The Role of Neuroimaging in Developmental Social Psychology

Abstract

The development of social cognition is defined as the behavioral patterns, feelings, attitudes, and concepts that children manifest in relation to other people, and the way in which these different functions change with age. To understand the development of social cognition, modelling based on longitudinal behavioral observation is essential. Neuroimaging techniques will aid in this process by providing the neural basis of the psychological constructs, and the constraints for the model. Here, the issue of selfrecognition and self-evaluation is presented as an example. Technical advances will allow the application of functional neuroimaging techniques directly to babies and/or children, particularly under the age of 6 years old, in the near future.Keywords Developmental psychology . Functional MRI . Near-infrared spectroscopy . NIRS . Self-recognition Developmental social psychology and neuroimaging techniquesHow do we become social beings? This developmental social psychology question is attracting growing interest in Japan in the face of recent reports on the declining birthrate, the breakdown in classroom discipline, and social withdrawal. Social cognition is defined as the processing of information that culminates in the accurate perception of the dispositions and intentions of other individuals (Brothers 1990). The development of social cognition is defined as the behavioral patterns, feelings, attitudes, and concepts that children manifest in relation to other people, and the way in which these different functions change with age (Schaffer 1996).To understand the development of social cognition, initially we have to identify the elementary constructs of social cognition that can be measured and quantified. As with other psychological models, the models of developmental social cognition use hypothetical representations and the processes on them. There is no direct evidence supporting the existence of processes and representation: their existence must be inferred on the basis of the success of the model. However, hypothetical representation is sufficiently powerful to produce a limitless number of models to account for the data. Thus, some constraints are necessary (Willingham and Dunn 2003). Classically, reaction time or error/success rate in developmental psychology was the method used to provide such constraints. However, recent advances in neuroimaging techniques have provided another approach. Neuroimaging techniques such as functional MRI (fMRI) allow associations between the psychological constructs and specific human brain areas to be made non-invasively. The essence of this method is brain localization. Thus neuroimaging techniques are an additional way of differentiating between the models by their specific predictions for how fMRI response to the task would be affected by task parameters (Willingham and Dunn 2003).Longitudinal behavioral data allow us to describe changes in behavior across age, that is, the chronological order of the emergence of functions X and Y (behavioral milestones). ...

The powerful pull of brain images

“…It is true that techniques such as fMRI cannot be used with younger children, but as Sadato, Morita and Itakura (2008) have pointed out, direct research into the working of the brain in children is not the only effective way of studying cerebral development. Thus, the combination of findings from cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, on the one hand, and the results of fMRI studies with adults on the other, may be of enormous use in charting the maturing process of certain brain areas during childhood, as indeed suggested by the authors cited above in relation to the development of self-awareness and self-recognition in young children.…”

Behavioral Characteristics of Children with High Functioning Pervasive Developmental Disorders during a Game

“…The “development of sociability” is the main target of our research project, “Identification of Factors Affecting Cognitive and Behavioral Development of Children in Japan Based on a Cohort Study” conducted by Japan Science and Technology Agency. 3 While sociability can be conceived as higher brain function based on verbal and non-verbal communicative ability, 4 – 6 in many cases the neural basis and developmental terms of the process of acquiring this ability are poorly understood. 7 – 10 As the first step towards identifying the acquisition processes of sociability we aim to develop a method for the quantification of sociability.…”