with higher values of the index indicating worse monitoring). Then, whole‐brain grey matter volume was analyzed via voxel‐based morphometry (VBM) to track possible associations with the monitoring index.
Results
Compared to controls, both groups of patients exhibited difficulties in monitoring negative emotions. Monitoring of disgust was specifically impaired in bvFTD, and monitoring of sadness and neutral faces, in AD. VBM results showed that, in bvFTD, reduced grey matter volume in areas belonging to the limbic system and subcortical regions was associated with emotion recognition deficits. Monitoring impairments were also related with different subcortical and cortical areas, including the prefrontal lobe, insula and the cingulate cortex. On the other hand, in AD, temporal and parietal areas were associated with emotion recognition and parietal and frontal regions, with monitoring.
Conclusion
These results indicate that dementia patients present emotion recognition monitoring impairments and that these deficits are associated with damage of cortical and subcortical regions as well as limbic circuits. In both groups, recognition and monitoring of emotions shared several structural substrates. The monitoring impairments presented in bvFTD and AD could be related with the changes in social cognition and behavior that these patients presented in daily life. Therefore, these preliminary findings could contribute to a better understanding of emotion monitoring processes.
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