Training social cognition: From imitation to Theory of Mind

Santiesteban, Idalmis; White, Sarah; Cook, Jennifer; Gilbert, Sam J.; Heyes, Cecilia; Bird, Geoffrey

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.11.004

Cited by 154 publications

(190 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The importance of self -other control for social interaction has previously been demonstrated for imitation and perspectivetaking [38] but this is the first study to extend this finding into the domain of empathy.…”

Section: (C) General Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…On Day 1, participants received either imitation training or imitation-inhibition training to decrease or increase self-other control, respectively [38]. On Day 2, participants: (i) underwent single pulse TMS to assess corticospinal empathic responses to pain observation; (ii) completed an imitation control task, and (iii) completed a control simple response time task.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An alternative approach to establish the contribution of self-other control to social interaction is to train this ability in one domain and assess the effect of training on other areas of social interaction. Santiesteban et al [38] trained participants to increase self-other control in the motor domain, by means of a task based on the work of Brass et al [39] requiring them to inhibit the tendency to imitate another person (increasing self-other control) or to enforce this tendency (decreasing self-other control). Training to increase self-other control improved both the control of imitation and visual perspective-taking.…”

Section: Training Self-other Control Across Social Cognitive Domainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Self–other control processes in social cognition: from imitation to empathy

Guzman

Bird

Banissy

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

117

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One contribution of 16 to a theme issue 'Understanding self and other: from origins to disorders'. We review the evidence that an ability to achieve a precise balance between representing the self and representing other people is crucial in social interaction. This ability is required for imitation, perspective-taking, theory of mind and empathy; and disruption to this ability may contribute to the symptoms of clinical and sub-clinical conditions, including autism spectrum disorder and mirror-touch synaesthesia. Moving beyond correlational approaches, a recent intervention study demonstrated that training participants to control representations of the self and others improves their ability to control imitative behaviour, and to take another's visual perspective. However, it is unclear whether these effects apply to other areas of social interaction, such as the ability to empathize with others. We report original data showing that participants trained to increase self-other control in the motor domain demonstrated increased empathic corticospinal responses (Experiment 1) and self-reported empathy (Experiment 2), as well as an increased ability to control imitation. These results suggest that the ability to control self and other representations contributes to empathy as well as to other types of social interaction.

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Section: (C) General Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Training Self-other Control Across Social Cognitive Domainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Self–other control processes in social cognition: from imitation to empathy

Guzman

Bird

Banissy

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

117

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“…Building upon behavioural work that examined mimicry in patients with lesions (Spengler, von Cramon, & Brass, 2010), as well as a study on the effects of theory of mind training (Santiesteban et al, 2012), both of which indicated an association between the mentalising regions in frontal cortex and the mirror system, Wang and colleagues (Wang, Ramsey, & Hamilton, 2011) investigated the processing of primes during mimicry using dynamic causal modelling. The analysis indicated an interaction between eye-gaze direction Social modulation of motor contagion 5 and interconnections between medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), superior temporal sulcus (STS) and mirror system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Top-down social modulation of interpersonal observation–execution

Roberts

Bennett

Hayes

2015

Psychological Research

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Cyclical upper-limb movement can involuntarily deviate from its primary movement axis when the performer concurrently observes incongruent biological motion (i.e., interpersonal observation-execution). The current study examined the social modulation of such involuntary motor interference using a protocol that reflected everyday social interactions encountered in a naturalistic social setting. Eighteen participants executed cyclical horizontal arm movements during the observation of horizontal (congruent) or curvilinear (incongruent) biological motion. Both prior to, and during the interpersonal observation-execution task, participants also received a series of social words designed to prime a pro-social or anti-social attitude. The results showed greater orthogonal movement deviation, and thus interference, for the curvilinear compared to horizontal stimuli.Importantly, and opposite to most of the previous findings from work on automatic imitation and mimicry, there was a greater interference effect for the anti-social compared to pro-social prime condition. These findings demonstrate the importance of interpreting the context of social primes, and strongly support predictions of a comparison between the prime construct and the self-concept/-schema and the top-down response modulation of social incentives.

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“…A less studied aspect of cognition is social cognition, which is not a uniform theoretical construct. It includes emotion perception, prosody, empathy, theory of mind (ToM) and assessment of mood [6,7]. Findings in MS show disturbance not only in emotion recognition from facial expressions but in the whole area of general emotion processing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Cognition Impairments in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Comparison with Imaging Studies, Disease Duration and Grade of Disability

Ignatova¹,

Todorova²,

Surchev³

2016

Trending Topics in Multiple Sclerosis

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Cognitive impairments in multiple sclerosis (MS) are heterogeneous and their rate varies between 43% and 70%. A less studied aspect of cognition is social cognition, which is not a uniform theoretical construct. It includes emotion perception, prosody, empathy, theory of mind (ToM) and assessment of mood. In addition to progressive physical disability, social cognitive impairments are a reason for job loss in 24-80% of patients with MS, increased divorce rate, dissolution of partnerships and social communication difficulties.Social cognitive impairments are the result of disruptions in the mentalization network at the neuroanatomical, neurochemical and/or genetic level, which can lead to malfunctions in the dopaminergic-serotoninergic system and to compromising the development of neuroanatomical targets within the network. The wide dissemination of demyelinating lesions and cortical thinning typical of patients with MS often lead to anatomic and functional disorders of the above-mentioned specific brain structures. A correlation has been established among specific cortical areas involved in emotion identification from facial expression (right and left fusiform face area, frontal eye), emotion processing (right entorhinal cortex) and socially relevant information (left temporal pole). The most active brain region involved in social cognitive processing is the medal frontal cortex (MFC), which is described as the brain's social cognitive center. During performance of various sociocognitive tasks for mental state attribution, common areas of increased activation in the medial prefrontal gyrus and the temporoparietal junctions are registered bilaterally, while the area of the medial prefrontal cortex (the paracingulate cortex) is the only region uniquely activated by the performance of ToM.Most MRI studies of patients with MS found a correlation between the cognitive and/or affective disorders, on the one hand, and lesion localization, total lesion load, or cerebral atrophy, on the other. A significant correlation was also reported between © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.abnormal activities in specific cortical zones on fMRI, on the one hand, and clinical manifestation, conventional MRI findings and behavioral changes, on the other. Altered patterns of brain activity were found in all clinical phenotypes of MS, including when cognitive abilities were intact and/or restored, social cognitive dysfunction in MS actually affects all stages of the disease and all types of clinical course. The cortical plastic changes are a dynamic phenomenon that can be modulated by external factors. This phenomenon would facilitate the mapping of individual strategies for adequate treatment and rehabilitation of each patient.

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Training social cognition: From imitation to Theory of Mind

Cited by 154 publications

References 27 publications

Self–other control processes in social cognition: from imitation to empathy

Self–other control processes in social cognition: from imitation to empathy

Top-down social modulation of interpersonal observation–execution

Social Cognition Impairments in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Comparison with Imaging Studies, Disease Duration and Grade of Disability

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