Social Semantics: The role of conceptual knowledge and cognitive control in a neurobiological model of the social brain

Abstract

Research in social neuroscience has primarily focused on carving up cognition into distinct pieces, as a function of mental process, neural network or social behaviour, while the need for unifying models that span multiple social phenomena has been relatively neglected. Here we present a novel framework that treats social cognition as a case of semantic cognition, which provides a neurobiologically constrained and generalizable framework, with clear, testable predictions regarding sociocognitive processing in the context of both health and disease. According to this framework, social cognition relies on two principal systems of representation and control. These systems are neuroanatomically and functionally distinct, but interact to (1) enable development of foundational, conceptual-level knowledge and (2) regulate access to this information in order to generate flexible and context-appropriate social behaviour. The Social Semantics framework shines new light on the mechanisms of social information processing by maintaining as much explanatory power as prior models of social cognition, whilst remaining simpler, by virtue of relying on fewer components that are "tuned" towards social interactions.

Putting the Nonsocial Into Social Neuroscience: A Role for Domain-General Priority Maps During Social Interactions

“…The first source is Jerry Fodor’s conception of mind, which distinguished between a set of specialized input modules and a central processor 1 (Fodor, 1983). The second source is work in the semantic-cognition literature, which has demonstrated that the extraction of meaning from the environment is based on two primary systems of representation and control that rely on distinct cognitive and neural architectures (Binney & Ramsey, 2020; Jefferies, 2013; Lambon Ralph et al, 2017). The third source is the overarching principle of brain organization proposed in models of biased competition (Desimone & Duncan, 1995; Duncan et al, 1997).…”

“…Indeed, several recent suggestions have argued that mechanisms underpinning social-information processing are likely to be a combination of domain-general and domain-specific processes as well as the links between the two types of information processing (H. C. Barrett, 2012; Binney & Ramsey, 2020; Ramsey, 2018b; Spunt & Adolphs, 2017; van Elk, van Schie, & Bekkering, 2014). In other words, domain-general and domain-specific systems may play complementary roles in social cognition (Michael & D’Ausilio, 2015), and understanding how these systems interact is likely to be a challenging but ultimately revealing line of future research.…”

“…Note, however, that this is not to suggest that there is one hybrid account of social-information processing; rather, a productive research program is likely to generate many different hybrid accounts. By outlining one hybrid model, we aimed to use it as a vehicle to highlight the value of hybrid accounts more generally as well as to link it in with other recent hybrid accounts of mental function (Amodio, 2019; Binney & Ramsey, 2020; Cabeza & Moscovitch, 2013; Jefferies, 2013; Lambon Ralph, Jefferies, Patterson, & Rogers, 2017; Ramsey, 2018b; Spunt & Adolphs, 2017). Hybrid accounts make it clear that a higher bar of attainment needs to be set for what counts as convincing evidence for domain-specific explanations of social behavior.…”

Dissociating Profiles of Social Cognitive Disturbances Between Mixed Personality and Anxiety Disorder

“…We have interpreted this profile as an indication of compromised cognitive control, resulting in poor performance on measures of social cognition that require the monitoring, updating and shifting among cognitive representations, and inhibition of inappropriate responses. Indeed, there is growing awareness of the role played by these executive functions in social cognition (Binney and Ramsey, 2019;Darda et al, 2019). Such dysfunction in cognitive flexibility would also contribute to the maladaptive disposition toward state-oriented emotional regulation exhibited by the MPD group.…”

RamseyWard_top_down_challenges

“…Translating this semantic framework into the social domain would entail specialised sensory processors for person features (representation), but general processors for controlling such social representations (Binney & Ramsey, 2020). Under this view, bias in the system (e.g., social modulation) can arise from representational and/or control systems and it is important to be clear which one you are measuring and researchers rarely, if ever, do this in cognitive psychology or neuroscience studies (including perception and action coupling).…”