Social Workers’ Orientation Toward the Evidence-Based Practice Process

PubMed Central

Kolmer, Deirdre M. Beneken genaamd; Schalk, René

2014-01-01

Objectives: This study assesses social workers’ orientation toward the evidence-based practice (EBP) process and explores which specific variables (e.g. age) are associated. Methods: Data were collected from 341 Dutch social workers through an online survey which included a Dutch translation of the EBP Process Assessment Scale (EBPPAS), along with 13 background/demographic questions. Results: The overall level of orientation toward the EBP process is relatively low. Although respondents are slightly familiar with it and have slightly positive attitudes about it, their intentions to engage in it and their actual engagement are relatively low. Respondents who followed a course on the EBP process as a student are more oriented toward it than those who did not. Social workers under 29 are more familiar with the EBP process than those over 29. Conclusions: We recommend educators to take a more active role in teaching the EBP process to students and social workers. PMID:27630517

Social Workers' Orientation Toward the Evidence-Based Practice Process: A Dutch Survey.

PubMed

van der Zwet, Renske J M; Kolmer, Deirdre M Beneken Genaamd; Schalk, René

2016-10-01

This study assesses social workers' orientation toward the evidence-based practice (EBP) process and explores which specific variables (e.g. age) are associated. Data were collected from 341 Dutch social workers through an online survey which included a Dutch translation of the EBP Process Assessment Scale (EBPPAS), along with 13 background/demographic questions. The overall level of orientation toward the EBP process is relatively low. Although respondents are slightly familiar with it and have slightly positive attitudes about it, their intentions to engage in it and their actual engagement are relatively low. Respondents who followed a course on the EBP process as a student are more oriented toward it than those who did not. Social workers under 29 are more familiar with the EBP process than those over 29. We recommend educators to take a more active role in teaching the EBP process to students and social workers.

Social Motor Synchronization: Insights for Understanding Social Behavior in Autism.

PubMed

Fitzpatrick, Paula; Romero, Veronica; Amaral, Joseph L; Duncan, Amie; Barnard, Holly; Richardson, Michael J; Schmidt, R C

2017-07-01

Impairments in social interaction and communication are critical features of ASD but the underlying processes are poorly understood. An under-explored area is the social motor synchronization that happens when we coordinate our bodies with others. Here, we explored the relationships between dynamical measures of social motor synchronization and assessments of ASD traits. We found (a) spontaneous social motor synchronization was associated with responding to joint attention, cooperation, and theory of mind while intentional social motor synchronization was associated with initiating joint attention and theory of mind; and (b) social motor synchronization was associated with ASD severity but not fully explained by motor problems. Findings suggest that objective measures of social motor synchronization may provide insights into understanding ASD traits.

Psychobiological Mechanisms Underlying the Social Buffering of the HPA Axis: A Review of Animal Models and Human Studies across Development

PubMed Central

Hostinar, Camelia E.; Sullivan, Regina M.; Gunnar, Megan R.

2013-01-01

Discovering the stress-buffering effects of social relationships has been one of the major findings in psychobiology in the last century. However, an understanding of the underlying neurobiological and psychological mechanisms of this buffering is only beginning to emerge. An important avenue of this research concerns the neurocircuitry that can regulate the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. The present review is a translational effort aimed at integrating animal models and human studies of the social regulation of the HPA axis from infancy to adulthood, specifically focusing on the process that has been named social buffering. This process has been noted across species and consists of a dampened HPA axis stress response to threat or challenge that occurs with the presence or assistance of a conspecific. We describe aspects of the relevant underlying neurobiology when enough information exists and expose major gaps in our understanding across all domains of the literatures we aimed to integrate. We provide a working conceptual model focused on the role of oxytocinergic systems and prefrontal neural networks as two of the putative biological mediators of this process, and propose that the role of early experiences is critical in shaping later social buffering effects. This synthesis points to both general future directions and specific experiments that need to be conducted to build a more comprehensive model of the HPA social buffering effect across the lifespan that incorporates multiple levels of analysis: neuroendocrine, behavioral, and social. PMID:23607429

Social attention in children with epilepsy.

PubMed

Lunn, Judith; Donovan, Tim; Litchfield, Damien; Lewis, Charlie; Davies, Robert; Crawford, Trevor

2017-04-01

Children with epilepsy may be vulnerable to impaired social attention given the increased risk of neurobehavioural comorbidities. Social attentional orienting and the potential modulatory role of attentional control on the perceptual processing of gaze and emotion cues have not been examined in childhood onset epilepsies. Social attention mechanisms were investigated in patients with epilepsy (n=25) aged 8-18years old and performance compared to healthy controls (n=30). Dynamic gaze and emotion facial stimuli were integrated into an antisaccade eye-tracking paradigm. The time to orient attention and execute a horizontal saccade toward (prosaccade) or away (antisaccade) from a peripheral target measured processing speed of social signals under conditions of low or high attentional control. Patients with epilepsy had impaired processing speed compared to healthy controls under conditions of high attentional control only when gaze and emotions were combined meaningfully to signal motivational intent of approach (happy or anger with a direct gaze) or avoidance (fear or sad with an averted gaze). Group differences were larger in older adolescent patients. Analyses of the discrete gaze emotion combinations found independent effects of epilepsy-related, cognitive and behavioural problems. A delayed disengagement from fearful gaze was also found under low attentional control that was linked to epilepsy developmental factors and was similarly observed in patients with higher reported anxiety problems. Overall, findings indicate increased perceptual processing of developmentally relevant social motivations during increased cognitive control, and the possibility of a persistent fear-related attentional bias. This was not limited to patients with chronic epilepsy, lower IQ or reported behavioural problems and has implications for social and emotional development in individuals with childhood onset epilepsies beyond remission. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Electrocortical measures of information processing biases in social anxiety disorder: A review.

PubMed

Harrewijn, Anita; Schmidt, Louis A; Westenberg, P Michiel; Tang, Alva; van der Molen, Melle J W

2017-10-01

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by information processing biases, however, their underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. The goal of this review was to give a comprehensive overview of the most frequently studied EEG spectral and event-related potential (ERP) measures in social anxiety during rest, anticipation, stimulus processing, and recovery. A Web of Science search yielded 35 studies reporting on electrocortical measures in individuals with social anxiety or related constructs. Social anxiety was related to increased delta-beta cross-frequency correlation during anticipation and recovery, and information processing biases during early processing of faces (P1) and errors (error-related negativity). These electrocortical measures are discussed in relation to the persistent cycle of information processing biases maintaining SAD. Future research should further investigate the mechanisms of this persistent cycle and study the utility of electrocortical measures in early detection, prevention, treatment and endophenotype research. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Deliberate Social Change in the City: List of Suggested Readings.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duhl, Leonard; Schon, Donald A.

The suggested readings in this occasionally annotated bibliography concerning deliberate socialchange in the city are listed under five subject areas. These subject areas are as follows: I. The Scope of "Social Change"; II. Toward a Theory of Social Change; III. A. The Rational Problem Solving Process, B. Behavioral Approaches to Social Change;…

The impact of intranasal oxytocin on attention to social emotional stimuli in patients with anorexia nervosa: a double blind within-subject cross-over experiment.

PubMed

Kim, Youl-Ri; Kim, Chan-Hyung; Park, Jin Hong; Pyo, Jimin; Treasure, Janet

2014-01-01

Social factors may be of importance causally and act as maintenance factors in patients with anorexia nervosa. Oxytocin is a neuromodulatory hormone involved in social emotional processing associated with attentional processes. This study aimed to examine the impact of oxytocin on attentional processes to social faces representing anger, disgust, and happiness in patients with anorexia nervosa. A double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subject crossover design was used. Intranasal oxytocin or placebo followed by a visual probe detection task with faces depicting anger, disgust, and happiness was administered to 64 female subjects: 31 patients with anorexia nervosa and 33 control students. Attentional bias to the disgust stimuli was observed in both groups under the placebo condition. The attentional bias to disgust was reduced under the oxytocin condition (a moderate effect in the patient group). Avoidance of angry faces was observed in the patient group under the placebo condition and vigilance was observed in the healthy comparison group; both of these information processing responses were moderated by oxytocin producing an increase in vigilance in the patients. Happy/smiling faces did not elicit an attentional response in controls or the patients under either the placebo or oxytocin conditions. Oxytocin attenuated attentional vigilance to disgust in patients with anorexia nervosa and healthy controls. On the other hand, oxytocin changed the response to angry faces from avoidance to vigilance in patients but reduced vigilance to anger in healthy controls. We conclude that patients with anorexia nervosa appear to use different strategies/circuits to emotionally process anger from their healthy counterparts.

Modeling of information diffusion in Twitter-like social networks under information overload.

PubMed

Li, Pei; Li, Wei; Wang, Hui; Zhang, Xin

2014-01-01

Due to the existence of information overload in social networks, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to find useful information according to their interests. This paper takes Twitter-like social networks into account and proposes models to characterize the process of information diffusion under information overload. Users are classified into different types according to their in-degrees and out-degrees, and user behaviors are generalized into two categories: generating and forwarding. View scope is introduced to model the user information-processing capability under information overload, and the average number of times a message appears in view scopes after it is generated by a given type user is adopted to characterize the information diffusion efficiency, which is calculated theoretically. To verify the accuracy of theoretical analysis results, we conduct simulations and provide the simulation results, which are consistent with the theoretical analysis results perfectly. These results are of importance to understand the diffusion dynamics in social networks, and this analysis framework can be extended to consider more realistic situations.

Modeling of Information Diffusion in Twitter-Like Social Networks under Information Overload

PubMed Central

Li, Wei

2014-01-01

Due to the existence of information overload in social networks, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to find useful information according to their interests. This paper takes Twitter-like social networks into account and proposes models to characterize the process of information diffusion under information overload. Users are classified into different types according to their in-degrees and out-degrees, and user behaviors are generalized into two categories: generating and forwarding. View scope is introduced to model the user information-processing capability under information overload, and the average number of times a message appears in view scopes after it is generated by a given type user is adopted to characterize the information diffusion efficiency, which is calculated theoretically. To verify the accuracy of theoretical analysis results, we conduct simulations and provide the simulation results, which are consistent with the theoretical analysis results perfectly. These results are of importance to understand the diffusion dynamics in social networks, and this analysis framework can be extended to consider more realistic situations. PMID:24795541

Naturalistic FMRI mapping reveals superior temporal sulcus as the hub for the distributed brain network for social perception.

PubMed

Lahnakoski, Juha M; Glerean, Enrico; Salmi, Juha; Jääskeläinen, Iiro P; Sams, Mikko; Hari, Riitta; Nummenmaa, Lauri

2012-01-01

Despite the abundant data on brain networks processing static social signals, such as pictures of faces, the neural systems supporting social perception in naturalistic conditions are still poorly understood. Here we delineated brain networks subserving social perception under naturalistic conditions in 19 healthy humans who watched, during 3-T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a set of 137 short (approximately 16 s each, total 27 min) audiovisual movie clips depicting pre-selected social signals. Two independent raters estimated how well each clip represented eight social features (faces, human bodies, biological motion, goal-oriented actions, emotion, social interaction, pain, and speech) and six filler features (places, objects, rigid motion, people not in social interaction, non-goal-oriented action, and non-human sounds) lacking social content. These ratings were used as predictors in the fMRI analysis. The posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) responded to all social features but not to any non-social features, and the anterior STS responded to all social features except bodies and biological motion. We also found four partially segregated, extended networks for processing of specific social signals: (1) a fronto-temporal network responding to multiple social categories, (2) a fronto-parietal network preferentially activated to bodies, motion, and pain, (3) a temporo-amygdalar network responding to faces, social interaction, and speech, and (4) a fronto-insular network responding to pain, emotions, social interactions, and speech. Our results highlight the role of the pSTS in processing multiple aspects of social information, as well as the feasibility and efficiency of fMRI mapping under conditions that resemble the complexity of real life.

Social Security at the Crossroads.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

International Labour Review, 1980

1980-01-01

Social security schemes need to be streamlined and the underlying policies made more coherent to obtain the fullest possible return on expenditure. Third World countries need to reflect very seriously on the role of social security in the development process and on the management problems involved. (CT)

The busy social brain: evidence for automaticity and control in the neural systems supporting social cognition and action understanding.

PubMed

Spunt, Robert P; Lieberman, Matthew D

2013-01-01

Much social-cognitive processing is believed to occur automatically; however, the relative automaticity of the brain systems underlying social cognition remains largely undetermined. We used functional MRI to test for automaticity in the functioning of two brain systems that research has indicated are important for understanding other people's behavior: the mirror neuron system and the mentalizing system. Participants remembered either easy phone numbers (low cognitive load) or difficult phone numbers (high cognitive load) while observing actions after adopting one of four comprehension goals. For all four goals, mirror neuron system activation showed relatively little evidence of modulation by load; in contrast, the association of mentalizing system activation with the goal of inferring the actor's mental state was extinguished by increased cognitive load. These results support a dual-process model of the brain systems underlying action understanding and social cognition; the mirror neuron system supports automatic behavior identification, and the mentalizing system supports controlled social causal attribution.

Increased Attention to the Search Process Improves the Chances of Foster Kinship Placements

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibson, Priscilla A.; Rinkel, Michaela

2012-01-01

Although child protective service (CPS) workers are mandated by social policies to conduct a search for relatives, the search process remains unclear and under scrutiny. Placing children with an appropriate relative is dependent on workers' practices and, to some extent, attitudes. Reviewing social policies that mandate the inclusion of relatives…

Stigmatised Choices: Social Class, Social Exclusion and Secondary School Markets in the Inner City

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reay, Diane; Lucey, Helen

2004-01-01

The transition to secondary school is rarely conceptualised as an important influence in maintaining and contributing to wider processes of social exclusion in the inner city. This article argues that the seeds of social exclusion are sown in under-resourced, struggling inner-city schooling, and their germination is found in class practices,…

White matter pathways and social cognition.

PubMed

Wang, Yin; Metoki, Athanasia; Alm, Kylie H; Olson, Ingrid R

2018-04-20

There is a growing consensus that social cognition and behavior emerge from interactions across distributed regions of the "social brain". Researchers have traditionally focused their attention on functional response properties of these gray matter networks and neglected the vital role of white matter connections in establishing such networks and their functions. In this article, we conduct a comprehensive review of prior research on structural connectivity in social neuroscience and highlight the importance of this literature in clarifying brain mechanisms of social cognition. We pay particular attention to three key social processes: face processing, embodied cognition, and theory of mind, and their respective underlying neural networks. To fully identify and characterize the anatomical architecture of these networks, we further implement probabilistic tractography on a large sample of diffusion-weighted imaging data. The combination of an in-depth literature review and the empirical investigation gives us an unprecedented, well-defined landscape of white matter pathways underlying major social brain networks. Finally, we discuss current problems in the field, outline suggestions for best practice in diffusion-imaging data collection and analysis, and offer new directions for future research. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Activation of Entorhinal Cortical Projections to the Dentate Gyrus Underlies Social Memory Retrieval.

PubMed

Leung, Celeste; Cao, Feng; Nguyen, Robin; Joshi, Krutika; Aqrabawi, Afif J; Xia, Shuting; Cortez, Miguel A; Snead, O Carter; Kim, Jun Chul; Jia, Zhengping

2018-05-22

Social interactions are essential to our mental health, and a deficit in social interactions is a hallmark characteristic of numerous brain disorders. Various subregions within the medial temporal lobe have been implicated in social memory, but the underlying mechanisms that tune these neural circuits remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that optical activation of excitatory entorhinal cortical perforant projections to the dentate gyrus (EC-DG) is necessary and sufficient for social memory retrieval. We further show that inducible disruption of p21-activated kinase (PAK) signaling, a key pathway important for cytoskeletal reorganization, in the EC-DG circuit leads to impairments in synaptic function and social recognition memory, and, importantly, optogenetic activation of the EC-DG terminals reverses the social memory deficits in the transgenic mice. These results provide compelling evidence that activation of the EC-DG pathway underlies social recognition memory recall and that PAK signaling may play a critical role in modulating this process. Copyright © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Learning to Walk in Another's Shoes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gehlbach, Hunter

2017-01-01

Despite the enthusiasm around social-emotional learning, the vast number of skills, dispositions, and attitudes we hope to infuse into students will overwhelm even the most ambitious schools. However, a single core capacity underlies a great many social-emotional learning outcomes: social perspective taking. Recent research on this process of…

The Influence of Socializing Agents in the Female Sport-Participation Process.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Higginson, David C.

1985-01-01

Investigated the influence of socializing agents on female athletes (N=587). Made comparisons across life-cycle states and discovered that socializing agent influences changed from being mostly parental at the under-13 life-cycle stage to mostly coach/teacher-oriented during junior and senior high school years. (BH)

Impaired Attentional Disengagement from Stimuli Matching the Contents of Working Memory in Social Anxiety

PubMed Central

Moriya, Jun; Sugiura, Yoshinori

2012-01-01

Although many cognitive models in anxiety propose that an impaired top-down control enhances the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli, few studies have paid attention to task-irrelevant stimuli under a cognitive load task. In the present study, we investigated the effects of the working memory load on attention to task-irrelevant stimuli in trait social anxiety. The results showed that as trait social anxiety increased, participants were unable to disengage from task-irrelevant stimuli identical to the memory cue under low and high working memory loads. Impaired attentional disengagement was positively correlated with trait social anxiety. This impaired attentional disengagement was related to trait social anxiety, but not state anxiety. Our findings suggest that socially anxious people have difficulty in disengaging attention from a task-irrelevant memory cue owing to an impaired top-down control under a working memory load. PMID:23071765

The social brain in adolescence: Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioural studies

PubMed Central

Burnett, Stephanie; Sebastian, Catherine; Kadosh, Kathrin Cohen; Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne

2015-01-01

Social cognition is the collection of cognitive processes required to understand and interact with others. The term ‘social brain’ refers to the network of brain regions that underlies these processes. Recent evidence suggests that a number of social cognitive functions continue to develop during adolescence, resulting in age differences in tasks that assess cognitive domains including face processing, mental state inference and responding to peer influence and social evaluation. Concurrently, functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies show differences between adolescent and adult groups within parts of the social brain. Understanding the relationship between these neural and behavioural observations is a challenge. This review discusses current research findings on adolescent social cognitive development and its functional MRI correlates, then integrates and interprets these findings in the context of hypothesised developmental neurocognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms. PMID:21036192

SEIR Model of Rumor Spreading in Online Social Network with Varying Total Population Size

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dong, Suyalatu; Deng, Yan-Bin; Huang, Yong-Chang

2017-10-01

Based on the infectious disease model with disease latency, this paper proposes a new model for the rumor spreading process in online social network. In this paper what we establish an SEIR rumor spreading model to describe the online social network with varying total number of users and user deactivation rate. We calculate the exact equilibrium points and reproduction number for this model. Furthermore, we perform the rumor spreading process in the online social network with increasing population size based on the original real world Facebook network. The simulation results indicate that the SEIR model of rumor spreading in online social network with changing total number of users can accurately reveal the inherent characteristics of rumor spreading process in online social network. Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 11275017 and 11173028

Left inferior parietal lobe engagement in social cognition and language

PubMed Central

Bzdok, Danilo; Hartwigsen, Gesa; Reid, Andrew; Laird, Angela R.; Fox, Peter T.; Eickhoff, Simon B.

2017-01-01

Social cognition and language are two core features of the human species. Despite distributed recruitment of brain regions in each mental capacity, the left parietal lobe (LPL) represents a zone of topographical convergence. The present study quantitatively summarizes hundreds of neuroimaging studies on social cognition and language. Using connectivity-based parcellation on a meta-analytically defined volume of interest (VOI), regional coactivation patterns within this VOI allowed identifying distinct subregions. Across parcellation solutions, two clusters emerged consistently in rostro-ventral and caudo-ventral aspects of the parietal VOI. Both clusters were functionally significantly associated with social-cognitive and language processing. In particular, the rostro-ventral cluster was associated with lower-level processing facets, while the caudo-ventral cluster was associated with higher-level processing facets in both mental capacities. Contrarily, in the (less stable) dorsal parietal VOI, all clusters reflected computation of general-purpose processes, such as working memory and matching tasks, that are frequently co-recruited by social or language processes. Our results hence favour a rostro-caudal distinction of lower-versus higher-level processes underlying social cognition and language in the left inferior parietal lobe. PMID:27241201

Sustained neural activity to gaze and emotion perception in dynamic social scenes

PubMed Central

Ulloa, José Luis; Puce, Aina; Hugueville, Laurent; George, Nathalie

2014-01-01

To understand social interactions, we must decode dynamic social cues from seen faces. Here, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study the neural responses underlying the perception of emotional expressions and gaze direction changes as depicted in an interaction between two agents. Subjects viewed displays of paired faces that first established a social scenario of gazing at each other (mutual attention) or gazing laterally together (deviated group attention) and then dynamically displayed either an angry or happy facial expression. The initial gaze change elicited a significantly larger M170 under the deviated than the mutual attention scenario. At around 400 ms after the dynamic emotion onset, responses at posterior MEG sensors differentiated between emotions, and between 1000 and 2200 ms, left posterior sensors were additionally modulated by social scenario. Moreover, activity on right anterior sensors showed both an early and prolonged interaction between emotion and social scenario. These results suggest that activity in right anterior sensors reflects an early integration of emotion and social attention, while posterior activity first differentiated between emotions only, supporting the view of a dual route for emotion processing. Altogether, our data demonstrate that both transient and sustained neurophysiological responses underlie social processing when observing interactions between others. PMID:23202662

New social tasks for cognitive psychology; or, new cognitive tasks for social psychology.

PubMed

Wettersten, John

2014-01-01

To elucidate how differing theories of rationality lead to differing practices, their social rules must be analyzed. This is true not merely in science but also in society at large. This analysis of social thinking requires both the identification of innate cognitive social psychological processes and explanations of their relations with differing rules of rational practice. These new tasks can enable social psychologists to contribute to the study of how social situations facilitate or inhibit rational practice and enable cognitive psychologists to improve social psychological theory. In contrast to dominant current research strategies, social and cognitive psychologists can integrate social studies of rational practices and their consequences with studies of underlying cognitive psychological processes. In this article I do not attempt to carry out these tasks but rather point to both their lack of recognition and their importance.

Social priming of hemispatial neglect affects spatial coding: Evidence from the Simon task.

PubMed

Arend, Isabel; Aisenberg, Daniela; Henik, Avishai

2016-10-01

In the Simon effect (SE), choice reactions are fast if the location of the stimulus and the response correspond when stimulus location is task-irrelevant; therefore, the SE reflects the automatic processing of space. Priming of social concepts was found to affect automatic processing in the Stroop effect. We investigated whether spatial coding measured by the SE can be affected by the observer's mental state. We used two social priming manipulations of impairments: one involving spatial processing - hemispatial neglect (HN) and another involving color perception - achromatopsia (ACHM). In two experiments the SE was reduced in the "neglected" visual field (VF) under the HN, but not under the ACHM manipulation. Our results show that spatial coding is sensitive to spatial representations that are not derived from task-relevant parameters, but from the observer's cognitive state. These findings dispute stimulus-response interference models grounded on the idea of the automaticity of spatial processing. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The role of learning in social development: Illustrations from neglected children.

PubMed

Wismer Fries, Alison B; Pollak, Seth D

2017-03-01

Children who experience early caregiving neglect are very likely to have problems developing and maintaining relationships and regulating their social behavior. One of the earliest manifestations of this problem is reflected in indiscriminate behavior, a phenomenon where young children do not show normative wariness of strangers or use familiar adults as sources of security. To better understand the developmental mechanisms underlying the emergence of these problems, this study examined whether institutionally reared children, who experienced early social neglect, had difficulty associating motivational significance to visual stimuli. Pairing stimuli with motivational significance is presumably one of the associative learning processes involved in establishing discriminate or selective relationships with others. We found that early experiences of neglectful caregiving were associated with difficulties in acquiring such associations, and that delays in this developmental skill were related to children's social difficulties. These data suggest a way in which early social learning experiences may impact the development of processes underlying emotional development. © 2016 The Authors. Developmental Science Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Gender-specific modulation of neural mechanisms underlying social reward processing by Autism Quotient

PubMed Central

Barman, Adriana; Richter, Sylvia; Soch, Joram; Deibele, Anna; Richter, Anni; Assmann, Anne; Wüstenberg, Torsten; Walter, Henrik; Seidenbecher, Constanze I.

2015-01-01

Autism spectrum disorder refers to a neurodevelopmental condition primarily characterized by deficits in social cognition and behavior. Subclinically, autistic features are supposed to be present in healthy humans and can be quantified using the Autism Quotient (AQ). Here, we investigated a potential relationship between AQ and neural correlates of social and monetary reward processing, using functional magnetic resonance imaging in young, healthy participants. In an incentive delay task with either monetary or social reward, reward anticipation elicited increased ventral striatal activation, which was more pronounced during monetary reward anticipation. Anticipation of social reward elicited activation in the default mode network (DMN), a network previously implicated in social processing. Social reward feedback was associated with bilateral amygdala and fusiform face area activation. The relationship between AQ and neural correlates of social reward processing varied in a gender-dependent manner. In women and, to a lesser extent in men, higher AQ was associated with increased posterior DMN activation during social reward anticipation. During feedback, we observed a negative correlation of AQ and right amygdala activation in men only. Our results suggest that social reward processing might constitute an endophenotype for autism-related traits in healthy humans that manifests in a gender-specific way. PMID:25944965

Racial bias shapes social reinforcement learning.

PubMed

Lindström, Björn; Selbing, Ida; Molapour, Tanaz; Olsson, Andreas

2014-03-01

Both emotional facial expressions and markers of racial-group belonging are ubiquitous signals in social interaction, but little is known about how these signals together affect future behavior through learning. To address this issue, we investigated how emotional (threatening or friendly) in-group and out-group faces reinforced behavior in a reinforcement-learning task. We asked whether reinforcement learning would be modulated by intergroup attitudes (i.e., racial bias). The results showed that individual differences in racial bias critically modulated reinforcement learning. As predicted, racial bias was associated with more efficiently learned avoidance of threatening out-group individuals. We used computational modeling analysis to quantitatively delimit the underlying processes affected by social reinforcement. These analyses showed that racial bias modulates the rate at which exposure to threatening out-group individuals is transformed into future avoidance behavior. In concert, these results shed new light on the learning processes underlying social interaction with racial-in-group and out-group individuals.

Selective influences of oxytocin on the evaluative processing of social stimuli

PubMed Central

Norman, Greg J; Cacioppo, John T; Morris, John S; Karelina, Kate; Malarkey, William B; DeVries, A Courtney; Berntson, Gary G

2013-01-01

The neuropeptide oxytocin has been implicated in a wide range of social processes, such as pair bonding, affiliation, and social judgments that may contribute to normal adjustment and psychiatric states. The present experimental study sought to elucidate potential underlying mechanisms by which oxytocin may impact social processes by examining the effects of intranasal oxytocin on basic evaluative processes. Subjects rated slide stimuli from the International Affective Picture System, varying across multiple categories (pleasant, neutral, unpleasant) and social content. Separate ratings for arousal and for the positive and negative components of valence were obtained in the context of a bivariate evaluative space model. Oxytocin did not have an independent significant effect on positivity or negativity ratings, but instead oxytocin treatment altered the interaction between these component processes for social, relative to non-social stimuli regardless of valence conditions. Specifically, oxytocin, relative to vehicle, significantly decreased arousal ratings to threatening human stimuli without altering ratings of threatening animal stimuli. These results indicate that oxytocin may exert its effects through dynamic alterations in the partially separable neural substrates mediating arousal as well as positive and negative evaluations of social stimuli. PMID:20498133

Intrinsic Functional Connectivity in Salience and Default Mode Networks and Aberrant Social Processes in Youth at Ultra-High Risk for Psychosis.

PubMed

Pelletier-Baldelli, Andrea; Bernard, Jessica A; Mittal, Vijay A

2015-01-01

Social processes are key to navigating the world, and investigating their underlying mechanisms and cognitive architecture can aid in understanding disease states such as schizophrenia, where social processes are highly impacted. Evidence suggests that social processes are impaired in individuals at ultra high-risk for the development of psychosis (UHR). Understanding these phenomena in UHR youth may clarify disease etiology and social processes in a period that is characterized by significantly fewer confounds than schizophrenia. Furthermore, understanding social processing deficits in this population will help explain these processes in healthy individuals. The current study examined resting state connectivity of the salience (SN) and default mode networks (DMN) in association with facial emotion recognition (FER), an integral aspect of social processes, as well as broader social functioning (SF) in UHR individuals and healthy controls. Consistent with the existing literature, UHR youth were impaired in FER and SF when compared with controls. In the UHR group, we found increased connectivity between the SN and the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the DMN relative to controls. In UHR youth, the DMN exhibited both positive and negative correlations with the somatosensory cortex/cerebellum and precuneus, respectively, which was linked with better FER performance. For SF, results showed that sensory processing links with the SN might be important in allowing for better SF for both groups, but especially in controls where sensory processing is likely to be unimpaired. These findings clarify how social processing deficits may manifest in psychosis, and underscore the importance of SN and DMN connectivity for social processing more generally.

Intrinsic Functional Connectivity in Salience and Default Mode Networks and Aberrant Social Processes in Youth at Ultra-High Risk for Psychosis

PubMed Central

Pelletier-Baldelli, Andrea; Bernard, Jessica A.; Mittal, Vijay A.

2015-01-01

Social processes are key to navigating the world, and investigating their underlying mechanisms and cognitive architecture can aid in understanding disease states such as schizophrenia, where social processes are highly impacted. Evidence suggests that social processes are impaired in individuals at ultra high-risk for the development of psychosis (UHR). Understanding these phenomena in UHR youth may clarify disease etiology and social processes in a period that is characterized by significantly fewer confounds than schizophrenia. Furthermore, understanding social processing deficits in this population will help explain these processes in healthy individuals. The current study examined resting state connectivity of the salience (SN) and default mode networks (DMN) in association with facial emotion recognition (FER), an integral aspect of social processes, as well as broader social functioning (SF) in UHR individuals and healthy controls. Consistent with the existing literature, UHR youth were impaired in FER and SF when compared with controls. In the UHR group, we found increased connectivity between the SN and the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the DMN relative to controls. In UHR youth, the DMN exhibited both positive and negative correlations with the somatosensory cortex/cerebellum and precuneus, respectively, which was linked with better FER performance. For SF, results showed that sensory processing links with the SN might be important in allowing for better SF for both groups, but especially in controls where sensory processing is likely to be unimpaired. These findings clarify how social processing deficits may manifest in psychosis, and underscore the importance of SN and DMN connectivity for social processing more generally. PMID:26252525

Ecologic, Economic, and Social Considerations for Rangeland Sustainability: An Integrated Conceptual Framework

Treesearch

Daniel W. McCollum; H. Theodore Jr. Heintz; Aaron J. Harp; John A. Tanaka; Gary R. Evans; David Radloff; Louis E. Swanson; William E. III Fox; Michael G. Sherm Karl; John E. Mitchell

2006-01-01

Use and sustainability of rangelands are inherently linked to the health and sustainability of the land. They are also inherently linked to the social and economic infrastructures that complement and support those rangelands and rangeland uses. Ecological systems and processes provide the biological interactions underlying ecosystem health and viability. Social and...

Classical Social Justice: A Philosophical Exploration of the Roots of Social and Economic Inequities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lucey, Thomas A.; Agnello, Mary Frances; Hawkins, Jeffrey M.

2010-01-01

For a socially just community to occur, decision-making must employ respectful procedures that value input from representatives of all economic contexts. By considering philosophical roots of Western societal development, it is possible to gain insight into the systemic processes underlying these circumstances. By understanding these bases,…

A Study of Social Identity in Two Ethnic Groups in India and Bangladesh.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ghosh, E. S. K.; Huq, M. M.

1985-01-01

Reports two studies which examined the social identity of Hindu and Muslim subjects under three frames of reference: self, own group, and outgroup evaluations cross-nationally. Findings are examined in relation to the interplay of specific socio-contextual experiences in the differential pattern of social identity processes. (SED)

Partners in Learning: A Child-Centered Approach to Teaching the Social Studies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hopkins, Lee Bennett; Arenstein, Misha

The underlying objective of this book is to review past and present curriculum patterns to emphasize the changes being carried out today so that preservice, beginning, and experienced teachers may glean some new ideas about involving the child in the process of learning. All of the social disciplines help explain the complex process of man's…

Covariation assessment for neutral and emotional verbal stimuli in paranoid delusions.

PubMed

Díez-Alegría, Cristina; Vázquez, Carmelo; Hernández-Lloreda, María J

2008-11-01

Selective processing of emotion-relevant information is considered a central feature in various types of psychopathology, yet the mechanisms underlying these biases are not well understood. One of the first steps in processing information is to gather data to judge the covariation or association of events. The aim of this study was to explore whether patients with persecutory delusions would show a covariation bias when processing stimuli related to social threat. We assessed estimations of covariation in-patients with current persecutory (CP) beliefs (N=40), patients with past persecutory (PP) beliefs (N=25), and a non-clinical control (NC) group (N=36). Covariation estimations were assessed under three different experimental conditions. The first two conditions focused on neutral behaviours (Condition 1) and psychological traits (Condition 2) for two distant cultural groups, while the third condition included self-relevant material by exposing the participant to either protective social (positive) or threatening social (negative) statements about the participant or a third person. Our results showed that all participants were precise in their covariation estimations. However, when judging covariation for self-relevant sentences related to social statements (Condition 3), all groups showed a significant tendency to associate positive social interaction (protection themed) sentences to the self. Yet, when using sentences related to social-threat, the CP group showed a bias consisting of overestimating the number of self-referent sentences. Our results showed that there was no specific covariation assessment bias related to paranoid beliefs. Both NCs and participants with persecutory beliefs showed a similar pattern of results when processing neutral or social threat-related sentences. The implications for understanding of the role of self-referent information processing biases in delusion formation are discussed.

Social learning among Congo Basin hunter–gatherers

PubMed Central

Hewlett, Barry S.; Fouts, Hillary N.; Boyette, Adam H.; Hewlett, Bonnie L.

2011-01-01

This paper explores childhood social learning among Aka and Bofi hunter–gatherers in Central Africa. Existing literature suggests that hunter–gatherer social learning is primarily vertical (parent-to-child) and that teaching is rare. We use behavioural observations, open-ended and semi-structured interviews, and informal and anecdotal observations to examine the modes (e.g. vertical versus horizontal/oblique) and processes (e.g. teaching versus observation and imitation) of cultural transmission. Cultural and demographic contexts of social learning associated with the modes and processes of cultural transmission are described. Hunter–gatherer social learning occurred early, was relatively rapid, primarily vertical under age 5 and oblique and horizontal between the ages of 6 and 12. Pedagogy and other forms of teaching existed as early as 12 months of age, but were relatively infrequent by comparison to other processes of social learning such as observation and imitation. PMID:21357239

Administrative review process for adjudicating initial disability claims. Final rule.

PubMed

2006-03-31

The Social Security Administration is committed to providing the high quality of service the American people expect and deserve. In light of the significant growth in the number of disability claims and the increased complexity of those claims, the need to make substantial changes in our disability determination process has become urgent. We are publishing a final rule that amends our administrative review process for applications for benefits that are based on whether you are disabled under title II of the Social Security Act (the Act), or applications for supplemental security income (SSI) payments that are based on whether you are disabled or blind under title XVI of the Act. We expect that this final rule will improve the accuracy, consistency, and timeliness of decision-making throughout the disability determination process.

Post-event processing in social anxiety disorder after real-life social situations - An ambulatory assessment study.

PubMed

Helbig-Lang, Sylvia; von Auer, Maxie; Neubauer, Karolin; Murray, Eileen; Gerlach, Alexander L

2016-09-01

Excessive post-mortem processing after social situations, a core symptom of social anxiety disorder (SAD), is thought to contribute to the perpetuation of social anxiety by consolidating negative self-schemata. Empirical findings on actual mechanisms underlying this so-called Post-Event Processing (PEP) are still scarce. The present study sought to identify variables associated with the experience of PEP after real-life social situations in a sample of 49 individuals diagnosed with SAD. Using an ambulatory assessment approach, individuals were asked to report on each distressing social event experienced during one week. A total of 192 events were captured. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that next to trait social anxiety, the type of social situation (performance vs. interaction situations), self-focused attention, safety behavior use, and negative affect predicted levels of PEP after social situations. These findings add to the growing literature that emphasizes the importance of situational factors for the experience of PEP, and highlight potential venues to prevent it. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Understanding the social effects of emotion regulation: the mediating role of authenticity for individual differences in suppression.

PubMed

English, Tammy; John, Oliver P

2013-04-01

Individuals differ in the strategies they use to regulate their emotions (e.g., suppression, reappraisal), and these regulatory strategies can differentially influence social outcomes. However, the mechanisms underlying these social effects remain to be specified. We examined one potential mediator that arises directly from emotion-regulatory effort (expression of positive emotion), and another mediator that does not involve emotion processes per se, but instead results from the link between regulation and self-processes (subjective inauthenticity). Across three studies, only inauthenticity mediated the link between habitual use of suppression and poor social functioning (lower relationship satisfaction, lower social support). These findings replicated across individuals socialized in Western and East Asian cultural contexts, younger and older adults, when predicting social functioning concurrently and a decade later, and even when broader adjustment was controlled. Thus, the social costs of suppression do not seem to be due to reduced positive emotion expression but rather the incongruence between inner-self and outer-behavior. Reappraisal was not consistently related to social functioning. Implications of these findings for emotion processes, self processes, and interpersonal relationships are discussed. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

An integrative neural model of social perception, action observation, and theory of mind.

PubMed

Yang, Daniel Y-J; Rosenblau, Gabriela; Keifer, Cara; Pelphrey, Kevin A

2015-04-01

In the field of social neuroscience, major branches of research have been instrumental in describing independent components of typical and aberrant social information processing, but the field as a whole lacks a comprehensive model that integrates different branches. We review existing research related to the neural basis of three key neural systems underlying social information processing: social perception, action observation, and theory of mind. We propose an integrative model that unites these three processes and highlights the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), which plays a central role in all three systems. Furthermore, we integrate these neural systems with the dual system account of implicit and explicit social information processing. Large-scale meta-analyses based on Neurosynth confirmed that the pSTS is at the intersection of the three neural systems. Resting-state functional connectivity analysis with 1000 subjects confirmed that the pSTS is connected to all other regions in these systems. The findings presented in this review are specifically relevant for psychiatric research especially disorders characterized by social deficits such as autism spectrum disorder. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An integrative neural model of social perception, action observation, and theory of mind

PubMed Central

Yang, Daniel Y.-J.; Rosenblau, Gabriela; Keifer, Cara; Pelphrey, Kevin A.

2016-01-01

In the field of social neuroscience, major branches of research have been instrumental in describing independent components of typical and aberrant social information processing, but the field as a whole lacks a comprehensive model that integrates different branches. We review existing research related to the neural basis of three key neural systems underlying social information processing: social perception, action observation, and theory of mind. We propose an integrative model that unites these three processes and highlights the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), which plays a central role in all three systems. Furthermore, we integrate these neural systems with the dual system account of implicit and explicit social information processing. Large-scale meta-analyses based on Neurosynth confirmed that the pSTS is at the intersection of the three neural systems. Resting-state functional connectivity analysis with 1000 subjects confirmed that the pSTS is connected to all other regions in these systems. The findings presented in this review are specifically relevant for psychiatric research especially disorders characterized by social deficits such as autism spectrum disorder. PMID:25660957

[Neural basis of self-face recognition: social aspects].

PubMed

Sugiura, Motoaki

2012-07-01

Considering the importance of the face in social survival and evidence from evolutionary psychology of visual self-recognition, it is reasonable that we expect neural mechanisms for higher social-cognitive processes to underlie self-face recognition. A decade of neuroimaging studies so far has, however, not provided an encouraging finding in this respect. Self-face specific activation has typically been reported in the areas for sensory-motor integration in the right lateral cortices. This observation appears to reflect the physical nature of the self-face which representation is developed via the detection of contingency between one's own action and sensory feedback. We have recently revealed that the medial prefrontal cortex, implicated in socially nuanced self-referential process, is activated during self-face recognition under a rich social context where multiple other faces are available for reference. The posterior cingulate cortex has also exhibited this activation modulation, and in the separate experiment showed a response to attractively manipulated self-face suggesting its relevance to positive self-value. Furthermore, the regions in the right lateral cortices typically showing self-face-specific activation have responded also to the face of one's close friend under the rich social context. This observation is potentially explained by the fact that the contingency detection for physical self-recognition also plays a role in physical social interaction, which characterizes the representation of personally familiar people. These findings demonstrate that neuroscientific exploration reveals multiple facets of the relationship between self-face recognition and social-cognitive process, and that technically the manipulation of social context is key to its success.

Executive Function as a Mediator in the Link between Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Social Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tseng, Wan-Ling; Gau, Susan Shur-Fen

2013-01-01

Background: Cognitive processes and mechanisms underlying the strong link between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and social problems remain unclear. Limited knowledge also exists regarding a subgroup of youth with ADHD who do not have social problems. This study investigated the extent to which executive function (EF) mediated the…

Spatial Heterogeneity, Social Capital, and Rural Larceny and Burglary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Deller, Steven; Deller, Melissa

2012-01-01

We explore the role of social capital in explaining patterns of rural larceny and burglary crime rates. We find consistent evidence that higher levels of social capital tend to be associated with lower levels of rural property crime rates. We also find that there is significant spatial heterogeneity in the underlying data-generating process. This…

Comment: Respecifying Emotional Influence

PubMed Central

Parkinson, Brian

2017-01-01

To what extent does the level of overlap between social appraisal and social referencing depend upon the particular definitions adopted when following different research agendas? I argue that processes of both kinds fall under the more inclusive heading of relation alignment. Relation alignment also covers emotional influence that is not mediated by the communication of appraisal. Similarities, interdependences, and distinctions between these various relation-alignment processes warrant further investigation. PMID:28804511

Comment: Respecifying Emotional Influence.

PubMed

Parkinson, Brian

2017-07-01

To what extent does the level of overlap between social appraisal and social referencing depend upon the particular definitions adopted when following different research agendas? I argue that processes of both kinds fall under the more inclusive heading of relation alignment. Relation alignment also covers emotional influence that is not mediated by the communication of appraisal. Similarities, interdependences, and distinctions between these various relation-alignment processes warrant further investigation.

What the Words Do Not Say: SFS for Children under the Light of Social Semiotic Theory Case Study--'Horis sosivio'

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dermata, Katerina; Skarpelos, Yannis

2017-01-01

The research on short stories for children has focused in Greece mostly on their literary, pedagogical, linguistic and educational aspects. This paper attempts to approach Short Form Stories for children under the light of social semiotics, the main elements being the author's choices in sign-creation process and its interpretation by the reader.…

Left inferior parietal lobe engagement in social cognition and language.

PubMed

Bzdok, Danilo; Hartwigsen, Gesa; Reid, Andrew; Laird, Angela R; Fox, Peter T; Eickhoff, Simon B

2016-09-01

Social cognition and language are two core features of the human species. Despite distributed recruitment of brain regions in each mental capacity, the left parietal lobe (LPL) represents a zone of topographical convergence. The present study quantitatively summarizes hundreds of neuroimaging studies on social cognition and language. Using connectivity-based parcellation on a meta-analytically defined volume of interest (VOI), regional coactivation patterns within this VOI allowed identifying distinct subregions. Across parcellation solutions, two clusters emerged consistently in rostro-ventral and caudo-ventral aspects of the parietal VOI. Both clusters were functionally significantly associated with social-cognitive and language processing. In particular, the rostro-ventral cluster was associated with lower-level processing facets, while the caudo-ventral cluster was associated with higher-level processing facets in both mental capacities. Contrarily, in the (less stable) dorsal parietal VOI, all clusters reflected computation of general-purpose processes, such as working memory and matching tasks, that are frequently co-recruited by social or language processes. Our results hence favour a rostro-caudal distinction of lower- versus higher-level processes underlying social cognition and language in the left inferior parietal lobe. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mechanisms of self-organized criticality in social processes of knowledge creation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tadić, Bosiljka; Dankulov, Marija Mitrović; Melnik, Roderick

2017-09-01

In online social dynamics, a robust scale invariance appears as a key feature of collaborative efforts that lead to new social value. The underlying empirical data thus offers a unique opportunity to study the origin of self-organized criticality (SOC) in social systems. In contrast to physical systems in the laboratory, various human attributes of the actors play an essential role in the process along with the contents (cognitive, emotional) of the communicated artifacts. As a prototypical example, we consider the social endeavor of knowledge creation via Questions and Answers (Q&A). Using a large empirical data set from one of such Q&A sites and theoretical modeling, we reveal fundamental characteristics of SOC by investigating the temporal correlations at all scales and the role of cognitive contents to the avalanches of the knowledge-creation process. Our analysis shows that the universal social dynamics with power-law inhomogeneities of the actions and delay times provides the primary mechanism for self-tuning towards the critical state; it leads to the long-range correlations and the event clustering in response to the external driving by the arrival of new users. In addition, the involved cognitive contents (systematically annotated in the data and observed in the model) exert important constraints that identify unique classes of the knowledge-creation avalanches. Specifically, besides determining a fine structure of the developing knowledge networks, they affect the values of scaling exponents and the geometry of large avalanches and shape the multifractal spectrum. Furthermore, we find that the level of the activity of the communities that share the knowledge correlates with the fluctuations of the innovation rate, implying that the increase of innovation may serve as the active principle of self-organization. To identify relevant parameters and unravel the role of the network evolution underlying the process in the social system under consideration, we compare the social avalanches to the avalanche sequences occurring in the field-driven physical model of disordered solids, where the factors contributing to the collective dynamics are better understood.

Mechanisms of self-organized criticality in social processes of knowledge creation.

PubMed

Tadić, Bosiljka; Dankulov, Marija Mitrović; Melnik, Roderick

2017-09-01

In online social dynamics, a robust scale invariance appears as a key feature of collaborative efforts that lead to new social value. The underlying empirical data thus offers a unique opportunity to study the origin of self-organized criticality (SOC) in social systems. In contrast to physical systems in the laboratory, various human attributes of the actors play an essential role in the process along with the contents (cognitive, emotional) of the communicated artifacts. As a prototypical example, we consider the social endeavor of knowledge creation via Questions and Answers (Q&A). Using a large empirical data set from one of such Q&A sites and theoretical modeling, we reveal fundamental characteristics of SOC by investigating the temporal correlations at all scales and the role of cognitive contents to the avalanches of the knowledge-creation process. Our analysis shows that the universal social dynamics with power-law inhomogeneities of the actions and delay times provides the primary mechanism for self-tuning towards the critical state; it leads to the long-range correlations and the event clustering in response to the external driving by the arrival of new users. In addition, the involved cognitive contents (systematically annotated in the data and observed in the model) exert important constraints that identify unique classes of the knowledge-creation avalanches. Specifically, besides determining a fine structure of the developing knowledge networks, they affect the values of scaling exponents and the geometry of large avalanches and shape the multifractal spectrum. Furthermore, we find that the level of the activity of the communities that share the knowledge correlates with the fluctuations of the innovation rate, implying that the increase of innovation may serve as the active principle of self-organization. To identify relevant parameters and unravel the role of the network evolution underlying the process in the social system under consideration, we compare the social avalanches to the avalanche sequences occurring in the field-driven physical model of disordered solids, where the factors contributing to the collective dynamics are better understood.

Spatiotemporal dissociation of brain activity underlying threat and reward in social anxiety disorder

PubMed Central

Ghane, Merage; Valdespino, Andrew; Coffman, Marika C.; Strege, Marlene V.; White, Susan W.; Ollendick, Thomas H.

2017-01-01

Abstract Social anxiety disorder (SAD) involves abnormalities in social motivation, which may be independent of well-documented differences in fear and arousal systems. Yet, the neurobiology underlying motivational difficulties in SAD is not well understood. The aim of the current study was to spatiotemporally dissociate reward circuitry dysfunction from alterations in fear and arousal-related neural activity during anticipation and notification of social and non-social reward and punishment. During fMRI acquisition, non-depressed adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD; N = 21) and age-, sex- and IQ-matched control subjects (N = 22) completed eight runs of an incentive delay task, alternating between social and monetary outcomes and interleaved in alternating order between gain and loss outcomes. Adults with SAD demonstrated significantly reduced neural activity in ventral striatum during the anticipation of positive but not negative social outcomes. No differences between the SAD and control groups were observed during anticipation of monetary gain or loss outcomes or during anticipation of negative social images. However, consistent with previous work, the SAD group demonstrated amygdala hyper-activity upon notification of negative social outcomes. Degraded anticipatory processing in bilateral ventral striatum in SAD was constrained exclusively to anticipation of positive social information and dissociable from the effects of negative social outcomes previously observed in the amygdala. Alterations in anticipation-related neural signals may represent a promising target for treatment that is not addressed by available evidence-based interventions, which focus primarily on fear extinction and habituation processes. PMID:27798252

20 CFR 422.601 - Scope and purpose.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.601 Scope and purpose. The regulations in this subpart describe how the Social Security Administration (SSA) will conduct reviews of...

Incorporating a Socio-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) perspective into the adaptive management framework

EPA Science Inventory

Incorporating a social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) perspective to the adaptive management process requires that stakeholders and managers conceptualize restoration projects as part of coupled human and natural systems and assess underlying social drivers and accrued b...

Systematic review of the neural basis of social cognition in patients with mood disorders.

PubMed

Cusi, Andrée M; Nazarov, Anthony; Holshausen, Katherine; Macqueen, Glenda M; McKinnon, Margaret C

2012-05-01

This review integrates neuroimaging studies of 2 domains of social cognition--emotion comprehension and theory of mind (ToM)--in patients with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The influence of key clinical and method variables on patterns of neural activation during social cognitive processing is also examined. Studies were identified using PsycINFO and PubMed (January 1967 to May 2011). The search terms were "fMRI," "emotion comprehension," "emotion perception," "affect comprehension," "affect perception," "facial expression," "prosody," "theory of mind," "mentalizing" and "empathy" in combination with "major depressive disorder," "bipolar disorder," "major depression," "unipolar depression," "clinical depression" and "mania." Taken together, neuroimaging studies of social cognition in patients with mood disorders reveal enhanced activation in limbic and emotion-related structures and attenuated activity within frontal regions associated with emotion regulation and higher cognitive functions. These results reveal an overall lack of inhibition by higher-order cognitive structures on limbic and emotion-related structures during social cognitive processing in patients with mood disorders. Critically, key variables, including illness burden, symptom severity, comorbidity, medication status and cognitive load may moderate this pattern of neural activation. Studies that did not include control tasks or a comparator group were included in this review. Further work is needed to examine the contribution of key moderator variables and to further elucidate the neural networks underlying altered social cognition in patients with mood disorders. The neural networks under lying higher-order social cognitive processes, including empathy, remain unexplored in patients with mood disorders.

Modeling and Compensatory Processes Underlying Involvement in Child Care among Kibbutz-Reared Fathers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaunt, Ruth; Bassi, Liat

2012-01-01

This study examined modeling and compensatory processes underlying the effects of an early paternal model on father involvement in child care. Drawing on social learning theory, it was hypothesized that father-son relationships would moderate the association between a father's involvement and his own father's involvement. A sample of 136 kibbutz…

Investigating Addiction in the Changing Universe

PubMed Central

Dastoury, Mojgan; Aminaee, Tayebe; Ghaumi, Raheleh

2014-01-01

The process of globalization as the most significant characteristic of modern era is facilitated by several factors including Information Technology, the industry of production and distribution of information, the flow of goods, services, human beings, capitals, information and etc. This phenomenon, along with the complex and various identities and life styles created by the national and transnational determinants, has widely changed the nature of social phenomena, including addition. The present study aims to investigate the contribution of sociological studies in the field of addiction during 2001 to 2011 in Iran. This is done through performing content analysis on 41 peer reviewed papers. The selected samples were surveyed and compared according to theoretical frameworks and the social groups under study. The results showed that the analyzed papers extensively overlooked the process of contemporary social changes in Iran which could be caused either by the theoretical basis of the studies or the social groups under study. Following the theoretical views of previous decades, these papers largely considered addiction as a type of social deviation and misbehavior related to the men living in urban areas. PMID:25363096

Social Cognition in Schizophrenia: From Social Stimuli Processing to Social Engagement

PubMed Central

Billeke, Pablo; Aboitiz, Francisco

2013-01-01

Social cognition consists of several skills which allow us to interact with other humans. These skills include social stimuli processing, drawing inferences about others’ mental states, and engaging in social interactions. In recent years, there has been growing evidence of social cognitive impairments in patients with schizophrenia. Apparently, these impairments are separable from general neurocognitive impairments, such as attention, memory, and executive functioning. Moreover, social cognition seems to be a main determinant of functional outcome and could be used as a guide to elaborate new pharmacological and psychological treatments. However, most of these studies focus on individual mechanisms and observational perspectives; only few of them study schizophrenic patients during interactive situations. We first review evidences of social cognitive impairments both in social stimuli processing and in mental state attribution. We focus on the relationship between these functions and both general cognitive impairments and functional outcome. We next review recent game theory approaches to the study of how social engagement occurs in schizophrenic patients. The advantage of using game theory is that game-oriented tasks can assess social decision making in an interactive everyday situation model. Finally, we review proposed theoretical models used to explain social alterations and their underlying biological mechanisms. Based on interactive studies, we propose a framework which takes into account the dynamic nature of social processes. Thus, understanding social skills as a result of dynamical systems could facilitate the development of both basic research and clinical applications oriented to psychiatric populations. PMID:23444313

Annual Research Review: What is resilience within the social ecology of human development?

PubMed

Ungar, Michael; Ghazinour, Mehdi; Richter, Jörg

2013-04-01

  The development of Bronfenbrenner's bio-social-ecological systems model of human development parallels advances made to the theory of resilience that progressively moved from a more individual (micro) focus on traits to a multisystemic understanding of person-environment reciprocal processes.   This review uses Bronfenbrenner's model and Ungar's social-ecological interpretation of four decades of research on resilience to discuss the results of a purposeful selection of studies of resilience that have been done in different contexts and cultures.   An ecological model of resilience can, and indeed has been shown to help researchers of resilience to conceptualize the child's social and physical ecologies, from caregivers to neighbourhoods, that account for both proximal and distal factors that predict successful development under adversity. Three principles emerged from this review that inform a bio-social-ecological interpretation of resilience: equifinality (there are many proximal processes that can lead to many different, but equally viable, expressions of human development associated with well-being); differential impact (the nature of the risks children face, their perceptions of the resources available to mitigate those risks and the quality of the resources that are accessible make proximal processes more or less influential to children's development); and contextual and cultural moderation (different contexts and cultures provide access to different processes associated with resilience as it is defined locally).   As this review shows, using this multisystemic social-ecological theory of resilience can inform a deeper understanding of the processes that contribute to positive development under stress. It can also offer practitioners and policy makers a broader perspective on principles for the design and implementation of effective interventions. © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry © 2012 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Social anxiety under load: the effects of perceptual load in processing emotional faces.

PubMed

Soares, Sandra C; Rocha, Marta; Neiva, Tiago; Rodrigues, Paulo; Silva, Carlos F

2015-01-01

Previous studies in the social anxiety arena have shown an impaired attentional control system, similar to that found in trait anxiety. However, the effect of task demands on social anxiety in socially threatening stimuli, such as angry faces, remains unseen. In the present study, 54 university students scoring high and low in the Social Interaction and Performance Anxiety and Avoidance Scale (SIPAAS) questionnaire, participated in a target letter discrimination task while task-irrelevant face stimuli (angry, disgust, happy, and neutral) were simultaneously presented. The results showed that high (compared to low) socially anxious individuals were more prone to distraction by task-irrelevant stimuli, particularly under high perceptual load conditions. More importantly, for such individuals, the accuracy proportions for angry faces significantly differed between the low and high perceptual load conditions, which is discussed in light of current evolutionary models of social anxiety.

On the rationale for hysteresis in economic decisions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rios, Luis A.; Rachinskii, Dmitrii; Cross, Rod

2017-02-01

In the social sciences there are plausible reasons to postulate that hysteresis effects are important. The available evidence, however, is predominantly at the macro level. In this paper we review the evidence regarding hysteresis in the neural processes underlying human behavior. We argue that there is a need for experimental and neuroimaging studies to fill the gap in knowledge about hysteresis processes at the micro level in the social sciences.

Crowd-driven Ecosystem for Evolutionary Design

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-07-28

also embeds social media connections to maximize crowd engagement. Within such an environment, experts and non- traditional contributors (crowd) can...process.” The CEED platform also embeds social media connections to maximize crowd engagement. When completed, the software developed under the...track a project of interest online through other social media (namely RSS, Facebook, and Twitter) as well as on the vehicleforge website itself

Early neural activation during facial affect processing in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PubMed

Leung, Rachel C; Pang, Elizabeth W; Cassel, Daniel; Brian, Jessica A; Smith, Mary Lou; Taylor, Margot J

2015-01-01

Impaired social interaction is one of the hallmarks of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Emotional faces are arguably the most critical visual social stimuli and the ability to perceive, recognize, and interpret emotions is central to social interaction and communication, and subsequently healthy social development. However, our understanding of the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying emotional face processing in adolescents with ASD is limited. We recruited 48 adolescents, 24 with high functioning ASD and 24 typically developing controls. Participants completed an implicit emotional face processing task in the MEG. We examined spatiotemporal differences in neural activation between the groups during implicit angry and happy face processing. While there were no differences in response latencies between groups across emotions, adolescents with ASD had lower accuracy on the implicit emotional face processing task when the trials included angry faces. MEG data showed atypical neural activity in adolescents with ASD during angry and happy face processing, which included atypical activity in the insula, anterior and posterior cingulate and temporal and orbitofrontal regions. Our findings demonstrate differences in neural activity during happy and angry face processing between adolescents with and without ASD. These differences in activation in social cognitive regions may index the difficulties in face processing and in comprehension of social reward and punishment in the ASD group. Thus, our results suggest that atypical neural activation contributes to impaired affect processing, and thus social cognition, in adolescents with ASD.

Alpha band event-related desynchronization underlying social situational context processing during irony comprehension: A magnetoencephalography source localization study.

PubMed

Akimoto, Yoritaka; Takahashi, Hidetoshi; Gunji, Atsuko; Kaneko, Yuu; Asano, Michiko; Matsuo, Junko; Ota, Miho; Kunugi, Hiroshi; Hanakawa, Takashi; Mazuka, Reiko; Kamio, Yoko

2017-12-01

Irony comprehension requires integration of social contextual information. Previous studies have investigated temporal aspects of irony processing and its neural substrates using psychological/electroencephalogram or functional magnetic resonance imaging methods, but have not clarified the temporospatial neural mechanisms of irony comprehension. Therefore, we used magnetoencephalography to investigate the neural generators of alpha-band (8-13Hz) event-related desynchronization (ERD) occurring from 600 to 900ms following the onset of a critical sentence at which social situational contexts activated ironic representation. We found that the right anterior temporal lobe, which is involved in processing social knowledge and evaluating others' intentions, exhibited stronger alpha ERD following an ironic statement than following a literal statement. We also found that alpha power in the left anterior temporal lobe correlated with the participants' communication abilities. These results elucidate the temporospatial neural mechanisms of language comprehension in social contexts, including non-literal processing. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Neural bases of eye and gaze processing: The core of social cognition

PubMed Central

Itier, Roxane J.; Batty, Magali

2014-01-01

Eyes and gaze are very important stimuli for human social interactions. Recent studies suggest that impairments in recognizing face identity, facial emotions or in inferring attention and intentions of others could be linked to difficulties in extracting the relevant information from the eye region including gaze direction. In this review, we address the central role of eyes and gaze in social cognition. We start with behavioral data demonstrating the importance of the eye region and the impact of gaze on the most significant aspects of face processing. We review neuropsychological cases and data from various imaging techniques such as fMRI/PET and ERP/MEG, in an attempt to best describe the spatio-temporal networks underlying these processes. The existence of a neuronal eye detector mechanism is discussed as well as the links between eye gaze and social cognition impairments in autism. We suggest impairments in processing eyes and gaze may represent a core deficiency in several other brain pathologies and may be central to abnormal social cognition. PMID:19428496

Express your social self: cultural differences in choice of brand-name versus generic products.

PubMed

Kim, Heejung S; Drolet, Aimee

2009-12-01

This research examined cultural differences in the patterns of choices that reflect more social characteristics of a chooser (e.g., social status). Four studies examined the cultural difference in individuals' tendency to choose brand-name products (i.e., high-status options) over generic products (i.e., low-status options) and the underlying reasons for these differences. Compared to European Americans, Asian Americans consistently chose brand-name products. This difference was driven by Asian Americans' greater social status concerns. Self-consciousness was more strongly associated with the brand-name choices of Asian Americans (vs. European Americans), and experimentally induced social status led Asian Americans (vs. European Americans) to make more choices concordant with self-perception. These findings highlight the importance of considering external and social motivations underlying the choice-making process.

Interactive Social Neuroscience to Study Autism Spectrum Disorder

PubMed Central

Rolison, Max J.; Naples, Adam J.; McPartland, James C.

2015-01-01

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate difficulty with social interactions and relationships, but the neural mechanisms underlying these difficulties remain largely unknown. While social difficulties in ASD are most apparent in the context of interactions with other people, most neuroscience research investigating ASD have provided limited insight into the complex dynamics of these interactions. The development of novel, innovative “interactive social neuroscience” methods to study the brain in contexts with two interacting humans is a necessary advance for ASD research. Studies applying an interactive neuroscience approach to study two brains engaging with one another have revealed significant differences in neural processes during interaction compared to observation in brain regions that are implicated in the neuropathology of ASD. Interactive social neuroscience methods are crucial in clarifying the mechanisms underlying the social and communication deficits that characterize ASD. PMID:25745371

Interactive social neuroscience to study autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Rolison, Max J; Naples, Adam J; McPartland, James C

2015-03-01

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate difficulty with social interactions and relationships, but the neural mechanisms underlying these difficulties remain largely unknown. While social difficulties in ASD are most apparent in the context of interactions with other people, most neuroscience research investigating ASD have provided limited insight into the complex dynamics of these interactions. The development of novel, innovative "interactive social neuroscience" methods to study the brain in contexts with two interacting humans is a necessary advance for ASD research. Studies applying an interactive neuroscience approach to study two brains engaging with one another have revealed significant differences in neural processes during interaction compared to observation in brain regions that are implicated in the neuropathology of ASD. Interactive social neuroscience methods are crucial in clarifying the mechanisms underlying the social and communication deficits that characterize ASD.

Complex social contagion makes networks more vulnerable to disease outbreaks.

PubMed

Campbell, Ellsworth; Salathé, Marcel

2013-01-01

Social network analysis is now widely used to investigate the dynamics of infectious disease spread. Vaccination dramatically disrupts disease transmission on a contact network, and indeed, high vaccination rates can potentially halt disease transmission altogether. Here, we build on mounting evidence that health behaviors - such as vaccination, and refusal thereof - can spread across social networks through a process of complex contagion that requires social reinforcement. Using network simulations that model health behavior and infectious disease spread, we find that under otherwise identical conditions, the process by which the health behavior spreads has a very strong effect on disease outbreak dynamics. This dynamic variability results from differences in the topology within susceptible communities that arise during the health behavior spreading process, which in turn depends on the topology of the overall social network. Our findings point to the importance of health behavior spread in predicting and controlling disease outbreaks.

Attitude change: persuasion and social influence.

PubMed

Wood, W

2000-01-01

This chapter reviews empirical and theoretical developments in research on social influence and message-based persuasion. The review emphasizes research published during the period from 1996-1998. Across these literatures, three central motives have been identified that generate attitude change and resistance. These involve concerns with the self, with others and the rewards/punishments they can provide, and with a valid understanding of reality. The motives have implications for information processing and for attitude change in public and private contexts. Motives in persuasion also have been investigated in research on attitude functions and cognitive dissonance theory. In addition, the chapter reviews the relatively unique aspects of each literature: In persuasion, it considers the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying attitude change, especially dual-mode processing models, recipients' affective reactions, and biased processing. In social influence, the chapter considers how attitudes are embedded in social relations, including social identity theory and majority/minority group influence.

Social anhedonia is associated with neural abnormalities during face emotion processing.

PubMed

Germine, Laura T; Garrido, Lucia; Bruce, Lori; Hooker, Christine

2011-10-01

Human beings are social organisms with an intrinsic desire to seek and participate in social interactions. Social anhedonia is a personality trait characterized by a reduced desire for social affiliation and reduced pleasure derived from interpersonal interactions. Abnormally high levels of social anhedonia prospectively predict the development of schizophrenia and contribute to poorer outcomes for schizophrenia patients. Despite the strong association between social anhedonia and schizophrenia, the neural mechanisms that underlie individual differences in social anhedonia have not been studied and are thus poorly understood. Deficits in face emotion recognition are related to poorer social outcomes in schizophrenia, and it has been suggested that face emotion recognition deficits may be a behavioral marker for schizophrenia liability. In the current study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see whether there are differences in the brain networks underlying basic face emotion processing in a community sample of individuals low vs. high in social anhedonia. We isolated the neural mechanisms related to face emotion processing by comparing face emotion discrimination with four other baseline conditions (identity discrimination of emotional faces, identity discrimination of neutral faces, object discrimination, and pattern discrimination). Results showed a group (high/low social anhedonia) × condition (emotion discrimination/control condition) interaction in the anterior portion of the rostral medial prefrontal cortex, right superior temporal gyrus, and left somatosensory cortex. As predicted, high (relative to low) social anhedonia participants showed less neural activity in face emotion processing regions during emotion discrimination as compared to each control condition. The findings suggest that social anhedonia is associated with abnormalities in networks responsible for basic processes associated with social cognition, and provide a starting point for understanding the neural basis of social motivation and our drive to seek social affiliation. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cuadernos Médico Sociales from Rosario, Argentina, and other Latin American social medicine journals from the 1970s and 1980s.

PubMed

Spinelli, Hugo; Librandi, Juan Martín; Zabala, Juan Pablo

2017-01-01

In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of journals were founded to disseminate ideas from Latin American social medicine in various countries across the continent, during the early stage of a movement that would later become institutionalized in Brazil under the name "collective medicine." In this article, we look at the principal characteristics of those endeavors: Revista Centroamericana de Ciencias de la Salud, Saúde em Debate, Salud Problema, Revista Latinoamericana de Salud and Cuadernos Médico Sociales. We focus in particular on Cuadernos Médico Sociales, published in Rosario, Argentina. We analyze the conditions under which this publication emerged, the editorial processes it followed, and the central role played by Carlos Bloch, its founder and managing editor.

Forming social capital--does participatory planning foster trust in institutions?

PubMed

Menzel, Susanne; Buchecker, Matthias; Schulz, Tobias

2013-12-15

Participatory planning that includes interest groups and municipal representatives has been presented as a means to deal with the increasing difficulty to reach arrangements due to progressively scarce land resources. Under dispute is whether collaborative forms of planning augment social capital or whether they might actually cause the destruction of such a valuable social commodity. In this paper we focus on trust in institution as a specific dimension of social capital because we argue that this is one of the effects the convenors of such participatory planning procedures are most interested in. We pursue a pre-post design and survey advisory group members of five on-going river-related planning processes in Switzerland. Controlling for generalised trust, we investigate how trust in institutions is affected over time by the quality of such processes and the degree of participation they offer. We find that generalised trust is highly correlated with initial levels of trust and so is process quality. Particularly the latter finding challenges the usually assumed direction of causality according to which process quality influences trust building. Additionally, we find a positive (non-significant) effect of process quality on changes in trust, while a higher degree of participation rather seems to hinder trust building. We suppose this indicates that under the conditions of limited time and resources more attention should be paid to how to improve the quality of participatory processes than putting much effort in increasing the degree of participation. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

20 CFR 422.606 - Processing the request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Processing the request for review. 422.606 Section 422.606 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.606 Processing the...

20 CFR 422.606 - Processing the request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Processing the request for review. 422.606 Section 422.606 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.606 Processing the...

20 CFR 422.606 - Processing the request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Processing the request for review. 422.606 Section 422.606 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.606 Processing the...

20 CFR 422.606 - Processing the request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Processing the request for review. 422.606 Section 422.606 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.606 Processing the...

Age-Related Changes to the Neural Correlates of Social Evaluation

PubMed Central

Cassidy, Brittany S.; Shih, Joanne Y.; Gutchess, Angela H.

2012-01-01

Recent work suggests the existence of a specialized neural system underlying social processing that may be relatively spared with age, unlike pervasive aging-related decline occurring in many cognitive domains. We investigated how neural mechanisms underlying social evaluation are engaged with age, and how age-related changes to socioemotional goals affect recruitment of regions within this network. In a functional MRI study, fifteen young and fifteen older adults formed behavior-based impressions of individuals. They also responded to a prompt that was interpersonally meaningful, social but interpersonally irrelevant, or non-social. Both age groups engaged regions implicated in mentalizing and impression formation when making social relative to non-social evaluations, including dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortices, precuneus, and temporoparietal junction. Older adults had increased activation over young in right temporal pole when making social relative to non-social evaluations, suggesting reliance on past experiences when evaluating others. Young had greater activation than old in posterior cingulate gyrus when making interpersonally irrelevant, compared to interpersonally meaningful, evaluations, potentially reflecting enhanced valuation of this information. The findings demonstrate the age-related preservation of the neural correlates underlying social evaluation, and suggest that functioning in these regions might be mediated by age-related changes in socioemotional goals. PMID:22439896

Implicit and explicit social mentalizing: dual processes driven by a shared neural network

PubMed Central

Van Overwalle, Frank; Vandekerckhove, Marie

2013-01-01

Recent social neuroscientific evidence indicates that implicit and explicit inferences on the mind of another person (i.e., intentions, attributions or traits), are subserved by a shared mentalizing network. Under both implicit and explicit instructions, ERP studies reveal that early inferences occur at about the same time, and fMRI studies demonstrate an overlap in core mentalizing areas, including the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). These results suggest a rapid shared implicit intuition followed by a slower explicit verification processes (as revealed by additional brain activation during explicit vs. implicit inferences). These data provide support for a default-adjustment dual-process framework of social mentalizing. PMID:24062663

Testing the metacognitive model against the benchmark CBT model of social anxiety disorder: Is it time to move beyond cognition?

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

The recommended treatment for Social Phobia is individual Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT-treatments emphasize social self-beliefs (schemas) as the core underlying factor for maladaptive self-processing and social anxiety symptoms. However, the need for such beliefs in models of psychopathology has recently been questioned. Specifically, the metacognitive model of psychological disorders asserts that particular beliefs about thinking (metacognitive beliefs) are involved in most disorders, including social anxiety, and are a more important factor underlying pathology. Comparing the relative importance of these disparate underlying belief systems has the potential to advance conceptualization and treatment for SAD. In the cognitive model, unhelpful self-regulatory processes (self-attention and safety behaviours) arise from (e.g. correlate with) cognitive beliefs (schemas) whilst the metacognitive model proposes that such processes arise from metacognitive beliefs. In the present study we therefore set out to evaluate the absolute and relative fit of the cognitive and metacognitive models in a longitudinal data-set, using structural equation modelling. Five-hundred and five (505) participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires at two time points approximately 8 weeks apart. We found that both models fitted the data, but that the metacognitive model was a better fit to the data than the cognitive model. Further, a specified metacognitive model, emphasising negative metacognitive beliefs about the uncontrollability and danger of thoughts and cognitive confidence improved the model fit further and was significantly better than the cognitive model. It would seem that advances in understanding and treating social anxiety could benefit from moving to a full metacognitive theory that includes negative metacognitive beliefs about the uncontrollability and danger of thoughts, and judgements of cognitive confidence. These findings challenge a core assumption of the cognitive model and treatment of social phobia and offer further support to the metacognitive model. PMID:28472176

Testing the metacognitive model against the benchmark CBT model of social anxiety disorder: Is it time to move beyond cognition?

PubMed

Nordahl, Henrik; Wells, Adrian

2017-01-01

The recommended treatment for Social Phobia is individual Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT-treatments emphasize social self-beliefs (schemas) as the core underlying factor for maladaptive self-processing and social anxiety symptoms. However, the need for such beliefs in models of psychopathology has recently been questioned. Specifically, the metacognitive model of psychological disorders asserts that particular beliefs about thinking (metacognitive beliefs) are involved in most disorders, including social anxiety, and are a more important factor underlying pathology. Comparing the relative importance of these disparate underlying belief systems has the potential to advance conceptualization and treatment for SAD. In the cognitive model, unhelpful self-regulatory processes (self-attention and safety behaviours) arise from (e.g. correlate with) cognitive beliefs (schemas) whilst the metacognitive model proposes that such processes arise from metacognitive beliefs. In the present study we therefore set out to evaluate the absolute and relative fit of the cognitive and metacognitive models in a longitudinal data-set, using structural equation modelling. Five-hundred and five (505) participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires at two time points approximately 8 weeks apart. We found that both models fitted the data, but that the metacognitive model was a better fit to the data than the cognitive model. Further, a specified metacognitive model, emphasising negative metacognitive beliefs about the uncontrollability and danger of thoughts and cognitive confidence improved the model fit further and was significantly better than the cognitive model. It would seem that advances in understanding and treating social anxiety could benefit from moving to a full metacognitive theory that includes negative metacognitive beliefs about the uncontrollability and danger of thoughts, and judgements of cognitive confidence. These findings challenge a core assumption of the cognitive model and treatment of social phobia and offer further support to the metacognitive model.

Forgotten Memories of a Social Justice Education: Difficult Knowledge and the Impossibilities of School and Research

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sonu, Debbie

2016-01-01

This paper is about memory, the elusive process of remembering and of an encounter between a researcher and a participant who after five years reunited to remember. The object under study is a high school social justice curriculum with a central focus on the development of social action projects. Grounded in Pitt and Britzman's work on difficult…

Spatiotemporal dissociation of brain activity underlying threat and reward in social anxiety disorder.

PubMed

A Richey, John; Ghane, Merage; Valdespino, Andrew; Coffman, Marika C; Strege, Marlene V; White, Susan W; Ollendick, Thomas H

2017-01-01

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) involves abnormalities in social motivation, which may be independent of well-documented differences in fear and arousal systems. Yet, the neurobiology underlying motivational difficulties in SAD is not well understood. The aim of the current study was to spatiotemporally dissociate reward circuitry dysfunction from alterations in fear and arousal-related neural activity during anticipation and notification of social and non-social reward and punishment. During fMRI acquisition, non-depressed adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD; N = 21) and age-, sex- and IQ-matched control subjects (N = 22) completed eight runs of an incentive delay task, alternating between social and monetary outcomes and interleaved in alternating order between gain and loss outcomes. Adults with SAD demonstrated significantly reduced neural activity in ventral striatum during the anticipation of positive but not negative social outcomes. No differences between the SAD and control groups were observed during anticipation of monetary gain or loss outcomes or during anticipation of negative social images. However, consistent with previous work, the SAD group demonstrated amygdala hyper-activity upon notification of negative social outcomes. Degraded anticipatory processing in bilateral ventral striatum in SAD was constrained exclusively to anticipation of positive social information and dissociable from the effects of negative social outcomes previously observed in the amygdala. Alterations in anticipation-related neural signals may represent a promising target for treatment that is not addressed by available evidence-based interventions, which focus primarily on fear extinction and habituation processes. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Social learning strategies.

PubMed

Laland, Kevin N

2004-02-01

In most studies of social learning in animals, no attempt has been made to examine the nature of the strategy adopted by animals when they copy others. Researchers have expended considerable effort in exploring the psychological processes that underlie social learning and amassed extensive data banks recording purported social learning in the field, but the contexts under which animals copy others remain unexplored. Yet, theoretical models used to investigate the adaptive advantages of social learning lead to the conclusion that social learning cannot be indiscriminate and that individuals should adopt strategies that dictate the circumstances under which they copy others and from whom they learn. In this article, I discuss a number of possible strategies that are predicted by theoretical analyses, including copy when uncertain, copy the majority, and copy if better, and consider the empirical evidence in support of each, drawing from both the animal and human social learning literature. Reliance on social learning strategies may be organized hierarchically, their being employed by animals when unlearned and asocially learned strategies prove ineffective but before animals take recourse in innovation.

Out of touch with reality? Social perception in first-episode schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Salone, Anatolia; Ferri, Francesca; De Berardis, Domenico; Romani, Gian Luca; Ferro, Filippo M.; Gallese, Vittorio

2013-01-01

Social dysfunction has been recognized as an elementary feature of schizophrenia, but it remains a crucial issue whether social deficits in schizophrenia concern the inter-subjective domain or primarily have their roots in disturbances of self-experience. Social perception comprises vicarious processes grounding an experiential inter-relationship with others as well as self-regulation processes allowing to maintain a coherent sense of self. The present study investigated whether the functional neural basis underlying these processes is altered in first-episode schizophrenia (FES). Twenty-four FES patients and 22 healthy control participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during a social perception task requiring them to watch videos depicting other individuals' inanimate and animate/social tactile stimulations, and a tactile localizer condition. Activation in ventral premotor cortex for observed bodily tactile stimulations was reduced in the FES group and negatively correlated with self-experience disturbances. Moreover, FES patients showed aberrant differential activation in posterior insula for first-person tactile experiences and observed affective tactile stimulations. These findings suggest that social perception in FES at a pre-reflective level is characterized by disturbances of self-experience, including impaired multisensory representations and self-other distinction. However, the results also show that social perception in FES involves more complex alterations of neural activation at multiple processing levels. PMID:22275166

Emile Durkheim's Contribution to the Sociology of Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnes, Grace M.

1977-01-01

Few sociologists and fewer educators have recognized Emile Durkheim's significant contribution to the sociology of education. His major theories of education are discussed under three main groupings--education developing as a social process, education's function in the socialization of the young, and education in the development of morality.…

Mind the Gap: Organizational Learning and Improvement in an Underperforming Urban System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finnigan, Kara S.; Daly, Alan J.

2012-01-01

Drawing on the theoretical lens of organizational learning, and utilizing the methodological approaches of social network and case-study analyses, our exploratory study examines whether schools under sanction exhibit the necessary processes, relationships, and social climates that support organizational learning and improvement. We also…

Promoting Cognitive and Social Aspects of Inquiry through Classroom Discourse

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jin, Hui; Wei, Xin; Duan, Peiran; Guo, Yuying; Wang, Wenxia

2016-01-01

We investigated how Chinese physics teachers structured classroom discourse to support the cognitive and social aspects of inquiry-based science learning. Regarding the cognitive aspect, we examined to what extent the cognitive processes underlying the scientific skills and the disciplinary reasoning behind the content knowledge were taught.…

A Social Neuroscientific Model of Vocational Behavior

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hansen, Jo-Ida C.; Sullivan, Brandon A.; Luciana, Monica

2011-01-01

In this article, the separate literatures of a neurobiologically based approach system and vocational interests are reviewed and integrated into a social neuroscientific model of the processes underlying interests, based upon the idea of selective approach motivation. The authors propose that vocational interests describe the types of stimuli that…

Cognitive Task Demands and Discourse Performance after Traumatic Brain Injury

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Byom, Lindsey; Turkstra, Lyn S.

2017-01-01

Background: Social communication problems are common in adults with traumatic brain injury (TBI), particularly problems in spoken discourse. Social communication problems are thought to reflect underlying cognitive impairments. Aims: To measure the contribution of two cognitive processes, executive functioning (EF) and theory of mind (ToM), to the…

Hanging Out With the Right Crowd: Peer Influence on Risk-Taking Behavior in Adolescence.

PubMed

Van Hoorn, Jorien; Crone, Eveline A; Van Leijenhorst, Linda

2017-03-01

Peer influence plays a key role in the increase of risk-taking behavior during adolescence. However, its underlying processes are not fully understood. This study examined the effects of social norms, conveyed through peer advice, on risk-taking behavior in 15- to 17-year-old adolescents (N = 76). Participants played a card-guessing task alone and with online peer advice. Results showed that risk-taking increased in the presence of peers. The results further showed that adolescents took into account the uncertainty associated with gambles, as well as the social norms conveyed by peers. Our findings suggest that peers are most influential in uncertain situations and demonstrate the value of a social norms approach in examining the processes underlying peer effects. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Research on Adolescence © 2016 Society for Research on Adolescence.

Self-referential and anxiety-relevant information processing in subclinical social anxiety: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Abraham, Anna; Kaufmann, Carolin; Redlich, Ronny; Hermann, Andrea; Stark, Rudolf; Stevens, Stephan; Hermann, Christiane

2013-03-01

The fear of negative evaluation is one of the hallmark features of social anxiety. Behavioral evidence thus far largely supports cognitive models which postulate that information processing biases in the face of socially relevant information are a key factor underlying this widespread phobia. So far only one neuroimaging study has explicitly focused on the fear of negative evaluation in social anxiety where the brain responses of social phobics were compared to healthy participants during the processing of self-referential relative to other-referential criticism, praise or neutral information. Only self-referential criticism led to stronger activations in emotion-relevant regions of the brain, such as the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortices (mPFC), in the social phobics. The objective of the current study was to determine whether these findings could be extended to subclinical social anxiety. In doing so, the specificity of this self-referential bias was also examined by including both social and non-social (physical illness-related) threat information as well as a highly health anxious control group in the experimental paradigm. The fMRI findings indicated that the processing of emotional stimuli was accompanied by activations in the amygdala and the ventral mPFC, while self-referential processing was associated with activity in regions such as the mPFC, posterior cingulate and temporal poles. Despite the validation of the paradigm, the results revealed that the previously reported behavioral and brain biases associated with social phobia could not be unequivocally extended to subclinical social anxiety. The divergence between the findings is explored in detail with reference to paradigm differences and conceptual issues.

Social Influence on Positive Youth Development: A Developmental Neuroscience Perspective.

PubMed

Telzer, Eva H; van Hoorn, Jorien; Rogers, Christina R; Do, Kathy T

2018-01-01

Susceptibility to social influence is associated with a host of negative outcomes during adolescence. However, emerging evidence implicates the role of peers and parents in adolescents' positive and adaptive adjustment. Hence, in this chapter we highlight social influence as an opportunity for promoting social adjustment, which can redirect negative trajectories and help adolescents thrive. We discuss influential models about the processes underlying social influence, with a particular emphasis on internalizing social norms, embedded in social learning and social identity theory. We link this behavioral work to developmental social neuroscience research, rooted in neurobiological models of decision making and social cognition. Work from this perspective suggests that the adolescent brain is highly malleable and particularly oriented toward the social world, which may account for heightened susceptibility to social influences during this developmental period. This chapter underscores the need to leverage social influences during adolescence, even beyond the family and peer context, to promote positive developmental outcomes. By further probing the underlying neural mechanisms as an additional layer to examining social influence on positive youth development, we will be able to gain traction on our understanding of this complex phenomenon. © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

How embarrassing! The behavioral and neural correlates of processing social norm violations

PubMed Central

van Steenbergen, Henk; Kreuk, Tanja; van der Wee, Nic J. A.; Westenberg, P. Michiel

2017-01-01

Social norms are important for human social interactions, and violations of these norms are evaluated partly on the intention of the actor. Here, we describe the revised Social Norm Processing Task (SNPT-R), a paradigm enabling the study of behavioral and neural responses to intended and unintended social norm violations among both adults and adolescents. We investigated how participants (adolescents and adults, n = 87) rate intentional and unintentional social norm violations with respect to inappropriateness and embarrassment, and we examined the brain activation patterns underlying the processing of these transgressions in an independent sample of 21 adults using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). We hypothesized to find activation within the medial prefrontal cortex, temporo-parietal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex in response to both intentional and unintentional social norm violations, with more pronounced activation for the intentional social norm violations in these regions and in the amygdala. Participants’ ratings confirmed the hypothesis that the three types of stories are evaluated differently with respect to intentionality: intentional social norm violations were rated as the most inappropriate and most embarrassing. Furthermore, fMRI results showed that reading stories on intentional and unintentional social norm violations evoked activation within the frontal pole, the paracingulate gyrus and the superior frontal gyrus. In addition, processing unintentional social norm violations was associated with activation in, among others, the orbitofrontal cortex, middle frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule, while reading intentional social norm violations was related to activation in the left amygdala. These regions have been previously implicated in thinking about one’s self, thinking about others and moral reasoning. Together, these findings indicate that the SNPT-R could serve as a useful paradigm for examining social norm processing, both at the behavioral and the neural level. PMID:28441460

How Social Ties Influence Consumer: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials.

PubMed

Luan, Jing; Yao, Zhong; Bai, Yan

2017-01-01

A considerable amount of marketing research has reported that consumers are more saliently influenced by friends (strong social ties) than by acquaintances and strangers (weak social ties). To shed light on the neural and psychological processes underlying such phenomenon, in this study we designed an amended S1-S2 paradigm (product-[reviewer-review]) that is based on realistic consumer purchase experiences. After incoming all given information (product, reviewer, review), participants were required to state their purchase intentions. The neurocognitive and emotional processes related to friend and stranger stimuli were delineated to suggest how social ties influence consumers during their shopping processes. Larger P2 (fronto-central scalp areas) and P3 (central and posterior-parietal scalp areas) components under stranger condition were elicited successfully. These findings demonstrate that the cognitive and emotional processing of friend and stranger stimuli occurs at stages of neural activity, and can be indicated by the P2 and P3 components. Electrophysiological data also support the hypothesis that different neural and emotional processing magnitude and strength underlie friend and stranger effect in the context of consumer purchase. During this process, the perception of stimuli evoked P2, subsequently emotional processing and attention modulation were activated and indicated by P2 and P3. The friend dominated phenomenon can be interpreted as the result of distinctive neurocognitive and emotional processing magnitude, which suggests that psychological and emotional factors can guide consumer decision making. This study consolidates that event related potential (ERP) methodology is likely to be a more sensitive method for investigating consumer behaviors. From the perspectives of management and marketing, our findings show that the P2 and P3 components can be employed as an indicator to probe the influential factors of consumer purchase intentions.

How Social Ties Influence Consumer: Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

PubMed Central

Yao, Zhong

2017-01-01

A considerable amount of marketing research has reported that consumers are more saliently influenced by friends (strong social ties) than by acquaintances and strangers (weak social ties). To shed light on the neural and psychological processes underlying such phenomenon, in this study we designed an amended S1-S2 paradigm (product-[reviewer-review]) that is based on realistic consumer purchase experiences. After incoming all given information (product, reviewer, review), participants were required to state their purchase intentions. The neurocognitive and emotional processes related to friend and stranger stimuli were delineated to suggest how social ties influence consumers during their shopping processes. Larger P2 (fronto-central scalp areas) and P3 (central and posterior-parietal scalp areas) components under stranger condition were elicited successfully. These findings demonstrate that the cognitive and emotional processing of friend and stranger stimuli occurs at stages of neural activity, and can be indicated by the P2 and P3 components. Electrophysiological data also support the hypothesis that different neural and emotional processing magnitude and strength underlie friend and stranger effect in the context of consumer purchase. During this process, the perception of stimuli evoked P2, subsequently emotional processing and attention modulation were activated and indicated by P2 and P3. The friend dominated phenomenon can be interpreted as the result of distinctive neurocognitive and emotional processing magnitude, which suggests that psychological and emotional factors can guide consumer decision making. This study consolidates that event related potential (ERP) methodology is likely to be a more sensitive method for investigating consumer behaviors. From the perspectives of management and marketing, our findings show that the P2 and P3 components can be employed as an indicator to probe the influential factors of consumer purchase intentions. PMID:28081196

20 CFR 422.603 - Overview of the review process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Overview of the review process. 422.603 Section 422.603 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.603 Overview of...

20 CFR 422.603 - Overview of the review process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Overview of the review process. 422.603 Section 422.603 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.603 Overview of...

20 CFR 422.603 - Overview of the review process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Overview of the review process. 422.603 Section 422.603 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.603 Overview of...

20 CFR 422.603 - Overview of the review process.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Overview of the review process. 422.603 Section 422.603 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.603 Overview of...

Can developmental cognitive neuroscience inform intervention for social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD)?

PubMed Central

Frederickson, Norah; Jones, Alice P.; Warren, Laura; Deakes, Tara; Allen, Geoff

2013-01-01

An initial evaluation of the utility of designing an intervention to address neuroscience-based subtyping of children who have conduct problems was undertaken in this pilot study. Drawing on the literature on callous–unemotional traits, a novel intervention programme, ‘Let's Get Smart’, was implemented in a school for children with social emotional and behavioural difficulties. A mixed-methods design was used to investigate the perspectives of staff participant-observers in the change process, alongside standardised scores on measures of pupil performance and behaviour. Both qualitative and quantitative results showed reductions in externalising behaviour and improvements in measures of hypothesised underlying cognitive and affective processes. While externalising behaviour improved across subtypes, associated changes in underlying processes differed by subtype, supporting the potential value of neuroscience-informed contributions to intervention planning. PMID:26635493

Culture, attribution and automaticity: a social cognitive neuroscience view

PubMed Central

Morris, Michael W.

2010-01-01

A fundamental challenge facing social perceivers is identifying the cause underlying other people’s behavior. Evidence indicates that East Asian perceivers are more likely than Western perceivers to reference the social context when attributing a cause to a target person’s actions. One outstanding question is whether this reflects a culture’s influence on automatic or on controlled components of causal attribution. After reviewing behavioral evidence that culture can shape automatic mental processes as well as controlled reasoning, we discuss the evidence in favor of cultural differences in automatic and controlled components of causal attribution more specifically. We contend that insights emerging from social cognitive neuroscience research can inform this debate. After introducing an attribution framework popular among social neuroscientists, we consider findings relevant to the automaticity of attribution, before speculating how one could use a social neuroscience approach to clarify whether culture affects automatic, controlled or both types of attribution processes. PMID:20460302

Climate change and social vicissitudes in China over the past two millennia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yin, Jun; Su, Yun; Fang, Xiuqi

2016-09-01

The relation between climate change and historical rhythms has long been discussed. However, this type of study still faces the lack of high-resolution data concerning long-term socio-economic processes. In this study, we collected 1586 items of direct and proffered evidence from 29 Chinese history books. We used semantic analysis to reconstruct a quantitative series of the social vicissitudes of the past 2000 yr with a 10-yr resolution to express the phase transition of the social vicissitudes of the dynasties in China. Our reconstruction demonstrates that social vicissitudes have clear cyclical features on multiple time scales. Analysis of the association of social rise and fall with climate change indicates that temperature displayed more significant effects on social vicissitudes in the long term, while precipitation displayed more significant effects on the social vicissitudes in the short term. There are great overlaps between social and climatic variables around the predominant or periodic bands. Social rise mostly occurred in the centennial-scale warm periods, whereas social decline mostly occurred in the centennial-scale cold periods. Under warm-wet conditions, social rise occurred over 57% of the time; under cold-dry conditions, the social decline occurred over 66% of the time.

Susceptibility to social pressure following ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage

PubMed Central

Rusch, Michelle L.; Dawson, Jeffrey D.; Rizzo, Matthew; Anderson, Steven W.

2015-01-01

Social pressure influences human behavior including risk taking, but the psychological and neural underpinnings of this process are not well understood. We used the human lesion method to probe the role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in resisting adverse social pressure in the presence of risk. Thirty-seven participants (11 with vmPFC damage, 12 with brain damage outside the vmPFC and 14 without brain damage) were tested in driving simulator scenarios requiring left-turn decisions across oncoming traffic with varying time gaps between the oncoming vehicles. Social pressure was applied by a virtual driver who honked aggressively from behind. Participants with vmPFC damage were more likely to select smaller and potentially unsafe gaps under social pressure, while gap selection by the comparison groups did not change under social pressure. Participants with vmPFC damage also showed prolonged elevated skin conductance responses (SCR) under social pressure. Comparison groups showed similar initial elevated SCR, which then declined prior to making left-turn decisions. The findings suggest that the vmPFC plays an important role in resisting explicit and immediately present social pressure with potentially negative consequences. The vmPFC appears to contribute to the regulation of emotional responses and the modulation of decision making to optimize long-term outcomes. PMID:25816815

Human cortical activity evoked by contextual processing in attentional orienting.

PubMed

Zhao, Shuo; Li, Chunlin; Uono, Shota; Yoshimura, Sayaka; Toichi, Motomi

2017-06-07

The ability to assess another person's direction of attention is paramount in social communication, many studies have reported a similar pattern between gaze and arrow cues in attention orienting. Neuroimaging research has also demonstrated no qualitative differences in attention to gaze and arrow cues. However, these studies were implemented under simple experiment conditions. Researchers have highlighted the importance of contextual processing (i.e., the semantic congruence between cue and target) in attentional orienting, showing that attentional orienting by social gaze or arrow cues could be modulated through contextual processing. Here, we examine the neural activity of attentional orienting by gaze and arrow cues in response to contextual processing using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results demonstrated that the influence of neural activity through contextual processing to attentional orienting occurred under invalid conditions (when the cue and target were incongruent versus congruent) in the ventral frontoparietal network, although we did not identify any differences in the neural substrates of attentional orienting in contextual processing between gaze and arrow cues. These results support behavioural data of attentional orienting modulated by contextual processing based on the neurocognitive architecture.

Social Studies Scope & Sequence Learner Outcomes: [Grades K-8].

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duluth Public Schools, MN.

The goal of this K-8 social studies curriculum guide is to ensure instructional consistency at each grade level and sequential growth in content and process skills. Within the K-6 grade levels, the curriculum objectives are itemized under the discipline areas of geography, history, cultures/ethnicity, citizenship/government, economics, and…

Explaining Cooperation in Groups: Testing Models of Reciprocity and Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Biele, Guido; Rieskamp, Jorg; Czienskowski, Uwe

2008-01-01

What are the cognitive processes underlying cooperation in groups? This question is addressed by examining how well a reciprocity model, two learning models, and social value orientation can predict cooperation in two iterated n-person social dilemmas with continuous contributions. In the first of these dilemmas, the public goods game,…

Learning Based on "Entrepreneurial Volunteering": Using Enterprise Education to Explore Social Responsibility

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clarke, Julia; Underwood, Sarah

2011-01-01

This article presents a case study of how a business school has developed enterprise education to incorporate ethics and social responsibility. The authors describe the process of developing volunteering opportunities and embedding them in the curriculum, and outline the underlying pedagogy. They describe how existing approaches to project-based…

Education as Anti-Structure: Non-Formal Education in Social and Ethnic Movements.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paulston, Rolland G.

The article describes how folk educational programs in the United States and in the Scandinavian countries work toward behavioral and social change efforts. The conditions under which collective change efforts create their own educational programs, the most effective pedagogical processes, and the variables associated with successful attempts to…

Lasting Adaptations in Social Behavior Produced by Social Disruption and Inhibition of Adult Neurogenesis

PubMed Central

Opendak, Maya; Offit, Lily; Monari, Patrick; Schoenfeld, Timothy J.; Sonti, Anup N.; Cameron, Heather A.

2016-01-01

Research on social instability has focused on its detrimental consequences, but most people are resilient and respond by invoking various coping strategies. To investigate cellular processes underlying such strategies, a dominance hierarchy of rats was formed and then destabilized. Regardless of social position, rats from disrupted hierarchies had fewer new neurons in the hippocampus compared with rats from control cages and those from stable hierarchies. Social disruption produced a preference for familiar over novel conspecifics, a change that did not involve global memory impairments or increased anxiety. Using the neuropeptide oxytocin as a tool to increase neurogenesis in the hippocampus of disrupted rats restored preference for novel conspecifics to predisruption levels. Conversely, reducing the number of new neurons by limited inhibition of adult neurogenesis in naive transgenic GFAP–thymidine kinase rats resulted in social behavior similar to disrupted rats. Together, these results provide novel mechanistic evidence that social disruption shapes behavior in a potentially adaptive way, possibly by reducing adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT To investigate cellular processes underlying adaptation to social instability, a dominance hierarchy of rats was formed and then destabilized. Regardless of social position, rats from disrupted hierarchies had fewer new neurons in the hippocampus compared with rats from control cages and those from stable hierarchies. Unexpectedly, these changes were accompanied by changes in social strategies without evidence of impairments in cognition or anxiety regulation. Restoring adult neurogenesis in disrupted rats using oxytocin and conditionally suppressing the production of new neurons in socially naive GFAP–thymidine kinase rats showed that loss of 6-week-old neurons may be responsible for adaptive changes in social behavior. PMID:27358459

The behavioural immune system and the psychology of human sociality.

PubMed

Schaller, Mark

2011-12-12

Because immunological defence against pathogens is costly and merely reactive, human anti-pathogen defence is also characterized by proactive behavioural mechanisms that inhibit contact with pathogens in the first place. This behavioural immune system comprises psychological processes that infer infection risk from perceptual cues, and that respond to these perceptual cues through the activation of aversive emotions, cognitions and behavioural impulses. These processes are engaged flexibly, producing context-contingent variation in the nature and magnitude of aversive responses. These processes have important implications for human social cognition and social behaviour-including implications for social gregariousness, person perception, intergroup prejudice, mate preferences, sexual behaviour and conformity. Empirical evidence bearing on these many implications is reviewed and discussed. This review also identifies important directions for future research on the human behavioural immune system--including the need for enquiry into underlying mechanisms, additional behavioural consequences and implications for human health and well-being.

The behavioural immune system and the psychology of human sociality

PubMed Central

Schaller, Mark

2011-01-01

Because immunological defence against pathogens is costly and merely reactive, human anti-pathogen defence is also characterized by proactive behavioural mechanisms that inhibit contact with pathogens in the first place. This behavioural immune system comprises psychological processes that infer infection risk from perceptual cues, and that respond to these perceptual cues through the activation of aversive emotions, cognitions and behavioural impulses. These processes are engaged flexibly, producing context–contingent variation in the nature and magnitude of aversive responses. These processes have important implications for human social cognition and social behaviour—including implications for social gregariousness, person perception, intergroup prejudice, mate preferences, sexual behaviour and conformity. Empirical evidence bearing on these many implications is reviewed and discussed. This review also identifies important directions for future research on the human behavioural immune system—including the need for enquiry into underlying mechanisms, additional behavioural consequences and implications for human health and well-being. PMID:22042918

How multiple social networks affect user awareness: The information diffusion process in multiplex networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Weihua; Tang, Shaoting; Fang, Wenyi; Guo, Quantong; Zhang, Xiao; Zheng, Zhiming

2015-10-01

The information diffusion process in single complex networks has been extensively studied, especially for modeling the spreading activities in online social networks. However, individuals usually use multiple social networks at the same time, and can share the information they have learned from one social network to another. This phenomenon gives rise to a new diffusion process on multiplex networks with more than one network layer. In this paper we account for this multiplex network spreading by proposing a model of information diffusion in two-layer multiplex networks. We develop a theoretical framework using bond percolation and cascading failure to describe the intralayer and interlayer diffusion. This allows us to obtain analytical solutions for the fraction of informed individuals as a function of transmissibility T and the interlayer transmission rate θ . Simulation results show that interaction between layers can greatly enhance the information diffusion process. And explosive diffusion can occur even if the transmissibility of the focal layer is under the critical threshold, due to interlayer transmission.

Friendship Dissolution Within Social Networks Modeled Through Multilevel Event History Analysis

PubMed Central

Dean, Danielle O.; Bauer, Daniel J.; Prinstein, Mitchell J.

2018-01-01

A social network perspective can bring important insight into the processes that shape human behavior. Longitudinal social network data, measuring relations between individuals over time, has become increasingly common—as have the methods available to analyze such data. A friendship duration model utilizing discrete-time multilevel survival analysis with a multiple membership random effect structure is developed and applied here to study the processes leading to undirected friendship dissolution within a larger social network. While the modeling framework is introduced in terms of understanding friendship dissolution, it can be used to understand microlevel dynamics of a social network more generally. These models can be fit with standard generalized linear mixed-model software, after transforming the data to a pair-period data set. An empirical example highlights how the model can be applied to understand the processes leading to friendship dissolution between high school students, and a simulation study is used to test the use of the modeling framework under representative conditions that would be found in social network data. Advantages of the modeling framework are highlighted, and potential limitations and future directions are discussed. PMID:28463022

Social cognitive neuroscience and humanoid robotics.

PubMed

Chaminade, Thierry; Cheng, Gordon

2009-01-01

We believe that humanoid robots provide new tools to investigate human social cognition, the processes underlying everyday interactions between individuals. Resonance is an emerging framework to understand social interactions that is based on the finding that cognitive processes involved when experiencing a mental state and when perceiving another individual experiencing the same mental state overlap, both at the behavioral and neural levels. We will first review important aspects of his framework. In a second part, we will discuss how this framework is used to address questions pertaining to artificial agents' social competence. We will focus on two types of paradigm, one derived from experimental psychology and the other using neuroimaging, that have been used to investigate humans' responses to humanoid robots. Finally, we will speculate on the consequences of resonance in natural social interactions if humanoid robots are to become integral part of our societies.

Systematic review of the neural basis of social cognition in patients with mood disorders

PubMed Central

Cusi, Andrée M.; Nazarov, Anthony; Holshausen, Katherine; MacQueen, Glenda M.; McKinnon, Margaret C.

2012-01-01

Background This review integrates neuroimaging studies of 2 domains of social cognition — emotion comprehension and theory of mind (ToM) — in patients with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder. The influence of key clinical and method variables on patterns of neural activation during social cognitive processing is also examined. Methods Studies were identified using PsycINFO and PubMed (January 1967 to May 2011). The search terms were “fMRI,” “emotion comprehension,” “emotion perception,” “affect comprehension,” “affect perception,” “facial expression,” “prosody,” “theory of mind,” “mentalizing” and “empathy” in combination with “major depressive disorder,” “bipolar disorder,” “major depression,” “unipolar depression,” “clinical depression” and “mania.” Results Taken together, neuroimaging studies of social cognition in patients with mood disorders reveal enhanced activation in limbic and emotion-related structures and attenuated activity within frontal regions associated with emotion regulation and higher cognitive functions. These results reveal an overall lack of inhibition by higher-order cognitive structures on limbic and emotion-related structures during social cognitive processing in patients with mood disorders. Critically, key variables, including illness burden, symptom severity, comorbidity, medication status and cognitive load may moderate this pattern of neural activation. Limitations Studies that did not include control tasks or a comparator group were included in this review. Conclusion Further work is needed to examine the contribution of key moderator variables and to further elucidate the neural networks underlying altered social cognition in patients with mood disorders. The neural networks underlying higher-order social cognitive processes, including empathy, remain unexplored in patients with mood disorders. PMID:22297065

20 CFR 350.3 - Procedure.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... § 350.3 Procedure. (a) Service of legal process brought for the enforcement of an individual's... General Counsel is effectively served with legal process relating to an individual's legal obligation to... under the social security minimum guaranty provision of the Railroad Retirement Act. (c) Included with...

Sexism in School Textbooks Prepared under Education Reform in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Esen, Yasemin

2007-01-01

The objective of this study is to analyze the new textbooks prepared under the framework of the "curriculum reform" realized in Turkey , as part of the EU harmonization process, in terms of gender representation. For this purpose, illustrations in the new ABC, Life Studies and Social Studies textbooks prepared under the new program were…

[Prediction and simulation of urban area expansion in Pearl River Delta Region under the RCPs climate scenarios].

PubMed

Jiang, Oun-ou; Deng, Xiang-zheng; Ke, Xin-li; Zhao, Chun-hong; Zhang, Wei

2014-12-01

The sizes and number of cities in China are increasing rapidly and complicated changes of urban land use system have occurred as the social economy develops rapidly. This study took the urban agglomeration of Pearl River Delta Region as the study area to explore the driving mechanism of dynamic changes of urban area in the urbanization process under the joint influence of natural environment and social economic conditions. Then the CA (cellular automata) model was used to predict and simulate the urban area changes until 2030 under the designed scenarios of planning and RCPs (representative concentration pathways). The results indicated that urbanization was mainly driven by the non-agricultural population growth and social-economic development, and the transportation had played a fundamental role in the whole process, while the areas with high elevation or steep slope restricted the urbanization. Besides, the urban area would keep an expanding trend regardless of the scenarios, however, the expanding speed would slow down with different inflection points under different scenarios. The urban expansion speed increased in the sequence of the planning scenario, MESSAGE scenario and AIM scenario, and that under the MESSAGE climate scenario was more consistent with the current urban development trend. In addition, the urban expansion would mainly concentrate in regions with the relatively high urbanization level, e.g., Guangzhou, Dongguan, Foshan, Shenzhen, Zhanjiang and Chaoshan.

The symbolic power of money: reminders of money alter social distress and physical pain.

PubMed

Zhou, Xinyue; Vohs, Kathleen D; Baumeister, Roy F

2009-06-01

People often get what they want from the social system, and that process is aided by social popularity or by having money. Money can thus possibly substitute for social acceptance in conferring the ability to obtain benefits from the social system. Moreover, past work has suggested that responses to physical pain and social distress share common underlying mechanisms. Six studies tested relationships among reminders of money, social exclusion, and physical pain. Interpersonal rejection and physical pain caused desire for money to increase. Handling money (compared with handling paper) reduced distress over social exclusion and diminished the physical pain of immersion in hot water. Being reminded of having spent money, however, intensified both social distress and physical pain.

Sustainable use of renewable resources in a stylized social-ecological network model under heterogeneous resource distribution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barfuss, Wolfram; Donges, Jonathan F.; Wiedermann, Marc; Lucht, Wolfgang

2017-04-01

Human societies depend on the resources ecosystems provide. Particularly since the last century, human activities have transformed the relationship between nature and society at a global scale. We study this coevolutionary relationship by utilizing a stylized model of private resource use and social learning on an adaptive network. The latter process is based on two social key dynamics beyond economic paradigms: boundedly rational imitation of resource use strategies and homophily in the formation of social network ties. The private and logistically growing resources are harvested with either a sustainable (small) or non-sustainable (large) effort. We show that these social processes can have a profound influence on the environmental state, such as determining whether the private renewable resources collapse from overuse or not. Additionally, we demonstrate that heterogeneously distributed regional resource capacities shift the critical social parameters where this resource extraction system collapses. We make these points to argue that, in more advanced coevolutionary models of the planetary social-ecological system, such socio-cultural phenomena as well as regional resource heterogeneities should receive attention in addition to the processes represented in established Earth system and integrated assessment models.

Understanding stigma in chronic health conditions: implications for nursing.

PubMed

Engebretson, Joan

2013-10-01

This article explores the social processes in stigmatization and the theoretical background on the impact in chronic illness. Review of literature from social sciences and applications to health issues. Understanding the social utility of stigmatization in preserving social cohesion and protecting the social order is an important function. However, this process can be harmful when applied to persons with chronic illness, such as HIV-AIDS, and psychiatric illness. These individuals often become shamed, ostracized, isolated, discredited, and socially and economically marginalized. Recent theoretical work on stigma has identified several issues and patient responses that may have implications in many other chronic conditions. Stigma is based on visible or nonvisible health conditions and can be both externally imposed or perceived in a process of self-stigma. Understanding stigma can aid clinicians in providing supportive help for patients with chronic illness. Stigma has been well researched in a few chronic illnesses; however, future studies in other conditions are much needed. Recognizing the underlying social factors has potential use in health-promoting behaviors. Sensitivity to stigma allows health professionals to critically reflect on ways the healthcare environment may add to stigma for their patients. ©2013 The Author(s) ©2013 American Association of Nurse Practitioners.

Social control and coercion in addiction treatment: towards evidence-based policy and practice.

PubMed

Wild, T Cameron

2006-01-01

Social pressures are often an integral part of the process of seeking addiction treatment. However, scientists have not developed conclusive evidence on the processes, benefits and limitations of using legal, formal and informal social control tactics to inform policy makers, service providers and the public. This paper characterizes barriers to a robust interdisciplinary analysis of social control and coercion in addiction treatment and provides directions for future research. Conceptual analysis and review of key studies and trends in the area are used to describe eight implicit assumptions underlying policy, practice and scholarship on this topic. Many policies, programmes and researchers are guided by a simplistic behaviourist and health-service perspective on social controls that (a) overemphasizes the use of criminal justice systems to compel individuals into treatment and (b) fails to take into account provider, patient and public views. Policies and programmes that expand addiction treatment options deserve support. However, drawing a firm distinction between social controls (objective use of social pressure) and coercion (client perceptions and decision-making processes) supports a parallel position that rejects treatment policies, programmes, and associated practices that create client perceptions of coercion.

Improving therapeutic outcomes in autism spectrum disorders: Enhancing social communication and sensory processing through the use of interactive robots.

PubMed

Sartorato, Felippe; Przybylowski, Leon; Sarko, Diana K

2017-07-01

For children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), social robots are increasingly utilized as therapeutic tools in order to enhance social skills and communication. Robots have been shown to generate a number of social and behavioral benefits in children with ASD including heightened engagement, increased attention, and decreased social anxiety. Although social robots appear to be effective social reinforcement tools in assistive therapies, the perceptual mechanism underlying these benefits remains unknown. To date, social robot studies have primarily relied on expertise in fields such as engineering and clinical psychology, with measures of social robot efficacy principally limited to qualitative observational assessments of children's interactions with robots. In this review, we examine a range of socially interactive robots that currently have the most widespread use as well as the utility of these robots and their therapeutic effects. In addition, given that social interactions rely on audiovisual communication, we discuss how enhanced sensory processing and integration of robotic social cues may underlie the perceptual and behavioral benefits that social robots confer. Although overall multisensory processing (including audiovisual integration) is impaired in individuals with ASD, social robot interactions may provide therapeutic benefits by allowing audiovisual social cues to be experienced through a simplified version of a human interaction. By applying systems neuroscience tools to identify, analyze, and extend the multisensory perceptual substrates that may underlie the therapeutic benefits of social robots, future studies have the potential to strengthen the clinical utility of social robots for individuals with ASD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social molecular pathways and the evolution of bee societies

PubMed Central

Bloch, Guy; Grozinger, Christina M.

2011-01-01

Bees provide an excellent model with which to study the neuronal and molecular modifications associated with the evolution of sociality because relatively closely related species differ profoundly in social behaviour, from solitary to highly social. The recent development of powerful genomic tools and resources has set the stage for studying the social behaviour of bees in molecular terms. We review ‘ground plan’ and ‘genetic toolkit’ models which hypothesize that discrete pathways or sets of genes that regulate fundamental behavioural and physiological processes in solitary species have been co-opted to regulate complex social behaviours in social species. We further develop these models and propose that these conserved pathways and genes may be incorporated into ‘social pathways’, which consist of relatively independent modules involved in social signal detection, integration and processing within the nervous and endocrine systems, and subsequent behavioural outputs. Modifications within modules or in their connections result in the evolution of novel behavioural patterns. We describe how the evolution of pheromonal regulation of social pathways may lead to the expression of behaviour under new social contexts, and review plasticity in circadian rhythms as an example for a social pathway with a modular structure. PMID:21690132

[Violent youth gangs in Madrid: socialization and culturalization].

PubMed

Martín, María Jesús; Martínez, José Manuel; Rosa, Alberto

2009-08-01

This study explores the subject of youth involved in violent groups or gangs, with the goal of further understanding the indoctrination, socialization, and culturalization processes undergone by youth involved in group violence or gangs. Furthermore, to examine the dynamics between peer pressure and other social factors (dating relationships, work, family, etc.) within the theoretical framework of the theories of primary socialization and differential socialization. A qualitative analysis of 40 interviews of youth belonging to violent gangs/groups. According to the theories of primary socialization and differential socialization, over socialization by the violent group and under socialization by all other social entities can be assumed. Regarding parental supervision and support, three family types were clearly associated with the problem of youth violence. The distinct or unified social identity of the violent youth, as well as their individual self esteem and self image, formed a combination of processes whose relevance was highly predictive. Lastly, an accurate indicator of how these youth mature is their support network-perceived, absolute, and relative (distributed among the various influencing forces). The study clearly outlines the need for re-imposing fundamental philosophical epistemology and methodologies on social forces of this kind, incorporating elements key to the postmodern, constructionist, and opposing perspectives.

c-Fos expression predicts long-term social memory retrieval in mice.

PubMed

Lüscher Dias, Thomaz; Fernandes Golino, Hudson; Moura de Oliveira, Vinícius Elias; Dutra Moraes, Márcio Flávio; Schenatto Pereira, Grace

2016-10-15

The way the rodent brain generally processes socially relevant information is rather well understood. How social information is stored into long-term social memory, however, is still under debate. Here, brain c-Fos expression was measured after adult mice were exposed to familiar or novel juveniles and expression was compared in several memory and socially relevant brain areas. Machine Learning algorithm Random Forest was then used to predict the social interaction category of adult mice based on c-Fos expression in these areas. Interaction with a familiar co-specific altered brain activation in the olfactory bulb, amygdala, hippocampus, lateral septum and medial prefrontal cortex. Remarkably, Random Forest was able to predict interaction with a familiar juvenile with 100% accuracy. Activity in the olfactory bulb, amygdala, hippocampus and the medial prefrontal cortex were crucial to this prediction. From our results, we suggest long-term social memory depends on initial social olfactory processing in the medial amygdala and its output connections synergistically with non-social contextual integration by the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex top-down modulation of primary olfactory structures. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Social Regulation of Emotion: An Integrative, Cross-Disciplinary Model.

PubMed

Reeck, Crystal; Ames, Daniel R; Ochsner, Kevin N

2016-01-01

Research in emotion regulation has largely focused on how people manage their own emotions, but there is a growing recognition that the ways in which we regulate the emotions of others also are important. Drawing on work from diverse disciplines, we propose an integrative model of the psychological and neural processes supporting the social regulation of emotion. This organizing framework, the 'social regulatory cycle', specifies at multiple levels of description the act of regulating another person's emotions as well as the experience of being a target of regulation. The cycle describes the processing stages that lead regulators to attempt to change the emotions of a target person, the impact of regulation on the processes that generate emotions in the target, and the underlying neural systems. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The Social Regulation of Emotion: An Integrative, Cross-Disciplinary Model

PubMed Central

Reeck, Crystal; Ames, Daniel R.; Ochsner, Kevin N.

2018-01-01

Research in emotion regulation has largely focused on how people manage their own emotions, but there is a growing recognition that the ways in which we regulate the emotions of others also are important. Drawing on work from diverse disciplines, we propose an integrative model of the psychological and neural processes supporting the social regulation of emotion. This organizing framework, the ‘social regulatory cycle’, specifies at multiple levels of description the act of regulating another person’s emotions as well as the experience of being a target of regulation. The cycle describes the processing stages that lead regulators to attempt to change the emotions of a target person, the impact of regulation on the processes that generate emotions in the target, and the underlying neural systems. PMID:26564248

Mind the fish: zebrafish as a model in cognitive social neuroscience

PubMed Central

Oliveira, Rui F.

2013-01-01

Understanding how the brain implements social behavior on one hand, and how social processes feedback on the brain to promote fine-tuning of behavioral output according to changes in the social environment is a major challenge in contemporary neuroscience. A critical step to take this challenge successfully is finding the appropriate level of analysis when relating social to biological phenomena. Given the enormous complexity of both the neural networks of the brain and social systems, the use of a cognitive level of analysis (in an information processing perspective) is proposed here as an explanatory interface between brain and behavior. A conceptual framework for a cognitive approach to comparative social neuroscience is proposed, consisting of the following steps to be taken across different species with varying social systems: (1) identification of the functional building blocks of social skills; (2) identification of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the previously identified social skills; and (3) mapping these information processing mechanisms onto the brain. Teleost fish are presented here as a group of choice to develop this approach, given the diversity of social systems present in closely related species that allows for planned phylogenetic comparisons, and the availability of neurogenetic tools that allows the visualization and manipulation of selected neural circuits in model species such as the zebrafish. Finally, the state-of-the art of zebrafish social cognition and of the tools available to map social cognitive abilities to neural circuits in zebrafish are reviewed. PMID:23964204

Mind the fish: zebrafish as a model in cognitive social neuroscience.

PubMed

Oliveira, Rui F

2013-01-01

Understanding how the brain implements social behavior on one hand, and how social processes feedback on the brain to promote fine-tuning of behavioral output according to changes in the social environment is a major challenge in contemporary neuroscience. A critical step to take this challenge successfully is finding the appropriate level of analysis when relating social to biological phenomena. Given the enormous complexity of both the neural networks of the brain and social systems, the use of a cognitive level of analysis (in an information processing perspective) is proposed here as an explanatory interface between brain and behavior. A conceptual framework for a cognitive approach to comparative social neuroscience is proposed, consisting of the following steps to be taken across different species with varying social systems: (1) identification of the functional building blocks of social skills; (2) identification of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the previously identified social skills; and (3) mapping these information processing mechanisms onto the brain. Teleost fish are presented here as a group of choice to develop this approach, given the diversity of social systems present in closely related species that allows for planned phylogenetic comparisons, and the availability of neurogenetic tools that allows the visualization and manipulation of selected neural circuits in model species such as the zebrafish. Finally, the state-of-the art of zebrafish social cognition and of the tools available to map social cognitive abilities to neural circuits in zebrafish are reviewed.

Amphetamine as a social drug: Effects of d-amphetamine on social processing and behavior

PubMed Central

Wardle, Margaret C.; Garner, Matthew J.; Munafò, Marcus R.; de Wit, Harriet

2012-01-01

Rationale Drug users often report using drugs to enhance social situations, and empirical studies support the idea that drugs increase both social behavior and the value of social interactions. One way drugs may affect social behavior is by altering social processing, for example by decreasing perceptions of negative emotion in others. Objectives We examined effects of d-amphetamine on processing of emotional facial expressions, and on the social behavior of talking. We predicted amphetamine would enhance attention, identification and responsivity to positive expressions, and that this in turn would predict increased talkativeness. Methods Over three sessions, 36 healthy normal adults received placebo, 10mg, and 20mg d-amphetamine under counterbalanced double-blind conditions. At each session we measured processing of happy, fearful, sad and angry expressions using an attentional visual probe task, a dynamic emotion identification task, and measures of facial muscle activity. We also measured talking. Results Amphetamine decreased the threshold for identifying all emotions, increased negative facial responses to sad expressions, and increased talkativeness. Contrary to our hypotheses, amphetamine did not alter attention to, identification of or facial responses to positive emotions specifically. Interestingly, the drug decreased the threshold to identify all emotions, and this effect was uniquely related to increased talkativeness, even after controlling for overall sensitivity to amphetamine. Conclusions The results suggest that amphetamine may encourage sociability by increasing sensitivity to subtle emotional expressions. These findings suggest novel social mechanisms that may contribute to the rewarding effects of amphetamine. PMID:22526538

The Big Three of Comparative Judgment: On the Effects of Social, Temporal, and Dimensional Comparisons on Academic Self-Concept

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Müller-Kalthoff, Hanno; Helm, Friederike; Möller, Jens

2017-01-01

Students evaluate their domain-specific abilities by comparing their own achievement in one domain to that of others (social comparison), to their own previous achievement (temporal comparison), as well as their own achievement in another domain (dimensional comparison). The theories underlying these three comparison processes each assume an…

Social and Contextual Constraints on Embodied Perception.

PubMed

Schnall, Simone

2017-03-01

A number of papers have challenged research on physiological and psychological influences on perception by claiming to show that such findings can be explained by nonperceptual factors such as demand characteristics. Relatedly, calls for separating perception from judgment have been issued. However, such efforts fail to consider key processes known to shape judgment processes: people's inability to report accurately on their judgments, conversational dynamics of experimental research contexts, and misattribution and discounting processes. Indeed, the fact that initially observed effects of embodied influences disappear is predicted by an extensive amount of literature on judgments studied within social psychology. Thus, findings from such studies suggest that the initially presumed underlying processes are at work-namely, functional considerations that are informative in the context of preparing the body for action. In this article, I provide suggestions on how to conduct research on perception within the social constraints of experimental contexts.

Toward a neighborhood resource-based theory of social capital for health: can Bourdieu and sociology help?

PubMed

Carpiano, Richard M

2006-01-01

Within the past several years, a considerable body of research on social capital has emerged in public health. Although offering the potential for new insights into how community factors impact health and well being, this research has received criticism for being undertheorized and methodologically flawed. In an effort to address some of these limitations, this paper applies Pierre Bourdieu's (1986) [Bourdieu, P. (1986). Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood] social capital theory to create a conceptual model of neighborhood socioeconomic processes, social capital (resources inhered within social networks), and health. After briefly reviewing the social capital conceptualizations of Bourdieu and Putnam, I attempt to integrate these authors' theories to better understand how social capital might operate within neighborhoods or local areas. Next, I describe a conceptual model that incorporates this theoretical integration of social capital into a framework of neighborhood social processes as health determinants. Discussion focuses on the utility of this Bourdieu-based neighborhood social capital theory and model for examining several under-addressed issues of social capital in the neighborhood effects literature and generating specific, empirically testable hypotheses for future research.

Coevolutionary dynamics of opinion propagation and social balance: The key role of small-worldness

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Yan; Chen, Lixue; Sun, Xian; Zhang, Kai; Zhang, Jie; Li, Ping

2014-03-01

The propagation of various opinions in social networks, which influences human inter-relationships and even social structure, and hence is a most important part of social life. We have incorporated social balance into opinion propagation in social networks are influenced by social balance. The edges in networks can represent both friendly or hostile relations, and change with the opinions of individual nodes. We introduce a model to characterize the coevolutionary dynamics of these two dynamical processes on Watts-Strogatz (WS) small-world network. We employ two distinct evolution rules (i) opinion renewal; and (ii) relation adjustment. By changing the rewiring probability, and thus the small-worldness of the WS network, we found that the time for the system to reach balanced states depends critically on both the average path length and clustering coefficient of the network, which is different than other networked process like epidemic spreading. In particular, the system equilibrates most quickly when the underlying network demonstrates strong small-worldness, i.e., small average path lengths and large clustering coefficient. We also find that opinion clusters emerge in the process of the network approaching the global equilibrium, and a measure of global contrariety is proposed to quantify the balanced state of a social network.

Understanding Social Hierarchies: The Neural and Psychological Foundations of Status Perception

PubMed Central

Koski, Jessica; Xie, Hongling; Olson, Ingrid R.

2017-01-01

Social groups across species rapidly self-organize into hierarchies, where members vary in their level of power, influence, skill, or dominance. In this review we explore the nature of social hierarchies and the traits associated with status in both humans and nonhuman primates, and how status varies across development in humans. Our review finds that we can rapidly identify social status based on a wide range of cues. Like monkeys, we tend to use certain cues, like physical strength, to make status judgments, although layered on top of these more primitive perceptual cues are socio-cultural status cues like job titles and educational attainment. One's relative status has profound effects on attention, memory, and social interactions, as well as health and wellness. These effects can be particularly pernicious in children and adolescents. Developmental research on peer groups and social exclusion suggests teenagers may be particularly sensitive to social status information, but research focused specifically on status processing and associated brain areas is very limited. Recent evidence from neuroscience suggests there may be an underlying neural network, including regions involved in executive, emotional, and reward processing, that is sensitive to status information. We conclude with questions for future research as well as stressing the need to expand social neuroscience research on status processing to adolescents. PMID:25697184

Effects of levodopa-carbidopa-entacapone and smoked cocaine on facial affect recognition in cocaine smokers.

PubMed

Bedi, Gillinder; Shiffrin, Laura; Vadhan, Nehal P; Nunes, Edward V; Foltin, Richard W; Bisaga, Adam

2016-04-01

In addition to difficulties in daily social functioning, regular cocaine users have decrements in social processing (the cognitive and affective processes underlying social behavior) relative to non-users. Little is known, however, about the effects of clinically-relevant pharmacological agents, such as cocaine and potential treatment medications, on social processing in cocaine users. Such drug effects could potentially alleviate or compound baseline social processing decrements in cocaine abusers. Here, we assessed the individual and combined effects of smoked cocaine and a potential treatment medication, levodopa-carbidopa-entacapone (LCE), on facial emotion recognition in cocaine smokers. Healthy non-treatment-seeking cocaine smokers (N = 14; two female) completed this 11-day inpatient within-subjects study. Participants received LCE (titrated to 400mg/100mg/200mg b.i.d.) for five days with the remaining time on placebo. The order of medication administration was counterbalanced. Facial emotion recognition was measured twice during target LCE dosing and twice on placebo: once without cocaine and once after repeated cocaine doses. LCE increased the response threshold for identification of facial fear, biasing responses away from fear identification. Cocaine had no effect on facial emotion recognition. Results highlight the possibility for candidate pharmacotherapies to have unintended impacts on social processing in cocaine users, potentially exacerbating already existing difficulties in this population. © The Author(s) 2016.

Individualistic and social motives for justice judgments.

PubMed

van Prooijen, Jan-Willem

2013-09-01

Justice judgments are subjective by nature, and are influenced substantially by motivational processes. In the present contribution, two motives underlying justice judgments are examined: individualistic motives to evaluate solutions to social problems that benefit the self in material or immaterial ways as fair versus social motives to conceptualize justice in terms of the well-being of others, such as a desire for equality, adherence to in-group norms, and a concern for the collective interest. A review of relevant research reveals evidence for both motivations when people make evaluations of justice. Moreover, which motive is most dominant in the justice judgment process depends on perceptual salience: whereas individualistic motives are activated when a perceiver's own needs and goals are perceptually salient, social motives are activated when others' needs and goals are perceptually salient. It is concluded that both individualistic and social motives contribute in predictable ways to justice judgments. © 2013 New York Academy of Sciences.

Sex differences in the development of brain mechanisms for processing biological motion.

PubMed

Anderson, L C; Bolling, D Z; Schelinski, S; Coffman, M C; Pelphrey, K A; Kaiser, M D

2013-12-01

Disorders related to social functioning including autism and schizophrenia differ drastically in incidence and severity between males and females. Little is known about the neural systems underlying these sex-linked differences in risk and resiliency. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a task involving the visual perception of point-light displays of coherent and scrambled biological motion, we discovered sex differences in the development of neural systems for basic social perception. In adults, we identified enhanced activity during coherent biological motion perception in females relative to males in a network of brain regions previously implicated in social perception including amygdala, medial temporal gyrus, and temporal pole. These sex differences were less pronounced in our sample of school-age youth. We hypothesize that the robust neural circuitry supporting social perception in females, which diverges from males beginning in childhood, may underlie sex differences in disorders related to social processing. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Positive Youth Development and Resilience: Growth Patterns of Social Skills Among Youth Investigated for Maltreatment.

PubMed

Oshri, Assaf; Topple, Trasie A; Carlson, Matthew W

2017-07-01

Maltreated children are a vulnerable population, yet many of these youth follow positive developmental pathways. The primary aim was to identify social skills growth trajectories among at-risk youth to understand processes underlying resilience. Nationally representative, longitudinal data from 1,179 families investigated for child maltreatment (M age  = 12.75) were obtained from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. Four trajectories were identified-stress-resistant, emergent resilience, breakdown, and unresponsive-maladaptive. Protective resources from multiple levels of the youth ecology (individual, family, school, and social service) predicted positive growth social skills trajectories. Resilience process and attendant positive outcomes in multiple domains of functioning were evident among the stress-resistant and emergent resilience trajectories. Results underscore the saliency of social skills development for resilient outcomes in youth. © 2017 The Authors. Child Development © 2017 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Sex Differences in the Development of Brain Mechanisms for Processing Biological Motion

PubMed Central

Anderson, L.C.; Bolling, D.Z.; Schelinski, S.; Coffman, M.C.; Pelphrey, K.A.; Kaiser, M.D.

2013-01-01

Disorders related to social functioning including autism and schizophrenia differ drastically in incidence and severity between males and females. Little is known about the neural systems underlying these sex-linked differences in risk and resiliency. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and a task involving the visual perception of point-light displays of coherent and scrambled biological motion, we discovered sex differences in the development of neural systems for basic social perception. In adults, we identified enhanced activity during coherent biological motion perception in females relative to males in a network of brain regions previously implicated in social perception including amygdala, medial temporal gyrus, and temporal pole. These sex differences were less pronounced in our sample of school-age youth. We hypothesize that the robust neural circuitry supporting social perception in females, which diverges from males beginning in childhood, may underlie sex differences in disorders related to social processing. PMID:23876243

Social provocation modulates decision making and feedback processing: Examining the trajectory of development in adolescent participants.

PubMed

Pincham, Hannah L; Wu, Claire; Killikelly, Clare; Vuillier, Laura; Fearon, R M Pasco

2015-10-01

Increasingly, research is turning to the ways in which social context impacts decision making and feedback processing in adolescents. The current study recorded electroencephalography to examine the trajectory of development across adolescence, with a focus on how social context impacts cognition and behaviour. To that end, younger (10-12 years) and older (14-16 years) adolescents played a modified Taylor Aggression Paradigm against two virtual opponents: a low-provoker and a high-provoker. During the task's decision phase (where participants select punishment for their opponent), we examined two event-related potentials: the N2 and the late positive potential (LPP). During the outcome phase (where participants experience win or loss feedback), we measured the feedback related negativity (FRN). Although N2 amplitudes did not vary with provocation, LPP amplitudes were enhanced under high provocation for the younger group, suggesting that emotional reactivity during the decision phase was heightened for early adolescents. During the outcome phase, the FRN was reduced following win outcomes under high provocation for both groups, suggesting that a highly provocative social opponent may influence the reward response. Collectively, the data argue that social context is an important factor modulating neural responses in adolescent behavioural and brain development. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution.

PubMed

Mesoudi, Alex; Chang, Lei; Murray, Keelin; Lu, Hui Jing

2015-01-07

Cultural evolutionary models have identified a range of conditions under which social learning (copying others) is predicted to be adaptive relative to asocial learning (learning on one's own), particularly in humans where socially learned information can accumulate over successive generations. However, cultural evolution and behavioural economics experiments have consistently shown apparently maladaptive under-utilization of social information in Western populations. Here we provide experimental evidence of cultural variation in people's use of social learning, potentially explaining this mismatch. People in mainland China showed significantly more social learning than British people in an artefact-design task designed to assess the adaptiveness of social information use. People in Hong Kong, and Chinese immigrants in the UK, resembled British people in their social information use, suggesting a recent shift in these groups from social to asocial learning due to exposure to Western culture. Finally, Chinese mainland participants responded less than other participants to increased environmental change within the task. Our results suggest that learning strategies in humans are culturally variable and not genetically fixed, necessitating the study of the 'social learning of social learning strategies' whereby the dynamics of cultural evolution are responsive to social processes, such as migration, education and globalization.

Higher frequency of social learning in China than in the West shows cultural variation in the dynamics of cultural evolution

PubMed Central

Mesoudi, Alex; Chang, Lei; Murray, Keelin; Lu, Hui Jing

2015-01-01

Cultural evolutionary models have identified a range of conditions under which social learning (copying others) is predicted to be adaptive relative to asocial learning (learning on one's own), particularly in humans where socially learned information can accumulate over successive generations. However, cultural evolution and behavioural economics experiments have consistently shown apparently maladaptive under-utilization of social information in Western populations. Here we provide experimental evidence of cultural variation in people's use of social learning, potentially explaining this mismatch. People in mainland China showed significantly more social learning than British people in an artefact-design task designed to assess the adaptiveness of social information use. People in Hong Kong, and Chinese immigrants in the UK, resembled British people in their social information use, suggesting a recent shift in these groups from social to asocial learning due to exposure to Western culture. Finally, Chinese mainland participants responded less than other participants to increased environmental change within the task. Our results suggest that learning strategies in humans are culturally variable and not genetically fixed, necessitating the study of the ‘social learning of social learning strategies' whereby the dynamics of cultural evolution are responsive to social processes, such as migration, education and globalization. PMID:25392473

Susceptibility to social pressure following ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage.

PubMed

Chen, Kuan-Hua; Rusch, Michelle L; Dawson, Jeffrey D; Rizzo, Matthew; Anderson, Steven W

2015-11-01

Social pressure influences human behavior including risk taking, but the psychological and neural underpinnings of this process are not well understood. We used the human lesion method to probe the role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in resisting adverse social pressure in the presence of risk. Thirty-seven participants (11 with vmPFC damage, 12 with brain damage outside the vmPFC and 14 without brain damage) were tested in driving simulator scenarios requiring left-turn decisions across oncoming traffic with varying time gaps between the oncoming vehicles. Social pressure was applied by a virtual driver who honked aggressively from behind. Participants with vmPFC damage were more likely to select smaller and potentially unsafe gaps under social pressure, while gap selection by the comparison groups did not change under social pressure. Participants with vmPFC damage also showed prolonged elevated skin conductance responses (SCR) under social pressure. Comparison groups showed similar initial elevated SCR, which then declined prior to making left-turn decisions. The findings suggest that the vmPFC plays an important role in resisting explicit and immediately present social pressure with potentially negative consequences. The vmPFC appears to contribute to the regulation of emotional responses and the modulation of decision making to optimize long-term outcomes. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Neural correlates of social decision-making in severely antisocial adolescents.

PubMed

van den Bos, Wouter; Vahl, Pauline; Güroğlu, Berna; van Nunspeet, Félice; Colins, Olivier; Markus, Monica; Rombouts, Serge A R B; van der Wee, Nic; Vermeiren, Robert; Crone, Eveline A

2014-12-01

Neurobiological and behavioral findings suggest that the development of delinquent behavior is associated with atypical social-affective processing. However, to date, no study has examined neural processes associated with social interactions in severely antisocial adolescents. In this study we investigated the behavioral and neural processes underlying social interactions of juvenile delinquents and a matched control group. Participants played the mini-Ultimatum Game as a responder while in the MRI scanner. Participants rejected unfair offers significantly less when the other player had 'no alternative' compared with a 'fair' alternative, suggesting that they took the intentions of the other player into account. However, this effect was reduced in the juvenile delinquents. The neuroimaging results revealed that juvenile delinquents showed less activation in the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). However, the groups showed similar activation levels in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and the right anterior insula (AI) when norms were violated. These results indicate that juvenile delinquents with severe antisocial behavior process norm violations adequately, but may have difficulties with attending spontaneously to relevant features of the social context during interactions. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Impaired face processing in autism: fact or artifact?

PubMed

Jemel, Boutheina; Mottron, Laurent; Dawson, Michelle

2006-01-01

Within the last 10 years, there has been an upsurge of interest in face processing abilities in autism which has generated a proliferation of new empirical demonstrations employing a variety of measuring techniques. Observably atypical social behaviors early in the development of children with autism have led to the contention that autism is a condition where the processing of social information, particularly faces, is impaired. While several empirical sources of evidence lend support to this hypothesis, others suggest that there are conditions under which autistic individuals do not differ from typically developing persons. The present paper reviews this bulk of empirical evidence, and concludes that the versatility and abilities of face processing in persons with autism have been underestimated.

Neural correlates of anticipation and processing of performance feedback in social anxiety.

PubMed

Heitmann, Carina Y; Peterburs, Jutta; Mothes-Lasch, Martin; Hallfarth, Marlit C; Böhme, Stephanie; Miltner, Wolfgang H R; Straube, Thomas

2014-12-01

Fear of negative evaluation, such as negative social performance feedback, is the core symptom of social anxiety. The present study investigated the neural correlates of anticipation and perception of social performance feedback in social anxiety. High (HSA) and low (LSA) socially anxious individuals were asked to give a speech on a personally relevant topic and received standardized but appropriate expert performance feedback in a succeeding experimental session in which neural activity was measured during anticipation and presentation of negative and positive performance feedback concerning the speech performance, or a neutral feedback-unrelated control condition. HSA compared to LSA subjects reported greater anxiety during anticipation of negative feedback. Functional magnetic resonance imaging results showed deactivation of medial prefrontal brain areas during anticipation of negative feedback relative to the control and the positive condition, and medial prefrontal and insular hyperactivation during presentation of negative as well as positive feedback in HSA compared to LSA subjects. The results indicate distinct processes underlying feedback processing during anticipation and presentation of feedback in HSA as compared to LSA individuals. In line with the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in self-referential information processing and the insula in interoception, social anxiety seems to be associated with lower self-monitoring during feedback anticipation, and an increased self-focus and interoception during feedback presentation, regardless of feedback valence. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Reputation Management in Children on the Autism Spectrum.

PubMed

Cage, Eilidh; Bird, Geoffrey; Pellicano, Elizabeth

2016-12-01

Being able to manage reputation is an important social skill, but it is unclear whether autistic children can manage reputation. This study investigated whether 33 autistic children matched to 33 typical children could implicitly or explicitly manage reputation. Further, we examined whether cognitive processes-theory of mind, social motivation, inhibitory control and reciprocity-contribute to reputation management. Results showed that neither group implicitly managed reputation, and there was no group difference in explicit reputation management. Results suggested different mechanisms contribute to reputation management in these groups-social motivation in typical children and reciprocity in autistic children. Explicit reputation management is achievable for autistic children, and there are individual differences in its relationship to underlying cognitive processes.

Differences between self- and peer-rated likability in relation to social anxiety and depression in adolescents with mild intellectual disabilities.

PubMed

Klein, Anke M; Houtkamp, Esther O; Salemink, Elske; Baartmans, Jeanine M D; Rinck, Mike; van der Molen, Mariët J

2018-06-13

Social anxiety and depressive symptoms are relatively common in adolescents with Mild to Borderline Intellectual Disabilities (MBID). Unfortunately, there are only a few studies that focus on examining processes underlying social anxiety and depression in these adolescents. The aim was to examine the differences between self- and peer-rated likability in relation to social anxiety and depression in the classroom environment. 631 normative non-clinical adolescents with MBID completed questionnaires to measure social anxiety, depression, and the estimation of their own likability by peers. Peer-reported likability was derived from peer-rating scales on likability. Adolescents with higher levels of social anxiety significantly rated their own likability as lower than their non-anxious peers. However, socially adolescents were equally liked by their peers. Adolescents with higher levels of depression were significantly less liked by their peers, but still underestimated their own likability than adolescents with lower levels of depression. Social anxiety and depression are linked to a biased interpretation of likability, but only depression is linked to actually being less liked by peers. Social anxiety and depression are partly based on similar underlying cognitive biases. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How understanding the neurobiology of complex post-traumatic stress disorder can inform clinical practice: a social cognitive and affective neuroscience approach.

PubMed

Lanius, R A; Bluhm, R L; Frewen, P A

2011-11-01

In this review, we examine the relevance of the social cognitive and affective neuroscience (SCAN) paradigm for an understanding of the psychology and neurobiology of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its effective treatment. The relevant literature pertaining to SCAN and PTSD was reviewed. We suggest that SCAN offers a novel theoretical paradigm for understanding psychological trauma and its numerous clinical outcomes, most notably problems in emotional/self-awareness, emotion regulation, social emotional processing and self-referential processing. A core set of brain regions appear to mediate these collective psychological functions, most notably the cortical midline structures, the amygdala, the insula, posterior parietal cortex and temporal poles, suggesting that problems in one area (e.g. emotional awareness) may relate to difficulties in another (e.g. self-referential processing). We further propose, drawing on clinical research, that the experiences of individuals with PTSD related to chronic trauma often reflect impairments in multiple social cognitive and affective functions. It is important that the assessment and treatment of individuals with complex PTSD not only addresses traumatic memories but also takes a SCAN-informed approach that focuses on the underlying deficits in emotional/self-awareness, emotion regulation, social emotional processing and self-referential processing. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

Emerging Adulthood: Age-Related Tasks and Underlying Self Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shulman, Shmuel; Feldman, Benni; Blatt, Sidney; Cohen, Omri; Mahler, Amalya

2005-01-01

Seventy-two Israeli emerging adults were interviewed for descriptions of themselves and accounts of their personal, social, and professional dreams, current life status, romantic relationships, and relationships with their parents. Interviews were transcribed and rated on scales assessing self-processes, attainment of professional and romantic…

Interrogating History: Promoting Student Activism Using Children's Literature and the Full Circling Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Long, Trisha Wies

2017-01-01

Adolescents are often disengaged in the learning process, being more focused on social media and self-interest than classroom content. Full circling is a process that can be used to help students collaboratively engage in learning and actively reflect on historical events--especially those that are under reported in history books. In the present…

Testing for multigroup equivalence of a measuring instrument: a walk through the process.

PubMed

Byrne, Barbara M

2008-11-01

This article presents an overview and application of the steps taken in testing for the equivalence of a measuring instrument across one or more groups. Following a basic description of, and rationale underlying these steps, the process is illustrated with data comprising response scores to four nonacademic subscales (Physical SC [Ability], Physical SC [Appearance], Social SC [Peers], and Social SC [Parents]) of the Self Description Questionnaire-I for Australian (N = 497) and Nigerian (N = 439) adolescents. All tests for validity and equivalence are based on the analysis of covariance structures within the framework of CFA models using the EQS 6 program. Prospective impediments to equivalence are suggested and additional caveats proposed in the special case where the groups under study represent different cultures.

Social memory engram in the hippocampus.

PubMed

Okuyama, Teruhiro

2018-04-01

Social memory is one of the crucial components of episodic memories. Gregarious animals living in societies utilize social memory to exhibit the appropriate social behaviors such as aggression, avoidance, cooperative behavior, and even mating behavior. However, the neural mechanisms underlying social memory in the hippocampus remains mysterious. Here, I review some evidence from work done in rodents and primates on the brain region(s) and circuits encoding and/or retrieving social memory, as well as a storage for social memory (i.e. social memory engram neurons). Based on our recent findings that neural ensemble in ventral CA1 sub-region of the hippocampus possesses social memory engram, I would discuss the neural network for social information processing in order to encode social memory; and its evolutionary conservation between rodents and human. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd and Japan Neuroscience Society. All rights reserved.

Evolution of cooperation driven by incremental learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Pei; Duan, Haibin

2015-02-01

It has been shown that the details of microscopic rules in structured populations can have a crucial impact on the ultimate outcome in evolutionary games. So alternative formulations of strategies and their revision processes exploring how strategies are actually adopted and spread within the interaction network need to be studied. In the present work, we formulate the strategy update rule as an incremental learning process, wherein knowledge is refreshed according to one's own experience learned from the past (self-learning) and that gained from social interaction (social-learning). More precisely, we propose a continuous version of strategy update rules, by introducing the willingness to cooperate W, to better capture the flexibility of decision making behavior. Importantly, the newly gained knowledge including self-learning and social learning is weighted by the parameter ω, establishing a strategy update rule involving innovative element. Moreover, we quantify the macroscopic features of the emerging patterns to inspect the underlying mechanisms of the evolutionary process using six cluster characteristics. In order to further support our results, we examine the time evolution course for these characteristics. Our results might provide insights for understanding cooperative behaviors and have several important implications for understanding how individuals adjust their strategies under real-life conditions.

Corporate corruption of the environment: sustainability as a process of compromise.

PubMed

Nyberg, Daniel; Wright, Christopher

2013-09-01

A key response to environmental degradation, climate change and declining biodiversity has been the growing adoption of market principles in an effort to better value the social good of nature. Through concepts such as 'natural capitalism' and 'corporate environmentalism', nature is increasingly viewed as a domain of capitalist endeavour. In this article, we use convention theory and a pluralist understanding of social goods to investigate how the social good of the environment is usurped by the alternate social good of the market. Through analysis of interviews with sustainability managers and corporate documentation, we highlight how organizational actors employ compromise to temporally settle disputes between competing claims about environmental activities. Our findings contribute to an understanding of the processes of empirically grounded critique and the under-theorized concept of compromise between social goods. Rather than protecting the environment, the corporate promotion of sustainability facilitates the corruption of the social good of the environment and its conversion into a market commodity. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2013.

Computational substrates of social value in interpersonal collaboration.

PubMed

Fareri, Dominic S; Chang, Luke J; Delgado, Mauricio R

2015-05-27

Decisions to engage in collaborative interactions require enduring considerable risk, yet provide the foundation for building and maintaining relationships. Here, we investigate the mechanisms underlying this process and test a computational model of social value to predict collaborative decision making. Twenty-six participants played an iterated trust game and chose to invest more frequently with their friends compared with a confederate or computer despite equal reinforcement rates. This behavior was predicted by our model, which posits that people receive a social value reward signal from reciprocation of collaborative decisions conditional on the closeness of the relationship. This social value signal was associated with increased activity in the ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex, which significantly predicted the reward parameters from the social value model. Therefore, we demonstrate that the computation of social value drives collaborative behavior in repeated interactions and provide a mechanistic account of reward circuit function instantiating this process. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/358170-11$15.00/0.

The neural bases underlying social risk perception in purchase decisions.

PubMed

Yokoyama, Ryoichi; Nozawa, Takayuki; Sugiura, Motoaki; Yomogida, Yukihito; Takeuchi, Hikaru; Akimoto, Yoritaka; Shibuya, Satoru; Kawashima, Ryuta

2014-05-01

Social considerations significantly influence daily purchase decisions, and the perception of social risk (i.e., the anticipated disapproval of others) is crucial in dissuading consumers from making purchases. However, the neural basis for consumers' perception of social risk remains undiscovered, and this novel study clarifies the relevant neural processes. A total of 26 volunteers were scanned while they evaluated purchase intention of products (purchase intention task) and their anticipation of others' disapproval for possessing a product (social risk task), using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI data from the purchase intention task was used to identify the brain region associated with perception of social risk during purchase decision making by using subjective social risk ratings for a parametric modulation analysis. Furthermore, we aimed to explore if there was a difference between participants' purchase decisions and their explicit evaluations of social risk, with reference to the neural activity associated with social risk perception. For this, subjective social risk ratings were used for a parametric modulation analysis on fMRI data from the social risk task. Analysis of the purchase intention task revealed a significant positive correlation between ratings of social risk and activity in the anterior insula, an area of the brain that is known as part of the emotion-related network. Analysis of the social risk task revealed a significant positive correlation between ratings of social risk and activity in the temporal parietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, which are known as theory-of-mind regions. Our results suggest that the anterior insula processes consumers' social risk implicitly to prompt consumers not to buy socially unacceptable products, whereas ToM-related regions process such risk explicitly in considering the anticipated disapproval of others. These findings may prove helpful in understanding the mental processes involved in purchase decisions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Defining and quantifying the social phenotype in autism.

PubMed

Klin, Ami; Jones, Warren; Schultz, Robert; Volkmar, Fred; Cohen, Donald

2002-06-01

Genetic and neurofunctional research in autism has highlighted the need for improved characterization of the core social disorder defining the broad spectrum of syndrome manifestations. This article reviews the advantages and limitations of current methods for the refinement and quantification of this highly heterogeneous social phenotype. The study of social visual pursuit by use of eye-tracking technology is offered as a paradigm for novel tools incorporating these requirements and as a research effort that builds on the emerging synergy of different branches of social neuroscience. Advances in the area will require increased consideration of processes underlying experimental results and a closer approximation of experimental methods to the naturalistic demands inherent in real-life social situations.

Positive Affect and Negative Affect as Modulators of Cognition and Motivation: The Rediscovery of Affect in Achievement Goal Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bjornebekk, Gunnar

2008-01-01

A central hypothesis of classical motivation theory is that affect underlies motivation and its behavioural manifestations. However, this has been largely ignored in the past 30 years because social cognitivism has been the dominant theory. As a result, studies have concentrated on social cognitive processes when analysing those factors that…

Questioning Reality, Questioning Science: Teaching Students in the Food and Agricultural Sciences about Epistemological, Ethical, and Empirical Controversies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiles, Roburt; Coupland, John Neil

2017-01-01

The effective application of food science depends on social constraints, yet the training for food scientists does not adequately consider the contested social context under which food is processed, packaged, and prepared. We recently co-taught a new course ("Arguing about food") intended to introduce students to critical perspectives on…

Brain-Computer Interfaces: A Neuroscience Paradigm of Social Interaction? A Matter of Perspective

PubMed Central

Mattout, Jérémie

2012-01-01

A number of recent studies have put human subjects in true social interactions, with the aim of better identifying the psychophysiological processes underlying social cognition. Interestingly, this emerging Neuroscience of Social Interactions (NSI) field brings up challenges which resemble important ones in the field of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI). Importantly, these challenges go beyond common objectives such as the eventual use of BCI and NSI protocols in the clinical domain or common interests pertaining to the use of online neurophysiological techniques and algorithms. Common fundamental challenges are now apparent and one can argue that a crucial one is to develop computational models of brain processes relevant to human interactions with an adaptive agent, whether human or artificial. Coupled with neuroimaging data, such models have proved promising in revealing the neural basis and mental processes behind social interactions. Similar models could help BCI to move from well-performing but offline static machines to reliable online adaptive agents. This emphasizes a social perspective to BCI, which is not limited to a computational challenge but extends to all questions that arise when studying the brain in interaction with its environment. PMID:22675291

Deepening, and repairing, the metabolic rift.

PubMed

Schneider, Mindi; McMichael, Philip

2010-01-01

This paper critically assesses the metabolic rift as a social, ecological, and historical concept describing the disruption of natural cycles and processes and ruptures in material human-nature relations under capitalism. As a social concept, the metabolic rift presumes that metabolism is understood in relation to the labour process. This conception, however, privileges the organisation of labour to the exclusion of the practice of labour, which we argue challenges its utility for analysing contemporary socio-environmental crises. As an ecological concept, the metabolic rift is based on outmoded understandings of (agro) ecosystems and inadequately describes relations and interactions between labour and ecological processes. Historically, the metabolic rift is integral to debates about the definitions and relations of capitalism, industrialism, and modernity as historical concepts. At the same time, it gives rise to an epistemic rift, insofar as the separation of the natural and social worlds comes to be expressed in social thought and critical theory, which have one-sidedly focused on the social. We argue that a reunification of the social and the ecological, in historical practice and in historical thought, is the key to repairing the metabolic rift, both conceptually and practically. The food sovereignty movement in this respect is exemplary.

From emotion resonance to empathic understanding: a social developmental neuroscience account.

PubMed

Decety, Jean; Meyer, Meghan

2008-01-01

The psychological construct of empathy refers to an intersubjective induction process by which positive and negative emotions are shared, without losing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy can lead to personal distress or to empathic concern (sympathy). The goal of this paper is to address the underlying cognitive processes and their neural underpinnings that constitute empathy within a developmental neuroscience perspective. In addition, we focus on how these processes go awry in developmental disorders marked by impairments in social cognition, such as autism spectrum disorder, and conduct disorder. We argue that empathy involves both bottom-up and top-down information processing, underpinned by specific and interacting neural systems. We discuss data from developmental psychology as well as cognitive neuroscience in support of such a model, and highlight the impact of neural dysfunctions on social cognitive developmental behavior. Altogether, bridging developmental science and cognitive neuroscience helps approach a more complete understanding of social cognition. Synthesizing these two domains also contributes to a better characterization of developmental psychopathologies that impacts the development of effective treatment strategies.

Financial Stress, Parental Depressive Symptoms, Parenting Practices, and Children's Externalizing Problem Behaviors: Underlying Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Chih-Yuan Steven; Lee, Jaerim; August, Gerald J.

2011-01-01

This study examined the relationships among financial stress encountered by families, parents' social support, parental depressive symptoms, parenting practices, and children's externalizing problem behaviors to advance our understanding of the processes by which family financial stress is associated with children's problem behaviors. We also…

Cognitive and Affective Processes Underlying Career Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Muja, Naser; Appelbaum, Steven H.

2012-01-01

Purpose: Aligning social identity and career identity has become increasingly complex due to growth in the pursuit of meaningful careers that offer very long-term personal satisfaction and stability. This paper aims to explore the complex cognitive and affective thought process involved in the conscious planning of voluntary career change.…

76 FR 77492 - Draft Guidance on Improving the Process for Preparing Efficient and Timely Environmental Reviews...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-12-13

..., is a fundamental tool used to harmonize our environmental, economic, and social aspirations and is a... COUNCIL ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY Draft Guidance on Improving the Process for Preparing Efficient and Timely Environmental Reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act AGENCY: Council on...

Exploring Entrainment Patterns of Human Emotion in Social Media

PubMed Central

Luo, Chuan; Zhang, Zhu

2016-01-01

Emotion entrainment, which is generally defined as the synchronous convergence of human emotions, performs many important social functions. However, what the specific mechanisms of emotion entrainment are beyond in-person interactions, and how human emotions evolve under different entrainment patterns in large-scale social communities, are still unknown. In this paper, we aim to examine the massive emotion entrainment patterns and understand the underlying mechanisms in the context of social media. As modeling emotion dynamics on a large scale is often challenging, we elaborate a pragmatic framework to characterize and quantify the entrainment phenomenon. By applying this framework on the datasets from two large-scale social media platforms, we find that the emotions of online users entrain through social networks. We further uncover that online users often form their relations via dual entrainment, while maintain it through single entrainment. Remarkably, the emotions of online users are more convergent in nonreciprocal entrainment. Building on these findings, we develop an entrainment augmented model for emotion prediction. Experimental results suggest that entrainment patterns inform emotion proximity in dyads, and encoding their associations promotes emotion prediction. This work can further help us to understand the underlying dynamic process of large-scale online interactions and make more reasonable decisions regarding emergency situations, epidemic diseases, and political campaigns in cyberspace. PMID:26953692

Exploring Entrainment Patterns of Human Emotion in Social Media.

PubMed

He, Saike; Zheng, Xiaolong; Zeng, Daniel; Luo, Chuan; Zhang, Zhu

2016-01-01

Emotion entrainment, which is generally defined as the synchronous convergence of human emotions, performs many important social functions. However, what the specific mechanisms of emotion entrainment are beyond in-person interactions, and how human emotions evolve under different entrainment patterns in large-scale social communities, are still unknown. In this paper, we aim to examine the massive emotion entrainment patterns and understand the underlying mechanisms in the context of social media. As modeling emotion dynamics on a large scale is often challenging, we elaborate a pragmatic framework to characterize and quantify the entrainment phenomenon. By applying this framework on the datasets from two large-scale social media platforms, we find that the emotions of online users entrain through social networks. We further uncover that online users often form their relations via dual entrainment, while maintain it through single entrainment. Remarkably, the emotions of online users are more convergent in nonreciprocal entrainment. Building on these findings, we develop an entrainment augmented model for emotion prediction. Experimental results suggest that entrainment patterns inform emotion proximity in dyads, and encoding their associations promotes emotion prediction. This work can further help us to understand the underlying dynamic process of large-scale online interactions and make more reasonable decisions regarding emergency situations, epidemic diseases, and political campaigns in cyberspace.

Perceived neighborhood walkability and physical exercise: An examination of casual communication in a social process.

PubMed

Yamamoto, Masahiro; Jo, Hyerim

2018-05-01

Despite the accumulated evidence for the environmental correlates of physical activity, social processes underlying this association are not entirely clear. This study positions communication characterized by weak ties as a social mechanism linking neighborhood walkability with physical exercise. Data from a survey of Chicago residents show that perceived neighborhood walkability is positively related to frequency of weak-tie communication. Frequency of weak-tie communication is related positively to perceived social cohesion and negatively to anonymity, both of which are significantly related to frequency of physical exercise in the neighborhood. Data also show a sequential indirect relationship involving perceived neighborhood walkability, weak-tie communication, anonymity, and physical exercise. Implications are discussed in terms of the role of communication in promoting locality-based physical exercise. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Relations between social-perceptual ability in multi- and unisensory contexts, autonomic reactivity, and social functioning in individuals with Williams syndrome

PubMed Central

Järvinen, Anna; Ng, Rowena; Crivelli, Davide; Arnold, Andrew J.; Woo-VonHoogenstyn, Nicholas; Bellugi, Ursula

2015-01-01

Compromised social-perceptual ability has been proposed to contribute to social dysfunction in neurodevelopmental disorders. While such impairments have been identified in Williams syndrome (WS), little is known about emotion processing in auditory and multisensory contexts. Employing a multidimensional approach, individuals with WS and typical development (TD) were tested for emotion identification across fearful, happy, and angry multisensory and unisensory face and voice stimuli. Autonomic responses were monitored in response to unimodal emotion. The WS group was administered an inventory of social functioning. Behaviorally, individuals with WS relative to TD demonstrated impaired processing of unimodal vocalizations and emotionally incongruent audiovisual compounds, reflecting a generalized deficit in social-auditory processing in WS. The TD group outperformed their counterparts with WS in identifying negative (fearful and angry) emotion, with similar between-group performance with happy stimuli. Mirroring this pattern, electrodermal activity (EDA) responses to the emotional content of the stimuli indicated that whereas those with WS showed the highest arousal to happy, and lowest arousal to fearful stimuli, the TD participants demonstrated the contrasting pattern. In WS, more normal social functioning was related to higher autonomic arousal to facial expressions. Implications for underlying neural architecture and emotional functions are discussed. PMID:26002754

Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition.

PubMed

Evans, Jonathan St B T

2008-01-01

This article reviews a diverse set of proposals for dual processing in higher cognition within largely disconnected literatures in cognitive and social psychology. All these theories have in common the distinction between cognitive processes that are fast, automatic, and unconscious and those that are slow, deliberative, and conscious. A number of authors have recently suggested that there may be two architecturally (and evolutionarily) distinct cognitive systems underlying these dual-process accounts. However, it emerges that (a) there are multiple kinds of implicit processes described by different theorists and (b) not all of the proposed attributes of the two kinds of processing can be sensibly mapped on to two systems as currently conceived. It is suggested that while some dual-process theories are concerned with parallel competing processes involving explicit and implicit knowledge systems, others are concerned with the influence of preconscious processes that contextualize and shape deliberative reasoning and decision-making.

Social Contagion of Motivation between Teacher and Student: Analyzing Underlying Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Radel, Remi; Sarrazin, Philippe; Legrain, Pascal; Wild, T. Cameron

2010-01-01

We examined (a) whether motivational orientation can spread from teachers to students during 2 consecutive teaching-learning sessions and (b) mechanisms underlying this phenomenon in a special physical education session delivered to high school students. Participants who were taught a sport activity by an allegedly paid instructor reported lower…

My friends have a word for it: Event-related potentials evidence of how social risk inhibits purchase intention.

PubMed

Shang, Qian; Pei, Guanxiong; Jin, Jia

2017-03-16

Social risk refers to the potential disapproval from significant others (especially family or friends), and it is crucial in dissuading consumers from making decisions to purchase. The current study explored the neural process underlying how social risk influenced people's purchase intention. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were employed to investigate the electrophysiological process when subjects evaluated their purchase intention for products with social risk factors. The behavioral data showed that the social risk condition inhibited people's purchase intention compared to the control condition. Neurophysiologically, larger anterior N2 amplitude was induced by the social risk condition in contrast with the control condition. We suggest that this anterior N2 may reflect the cognitive control or conflict monitoring. It may be that the participant has to regulate the conflict between an internal desire to purchase the item and the discordant information obtained from the social risk sentence, which would pressure the participant to not purchase the item in accord with social norms. These findings will be helpful in understanding the neural basis of social risk perception during purchase decisions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social interaction shapes babbling: Testing parallels between birdsong and speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goldstein, Michael H.; King, Andrew P.; West, Meredith J.

2003-06-01

Birdsong is considered a model of human speech development at behavioral and neural levels. Few direct tests of the proposed analogs exist, however. Here we test a mechanism of phonological development in human infants that is based on social shaping, a selective learning process first documented in songbirds. By manipulating mothers' reactions to their 8-month-old infants' vocalizations, we demonstrate that phonological features of babbling are sensitive to nonimitative social stimulation. Contingent, but not noncontingent, maternal behavior facilitates more complex and mature vocal behavior. Changes in vocalizations persist after the manipulation. The data show that human infants use social feedback, facilitating immediate transitions in vocal behavior. Social interaction creates rapid shifts to developmentally more advanced sounds. These transitions mirror the normal development of speech, supporting the predictions of the avian social shaping model. These data provide strong support for a parallel in function between vocal precursors of songbirds and infants. Because imitation is usually considered the mechanism for vocal learning in both taxa, the findings introduce social shaping as a general process underlying the development of speech and song.

The Functional Architecture of the Brain Underlies Strategic Deception in Impression Management

PubMed Central

Luo, Qiang; Ma, Yina; Bhatt, Meghana A.; Montague, P. Read; Feng, Jianfeng

2017-01-01

Impression management, as one of the most essential skills of social function, impacts one's survival and success in human societies. However, the neural architecture underpinning this social skill remains poorly understood. By employing a two-person bargaining game, we exposed three strategies involving distinct cognitive processes for social impression management with different levels of strategic deception. We utilized a novel adaptation of Granger causality accounting for signal-dependent noise (SDN), which captured the directional connectivity underlying the impression management during the bargaining game. We found that the sophisticated strategists engaged stronger directional connectivity from both dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and retrosplenial cortex to rostral prefrontal cortex, and the strengths of these directional influences were associated with higher level of deception during the game. Using the directional connectivity as a neural signature, we identified the strategic deception with 80% accuracy by a machine-learning classifier. These results suggest that different social strategies are supported by distinct patterns of directional connectivity among key brain regions for social cognition. PMID:29163095

The association between imitation recognition and socio-communicative competencies in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

PubMed

Pope, Sarah M; Russell, Jamie L; Hopkins, William D

2015-01-01

Imitation recognition provides a viable platform from which advanced social cognitive skills may develop. Despite evidence that non-human primates are capable of imitation recognition, how this ability is related to social cognitive skills is unknown. In this study, we compared imitation recognition performance, as indicated by the production of testing behaviors, with performance on a series of tasks that assess social and physical cognition in 49 chimpanzees. In the initial analyses, we found that males were more responsive than females to being imitated and engaged in significantly greater behavior repetitions and testing sequences. We also found that subjects who consistently recognized being imitated performed better on social but not physical cognitive tasks, as measured by the Primate Cognitive Test Battery. These findings suggest that the neural constructs underlying imitation recognition are likely associated with or among those underlying more general socio-communicative abilities in chimpanzees. Implications regarding how imitation recognition may facilitate other social cognitive processes, such as mirror self-recognition, are discussed.

The association between imitation recognition and socio-communicative competencies in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

PubMed Central

Pope, Sarah M.; Russell, Jamie L.; Hopkins, William D.

2015-01-01

Imitation recognition provides a viable platform from which advanced social cognitive skills may develop. Despite evidence that non-human primates are capable of imitation recognition, how this ability is related to social cognitive skills is unknown. In this study, we compared imitation recognition performance, as indicated by the production of testing behaviors, with performance on a series of tasks that assess social and physical cognition in 49 chimpanzees. In the initial analyses, we found that males were more responsive than females to being imitated and engaged in significantly greater behavior repetitions and testing sequences. We also found that subjects who consistently recognized being imitated performed better on social but not physical cognitive tasks, as measured by the Primate Cognitive Test Battery. These findings suggest that the neural constructs underlying imitation recognition are likely associated with or among those underlying more general socio-communicative abilities in chimpanzees. Implications regarding how imitation recognition may facilitate other social cognitive processes, such as mirror self-recognition, are discussed. PMID:25767454

The Functional Architecture of the Brain Underlies Strategic Deception in Impression Management.

PubMed

Luo, Qiang; Ma, Yina; Bhatt, Meghana A; Montague, P Read; Feng, Jianfeng

2017-01-01

Impression management, as one of the most essential skills of social function, impacts one's survival and success in human societies. However, the neural architecture underpinning this social skill remains poorly understood. By employing a two-person bargaining game, we exposed three strategies involving distinct cognitive processes for social impression management with different levels of strategic deception. We utilized a novel adaptation of Granger causality accounting for signal-dependent noise (SDN), which captured the directional connectivity underlying the impression management during the bargaining game. We found that the sophisticated strategists engaged stronger directional connectivity from both dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and retrosplenial cortex to rostral prefrontal cortex, and the strengths of these directional influences were associated with higher level of deception during the game. Using the directional connectivity as a neural signature, we identified the strategic deception with 80% accuracy by a machine-learning classifier. These results suggest that different social strategies are supported by distinct patterns of directional connectivity among key brain regions for social cognition.

A Systematic Review of the Processes Underlying the Main and the Buffering Effect of Social Support on the Experience of Pain.

PubMed

Che, Xianwei; Cash, Robin; Ng, Sin Ki; Fitzgerald, Paul; Fitzgibbon, Bernadette M

2018-04-24

This review aimed to explore the processes that underlie the main and the buffering effect of social support on decreased pain experience. The systematic review was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines. Online databases of PubMed and PsycINFO were searched for peer-reviewed articles using keywords (("social support", OR "interpersonal", OR "social presence", OR "spouse", OR "couple", OR "marriage") AND "pain"). Articles were included if they examined the cognitive or behavioural processes linking social support to any aspects of reduced pain experience. The database search identified 38 studies, of which 33 were cognitive-behavioural studies and 5 were neurobiological. Cognitive-behavioural studies generated a total of 57 findings of the analgesic influence of social support. This effect was further categorized as social support decreasing the adverse influence of pain-related stress (28/44 findings), reappraising pain-related stress (7/9 findings), and facilitating coping attempts (2/4 findings). Of the 5 neurobiological studies, the influence of social support on pain reduction was associated with reduced neural and physiological stress systems in response to painful stimuli. This review presents evidence that the stress-buffering effect is more often able to account for the relationship between social support and pain experience. Moreover, findings suggest the critical significance of stress appraisal and attenuated stress systems in linking social support to aspects of reduced pain experience. Findings implicate the role of integrating perceived support and intimacy in support-oriented interventional trials for chronic pain.

The influence of socializing agents in the female sport-participation process.

PubMed

Higginson, D C

1985-01-01

This study investigated the influence of socializing agents on the female athletes who participated in the Empire State Games in Syracuse, New York (N = 587). When comparisons were made across life-cycle states (under-13, junior high, and senior high), it was discovered that statistically significant differences existed (p less than 0.0001). It was apparent that the socializing agent influences changed from being mostly parental at the under-13 life-cycle stage to mostly coach/teacher oriented during junior and senior high school years. No significant differences occurred across the three life-cycle stages when the following items were examined: (a) the number of sports in which the female athletes participated, (b) the number of sports learned by the female athletes, and (c) the amount of sport interest developed. It was concluded that socializing agent influences do exist, but change during different periods in the life cycle.

Perceiving nonverbal behavior: neural correlates of processing movement fluency and contingency in dyadic interactions.

PubMed

Georgescu, Alexandra L; Kuzmanovic, Bojana; Santos, Natacha S; Tepest, Ralf; Bente, Gary; Tittgemeyer, Marc; Vogeley, Kai

2014-04-01

Despite the fact that nonverbal dyadic social interactions are abundant in the environment, the neural mechanisms underlying their processing are not yet fully understood. Research in the field of social neuroscience has suggested that two neural networks appear to be involved in social understanding: (1) the action observation network (AON) and (2) the social neural network (SNN). The aim of this study was to determine the differential contributions of the AON and the SNN to the processing of nonverbal behavior as observed in dyadic social interactions. To this end, we used short computer animation sequences displaying dyadic social interactions between two virtual characters and systematically manipulated two key features of movement activity, which are known to influence the perception of meaning in nonverbal stimuli: (1) movement fluency and (2) contingency of movement patterns. A group of 21 male participants rated the "naturalness" of the observed scenes on a four-point scale while undergoing fMRI. Behavioral results showed that both fluency and contingency significantly influenced the "naturalness" experience of the presented animations. Neurally, the AON was preferentially engaged when processing contingent movement patterns, but did not discriminate between different degrees of movement fluency. In contrast, regions of the SNN were engaged more strongly when observing dyads with disturbed movement fluency. In conclusion, while the AON is involved in the general processing of contingent social actions, irrespective of their kinematic properties, the SNN is preferentially recruited when atypical kinematic properties prompt inferences about the agents' intentions. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Physiological mechanisms underlying animal social behaviour.

PubMed

Seebacher, Frank; Krause, Jens

2017-08-19

Many species of animal live in groups, and the group represents the organizational level within which ecological and evolutionary processes occur. Understanding these processes, therefore, relies on knowledge of the mechanisms that permit or constrain group formation. We suggest that physiological capacities and differences in physiology between individuals modify fission-fusion dynamics. Differences between individuals in locomotor capacity and metabolism may lead to fission of groups and sorting of individuals into groups with similar physiological phenotypes. Environmental impacts such as hypoxia can influence maximum group sizes and structure in fish schools by altering access to oxygenated water. The nutritional environment determines group cohesion, and the increase in information collected by the group means that individuals should rely more on social information and form more cohesive groups in uncertain environments. Changing environmental contexts require rapid responses by individuals to maintain group coordination, which are mediated by neuroendocrine signalling systems such as nonapeptides and steroid hormones. Brain processing capacity may constrain social complexity by limiting information processing. Failure to evaluate socially relevant information correctly limits social interactions, which is seen, for example, in autism. Hence, functioning of a group relies to a large extent on the perception and appropriate processing of signals from conspecifics. Many if not all physiological systems are mechanistically linked, and therefore have synergistic effects on social behaviour. A challenge for the future lies in understanding these interactive effects, which will improve understanding of group dynamics, particularly in changing environments.This article is part of the themed issue 'Physiological determinants of social behaviour in animals'. © 2017 The Author(s).

Atypical development of spontaneous social cognition in autism spectrum disorders.

PubMed

Senju, Atsushi

2013-02-01

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have profound impairment in the development of social interaction and communication. However, it is also known that some 'high-functioning' individuals with ASD show apparently typical capacity to process social information in a controlled experimental settings, despite their difficulties in daily life. The current paper overviews the spontaneous social cognition, spontaneous processing of social information in the absence of explicit instruction or task demand, in individuals with ASD. Three areas of the researches, false belief attribution, imitation/mimicry, and eye gaze processing, have been reviewed. The literatures suggest that high-functioning individuals with ASD (a) do not spontaneously attribute false belief to others, even though they can easily do so when explicitly instructed, (b) can imitate others' goal-directed actions under explicit instruction and show spontaneous mimicry of others' actions when they attend to the action, but are less likely to show spontaneous mimicry without the task structure to navigate attention to others' action and (c) can process others' gaze direction and shift attention to others' gaze directions, but fail to spontaneously attend to another person's eyes in social and communicative context, and less likely to be prompted to respond in response to perceived eye contact. These results are consistent with the claim that individuals with ASD do not spontaneously attend to socially relevant information, even though they can easily process the same information when their attention is navigated towards it. Copyright © 2012 The Japanese Society of Child Neurology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social and diagnostic inequality in health.

PubMed

Bringedal, Berit; Tufte, Per Arne

2012-11-01

Empirical studies of social inequalities in health commonly take the diagnosing of disease for granted. Social inequalities in health are seen as the result of social processes, yet the diagnosis itself is rarely considered to contribute to such inequality. We argue that the influence of sociocultural and cognitive bias in the diagnosing process follows a social pattern, such that certain diagnoses are disproportionally over- or underrepresented in different socioeconomic groups due to interpretive bias of underlying symptoms. Norwegian data on sick leave for diffuse musculoskeletal and diffuse psychiatric disease in 2006 were analysed to study the distribution of the two diagnoses in different status groups. Socioeconomic status was measured by years of education. Diagnoses and occupational codes were based on national registers; diagnoses in accordance with the International Classification of Primary Care second edition. We compared occupations in technical sectors to occupations in the health sector and the relative number of cases of sick leave controlled for years of education, gender, occupational sector, and diagnosis. Data were analysed by cross-tabulation, ratio of diffuse psychiatric/musculoskeletal diseases, and logistic regression. The ratio of diffuse psychiatric/musculoskeletal diseases increases with education and decreases if the employee works in a technical job. The results challenge the traditional explanation that job features alone can explain the distribution of disease and suggest that a part of the persistent social inequality in health can be caused by the diagnosing process. In order to reach a better understanding of the processes behind the social inequalities in health, the diagnosing process itself should also be studied.

Physiological mechanisms underlying animal social behaviour

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Many species of animal live in groups, and the group represents the organizational level within which ecological and evolutionary processes occur. Understanding these processes, therefore, relies on knowledge of the mechanisms that permit or constrain group formation. We suggest that physiological capacities and differences in physiology between individuals modify fission–fusion dynamics. Differences between individuals in locomotor capacity and metabolism may lead to fission of groups and sorting of individuals into groups with similar physiological phenotypes. Environmental impacts such as hypoxia can influence maximum group sizes and structure in fish schools by altering access to oxygenated water. The nutritional environment determines group cohesion, and the increase in information collected by the group means that individuals should rely more on social information and form more cohesive groups in uncertain environments. Changing environmental contexts require rapid responses by individuals to maintain group coordination, which are mediated by neuroendocrine signalling systems such as nonapeptides and steroid hormones. Brain processing capacity may constrain social complexity by limiting information processing. Failure to evaluate socially relevant information correctly limits social interactions, which is seen, for example, in autism. Hence, functioning of a group relies to a large extent on the perception and appropriate processing of signals from conspecifics. Many if not all physiological systems are mechanistically linked, and therefore have synergistic effects on social behaviour. A challenge for the future lies in understanding these interactive effects, which will improve understanding of group dynamics, particularly in changing environments. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Physiological determinants of social behaviour in animals’. PMID:28673909

The role of executive functions in social impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PubMed

Leung, Rachel C; Vogan, Vanessa M; Powell, Tamara L; Anagnostou, Evdokia; Taylor, Margot J

2016-01-01

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by socio-communicative impairments. Executive dysfunction may explain some key characteristics of ASD, both social and nonsocial hallmarks. Limited research exists exploring the relations between executive function and social impairment in ASD and few studies have used a comparison control group. Thus, the objective of the present study was to investigate the relations between executive functioning using the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning (BRIEF), social impairment as measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), and overall autistic symptomology as measured by the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) in children and adolescents with and without ASD. Seventy children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD and 71 typically developing controls were included in this study. Findings showed that behavioral regulation executive processes (i.e., inhibition, shifting, and emotional control) predicted social function in all children. However, metacognitive executive processes (i.e., initiation, working memory, planning, organization, and monitoring) predicted social function only in children with ASD and not in typically developing children. Our findings suggest a distinct metacognitive executive function-social symptom link in ASD that is not present in the typical population. Understanding components of executive functioning that contribute to the autistic symptomology, particularly in the socio-communicative domain, is crucial for developing effective interventions that target key executive processes as well as underlying behavioral symptoms.

Comparison of dogs and humans in visual scanning of social interaction.

PubMed

Törnqvist, Heini; Somppi, Sanni; Koskela, Aija; Krause, Christina M; Vainio, Outi; Kujala, Miiamaaria V

2015-09-01

Previous studies have demonstrated similarities in gazing behaviour of dogs and humans, but comparisons under similar conditions are rare, and little is known about dogs' visual attention to social scenes. Here, we recorded the eye gaze of dogs while they viewed images containing two humans or dogs either interacting socially or facing away: the results were compared with equivalent data measured from humans. Furthermore, we compared the gazing behaviour of two dog and two human populations with different social experiences: family and kennel dogs; dog experts and non-experts. Dogs' gazing behaviour was similar to humans: both species gazed longer at the actors in social interaction than in non-social images. However, humans gazed longer at the actors in dog than human social interaction images, whereas dogs gazed longer at the actors in human than dog social interaction images. Both species also made more saccades between actors in images representing non-conspecifics, which could indicate that processing social interaction of non-conspecifics may be more demanding. Dog experts and non-experts viewed the images very similarly. Kennel dogs viewed images less than family dogs, but otherwise their gazing behaviour did not differ, indicating that the basic processing of social stimuli remains similar regardless of social experiences.

Modelling information dissemination under privacy concerns in social media

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, Hui; Huang, Cheng; Lu, Rongxing; Li, Hui

2016-05-01

Social media has recently become an important platform for users to share news, express views, and post messages. However, due to user privacy preservation in social media, many privacy setting tools are employed, which inevitably change the patterns and dynamics of information dissemination. In this study, a general stochastic model using dynamic evolution equations was introduced to illustrate how privacy concerns impact the process of information dissemination. Extensive simulations and analyzes involving the privacy settings of general users, privileged users, and pure observers were conducted on real-world networks, and the results demonstrated that user privacy settings affect information differently. Finally, we also studied the process of information diffusion analytically and numerically with different privacy settings using two classic networks.

Ecological Factors in Social Skill Acquisition: High School Students with Emotional and/or Behavioral Disorders in the United States and Norway

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Sarah K.

2010-01-01

The purpose of my study was to develop a grounded theory of the underlying social processes and/or other ecological factors that impact the effectiveness of skill acquisition for students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD) in "sister" cities located in the United States (Site One) and in Norway (Site Two). Theory…

Enabled Masses: Challenge and Trust within Modern Social Networks

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-03-01

maintaining the data needed , and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of...mobile technology presents a challenge to future operations in terms of increased scrutiny. Senior military leaders need to understand and appreciate...increased scrutiny. Senior military leaders need to understand and appreciate the human processes underlying social networks as well as why this

Changes and Threats to the Employee Development under Social and Economic Conditions within Global Labour Market

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sikora, Jan

2014-01-01

The main theme of the article is the thesis that man's engagement in the process of professional work is engaged in a number of antinomies. The problem of contemporary economics has been analyzed. It has been revealed that situation in which the majority of people excluded from social debate due to their lack of competences become a useful medium…

Facing changes and changing faces in adolescence: A new model for investigating adolescent-specific interactions between pubertal, brain and behavioral development

PubMed Central

Scherf, K. Suzanne; Behrmann, Marlene; Dahl, Ronald E.

2015-01-01

Adolescence is a time of dramatic physical, cognitive, emotional, and social changes as well as a time for the development of many social-emotional problems. These characteristics raise compelling questions about accompanying neural changes that are unique to this period of development. Here, we propose that studying adolescent-specific changes in face processing and its underlying neural circuitry provides an ideal model for addressing these questions. We also use this model to formulate new hypotheses. Specifically, pubertal hormones are likely to increase motivation to master new peer-oriented developmental tasks, which will in turn, instigate the emergence of new social/affective components of face processing. We also predict that pubertal hormones have a fundamental impact on the reorganization of neural circuitry supporting face processing and propose, in particular, that, the functional connectivity, or temporal synchrony, between regions of the face-processing network will change with the emergence of these new components of face processing in adolescence. Finally, we show how this approach will help reveal why adolescence may be a period of vulnerability in brain development and suggest how it could lead to prevention and intervention strategies that facilitate more adaptive functional interactions between regions within the broader social information processing network. PMID:22483070

Definition and characterization of an extended social-affective default network.

PubMed

Amft, Maren; Bzdok, Danilo; Laird, Angela R; Fox, Peter T; Schilbach, Leonhard; Eickhoff, Simon B

2015-03-01

Recent evidence suggests considerable overlap between the default mode network (DMN) and regions involved in social, affective and introspective processes. We considered these overlapping regions as the social-affective part of the DMN. In this study, we established a robust mapping of the underlying brain network formed by these regions and those strongly connected to them (the extended social-affective default network). We first seeded meta-analytic connectivity modeling and resting-state analyses in the meta-analytically defined DMN regions that showed statistical overlap with regions associated with social and affective processing. Consensus connectivity of each seed was subsequently delineated by a conjunction across both connectivity analyses. We then functionally characterized the ensuing regions and performed several cluster analyses. Among the identified regions, the amygdala/hippocampus formed a cluster associated with emotional processes and memory functions. The ventral striatum, anterior cingulum, subgenual cingulum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex formed a heterogeneous subgroup associated with motivation, reward and cognitive modulation of affect. Posterior cingulum/precuneus and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex were associated with mentalizing, self-reference and autobiographic information. The cluster formed by the temporo-parietal junction and anterior middle temporal sulcus/gyrus was associated with language and social cognition. Taken together, the current work highlights a robustly interconnected network that may be central to introspective, socio-affective, that is, self- and other-related mental processes.

Exogenous cortisol facilitates responses to social threat under high provocation.

PubMed

Bertsch, Katja; Böhnke, Robina; Kruk, Menno R; Richter, Steffen; Naumann, Ewald

2011-04-01

Stress is one of the most important promoters of aggression. Human and animal studies have found associations between basal and acute levels of the stress hormone cortisol and (abnormal) aggression. Irrespective of the direction of these changes--i.e., increased or decreased aggressive behavior--the results of these studies suggest dramatic alterations in the processing of threat-related social information. Therefore, the effects of cortisol and provocation on social information processing were addressed by the present study. After a placebo-controlled pharmacological manipulation of acute cortisol levels, we exposed healthy individuals to high or low levels of provocation in a competitive aggression paradigm. Influences of cortisol and provocation on emotional face processing were then investigated with reaction times and event-related potentials (ERPs) in an emotional Stroop task. In line with previous results, enhanced early and later positive, posterior ERP components indicated a provocation-induced enhanced relevance for all kinds of social information. Cortisol, however, reduced an early frontocentral bias for angry faces and--despite the provocation-enhancing relevance--led to faster reactions for all facial expressions in highly provoked participants. The results thus support the moderating role of social information processing in the 'vicious circle of stress and aggression'. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of androstadienone on dominance perception in males with low and high social anxiety.

PubMed

Banner, Amir; Shamay-Tsoory, Simone

2018-05-25

Increasing evidence suggests that humans can communicate both trait-dominance and state-dominance via body odor. Androstadienone (androsta-4,16,-dien-3-one), a chemosignal found in human sweat, seems to be a likely candidate for signaling dominance in humans. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of androstadienone on the perception of social dominance. Moreover, we examined whether high levels of social anxiety, a psychopathology involving concerns that specifically pertain to social dominance, are associated with increased sensitivity to androstadienone as a chemical cue of dominance. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design, 64 heterosexual male participants (32 with high social anxiety and 32 withconfliow social anxiety) viewed facial images of males depicting dominant, neutral and submissive postures, and were asked to recognize and rate the dominance expressed in those images. Participants completed the task twice, once under exposure to androstadienone and once under exposure to a control solution. The results indicate that androstadienone increased the perceived dominance of men's faces, specifically among participants with high social anxiety. These findings suggest a direct influence of androstadienone on dominance perception and further highlight the preferential processing of dominance and social threat signals evident in social anxiety. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Atypical forest products, processes, and uses: a developing component of National Forest management

Treesearch

Mike Higgs; John Sebelius; Mike Miller

1995-01-01

The silvicultural practices prescribed under an ecosystem management regimen will alter the volume and character of National Forests' marketable raw material base. This alteration will affect forest-dependent communities that have traditionally relied upon these resources for their economic and social well being. Community based atypical forest products, processes...

Drawing, Talking, and Writing: Rethinking Writing Development. Occasional Paper No. 3.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dyson, Anne Haas

A study investigated one way in which teachers can focus on more than children's products and writing processes by examining their social processes as well, specifically the health of the classroom communities and the individual children's comfort within those communities. Under the supervision of the same teacher, "journal time" in…

Human Neuroimaging of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in Social Cognition

PubMed Central

Zink, Caroline F; Meyer-Lindenberg, Andreas

2012-01-01

The neuropeptides oxytocin and vasopressin have increasingly been identified as modulators of human social behaviors and associated with neuropsychiatric disorders characterized by social dysfunction, such as autism. Identifying the human brain regions that are impacted by oxytocin and vasopressin in a social context is essential to fully characterize the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in complex human social cognition. Advances in human non-invasive neuroimaging techniques and genetics have enabled scientists to begin to elucidate the neurobiological basis of the influence of oxytocin and vasopressin on human social behaviors. Here we review the findings to-date from investigations of the acute and chronic effects of oxytocin and vasopressin on neural activity underlying social cognitive processes using “pharmacological fMRI” and “imaging genetics”, respectively. PMID:22326707

The development of human social learning across seven societies.

PubMed

van Leeuwen, Edwin J C; Cohen, Emma; Collier-Baker, Emma; Rapold, Christian J; Schäfer, Marie; Schütte, Sebastian; Haun, Daniel B M

2018-05-25

Social information use is a pivotal characteristic of the human species. Avoiding the cost of individual exploration, social learning confers substantial fitness benefits under a wide variety of environmental conditions, especially when the process is governed by biases toward relative superiority (e.g., experts, the majority). Here, we examine the development of social information use in children aged 4-14 years (n = 605) across seven societies in a standardised social learning task. We measured two key aspects of social information use: general reliance on social information and majority preference. We show that the extent to which children rely on social information depends on children's cultural background. The extent of children's majority preference also varies cross-culturally, but in contrast to social information use, the ontogeny of majority preference follows a U-shaped trajectory across all societies. Our results demonstrate both cultural continuity and diversity in the realm of human social learning.

[Discourses and practices concerning the social participation process in health education activities: community mobilization in the PCDEN/PE. Programa de Controle das Doenças Endêmicas do Nordeste/Pernambuco].

PubMed

Acioli, M D; de Carvalho, E F

1998-01-01

This study analyzes and compares several social participation concepts in health education processes to practical experiences with schistosomiasis prevention measures under the Northeast Endemic Disease Control Program (Brazilian Ministry of Health/World Bank, 1987). Using qualitative methods, institutional documents and discourses were interpreted (Sucam, FNS, and Ministry of Health). A field study was also performed (using interviews with community-based health agents and the general population) in the Zona da Mata region of Pernambuco (a historically endemic area for schistosomiasis), focused in the county of Amaraji. Comparing discourses and educational practices, we found factors that explain respective points of convergence and divergence, as well as elements linked to the social and historical process of the target population which systematically limit the efficacy of such educational measures.

[Some sex-specific problem under especially consideration of demographic and social-economic aspects (author's transl)].

PubMed

Brännström, M; Festbaum, G; Frille, D

1981-01-01

Demographic and social-economic trends are tightly linked together, the social-economic being the determinates of this trend. For that aim the direct pecuniary living conditions are analyzed more thoroughly than usual by means of a special demographic group. Now as before the mode of action and the accuracy of aim of social-politic measures are unclear. The downward trend of the degree of pensioner's employment is discussed in connection to concretly existing material living conditions with regard to better social security payment. Recommendations are given for elderly working people from the side of work hygiene, which will be planned and realized in our process of development.

Social-ecological outcomes in recreational fisheries: the interaction of lakeshore development and stocking.

PubMed

Ziegler, Jacob P; Golebie, Elizabeth J; Jones, Stuart E; Weidel, Brian C; Solomon, Christopher T

2017-01-01

Many ecosystems continue to experience rapid transformations due to processes like land use change and resource extraction. A systems approach to maintaining natural resources focuses on how interactions and feedbacks among components of complex social-ecological systems generate social and ecological outcomes. In recreational fisheries, residential shoreline development and fish stocking are two widespread human behaviors that influence fisheries, yet emergent social-ecological outcomes from these potentially interacting behaviors remain under explored. We applied a social-ecological systems framework using a simulation model and empirical data to determine whether lakeshore development is likely to promote stocking through its adverse effects on coarse woody habitat and thereby also on survival of juvenile and adult fish. We demonstrate that high lakeshore development is likely to generate dependency of the ecosystem on the social system, in the form of stocking. Further, lakeshore development can interact with social-ecological processes to create deficits for state-level governments, which threatens the ability to fund further ecosystem subsidies. Our results highlight the value of a social-ecological framework for maintaining ecosystem services like recreational fisheries. © 2016 by the Ecological Society of America.

Finding a face in the crowd: testing the anger superiority effect in Asperger Syndrome.

PubMed

Ashwin, Chris; Wheelwright, Sally; Baron-Cohen, Simon

2006-06-01

Social threat captures attention and is processed rapidly and efficiently, with many lines of research showing involvement of the amygdala. Visual search paradigms looking at social threat have shown angry faces 'pop-out' in a crowd, compared to happy faces. Autism and Asperger Syndrome (AS) are neurodevelopmental conditions characterised by social deficits, abnormal face processing, and amygdala dysfunction. We tested adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) and AS using a facial visual search paradigm with schematic neutral and emotional faces. We found, contrary to predictions, that people with HFA/AS performed similarly to controls in many conditions. However, the effect was reduced in the HFA/AS group when using widely varying crowd sizes and when faces were inverted, suggesting a difference in face-processing style may be evident even with simple schematic faces. We conclude there are intact threat detection mechanisms in AS, under simple and predictable conditions, but that like other face-perception tasks, the visual search of threat faces task reveals atypical face-processing in HFA/AS.

Mechanisms underlying the social enhancement of vocal learning in songbirds.

PubMed

Chen, Yining; Matheson, Laura E; Sakata, Jon T

2016-06-14

Social processes profoundly influence speech and language acquisition. Despite the importance of social influences, little is known about how social interactions modulate vocal learning. Like humans, songbirds learn their vocalizations during development, and they provide an excellent opportunity to reveal mechanisms of social influences on vocal learning. Using yoked experimental designs, we demonstrate that social interactions with adult tutors for as little as 1 d significantly enhanced vocal learning. Social influences on attention to song seemed central to the social enhancement of learning because socially tutored birds were more attentive to the tutor's songs than passively tutored birds, and because variation in attentiveness and in the social modulation of attention significantly predicted variation in vocal learning. Attention to song was influenced by both the nature and amount of tutor song: Pupils paid more attention to songs that tutors directed at them and to tutors that produced fewer songs. Tutors altered their song structure when directing songs at pupils in a manner that resembled how humans alter their vocalizations when speaking to infants, that was distinct from how tutors changed their songs when singing to females, and that could influence attention and learning. Furthermore, social interactions that rapidly enhanced learning increased the activity of noradrenergic and dopaminergic midbrain neurons. These data highlight striking parallels between humans and songbirds in the social modulation of vocal learning and suggest that social influences on attention and midbrain circuitry could represent shared mechanisms underlying the social modulation of vocal learning.

Mechanisms underlying the social enhancement of vocal learning in songbirds

PubMed Central

Chen, Yining; Matheson, Laura E.; Sakata, Jon T.

2016-01-01

Social processes profoundly influence speech and language acquisition. Despite the importance of social influences, little is known about how social interactions modulate vocal learning. Like humans, songbirds learn their vocalizations during development, and they provide an excellent opportunity to reveal mechanisms of social influences on vocal learning. Using yoked experimental designs, we demonstrate that social interactions with adult tutors for as little as 1 d significantly enhanced vocal learning. Social influences on attention to song seemed central to the social enhancement of learning because socially tutored birds were more attentive to the tutor’s songs than passively tutored birds, and because variation in attentiveness and in the social modulation of attention significantly predicted variation in vocal learning. Attention to song was influenced by both the nature and amount of tutor song: Pupils paid more attention to songs that tutors directed at them and to tutors that produced fewer songs. Tutors altered their song structure when directing songs at pupils in a manner that resembled how humans alter their vocalizations when speaking to infants, that was distinct from how tutors changed their songs when singing to females, and that could influence attention and learning. Furthermore, social interactions that rapidly enhanced learning increased the activity of noradrenergic and dopaminergic midbrain neurons. These data highlight striking parallels between humans and songbirds in the social modulation of vocal learning and suggest that social influences on attention and midbrain circuitry could represent shared mechanisms underlying the social modulation of vocal learning. PMID:27247385

Social matching of food intake and the need for social acceptance.

PubMed

Robinson, Eric; Tobias, Talia; Shaw, Lucy; Freeman, Elyse; Higgs, Suzanne

2011-06-01

In a social eating context individuals tend to match their food intake to that of eating companions, regardless of whether the other person is eating a large amount. However, relatively little is known about the underlying processes of food intake matching. Findings from behavioural mimicry research suggest that individuals may copy how those around them act in order to facilitate social interactions and ingratiate themselves. The present paper reports two studies which were designed to examine whether ingratiation strategies may in part explain social matching of food intake in young females. In Study 1, female dyads completed a problem solving task together whilst having access to chocolate M&M's. We hypothesised that the extent to which individuals have a need to be socially accepted (trait self esteem) and are competent in social interactions (trait empathy) would predict the degree of matching. In Study 2 we directly manipulated the desire to ingratiate by priming social acceptance in half of participants prior to eating popcorn in the presence of a high eating confederate. In Study 1, both self esteem and empathy were associated with degree of matching within female dyads. In Study 2, priming social acceptance reduced the matching effect in females. These findings suggest that desire for social acceptance may be an underlying cause of social matching of food intake. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Observing and participating in social interactions: Action perception and action control across the autistic spectrum.

PubMed

Bolis, Dimitris; Schilbach, Leonhard

2018-01-01

Autism is a developmental condition, characterized by difficulties of social interaction and communication, as well as restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. Although several important conceptions have shed light on specific facets, there is still no consensus about a universal yet specific theory in terms of its underlying mechanisms. While some theories have exclusively focused on sensory aspects, others have emphasized social difficulties. However, sensory and social processes in autism might be interconnected to a higher degree than what has been traditionally thought. We propose that a mismatch in sensory abilities across individuals can lead to difficulties on a social, i.e. interpersonal level and vice versa. In this article, we, therefore, selectively review evidence indicating an interrelationship between perceptual and social difficulties in autism. Additionally, we link this body of research with studies, which investigate the mechanisms of action control in social contexts. By doing so, we highlight that autistic traits are also crucially related to differences in integration, anticipation and automatic responding to social cues, rather than a mere inability to register and learn from social cues. Importantly, such differences may only manifest themselves in sufficiently complex situations, such as real-life social interactions, where such processes are inextricably linked. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Pattern of brain activation during social cognitive tasks is related to social competence in siblings discordant for schizophrenia.

PubMed

Villarreal, Mirta F; Drucaroff, Lucas J; Goldschmidt, Micaela G; de Achával, Delfina; Costanzo, Elsa Y; Castro, Mariana N; Ladrón-de-Guevara, M Soledad; Busatto Filho, Geraldo; Nemeroff, Charles B; Guinjoan, Salvador M

2014-09-01

Measures of social competence are closely related to actual community functioning in patients with schizophrenia. However, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying competence in schizophrenia are not fully understood. We hypothesized that social deficits in schizophrenia are explained, at least in part, by abnormally lateralized patterns of brain activation in response to tasks engaging social cognition, as compared to healthy individuals. We predicted such patterns would be partly heritable, and therefore affected in patients' nonpsychotic siblings as well. We used a functional magnetic resonance image paradigm to characterize brain activation induced by theory of mind tasks, and two tests of social competence, the Test of Adaptive Behavior in Schizophrenia (TABS), and the Social Skills Performance Assessment (SSPA) in siblings discordant for schizophrenia and comparable healthy controls (n = 14 per group). Healthy individuals showed the strongest correlation between social competence and activation of right hemisphere structures involved in social cognitive processing, whereas in patients, the correlation pattern was lateralized to left hemisphere areas. Unaffected siblings of patients exhibited a pattern intermediate between the other groups. These results support the hypothesis that schizophrenia may be characterized by an abnormal functioning of nondominant hemisphere structures involved in the processing of socially salient information. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Psychology and social networks: a dynamic network theory perspective.

PubMed

Westaby, James D; Pfaff, Danielle L; Redding, Nicholas

2014-04-01

Research on social networks has grown exponentially in recent years. However, despite its relevance, the field of psychology has been relatively slow to explain the underlying goal pursuit and resistance processes influencing social networks in the first place. In this vein, this article aims to demonstrate how a dynamic network theory perspective explains the way in which social networks influence these processes and related outcomes, such as goal achievement, performance, learning, and emotional contagion at the interpersonal level of analysis. The theory integrates goal pursuit, motivation, and conflict conceptualizations from psychology with social network concepts from sociology and organizational science to provide a taxonomy of social network role behaviors, such as goal striving, system supporting, goal preventing, system negating, and observing. This theoretical perspective provides psychologists with new tools to map social networks (e.g., dynamic network charts), which can help inform the development of change interventions. Implications for social, industrial-organizational, and counseling psychology as well as conflict resolution are discussed, and new opportunities for research are highlighted, such as those related to dynamic network intelligence (also known as cognitive accuracy), levels of analysis, methodological/ethical issues, and the need to theoretically broaden the study of social networking and social media behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Identification of Learning Mechanisms in a Wild Meerkat Population

PubMed Central

Hoppitt, Will; Samson, Jamie; Laland, Kevin N.; Thornton, Alex

2012-01-01

Vigorous debates as to the evolutionary origins of culture remain unresolved due to an absence of methods for identifying learning mechanisms in natural populations. While laboratory experiments on captive animals have revealed evidence for a number of mechanisms, these may not necessarily reflect the processes typically operating in nature. We developed a novel method that allows social and asocial learning mechanisms to be determined in animal groups from the patterns of interaction with, and solving of, a task. We deployed it to analyse learning in groups of wild meerkats (Suricata suricatta) presented with a novel foraging apparatus. We identify nine separate learning processes underlying the meerkats’ foraging behaviour, in each case precisely quantifying their strength and duration, including local enhancement, emulation, and a hitherto unrecognized form of social learning, which we term ‘observational perseverance’. Our analysis suggests a key factor underlying the stability of behavioural traditions is a high ratio of specific to generalized social learning effects. The approach has widespread potential as an ecologically valid tool to investigate learning mechanisms in natural groups of animals, including humans. PMID:22905113

On the Control of Social Approach-Avoidance Behavior: Neural and Endocrine Mechanisms.

PubMed

Kaldewaij, Reinoud; Koch, Saskia B J; Volman, Inge; Toni, Ivan; Roelofs, Karin

The ability to control our automatic action tendencies is crucial for adequate social interactions. Emotional events trigger automatic approach and avoidance tendencies. Although these actions may be generally adaptive, the capacity to override these emotional reactions may be key to flexible behavior during social interaction. The present chapter provides a review of the neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying this ability and their relation to social psychopathologies. Aberrant social behavior, such as observed in social anxiety or psychopathy, is marked by abnormalities in approach-avoidance tendencies and the ability to control them. Key neural regions involved in the regulation of approach-avoidance behavior are the amygdala, widely implicated in automatic emotional processing, and the anterior prefrontal cortex, which exerts control over the amygdala. Hormones, especially testosterone and cortisol, have been shown to affect approach-avoidance behavior and the associated neural mechanisms. The present chapter also discusses ways to directly influence social approach and avoidance behavior and will end with a research agenda to further advance this important research field. Control over approach-avoidance tendencies may serve as an exemplar of emotional action regulation and might have a great value in understanding the underlying mechanisms of the development of affective disorders.

Development of self-protective biases in response to social evaluative feedback

PubMed Central

Rodman, Alexandra M.; Powers, Katherine E.; Somerville, Leah H.

2017-01-01

Adolescence is a developmental period marked by heightened attunement to social evaluation. While adults have been shown to enact self-protective processes to buffer their self-views from evaluative threats like peer rejection, it is unclear whether adolescents avail themselves of the same defenses. The present study examines how social evaluation shapes views of the self and others differently across development. N = 107 participants ages 10–23 completed a reciprocal social evaluation task that involved predicting and receiving peer acceptance and rejection feedback, along with assessments of self-views and likability ratings of peers. Here, we show that, despite equivalent experiences of social evaluation, adolescents internalized peer rejection, experiencing a feedback-induced drop in self-views, whereas adults externalized peer rejection, reporting a task-induced boost in self-views and deprecating the peers who rejected them. The results identify codeveloping processes underlying why peer rejection may lead to more dramatic alterations in self-views during adolescence than other phases of the lifespan. PMID:29180428

Trust, cooperation, and equality: a psychological analysis of the formation of social capital.

PubMed

Cozzolino, Philip J

2011-06-01

Research suggests that in modern Western culture there is a positive relationship between the equality of resources and the formation of trust and cooperation, two psychological components of social capital. Two studies elucidate the psychological processes underlying that relationship. Study 1 experimentally tested the influence of resource distributions on the formation of trust and intentions to cooperate; individuals receiving a deficit of resources and a surplus of resources evidenced lower levels of social capital (i.e., trust and cooperation) than did individuals receiving equal amounts. Analyses revealed the process was affective for deficit participants and cognitive for surplus participants. Study 2 provided suggestive support for the affective-model of equality and social capital using proxy variables in the 1996 General Social Survey data set. Results suggest support for a causal path of unequal resource distributions generating affective experiences and cognitive concerns of justice, which mediate disengagement and distrust of others. ©2010 The British Psychological Society.

Social Identification in Sports Teams: The Role of Personal, Social, and Collective Identity Motives.

PubMed

Thomas, William E; Brown, Rupert; Easterbrook, Matthew J; Vignoles, Vivian L; Manzi, Claudia; D'Angelo, Chiara; Holt, Jeremy J

2017-04-01

Based on motivated identity construction theory (MICT; Vignoles, 2011), we offer an integrative approach examining the combined roles of six identity motives (self-esteem, distinctiveness, belonging, meaning, continuity, and efficacy) instantiated at three different motivational levels (personal, social, and collective identity) as predictors of group identification. These identity processes were investigated among 369 members of 45 sports teams from England and Italy in a longitudinal study over 6 months with four time points. Multilevel change modeling and cross-lagged analyses showed that satisfaction of four personal identity motives (individuals' personal feelings of self-esteem, distinctiveness, meaning, and efficacy derived from team membership), three social identity motives (individuals' feelings that the team identity carries a sense of belonging, meaning, and continuity), and one collective identity motive (a shared belief in group distinctiveness) significantly predicted group identification. Motivational processes underlying group identification are complex, multilayered, and not reducible to personal needs.

Interplay between social experiences and the genome: epigenetic consequences for behavior.

PubMed

Champagne, Frances A

2012-01-01

Social experiences can have a persistent effect on biological processes leading to phenotypic diversity. Variation in gene regulation has emerged as a mechanism through which the interplay between DNA and environments leads to the biological encoding of these experiences. Epigenetic modifications-molecular pathways through which transcription is altered without altering the underlying DNA sequence-play a critical role in the normal process of development and are being increasingly explored as a mechanism linking environmental experiences to long-term biobehavioral outcomes. In this review, evidence implicating epigenetic factors, such as DNA methylation and histone modifications, in the link between social experiences occurring during the postnatal period and in adulthood and altered neuroendocrine and behavioral outcomes will be highlighted. In addition, the role of epigenetic mechanisms in shaping variation in social behavior and the implications of epigenetics for our understanding of the transmission of traits across generations will be discussed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of a common variant in the CD38 gene on social processing in an oxytocin challenge study: possible links to autism.

PubMed

Sauer, Carina; Montag, Christian; Wörner, Christiane; Kirsch, Peter; Reuter, Martin

2012-05-01

The intranasal application of oxytocin (OT) has been shown to influence behavioral and neural correlates of social processing. These effects are probably mediated by genetic variations within the OT system. One potential candidate could be the CD38 gene, which codes for a transmembrane protein engaged in OT secretion processes. A common variation in this gene (rs3796863) was recently found to be associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Using an imaging genetics approach, we studied differential effects of an intranasal OT application on neural processing of social stimuli in 55 healthy young men depending on their CD38 gene variant in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Genotype had a significant influence on both behavioral and neuronal measures of social processing. Homozygotic risk allele carriers showed slower reaction times (RT) and higher activation of left fusiform gyrus during visual processing of social stimuli. Under OT activation differences between genotypes were more evident (though not statistically significantly increased) and RT were accelerated in homozygotic risk allele carriers. According to our data, rs3796863 mainly influences fusiform gyrus activation, an area which has been widely discussed in ASD research. OT seems to modulate this effect by enhancing activation differences between allele groups, which suggests an interaction between genetic makeup and OT availability on fusiform gyrus activation. These results support recent approaches to apply OT as a pharmacological treatment of ASD symptoms.

'Multimorbidity' as the manifestation of network disturbances.

PubMed

Sturmberg, Joachim P; Bennett, Jeanette M; Martin, Carmel M; Picard, Martin

2017-02-01

We argue that 'multimorbidity' is the manifestation of interconnected physiological network processes within an individual in his or her socio-cultural environment. Networks include genomic, metabolomic, proteomic, neuroendocrine, immune and mitochondrial bioenergetic elements, as well as social, environmental and health care networks. Stress systems and other physiological mechanisms create feedback loops that integrate and regulate internal networks within the individual. Minor (e.g. daily hassles) and major (e.g. trauma) stressful life experiences perturb internal and social networks resulting in physiological instability with changes ranging from improved resilience to unhealthy adaptation and 'clinical disease'. Understanding 'multimorbidity' as a complex adaptive systems response to biobehavioural and socio-environmental networks is essential. Thus, designing integrative care delivery approaches that more adequately address the underlying disease processes as the manifestation of a state of physiological dysregulation is essential. This framework can shape care delivery approaches to meet the individual's care needs in the context of his or her underlying illness experience. It recognizes 'multimorbidity' and its symptoms as the end product of complex physiological processes, namely, stress activation and mitochondrial energetics, and suggests new opportunities for treatment and prevention. The future of 'multimorbidity' management might become much more discerning by combining the balancing of physiological dysregulation with targeted personalized biotechnology interventions such as small molecule therapeutics targeting specific cellular components of the stress response, with community-embedded interventions that involve addressing psycho-socio-cultural impediments that would aim to strengthen personal/social resilience and enhance social capital. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Understanding Classrooms through Social Network Analysis: A Primer for Social Network Analysis in Education Research.

PubMed

Grunspan, Daniel Z; Wiggins, Benjamin L; Goodreau, Steven M

2014-01-01

Social interactions between students are a major and underexplored part of undergraduate education. Understanding how learning relationships form in undergraduate classrooms, as well as the impacts these relationships have on learning outcomes, can inform educators in unique ways and improve educational reform. Social network analysis (SNA) provides the necessary tool kit for investigating questions involving relational data. We introduce basic concepts in SNA, along with methods for data collection, data processing, and data analysis, using a previously collected example study on an undergraduate biology classroom as a tutorial. We conduct descriptive analyses of the structure of the network of costudying relationships. We explore generative processes that create observed study networks between students and also test for an association between network position and success on exams. We also cover practical issues, such as the unique aspects of human subjects review for network studies. Our aims are to convince readers that using SNA in classroom environments allows rich and informative analyses to take place and to provide some initial tools for doing so, in the process inspiring future educational studies incorporating relational data. © 2014 D. Z. Grunspan et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2014 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

The genetical theory of social behaviour

PubMed Central

Lehmann, Laurent; Rousset, François

2014-01-01

We survey the population genetic basis of social evolution, using a logically consistent set of arguments to cover a wide range of biological scenarios. We start by reconsidering Hamilton's (Hamilton 1964 J. Theoret. Biol. 7, 1–16 (doi:10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4)) results for selection on a social trait under the assumptions of additive gene action, weak selection and constant environment and demography. This yields a prediction for the direction of allele frequency change in terms of phenotypic costs and benefits and genealogical concepts of relatedness, which holds for any frequency of the trait in the population, and provides the foundation for further developments and extensions. We then allow for any type of gene interaction within and between individuals, strong selection and fluctuating environments and demography, which may depend on the evolving trait itself. We reach three conclusions pertaining to selection on social behaviours under broad conditions. (i) Selection can be understood by focusing on a one-generation change in mean allele frequency, a computation which underpins the utility of reproductive value weights; (ii) in large populations under the assumptions of additive gene action and weak selection, this change is of constant sign for any allele frequency and is predicted by a phenotypic selection gradient; (iii) under the assumptions of trait substitution sequences, such phenotypic selection gradients suffice to characterize long-term multi-dimensional stochastic evolution, with almost no knowledge about the genetic details underlying the coevolving traits. Having such simple results about the effect of selection regardless of population structure and type of social interactions can help to delineate the common features of distinct biological processes. Finally, we clarify some persistent divergences within social evolution theory, with respect to exactness, synergies, maximization, dynamic sufficiency and the role of genetic arguments. PMID:24686929

The genetical theory of social behaviour.

PubMed

Lehmann, Laurent; Rousset, François

2014-05-19

We survey the population genetic basis of social evolution, using a logically consistent set of arguments to cover a wide range of biological scenarios. We start by reconsidering Hamilton's (Hamilton 1964 J. Theoret. Biol. 7, 1-16 (doi:10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4)) results for selection on a social trait under the assumptions of additive gene action, weak selection and constant environment and demography. This yields a prediction for the direction of allele frequency change in terms of phenotypic costs and benefits and genealogical concepts of relatedness, which holds for any frequency of the trait in the population, and provides the foundation for further developments and extensions. We then allow for any type of gene interaction within and between individuals, strong selection and fluctuating environments and demography, which may depend on the evolving trait itself. We reach three conclusions pertaining to selection on social behaviours under broad conditions. (i) Selection can be understood by focusing on a one-generation change in mean allele frequency, a computation which underpins the utility of reproductive value weights; (ii) in large populations under the assumptions of additive gene action and weak selection, this change is of constant sign for any allele frequency and is predicted by a phenotypic selection gradient; (iii) under the assumptions of trait substitution sequences, such phenotypic selection gradients suffice to characterize long-term multi-dimensional stochastic evolution, with almost no knowledge about the genetic details underlying the coevolving traits. Having such simple results about the effect of selection regardless of population structure and type of social interactions can help to delineate the common features of distinct biological processes. Finally, we clarify some persistent divergences within social evolution theory, with respect to exactness, synergies, maximization, dynamic sufficiency and the role of genetic arguments.

Floating worlds and their phantoms in the aftermath of social catastrophes.

PubMed

Kimbles, Samuel

2017-02-01

In this paper the author describes certain kinds of images (phantoms) that appear in the aftermath of social catastrophes. These phantoms come with an underlying narrative structure, which the author describes as phantom narratives. Phantom narratives show how the unconscious, working at the group and individual levels, provides political and social contexts within which the individual may find a different kind of containment for these catastrophes. In this way their suffering may be potentially processed psychologically and related to symbolically. © 2017, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Neural substrates of embodied natural beauty and social endowed beauty: An fMRI study.

PubMed

Zhang, Wei; He, Xianyou; Lai, Siyan; Wan, Juan; Lai, Shuxian; Zhao, Xueru; Li, Darong

2017-08-02

What are the neural mechanisms underlying beauty based on objective parameters and beauty based on subjective social construction? This study scanned participants with fMRI while they performed aesthetic judgments on concrete pictographs and abstract oracle bone scripts. Behavioral results showed both pictographs and oracle bone scripts were judged to be more beautiful when they referred to beautiful objects and positive social meanings, respectively. Imaging results revealed regions associated with perceptual, cognitive, emotional and reward processing were commonly activated both in beautiful judgments of pictographs and oracle bone scripts. Moreover, stronger activations of orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and motor-related areas were found in beautiful judgments of pictographs, whereas beautiful judgments of oracle bone scripts were associated with putamen activity, implying stronger aesthetic experience and embodied approaching for beauty were elicited by the pictographs. In contrast, only visual processing areas were activated in the judgments of ugly pictographs and negative oracle bone scripts. Results provide evidence that the sense of beauty is triggered by two processes: one based on the objective parameters of stimuli (embodied natural beauty) and the other based on the subjective social construction (social endowed beauty).

EEG reveals an early influence of social conformity on visual processing in group pressure situations.

PubMed

Trautmann-Lengsfeld, Sina Alexa; Herrmann, Christoph Siegfried

2013-01-01

Humans are social beings and often have to perceive and perform within groups. In conflict situations, this puts them under pressure to either adhere to the group opinion or to risk controversy with the group. Psychological experiments have demonstrated that study participants adapt to erroneous group opinions in visual perception tasks, which they can easily solve correctly when performing on their own. Until this point, however, it is unclear whether this phenomenon of social conformity influences early stages of perception that might not even reach awareness or later stages of conscious decision-making. Using electroencephalography, this study has revealed that social conformity to the wrong group opinion resulted in a decrease of the posterior-lateral P1 in line with a decrease of the later centro-parietal P3. These results suggest that group pressure situations impact early unconscious visual perceptual processing, which results in a later diminished stimulus discrimination and an adaptation even to the wrong group opinion. These findings might have important implications for understanding social behavior in group settings and are discussed within the framework of social influence on eyewitness testimony.

An Exploration of Dual Systems via Time Pressure Manipulation in Decision-making Problems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guo, Lisa

Every day, decisions need to be made where time is a limiting factor. Regardless of situation, time constraints often place a premium on rapid decision-making. Researchers have been interested in studying this human behavior and understanding its underlying cognitive processes. In previous studies, scientists have believed that the cognitive processes underlying decision-making behavior were consistent with dual-process modes of thinking. Critics of dual-process theory question the vagueness of its definition, and claim that single-process accounts can explain the data just as well. My aim is to elucidate the cognitive processes that underlie decisions which involve some level of risk through the experimental manipulation of time pressure. Using this method, I hope to distinguish between competing hypotheses related to the origin of the effect. I will explore three types of decisions that illustrate these concepts: risky decision-making involving gambles, intertemporal choice, and one-shot public goods games involving social cooperation. In our experiments, participants made decisions about gambles framed as either gains or losses; decided upon intertemporal choices for smaller but sooner rewards or larger but later rewards; and played a one-shot public goods game involving social cooperation and contributing an amount of money to a group. In each case, we experimentally manipulated time pressure, either within subjects or among individuals. Results showed under time pressure, increased framing effects under in both hypothetical and incentivized choices; and greater contributions and cooperation among individuals, lending support to the dual process hypothesis that these effects arise from a fast, intuitive system. However, our intertemporal choice experiment showed that time constraints led to increased selection of the larger but later options, which suggests that the magnitude of the reward may play larger role in choice selection under cognitive load than previously studied. This diverges from the current dual-process interpretation that myopic choices under time pressure favor smaller but sooner rewards, and suggests that more studies are needed in this realm to disentangle the intuitive from the deliberative system through the manipulation of cognitive load.

Evaluation of the effect of co-financing on collaboration between health care, social services and social insurance in Sweden.

PubMed

Hultberg, Eva-Lisa; Lönnroth, Knut; Allebeck, Peter

2002-01-01

In this paper, we present an ongoing research project aimed to determine the impact of co-financing on collaboration around patients with musculoskeletal disorders. A trial legislation that allows the social insurance, social services and health care services to unite in co-financing under joint political steering has been tested in different areas in Sweden. In a series of studies, we compare collaboration processes and health outcome for patients with musculoskeletal disorders between health centres with co-financing projects and control health centres without co-financing projects. In this paper the studies are described and some preliminary results are discussed.

Information Content Moderates Positivity and Negativity Biases in Memory

PubMed Central

Hess, Thomas M.; Popham, Lauren E.; Dennis, Paul A.; Emery, Lisa

2014-01-01

Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets. PMID:23421322

Information content moderates positivity and negativity biases in memory.

PubMed

Hess, Thomas M; Popham, Lauren E; Dennis, Paul A; Emery, Lisa

2013-09-01

Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets.

Interactive Cumulative Burden Assessment: Engaging Stakeholders in an Adaptive, Participatory and Transdisciplinary Approach

PubMed Central

Shrestha, Rehana; van Maarseveen, Martin

2018-01-01

Cumulative burden assessment (CuBA) has the potential to inform planning and decision-making on health disparities related to multiple environmental burdens. However, scholars have raised concerns about the social complexity to be dealt with while conducting CuBA, suggesting that it should be addressed in an adaptive, participatory and transdisciplinary (APT) approach. APT calls for deliberation among stakeholders by engaging them in a process of social learning and knowledge co-production. We propose an interactive stakeholder-based approach that facilitates a science-based stakeholder dialogue as an interface for combining different knowledge domains and engendering social learning in CuBA processes. Our approach allows participants to interact with each other using a flexible and auditable CuBA model implemented within a shared workspace. In two workshops we explored the usefulness and practicality of the approach. Results show that stakeholders were enabled to deliberate on cumulative burdens collaboratively, to learn about the technical uncertainties and social challenges associated with CuBA, and to co-produce knowledge in a realm of both technical and societal challenges. The paper identifies potential benefits relevant for responding to social complexity in the CuBA and further recommends exploration of how our approach can enable or constraint social learning and knowledge co-production in CuBA processes under various institutional, social and political contexts. PMID:29401676

Face perception in women with Turner syndrome and its underlying factors.

PubMed

Anaki, David; Zadikov Mor, Tal; Gepstein, Vardit; Hochberg, Ze'ev

2016-09-01

Turner syndrome (TS) is a chromosomal condition that affects development in females. It is characterized by short stature, ovarian failure and other congenital malformations, due to a partial or complete absence of the sex chromosome. Women with TS frequently suffer from various physical and hormonal dysfunctions, along with impairments in visual-spatial processing and social cognition difficulties. Previous research has also shown difficulties in face and emotion perception. In the current study we examined two questions: First, whether women with TS, that are impaired in face perception, also suffer from deficits in face-specific processes. The second question was whether these face impairments in TS are related to visual-spatial perceptual dysfunctions exhibited by TS individuals, or to impaired social cognition skills. Twenty-six women with TS and 26 control participants were tested on various cognitive and psychological tests to assess visual-spatial perception, face and facial expression perception, and social cognition skills. Results show that women with TS were less accurate in face perception and facial expression processing, yet they exhibited normal face-specific processes (configural and holistic processing). They also showed difficulties in spatial perception and social cognition capacities. Additional analyses revealed that their face perception impairments were related to their deficits in visual-spatial processing. Thus, our results do not support the claim that the impairments in face processing observed in TS are related to difficulties in social cognition. Rather, our data point to the possibility that face perception difficulties in TS stem from visual-spatial impairments and may not be specific to faces. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A treatment program for individuals with deficient evaluative processing and consequent impaired social and risk judgement.

PubMed

Park, Norman W; Conrod, Brian; Hussain, Zahra; Murphy, Kelly J; Rewilak, Dmytro; Black, Sandra E

2003-01-01

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a rehabilitation program developed to assist individuals such as AM who have impaired social and risk judgement. AM's difficulties developed after a severe traumatic brain injury that resulted in bilateral frontal and temporal lobe damage including damage to the amygdala. Previous work (Park et al., 2001) established that AM had impaired automatic processing of negative, but not positive evaluative information, and relatively spared processing of both types of evaluative information when using controlled or strategic processing. In the Strategic Evaluation of Alternatives (SEA) treatment program, AM was trained to compensate for his impairments by explicitly retrieving positive and negative attributes associated with potential actions prior to performing them. The SEA treatment focused specifically on improving AM's ability to obtain financial compensation for his work-related activities. Results showed improved performance on work-related activities and evidence of generalization. Analyses suggested that the process underlying improved performance was compensatory rather than restorative in nature. We discuss the implications of these results for the development of rehabilitation treatment for patients with impaired social and risk judgement.

Impact of heterogeneous activity and community structure on the evolutionary success of cooperators in social networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wu, Zhi-Xi; Rong, Zhihai; Yang, Han-Xin

2015-01-01

Recent empirical studies suggest that heavy-tailed distributions of human activities are universal in real social dynamics [L. Muchnik, S. Pei, L. C. Parra, S. D. S. Reis, J. S. Andrade Jr., S. Havlin, and H. A. Makse, Sci. Rep. 3, 1783 (2013), 10.1038/srep01783]. On the other hand, community structure is ubiquitous in biological and social networks [M. E. J. Newman, Nat. Phys. 8, 25 (2012), 10.1038/nphys2162]. Motivated by these facts, we here consider the evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game taking place on top of a real social network to investigate how the community structure and the heterogeneity in activity of individuals affect the evolution of cooperation. In particular, we account for a variation of the birth-death process (which can also be regarded as a proportional imitation rule from a social point of view) for the strategy updating under both weak and strong selection (meaning the payoffs harvested from games contribute either slightly or heavily to the individuals' performance). By implementing comparative studies, where the players are selected either randomly or in terms of their actual activities to play games with their immediate neighbors, we figure out that heterogeneous activity benefits the emergence of collective cooperation in a harsh environment (the action for cooperation is costly) under strong selection, whereas it impairs the formation of altruism under weak selection. Moreover, we find that the abundance of communities in the social network can evidently foster the formation of cooperation under strong selection, in contrast to the games evolving on randomized counterparts. Our results are therefore helpful for us to better understand the evolution of cooperation in real social systems.

Co-segregation of social cognition, executive function and local processing style in children with ASD, their siblings and normal controls.

PubMed

Oerlemans, Anoek M; Droste, Katharina; van Steijn, Daphne J; de Sonneville, Leo M J; Buitelaar, Jan K; Rommelse, Nanda N J

2013-12-01

Cognitive research proposes that social cognition (SC), executive functions (EF) and local processing style (weak CC) may be fruitful areas for research into the familial-genetic underpinnings of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The performance of 140 children with ASD, 172 siblings and 127 controls on tasks measuring SC (face recognition, affective prosody, and facial emotion recognition), EF (inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and verbal working memory) and local processing style was assessed. Compelling evidence was found for the interrelatedness of SC and EF, but not local processing style, within individuals and within families, suggesting that these domains tend to co-segregate in ASD. Using the underlying shared variance of these constructs in genetic research may increase the power for detecting susceptibility genes for ASD.

Naltrexone alters the processing of social and emotional stimuli in healthy adults.

PubMed

Wardle, Margaret C; Bershad, Anya K; de Wit, Harriet

2016-12-01

Endogenous opioids have complex social effects that may depend on specific receptor actions and vary depending on the "stage" of social behavior (e.g., seeking vs. responding to social stimuli). We tested the effects of a nonspecific opioid antagonist, naltrexone (NTX), on social processing in humans. NTX is used to treat alcohol and opiate dependence, and may affect both mu and kappa-opioid systems. We assessed attention ("seeking"), and subjective and psychophysiological responses ("responding") to positive and negative social stimuli. Based on literature suggesting mu-opioid blockade impairs positive social responses, we hypothesized that NTX would decrease responses to positive social stimuli. We also tested responses to negative stimuli, which might be either increased by NTX's mu-opioid effects or decreased by its kappa-opioid effects. Thirty-four healthy volunteers received placebo, 25 mg, or 50 mg NTX across three sessions under double-blind conditions. At each session, participants completed measures of attention, identification, and emotional responses for emotional faces and scenes. NTX increased attention to emotional expressions, slowed identification of sadness and fear, and decreased ratings of arousal for social and nonsocial emotional scenes. These findings are more consistent with anxiolytic kappa-antagonist than mu-blocking effects, suggesting effects on kappa receptors may contribute to the clinical effects of NTX.

Computations Underlying Social Hierarchy Learning: Distinct Neural Mechanisms for Updating and Representing Self-Relevant Information.

PubMed

Kumaran, Dharshan; Banino, Andrea; Blundell, Charles; Hassabis, Demis; Dayan, Peter

2016-12-07

Knowledge about social hierarchies organizes human behavior, yet we understand little about the underlying computations. Here we show that a Bayesian inference scheme, which tracks the power of individuals, better captures behavioral and neural data compared with a reinforcement learning model inspired by rating systems used in games such as chess. We provide evidence that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) selectively mediates the updating of knowledge about one's own hierarchy, as opposed to that of another individual, a process that underpinned successful performance and involved functional interactions with the amygdala and hippocampus. In contrast, we observed domain-general coding of rank in the amygdala and hippocampus, even when the task did not require it. Our findings reveal the computations underlying a core aspect of social cognition and provide new evidence that self-relevant information may indeed be afforded a unique representational status in the brain. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Intrinsic functional connectivity underlying successful emotion regulation of angry faces

PubMed Central

Morawetz, Carmen; Kellermann, Tanja; Kogler, Lydia; Radke, Sina; Blechert, Jens; Derntl, Birgit

2016-01-01

Most of our social interaction is naturally based on emotional information derived from the perception of faces of other people. Negative facial expressions of a counterpart might trigger negative emotions and initiate emotion regulatory efforts to reduce the impact of the received emotional message in a perceiver. Despite the high adaptive value of emotion regulation in social interaction, the neural underpinnings of it are largely unknown. To remedy this, this study investigated individual differences in emotion regulation effectiveness during the reappraisal of angry faces on the underlying functional activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as well as the underlying functional connectivity using resting-state fMRI. Greater emotion regulation ability was associated with greater functional activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Furthermore, greater functional coupling between activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the amygdala was associated with emotion regulation success. Our findings provide a first link between prefrontal cognitive control and subcortical emotion processing systems during successful emotion regulation in an explicitly social context. PMID:27510495

[THE ROLE OF SYSTEM QUORUM SENSING UNDER CHRONIC UROGENITAL CHLAMYDIA INFECTION].

PubMed

2015-10-01

It is established that system quorum sensing (QS) assure social behavior of bacteria in regulation of genes of virulence and generalization of inflectional inflammatory process under chronic urogenital chlamydia infection. The techniques of gas chromatography and mass-spectrometry were applied to detect molecular markers of generalization of infectious process under urogenital chlamydiasis--activators of QS microbes (lactones, quinolones, furan ethers). The developed diagnostic gas chromatography and mass-spectrometry criteria of indexation of molecular markers under chronic urogenital chlamydia infection have high level of diagnostic sensitivity, specificity and prognostic value of positive and negative result. The application of techniques of gas chromatography and mass-spectrometry permits enhancing effectiveness of diagnostic of chronic inflectional inflammatory diseases of urogenital system of chlamydia etiology with identification of prognostic criteria of generalization of infectious process and subsequent prescription of timely and appropriate therapy

A neuroscientific perspective on music therapy.

PubMed

Koelsch, Stefan

2009-07-01

During the last years, a number of studies demonstrated that music listening (and even more so music production) activates a multitude of brain structures involved in cognitive, sensorimotor, and emotional processing. For example, music engages sensory processes, attention, memory-related processes, perception-action mediation ("mirror neuron system" activity), multisensory integration, activity changes in core areas of emotional processing, processing of musical syntax and musical meaning, and social cognition. It is likely that the engagement of these processes by music can have beneficial effects on the psychological and physiological health of individuals, although the mechanisms underlying such effects are currently not well understood. This article gives a brief overview of factors contributing to the effects of music-therapeutic work. Then, neuroscientific studies using music to investigate emotion, perception-action mediation ("mirror function"), and social cognition are reviewed, including illustrations of the relevance of these domains for music therapy.

"Artificial humans": Psychology and neuroscience perspectives on embodiment and nonverbal communication.

PubMed

Vogeley, Kai; Bente, Gary

2010-01-01

"Artificial humans", so-called "Embodied Conversational Agents" and humanoid robots, are assumed to facilitate human-technology interaction referring to the unique human capacities of interpersonal communication and social information processing. While early research and development in artificial intelligence (AI) focused on processing and production of natural language, the "new AI" has also taken into account the emotional and relational aspects of communication with an emphasis both on understanding and production of nonverbal behavior. This shift in attention in computer science and engineering is reflected in recent developments in psychology and social cognitive neuroscience. This article addresses key challenges which emerge from the goal to equip machines with socio-emotional intelligence and to enable them to interpret subtle nonverbal cues and to respond to social affordances with naturally appearing behavior from both perspectives. In particular, we propose that the creation of credible artificial humans not only defines the ultimate test for our understanding of human communication and social cognition but also provides a unique research tool to improve our knowledge about the underlying psychological processes and neural mechanisms. Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Social complexity, modernity and suicide: an assessment of Durkheim's suicide from the perspective of a non-linear analysis of complex social systems.

PubMed

Condorelli, Rosalia

2016-01-01

Can we share even today the same vision of modernity which Durkheim left us by its suicide analysis? or can society 'surprise us'? The answer to these questions can be inspired by several studies which found that beginning the second half of the twentieth century suicides in western countries more industrialized and modernized do not increase in a constant, linear way as modernization and social fragmentation process increases, as well as Durkheim's theory seems to lead us to predict. Despite continued modernizing process, they found stabilizing or falling overall suicide rate trends. Therefore, a gradual process of adaptation to the stress of modernization associated to low social integration levels seems to be activated in modern society. Assuming this perspective, the paper highlights as this tendency may be understood in the light of the new concept of social systems as complex adaptive systems, systems which are able to adapt to environmental perturbations and generate as a whole surprising, emergent effects due to nonlinear interactions among their components. So, in the frame of Nonlinear Dynamical System Modeling, we formalize the logic of suicide decision-making process responsible for changes at aggregate level in suicide growth rates by a nonlinear differential equation structured in a logistic way, and in so doing we attempt to capture the mechanism underlying the change process in suicide growth rate and to test the hypothesis that system's dynamics exhibits a restrained increase process as expression of an adaptation process to the liquidity of social ties in modern society. In particular, a Nonlinear Logistic Map is applied to suicide data in a modern society such as the Italian one from 1875 to 2010. The analytic results, seeming to confirm the idea of the activation of an adaptation process to the liquidity of social ties, constitutes an opportunity for a more general reflection on the current configuration of modern society, by relating the Durkheimian Theory with the Halbwachs' Theory and most current visions of modernity such as the Baumanian one. Complexity completes the interpretative framework by rooting the generating mechanism of adaptation process in the precondition of a new General Theory of Systems making the non linearity property of social system's interactions and surprise the functioning and evolution rule of social systems.

Neuroscientific evidence for contextual effects in decision making.

PubMed

Hytönen, Kaisa

2014-02-01

Both internal and external states can cause inconsistencies in decision behavior. I present examples from behavioral decision-making literature and review neuroscientific knowledge on two contextual influences: framing effects and social conformity. The brain mechanisms underlying these behavioral adjustments comply with the dual-process account and simple learning mechanisms, and are weak indicators for unintentionality in decision-making processes.

Interpersonal and group processes in long-term spaceflight crews: perspectives from social and organizational psychology.

PubMed

Dion, Kenneth L

2004-07-01

The issues of interpersonal and group processes in long-term spacecrews from the perspectives of social and organizational psychology are considered here. A contrast between the Amundsen vs. Scott expeditions to the South Pole 90 yrs. ago highlights the importance of personnel selection and attention to interpersonal and group dynamics in expeditions to extreme and dangerous environments, such as long-term spaceflights today. Under the rubric of personnel selection, some further psychological "select-in" and "select-out" criteria are suggested, among them implicit measures of human motivation, intergroup attitudes ("implicit" and "explicit" measures of prejudice, social dominance orientation, and right-wing authoritarianism), attachment styles, and dispositional hardiness. The situational interview and the idea of "selection for teams," drawn from current advances in organizational psychology, are recommended for selecting members for future spacecrews. Under the rubrics of interpersonal and group processes, the social relations model is introduced as a technique for modeling and understanding interdependence among spacecrew members and partialling out variance in behavioral and perceptual data into actor/perceiver, partner/target, and relationship components. Group cohesion as a multidimensional construct is introduced, along with a consideration of the groupthink phenomenon and its controversial link to cohesion. Group composition issues are raised with examples concerning cultural heterogeneity and gender composition. Cultural value dimensions, especially power distance and individual-collectivism, should be taken into account at both societal and psychological levels in long-term space missions. Finally, intergroup processes and language issues in crews are addressed. The recategorization induction from the common ingroup identity model is recommended as a possible intervention for overcoming and inhibiting intergroup biases within spacecrews and between space- and groundcrews.

Emotion Regulation and Depressive Symptoms: Close Relationships as Social Context and Influence

PubMed Central

Marroquín, Brett; Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan

2015-01-01

Depression is associated with social dysfunction and maladaptive social environments, but mechanisms through which social relationships affect depressive psychopathology are unclear. We hypothesized that emotion regulation (ER) is such a mechanism, with outcomes of individuals’ ER efforts sensitive to the social context, and individuals’ ER strategy repertoire and use sensitive to social influence. In Study 1, a longitudinal study of community adults (N = 1,319), associations of individuals’ ER strategies with depressive symptoms depended on social connectedness and romantic relationship status (social context hypothesis). Moreover, associations of social connectedness and relationship status with symptoms were accounted for by maladaptive ER concurrently and, for social connectedness, prospectively over 1 year (social influence hypothesis). Study 2a, using a national sample (N = 772), replicated and extended these findings with a broader array of ER strategies, and ruled out alternative explanations regarding social skills and psychological wellbeing. Among participants in romantic relationships (Study 2b; N = 558), intimacy and trust buffered associations of maladaptive ER strategies with symptoms (context), and maladaptive and adaptive ER mediated links between relationship variables and symptoms (influence). Findings suggest that close relationships—and variation in underlying relational processes within relationships— influence the ER strategies people use, and also affect whether individuals’ own ER repertoires contribute to depression when deployed. Results elucidate core social mechanisms of ER in terms of both basic processes and depressive psychopathology, suggest ER is a channel through which social factors affect internal functioning and mental health, and inform relationship pathways for clinical intervention. PMID:26479366

Inclined to see it your way: Do altercentric intrusion effects in visual perspective taking reflect an intrinsically social process?

PubMed

Kragh Nielsen, Maria; Slade, Lance; Levy, Joseph P; Holmes, Amanda

2015-01-01

It has been suggested that some aspects of mental state understanding recruit a rudimentary, but fast and efficient, processing system, demonstrated by the obligatory slowing down of judgements about what the self can see when this is incongruent with what another can see. We tested the social nature of this system by investigating to what extent these altercentric intrusions are elicited under conditions that differed in their social relevance and, further, how these related to self-reported social perspective taking and empathy. In Experiment 1, adult participants were asked to make "self" or "other" perspective-taking judgements during congruent ("self" and "other" can see the same items) or incongruent conditions ("self" and "other" cannot see the same items) in conditions that were social (i.e., involving a social agent), semisocial (an arrow), or nonsocial (a dual-coloured block). Reaction time indices of altercentric intrusion effects were present across all conditions, but were significantly stronger for the social than for the less social conditions. Self-reported perspective taking and empathy correlated with altercentric intrusion effects in the social condition only. In Experiment 2, the significant correlations for the social condition were replicated, but this time with gaze duration indices of altercentric intrusion effects. Findings are discussed with regard to the degree to which this rudimentary system is socially specialized and how it is linked to more conceptual understanding.

Anthropology and cultural neuroscience: creating productive intersections in parallel fields.

PubMed

Brown, R A; Seligman, R

2009-01-01

Partly due to the failure of anthropology to productively engage the fields of psychology and neuroscience, investigations in cultural neuroscience have occurred largely without the active involvement of anthropologists or anthropological theory. Dramatic advances in the tools and findings of social neuroscience have emerged in parallel with significant advances in anthropology that connect social and political-economic processes with fine-grained descriptions of individual experience and behavior. We describe four domains of inquiry that follow from these recent developments, and provide suggestions for intersections between anthropological tools - such as social theory, ethnography, and quantitative modeling of cultural models - and cultural neuroscience. These domains are: the sociocultural construction of emotion, status and dominance, the embodiment of social information, and the dual social and biological nature of ritual. Anthropology can help locate unique or interesting populations and phenomena for cultural neuroscience research. Anthropological tools can also help "drill down" to investigate key socialization processes accountable for cross-group differences. Furthermore, anthropological research points at meaningful underlying complexity in assumed relationships between social forces and biological outcomes. Finally, ethnographic knowledge of cultural content can aid with the development of ecologically relevant stimuli for use in experimental protocols.

Loneliness and Hypervigilance to Social Cues in Females: An Eye-Tracking Study

PubMed Central

Lodder, Gerine M. A.; Scholte, Ron H. J.; Clemens, Ivar A. H.; Engels, Rutger C. M. E.; Goossens, Luc; Verhagen, Maaike

2015-01-01

The goal of the present study was to examine whether lonely individuals differ from nonlonely individuals in their overt visual attention to social cues. Previous studies showed that loneliness was related to biased post-attentive processing of social cues (e.g., negative interpretation bias), but research on whether lonely and nonlonely individuals also show differences in an earlier information processing stage (gazing behavior) is very limited. A sample of 25 lonely and 25 nonlonely students took part in an eye-tracking study consisting of four tasks. We measured gazing (duration, number of fixations and first fixation) at the eyes, nose and mouth region of faces expressing emotions (Task 1), at emotion quadrants (anger, fear, happiness and neutral expression) (Task 2), at quadrants with positive and negative social and nonsocial images (Task 3), and at the facial area of actors in video clips with positive and negative content (Task 4). In general, participants tended to gaze most often and longest at areas that conveyed most social information, such as the eye region of the face (T1), and social images (T3). Participants gazed most often and longest at happy faces (T2) in still images, and more often and longer at the facial area in negative than in positive video clips (T4). No differences occurred between lonely and nonlonely participants in their gazing times and frequencies, nor at first fixations at social cues in the four different tasks. Based on this study, we found no evidence that overt visual attention to social cues differs between lonely and nonlonely individuals. This implies that biases in social information processing of lonely individuals may be limited to other phases of social information processing. Alternatively, biased overt attention to social cues may only occur under specific conditions, for specific stimuli or for specific lonely individuals. PMID:25915656

Israeli and Palestinian families in the peace process: sources of stress and response patterns.

PubMed

Lavee, Y; Ben-David, A; Azaiza, F

1997-09-01

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is characterized by its unknown outcomes and consequences for the families involved. The purpose of this study was to identify family processes under conditions of prolonged uncertainty. Data were collected from both Israeli and Palestinian families in the West Bank by means of semi-structured interviews. Qualitative and quantitative analyses showed cross-cultural differences in the perception of the situation; different kinds of concerns and sources of stress; different coping responses; and differences in dyadic interaction patterns and intrafamily processes. The findings are discussed in social-contextual terms, particularly the ways in which political and cultural contexts shape the perception of the situation and family processes under prolonged stressful conditions.

The social origin of the illness experience--an outline of problems.

PubMed

Skrzypek, Michał

2014-01-01

The main research objective is a study of social influences on the processes of experiencing illness in the sociological meaning of the term 'illness experience' focusing attention on the subjective activity inspired by being ill, taking into account interpretive (meaning-making) activity. The goal of the analysis is to specify 'social actors' jointly creating the phenomena of 'illness' and 'being ill', taking into consideration the evolution of the position of medical sociology on this issue. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE: The ways of experiencing illness in contemporary society, including processes of creating the meanings of the phenomena of 'illness' and 'being ill', are the outcome of not only the application of biomedical knowledge, but are also parallelly a sociocultural 'construct' in the sense that they are under the impact of social and cultural influences. In the sociology of illness experience it is pointed out that illness experience develops in connection with experiencing somatic discomfort, this process occurring in the context of influences of culture, society and socially accepted norms and values. These relationships are interpreted by the sociological, interactionist model which presents illness as a 'social construct'. Sociological studies on the social construction of 'illness' and 'being ill' construct a model of these phenomena, complementary to the biomedical model, conducive to the validation of the patient's perspective in the processes of medical treatment, and to the humanization of the naturalistically oriented, biomedical approach to illness, i.e. to adjust it more accurately to typically human needs manifesting themselves in the situation of being ill.

Social Support Modulates Stress-Related Gene Expression in Various Brain Regions of Piglets.

PubMed

Kanitz, Ellen; Hameister, Theresa; Tuchscherer, Armin; Tuchscherer, Margret; Puppe, Birger

2016-01-01

The presence of an affiliative conspecific may alleviate an individual's stress response in threatening conditions. However, the mechanisms and neural circuitry underlying the process of social buffering have not yet been elucidated. Using the domestic pig as an animal model, we examined the effect of a 4-h maternal and littermate deprivation on stress hormones and on mRNA expression of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), mineralocorticoid receptor (MR), 11ß-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11ß-HSD) types 1 and 2 and the immediate early gene c-fos in various brain regions of 7-, 21- and 35-day old piglets. The deprivation occurred either alone or with a familiar or unfamiliar age-matched piglet. Compared to piglets deprived alone, the presence of a conspecific animal significantly reduced free plasma cortisol concentrations and altered the MR/GR balance and 11ß-HSD2 and c-fos mRNA expression in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), amygdala and hypothalamus, but not in the hippocampus. The alterations in brain mRNA expression were particularly found in 21- or 35-day old piglets, which may reflect the species-specific postnatal ontogeny of the investigated brain regions. The buffering effects of social support were most pronounced in the amygdala, indicating its significance both for the assessment of social conspecifics as biologically relevant stimuli and for the processing of emotional states. In conclusion, the present findings provide further evidence for the importance of the cortico-limbic network underlying the abilities of individuals to cope with social stress and strongly emphasize the benefits of social partners in livestock with respect to positive welfare and health.

Reclaiming the person: intersectionality and dynamic social categories through a psychological lens.

PubMed

Frazier, Kathryn E

2012-09-01

Psychology's conventionally treatment of individuals' engagement with and resistance to the societal processes in which they are embedded has come under scrutiny amid the rise of postmodernist and critical feminist perspectives (among many others) in the social sciences. A sample of social psychology's responses to these critiques is presented in the recently published book, Social Categories in Everyday Experience edited by Shaun Wiley et al. (2011). In this essay, the challenges of seriously addressing the critiques of psychology's conventional treatment of social categories, which implicate fundamental assumptions of the discipline, are discussed. Further, it is argued that in order to effectively construct psychological accounts of political activism and social change amid theories that are increasingly cognizant of the complexities and contingencies of social embeddiness, the person must be reclaimed and revisioned. Notions of agency that complement an intersectional and systemic vision of the social world are discussed.

Facing changes and changing faces in adolescence: a new model for investigating adolescent-specific interactions between pubertal, brain and behavioral development.

PubMed

Scherf, K Suzanne; Behrmann, Marlene; Dahl, Ronald E

2012-04-01

Adolescence is a time of dramatic physical, cognitive, emotional, and social changes as well as a time for the development of many social-emotional problems. These characteristics raise compelling questions about accompanying neural changes that are unique to this period of development. Here, we propose that studying adolescent-specific changes in face processing and its underlying neural circuitry provides an ideal model for addressing these questions. We also use this model to formulate new hypotheses. Specifically, pubertal hormones are likely to increase motivation to master new peer-oriented developmental tasks, which will in turn, instigate the emergence of new social/affective components of face processing. We also predict that pubertal hormones have a fundamental impact on the re-organization of neural circuitry supporting face processing and propose, in particular, that, the functional connectivity, or temporal synchrony, between regions of the face-processing network will change with the emergence of these new components of face processing in adolescence. Finally, we show how this approach will help reveal why adolescence may be a period of vulnerability in brain development and suggest how it could lead to prevention and intervention strategies that facilitate more adaptive functional interactions between regions within the broader social information processing network. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Building blocks of social cognition: Mirror, mentalize, share?

PubMed

Alcalá-López, Daniel; Vogeley, Kai; Binkofski, Ferdinand; Bzdok, Danilo

2018-05-14

During the past decade, novel approaches to study social interaction have expanded and questioned long-standing knowledge about how humans understand each other. We aim to portray and reconcile the key psychological processes and neural mechanisms underlying navigation of the social environment. Theoretical accounts mostly revolved around either abstract inferences or embodied simulations, whereas experimental studies mostly focused on theory of mind or mentalizing, empathy, and action imitation. The tension between theories of and experiments on social cognition is systematically revisited to foster new theoretical and empirical studies in the fields. We finally retrace differential impairments in social capacities as a means to re-conceptualize psychopathological disturbance in psychiatry, including schizophrenia, borderline personality, and autism. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying social learning in infancy: infants' neural processing of the effects of others' actions.

PubMed

Paulus, Markus; Hunnius, Sabine; Bekkering, Harold

2013-10-01

Social transmission of knowledge is one of the reasons for human evolutionary success, and it has been suggested that already human infants possess eminent social learning abilities. However, nothing is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms that subserve infants' acquisition of novel action knowledge through the observation of other people's actions and their consequences in the physical world. In an electroencephalogram study on social learning in infancy, we demonstrate that 9-month-old infants represent the environmental effects of others' actions in their own motor system, although they never achieved these effects themselves before. The results provide first insights into the neurocognitive basis of human infants' unique ability for social learning of novel action knowledge.

A working model for the assessment of disruptions in social behavior among aged rats: the role of sex differences, social recognition, and sensorimotor processes

PubMed Central

Perkins, Amy E.; Doremus-Fitzwater, Tamara L.; Spencer, Robert L.; Varlinskaya, Elena I.; Conti, Melissa M.; Bishop, Chris; Deak, Terrence

2016-01-01

Aging results in a natural decline in social behavior, yet little is known about the processes underlying these changes. Engaging in positive social interaction is associated with many health benefits, including reduced stress reactivity, and may serve as a potential buffer against adverse consequences of aging. The goal of these studies was to establish a tractable model for the assessment of social behavior deficits associated with late aging. Thus, in Exp. 1, 1.5-, 3-, and 18-month-old male Fischer 344 (F344) rats were assessed for object investigation, and social interaction with a same-aged partner (novel/familiar), or a different-aged partner, thereby establishing working parameters for studies that followed. Results revealed that 18-month-old males exhibited reductions in social investigation and social contact behavior, with this age-related decline not influenced by familiarity or age of the social partner. Subsequently, Exp. 2 extended assessment of social behavior to both male and female F344 rats at multiple ages (3, 9, 18, and 24 months), after which a series of sensorimotor performance tests were conducted. In this study, both males and females exhibited late aging-related reductions in social interactions, but these changes were more pronounced in females. Additionally, sensorimotor performance was shown to be impaired in 24-month-olds, but not 18-month-olds, with this deficit more evident in males. Finally, Exp. 3 examined whether aging-related inflammation could account for declines in social behavior during late aging by administering naproxen (0, 7, 14, and 28 mg/kg; s.c.)—a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug—to 18-month-old females. Results from this study revealed that social behavior was unaffected by acute or repeated (6 days) naproxen, suggesting that aging-related social deficits in females may not be a consequence of a general aging-related inflammation and/or malaise. Together, these findings demonstrate that aging-related declines in social behavior are (i) specific to social stimuli and (ii) not indicative of a general state of aging-related debilitation. Thus, these findings establish working parameters for a highly tractable model in which the neural and hormonal mechanisms underlying aging-related declines in social behavior can be examined. PMID:26811912

A working model for the assessment of disruptions in social behavior among aged rats: The role of sex differences, social recognition, and sensorimotor processes.

PubMed

Perkins, Amy E; Doremus-Fitzwater, Tamara L; Spencer, Robert L; Varlinskaya, Elena I; Conti, Melissa M; Bishop, Christopher; Deak, Terrence

2016-04-01

Aging results in a natural decline in social behavior, yet little is known about the processes underlying these changes. Engaging in positive social interaction is associated with many health benefits, including reduced stress reactivity, and may serve as a potential buffer against adverse consequences of aging. The goal of these studies was to establish a tractable model for the assessment of social behavior deficits associated with late aging. Thus, in Exp. 1, 1.5-, 3-, and 18-month-old male Fischer 344 (F344) rats were assessed for object investigation, and social interaction with a same-aged partner (novel/familiar), or a different-aged partner, thereby establishing working parameters for studies that followed. Results revealed that 18-month-old males exhibited reductions in social investigation and social contact behavior, with this age-related decline not influenced by familiarity or age of the social partner. Subsequently, Exp. 2 extended assessment of social behavior to both male and female F344 rats at multiple ages (3, 9, 18, and 24 months), after which a series of sensorimotor performance tests were conducted. In this study, both males and females exhibited late aging-related reductions in social interactions, but these changes were more pronounced in females. Additionally, sensorimotor performance was shown to be impaired in 24-month-olds, but not 18-month-olds, with this deficit more evident in males. Finally, Exp. 3 examined whether aging-related inflammation could account for declines in social behavior during late aging by administering naproxen (0, 7, 14, and 28 mg/kg; s.c.)-a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug-to 18-month-old females. Results from this study revealed that social behavior was unaffected by acute or repeated (6 days) naproxen, suggesting that aging-related social deficits in females may not be a consequence of a general aging-related inflammation and/or malaise. Together, these findings demonstrate that aging-related declines in social behavior are (i) specific to social stimuli and (ii) not indicative of a general state of aging-related debilitation. Thus, these findings establish working parameters for a highly tractable model in which the neural and hormonal mechanisms underlying aging-related declines in social behavior can be examined. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From social liminality to cultural negotiation: Transformative processes in immigrant mental wellbeing.

PubMed

Simich, Laura; Maiter, Sarah; Ochocka, Joanna

2009-12-01

The underlying psychosocial processes that produce immigrant mental wellbeing are understudied in anthropology and medicine. This paper provides insights into these processes by describing culturally diverse immigrants' perceptions of mental health and adaptation strategies. Qualitative data were collected from 21 focus groups as part of a large, multidisciplinary, participatory action research project about mental health with five ethnolinguistic groups (Mandarin-speaking Chinese, Polish, Punjabi Sikh, Somali and Spanish-speaking Latin American) in Ontario, Canada. In framing the analysis, transformative concepts are applied to address dimensions of power and culture - social liminality and cultural negotiation - to the ongoing psychosocial processes of coping with mental distress. 'Social liminality' describes how immigrants perceive themselves to be in a psychologically stressful, transitional state, whereas 'cultural negotiation' describes how they actively cope with cultural tensions and respond to mental health challenges. Study findings show that while social liminality and cultural negotiation are stressful, they also have the potential to help individuals adapt by producing a positive synthesis of ideas about mental health in new social and cultural contexts. The study contributes to the shift from problem identification using a biomedical model of mental illness to a more psychosocial and ecological approach that reveals the potential for resolving some mental health problems experienced in immigrant communities. Describing active psychosocial process of adaptation also reinforces the therapeutic and educational value of partnerships between practitioners and clients and immigrant communities and mental health systems.

Social reward among juvenile mice

PubMed Central

Panksepp, J B; Lahvis, G P

2007-01-01

Mammalian social relationships, such as mother–offspring attachments and pair bonds, can directly affect reproductive output. However, conspecifics approach one another in a comparatively broad range of contexts, so conceivably there are motivations for social congregation other than those underlying reproduction, parental care or territoriality. Here, we show that reward mediated by social contact is a fundamental aspect of juvenile mouse sociality. Employing a novel social conditioned place preference (SCPP) procedure, we demonstrate that social proximity is rewarding for juvenile mice from three inbred strains (A/J, C57BL/6J and DBA/2J), while mice from a fourth strain (BALB/cJ) are much less responsive to social contact. Importantly, this strain-dependent difference was not related to phenotypic variability in exploratory behavior or contextual learning nor influenced by the genetic background associated with maternal care or social conditioning. Furthermore, the SCPP phenotype was expressed early in development (postnatal day 25) and did not require a specific sex composition within the conditioning group. Finally, SCPP responses resulted from an interaction between two specifiable processes: one component of the interaction facilitated approach toward environments that were associated with social salience, whereas a second component mediated avoidance of environmental cues that predicted social isolation. We have thus identified a genetically prescribed process that can attribute value onto conditions predicting a general form of social contact. To our knowledge, this is the first definitive evidence to show that genetic variation can influence a form of social valuation not directly related to a reproductive behavior. PMID:17212648

Activity of striatal neurons reflects social action and own reward.

PubMed

Báez-Mendoza, Raymundo; Harris, Christopher J; Schultz, Wolfram

2013-10-08

Social interactions provide agents with the opportunity to earn higher benefits than when acting alone and contribute to evolutionary stable strategies. A basic requirement for engaging in beneficial social interactions is to recognize the actor whose movement results in reward. Despite the recent interest in the neural basis of social interactions, the neurophysiological mechanisms identifying the actor in social reward situations are unknown. A brain structure well suited for exploring this issue is the striatum, which plays a role in movement, reward, and goal-directed behavior. In humans, the striatum is involved in social processes related to reward inequity, donations to charity, and observational learning. We studied the neurophysiology of social action for reward in rhesus monkeys performing a reward-giving task. The behavioral data showed that the animals distinguished between their own and the conspecific's reward and knew which individual acted. Striatal neurons coded primarily own reward but rarely other's reward. Importantly, the activations occurred preferentially, and in approximately similar fractions, when either the own or the conspecific's action was followed by own reward. Other striatal neurons showed social action coding without reward. Some of the social action coding disappeared when the conspecific's role was simulated by a computer, confirming a social rather than observational relationship. These findings demonstrate a role of striatal neurons in identifying the social actor and own reward in a social setting. These processes may provide basic building blocks underlying the brain's function in social interactions.

A longitudinal study of the sociosexual dynamics in a captive family group of wolves: the University of Connecticut wolf project.

PubMed

Jenks, Susan M

2011-11-01

An interest in the role of the social environment on the evolution of behavior led Professor Benson Ginsburg to studies of wolf social behavior. He initiated the University of Connecticut wolf project with a family group of wolves housed in a protected enclosure in an isolated area of campus. One aim of this project was to conduct a longitudinal study of a family group of wolves in order to understand the proximate behavioral mechanisms underlying mating dynamics with a degree of control and opportunistic observation that could not be achieved through field studies. The development of social relationships and the dynamics of mating were observed for 9 years. As in nature, agonistic relationships strongly influenced reproductive success, successful breeding was limited to a single pair each season, and the behavioral dynamics included status transitions with breeder rotations. Our work, when combined with the results of other captive wolf studies, has contributed valuable information to the general understanding of wolf social behavior, especially regarding the proximate behavior patterns underlying group social interactions and reproduction. This understanding has broadened perspectives on the dynamic interplay between social behavior and evolutionary processes.

The Interrelation Between Personnel and Training in the Soviet Armed Forces.

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-06-01

as they are planned, there is no problem; the political socialization so commonplace within the society drives into the individual the characteristics...training one receives from childhood through political socialization and collectivization tends to contradict the move towards encouraging initiative. On...military and plays a major role in the decision making process, as well as in the day to day life of the soldier. Having been raised under political

The Neural Basis of Social Influence in a Dictator Decision.

PubMed

Wei, Zhenyu; Zhao, Zhiying; Zheng, Yong

2017-01-01

Humans tend to reduce inequitable distributions. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that inequitable decisions are related to brain regions that associated with negative emotion and signaling conflict. In the highly complex human social environment, our opinions and behaviors can be affected by social information. In current study, we used a modified dictator game to investigate the effect of social influence on making an equitable decision. We found that the choices of participants in present task was influenced by the choices of peers. However, participants' decisions were influenced by equitable rather than inequitable group choices. fMRI results showed that brain regions that related to norm violation and social conflict were related to the inequitable social influence. The neural responses in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, rostral cingulate zone, and insula predicted subsequent conforming behavior in individuals. Additionally, psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed that the interconnectivity between the dorsal striatum and insula was elevated in advantageous inequity influence versus no-social influence conditions. We found decreased functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and insula, supplementary motor area, posterior cingulate gyrus and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the disadvantageous inequity influence versus no-social influence conditions. This suggests that a disadvantageous inequity influence may decrease the functional connectivity among brain regions that are related to reward processes. Thus, the neural mechanisms underlying social influence in an equitable decision may be similar to those implicated in social norms and reward processing.

Improving social impact assessment of protected areas: A review of the literature and directions for future research

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jones, Nikoleta, E-mail: nikoleta.jones@anglia.ac.uk; McGinlay, James, E-mail: jimmcginlay@hotmail.com; Dimitrakopoulos, Panayiotis G., E-mail: pdimi@env.aegean.gr

Protected areas are the most widely applied policy tool for biodiversity conservation. However, effective management of protected areas is often obstructed by conflicts mainly associated with the social impacts imposed on local communities and other users by their establishment. Despite the importance of these social impacts they remain significantly under-researched. There is now an increasing need to incorporate social impacts in decision making processes by providing accurate estimations and develop ways to forecast their change in the future. Considering the increase of studies identifying this need, the present paper aims to indicate three main directions that will assist in designingmore » effective tools for measuring and most importantly understanding social impacts: a) perceptions on social impacts of individuals who are directly affected by protected areas need to be incorporated in management evaluation techniques in a meaningful and accurate way and be combined with objective measurements of impact; b) understanding the factors determining the actual and perceived levels of social impacts is a key step for the design of effective management frameworks of protected areas and c) social impacts should not be seen as static concepts but should be seen as a dynamic and long-term factor which needs to be incorporated in decision-making processes.« less

Factors modulating social influence on spatial choice in rats.

PubMed

Bisbing, Teagan A; Saxon, Marie; Sayde, Justin M; Brown, Michael F

2015-07-01

Three experiments examined the conditions under which the spatial choices of rats searching for food are influenced by the choices made by other rats. Model rats learned a consistent set of baited locations in a 5 × 5 matrix of locations, some of which contained food. In Experiment 1, subject rats could determine the baited locations after choosing 1 location because all of the baited locations were on the same side of the matrix during each trial (the baited side varied over trials). Under these conditions, the social cues provided by the model rats had little or no effect on the choices made by the subject rats. The lack of social influence on choices occurred despite a simultaneous social influence on rats' location in the testing arena (Experiment 2). When the outcome of the subject rats' own choices provided no information about the positions of other baited locations, on the other hand, social cues strongly controlled spatial choices (Experiment 3). These results indicate that social information about the location of food influences spatial choices only when those cues provide valid information that is not redundant with the information provided by other cues. This suggests that social information is learned about, processed, and controls behavior via the same mechanisms as other kinds of stimuli. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Theory of mind, facial recognition and emotional processing in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Rodríguez Sosa, Juana Teresa; Acosta Ojeda, Miguel; Rodríguez Del Rosario, Luciano

2011-01-01

Social cognition can be understood as "the mental operations underlying social interactions, which include the human ability to perceive the intentions and dispositions of others" (Brothers, 1990). Theory of mind, atributtional style, social perception are involved in social cognition. It is wellknown that social cognition is impaired in individuals with schizophrenia. Recent investigations for social cognition in schizophrenia has showed that there is a relationship among social cognition, neurocognition and psychosocial functioning. The purpose of this article is to provide a review of social cognition in schizophrenia focusing on the deficit in Theory of mind described by Frith and recent neuroimaging studies. In fact neuroimaging research has demonstrated specific brain regions consistently engaged during theory of mind tasks.We also present some of the instruments avalaible to evaluate social cognition and to review and improve the main intervention programs. Social cognition may be an important target for pharmacological and psychosocial treatments in the future. Copyright © 2010 SEP y SEPB. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

Transcultural nursing theory from a critical cultural perspective.

PubMed

Gustafson, Diana L

2005-01-01

This critical cultural discourse analysis explores the internal logic of Transcultural Nursing Theory and interrogates the underlying assumptions, goals, and strategies of this approach to race and other human and social differences. Drawing on examples from nursing textbooks and policy documents, I assert that Transcultural Nursing Theory operates from a liberal standpoint that focuses attention on a broadly defined, but narrowly applied, concept of culture. The goal of providing culturally competent care and the processes used to achieve that outcome reinforce, rather than transform, the social practices and relations that institutionalize the dominant approach to social and human differences.

Building social cognitive models of language change.

PubMed

Hruschka, Daniel J; Christiansen, Morten H; Blythe, Richard A; Croft, William; Heggarty, Paul; Mufwene, Salikoko S; Pierrehumbert, Janet B; Poplack, Shana

2009-11-01

Studies of language change have begun to contribute to answering several pressing questions in cognitive sciences, including the origins of human language capacity, the social construction of cognition and the mechanisms underlying culture change in general. Here, we describe recent advances within a new emerging framework for the study of language change, one that models such change as an evolutionary process among competing linguistic variants. We argue that a crucial and unifying element of this framework is the use of probabilistic, data-driven models both to infer change and to compare competing claims about social and cognitive influences on language change.

A Mobile Game for the Social and Cognitive Well-Being of Elderly People in China.

PubMed

Li, Nan; Chen, Weiqin

2017-01-01

China, like many other countries, is facing the challenges of an ageing population. Literature has shown that the lack of social interaction has a negative impact on the physical health of the elderly, and playing games can be beneficial in maintaining or even improving their cognitive abilities. This study describes the design and development process for a social and cognitive mobile game and the related user evaluation in terms of well-being. The objective is to explore the underlying connections between game playing and the improvement of well-being among elderly people in China.

Implicit social cognition: From measures to mechanisms

PubMed Central

Nosek, Brian A.; Hawkins, Carlee Beth; Frazier, Rebecca S.

2011-01-01

Most of human cognition occurs outside of conscious awareness or conscious control. Some of these implicit processes influence social perception, judgment and action. The last fifteen years of research in implicit social cognition can be characterized as the Age of Measurement because of a proliferation of measurement methods and research evidence demonstrating their practical value for predicting human behavior. Implicit measures assess constructs that are distinct, but related, to self-report assessments, and predict variation in behavior that is not accounted for by those explicit measures. The present state of knowledge provides a foundation for the next age of implicit social cognition – clarification of the mechanisms underlying implicit measurement and how the measured constructs influence behavior. PMID:21376657

A Method of Measuring Inequality within a Selection Process

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bulle, Nathalie

2016-01-01

To explain the inequalities in access to a discrete good G across two populations, or across time in a single national context, it is necessary to distinguish, for each population or period of time, the effect of the diffusion of G from that of unequal outcomes of underlying micro-social processes. The inequality of outcomes of these micro-social…

Family and Children in the Attitudes and Life Plans of Russians

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Varlamova, Svetlana Nikolaevna; Noskova, Antonina Viacheslavovna; Sedova, Natal'ia Nikolaevna

2008-01-01

Specialists in the field of family research emphasize that the history of the family in Russia, as in all other countries of the world, is closely linked to the social, economic, and political processes of the modernization of society. The general vector of the development of the institution of the family, under the influence of processes of…

Abnormal Neural Activation to Faces in the Parents of Children with Autism

PubMed Central

Yucel, G. H.; Belger, A.; Bizzell, J.; Parlier, M.; Adolphs, R.; Piven, J.

2015-01-01

Parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show subtle deficits in aspects of social behavior and face processing, which resemble those seen in ASD, referred to as the “Broad Autism Phenotype ” (BAP). While abnormal activation in ASD has been reported in several brain structures linked to social cognition, little is known regarding patterns in the BAP. We compared autism parents with control parents with no family history of ASD using 2 well-validated face-processing tasks. Results indicated increased activation in the autism parents to faces in the amygdala (AMY) and the fusiform gyrus (FG), 2 core face-processing regions. Exploratory analyses revealed hyper-activation of lateral occipital cortex (LOC) bilaterally in autism parents with aloof personality (“BAP+”). Findings suggest that abnormalities of the AMY and FG are related to underlying genetic liability for ASD, whereas abnormalities in the LOC and right FG are more specific to behavioral features of the BAP. Results extend our knowledge of neural circuitry underlying abnormal face processing beyond those previously reported in ASD to individuals with shared genetic liability for autism and a subset of genetically related individuals with the BAP. PMID:25056573

Cooperation and heterogeneity of the autistic mind.

PubMed

Yoshida, Wako; Dziobek, Isabel; Kliemann, Dorit; Heekeren, Hauke R; Friston, Karl J; Dolan, Ray J

2010-06-30

Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) have a core difficulty in recursively inferring the intentions of others. The precise cognitive dysfunctions that determine the heterogeneity at the heart of this spectrum, however, remains unclear. Furthermore, it remains possible that impairment in social interaction is not a fundamental deficit but a reflection of deficits in distinct cognitive processes. To better understand heterogeneity within ASCs, we employed a game-theoretic approach to characterize unobservable computational processes implicit in social interactions. Using a social hunting game with autistic adults, we found that a selective difficulty representing the level of strategic sophistication of others, namely inferring others' mindreading strategy, specifically predicts symptom severity. In contrast, a reduced ability in iterative planning was predicted by overall intellectual level. Our findings provide the first quantitative approach that can reveal the underlying computational dysfunctions that generate the autistic "spectrum."

Social Isolation and Adult Mortality: The Role of Chronic Inflammation and Sex Differences

PubMed Central

Yang, Yang Claire; McClintock, Martha K.; Kozloski, Michael; Li, Ting

2014-01-01

The health and survival benefits of social embeddedness have been widely documented across social species, but the underlying biophysiological mechanisms have not been elucidated in the general population. We assessed the process by which social isolation increases the risk for all-cause and chronic disease mortality through proinflammatory mechanisms. Using the 18-year mortality follow-up data (n = 6,729) from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1988–2006) on Social Network Index and multiple markers of chronic inflammation, we conducted survival analyses and found evidence that supports the mediation role of chronic inflammation in the link between social isolation and mortality. A high-risk fibrinogen level and cumulative inflammation burden may be particularly important in this link. There are notable sex differences in the mortality effects of social isolation in that they are greater for men and can be attributed in part to their heightened inflammatory responses. PMID:23653312

Experimental manipulation of avian social structure reveals segregation is carried over across contexts

PubMed Central

Firth, Josh A.; Sheldon, Ben C.

2015-01-01

Our current understanding of animal social networks is largely based on observations or experiments that do not directly manipulate associations between individuals. Consequently, evidence relating to the causal processes underlying such networks is limited. By imposing specified rules controlling individual access to feeding stations, we directly manipulated the foraging social network of a wild bird community, thus demonstrating how external factors can shape social structure. We show that experimentally imposed constraints were carried over into patterns of association at unrestricted, ephemeral food patches, as well as at nesting sites during breeding territory prospecting. Hence, different social contexts can be causally linked, and constraints at one level may have consequences that extend into other aspects of sociality. Finally, the imposed assortment was lost following the cessation of the experimental manipulation, indicating the potential for previously perturbed social networks of wild animals to recover from segregation driven by external constraints. PMID:25652839

Adoptive parent hostility and children's peer behavior problems: examining the role of genetically informed child attributes on adoptive parent behavior.

PubMed

Elam, Kit K; Harold, Gordon T; Neiderhiser, Jenae M; Reiss, David; Shaw, Daniel S; Natsuaki, Misaki N; Gaysina, Darya; Barrett, Doug; Leve, Leslie D

2014-05-01

Socially disruptive behavior during peer interactions in early childhood is detrimental to children's social, emotional, and academic development. Few studies have investigated the developmental underpinnings of children's socially disruptive behavior using genetically sensitive research designs that allow examination of parent-on-child and child-on-parent (evocative genotype-environment correlation [rGE]) effects when examining family process and child outcome associations. Using an adoption-at-birth design, the present study controlled for passive genotype-environment correlation and directly examined evocative rGE while examining the associations between family processes and children's peer behavior. Specifically, the present study examined the evocative effect of genetic influences underlying toddler low social motivation on mother-child and father-child hostility and the subsequent influence of parent hostility on disruptive peer behavior during the preschool period. Participants were 316 linked triads of birth mothers, adoptive parents, and adopted children. Path analysis showed that birth mother low behavioral motivation predicted toddler low social motivation, which predicted both adoptive mother-child and father-child hostility, suggesting the presence of an evocative genotype-environment association. In addition, both mother-child and father-child hostility predicted children's later disruptive peer behavior. Results highlight the importance of considering genetically influenced child attributes on parental hostility that in turn links to later child social behavior. Implications for intervention programs focusing on early family processes and the precursors of disrupted child social development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Adoptive Parent Hostility and Children’s Peer Behavior Problems: Examining the Role of Genetically-Informed Child Attributes on Adoptive Parent Behavior

PubMed Central

Elam, Kit K.; Harold, Gordon T.; Neiderhiser, Jenae M.; Reiss, David; Shaw, Daniel S.; Natsuaki, Misaki N.; Gaysina, Darya; Barrett, Doug; Leve, Leslie D.

2014-01-01

Socially disruptive behavior during peer interactions in early childhood is detrimental to children’s social, emotional, and academic development. Few studies have investigated the developmental underpinnings of children’s socially disruptive behavior using genetically-sensitive research designs that allow examination of parent-on-child and child-on-parent (evocative genotype-environment correlation) effects when examining family process and child outcome associations. Using an adoption-at-birth design, the present study controlled for passive genotype-environment correlation and directly examined evocative genotype-environment correlation (rGE) while examining the associations between family processes and children’s peer behavior. Specifically, the present study examined the evocative effect of genetic influences underlying toddler low social motivation on mother-child and father-child hostility, and the subsequent influence of parent hostility on disruptive peer behavior during the preschool period. Participants were 316 linked triads of birth mothers, adoptive parents, and adopted children. Path analysis showed that birth mother low behavioral motivation predicted toddler low social motivation, which predicted both adoptive mother-child and father-child hostility, suggesting the presence of an evocative genotype-environment association. In addition, both mother-child and father-child hostility predicted children’s later disruptive peer behavior. Results highlight the importance of considering genetically-influenced child attributes on parental hostility that in turn link to later child social behavior. Implications for intervention programs focusing on early family processes and the precursors of disrupted child social development are discussed. PMID:24364829

The epigenetic impacts of social stress: how does social adversity become biologically embedded?

PubMed Central

Cunliffe, Vincent T

2016-01-01

Epigenetic mechanisms are implicated in the processes through which social stressors erode health in humans and other animals. Here I review progress in elucidating the biological pathways underlying the social gradient in health, with particular emphasis on how behavioral stresses influence epigenomic variation linked to health. The evidence that epigenetic changes are involved in embedding of social status-linked chronic stress is reviewed in the context of current knowledge about behavior within animal dominance hierarchies and the impacts of social position on behaviors that affect health. The roles of epigenetic mechanisms in responses to trauma and the evidence for their involvement in intergenerational transmission of the biological impacts of traumatic stress are also considered. Taken together, the emerging insights have important implications for development of strategies to improve societal health and well-being. PMID:27869483

[The role of environmental factors in managing labour stress].

PubMed

Rados, Melinda; Mészáros, Judit

2017-07-01

Emotional, cognitive and behavioural aspects of birth and labour stress are strongly associated with the underlying physiological processes. To study the factors of physical security and social support, the administration of synthetic oxytocin, and how they relate to perceived stress during childbirth. Women's experienced physical security, social support and oxytocin administration was measured with targeted questions, and their perceived stress with the short and modified version of the Perceived Stress Scale. A strong negative association was found between perceived stress and physical and social security. The group of women experiencing low physical and social security perceived significantly higher stress, while those given synthetic oxytocin perceived higher stress, and lower physical and social security. Since physiological, psychological processes and behaviours are strongly intertwined, the support of natural physiological birth without interventions is recommended, which considers not only short-term but long-term health consequences for mother and child. The contribution of calming physical surroundings, minimal interventions and empowering support of caregivers to safe and satisfying birth is demonstrated in a model. Orv Hetil. 2017; 158(29): 1149-1156.

Alpha oscillations and their impairment in affective and post-traumatic stress disorders.

PubMed

Eidelman-Rothman, Moranne; Levy, Jonathan; Feldman, Ruth

2016-09-01

Affective and anxiety disorders are debilitating conditions characterized by impairments in cognitive and social functioning. Elucidating their neural underpinnings may assist in improving diagnosis and developing targeted interventions. Neural oscillations are fundamental for brain functioning. Specifically, oscillations in the alpha frequency range (alpha rhythms) are prevalent in the awake, conscious brain and play an important role in supporting perceptual, cognitive, and social processes. We review studies utilizing various alpha power measurements to assess abnormalities in brain functioning in affective and anxiety disorders as well as obsessive compulsive and post-traumatic stress disorders. Despite some inconsistencies, studies demonstrate associations between aberrant alpha patterns and these disorders both in response to specific cognitive and emotional tasks and during a resting state. We conclude by discussing methodological considerations and future directions, and underscore the need for much further research on the role of alpha functionality in social contexts. As social dysfunction accompanies most psychiatric conditions, research on alpha's involvement in social processes may provide a unique window into the neural mechanisms underlying these disorders. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Work and health: Two social rights].

PubMed

García Blanco, Lucía

2015-01-01

Work and health are two concepts whose formulation varies from one society to another depending on unique and temporal appreciation. Updating them to our time involves the challenge to understand their construction as part of consuming organized societies. Political and social processes during the last decades must be analyzed, and so must be the worker subject as a psychophysics unit. Health, as well, ought to be considered a universal right, from where to focus and understand pathological social behaviors impacting the workplace. The subject's social dimension and the health-work relationship are dynamic. And keeping this dynamic involves to continuously review principles, norms and regulations which need to fit reality, and specific communication and language modes, as well as working conditions and environmental aspects. These processes must be considered as taking part in Argentina's social imaginary worth highlighting: a shift in how the State's role is considered, the public policy's sense, the importance of working in a complementary and interdisciplinary way, redesigning the concept of health through the broadening of those under the State's care and considering and building the workplace as a healthy space.

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Recruitment Patterns on RDS Estimates among a Socially Ordered Population of Female Sex Workers in China

PubMed Central

Yamanis, Thespina J.; Merli, M. Giovanna; Neely, William Whipple; Tian, Felicia Feng; Moody, James; Tu, Xiaowen; Gao, Ersheng

2013-01-01

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) is a method for recruiting “hidden” populations through a network-based, chain and peer referral process. RDS recruits hidden populations more effectively than other sampling methods and promises to generate unbiased estimates of their characteristics. RDS’s faithful representation of hidden populations relies on the validity of core assumptions regarding the unobserved referral process. With empirical recruitment data from an RDS study of female sex workers (FSWs) in Shanghai, we assess the RDS assumption that participants recruit nonpreferentially from among their network alters. We also present a bootstrap method for constructing the confidence intervals around RDS estimates. This approach uniquely incorporates real-world features of the population under study (e.g., the sample’s observed branching structure). We then extend this approach to approximate the distribution of RDS estimates under various peer recruitment scenarios consistent with the data as a means to quantify the impact of recruitment bias and of rejection bias on the RDS estimates. We find that the hierarchical social organization of FSWs leads to recruitment biases by constraining RDS recruitment across social classes and introducing bias in the RDS estimates. PMID:24288418

Face processing in autism spectrum disorders: from brain regions to brain networks

PubMed Central

Nomi, Jason S.; Uddin, Lucina Q.

2015-01-01

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by reduced attention to social stimuli including the human face. This hypo-responsiveness to stimuli that are engaging to typically developing individuals may result from dysfunctioning motivation, reward, and attention systems in the brain. Here we review an emerging neuroimaging literature that emphasizes a shift from focusing on hypo-activation of isolated brain regions such as the fusiform gyrus, amygdala, and superior temporal sulcus in ASD to a more holistic approach to understanding face perception as a process supported by distributed cortical and subcortical brain networks. We summarize evidence for atypical activation patterns within brain networks that may contribute to social deficits characteristic of the disorder. We conclude by pointing to gaps in the literature and future directions that will continue to shed light on aspects of face processing in autism that are still under-examined. In particular, we highlight the need for more developmental studies and studies examining ecologically valid and naturalistic social stimuli. PMID:25829246

Social learning modulates the lateralization of emotional valence.

PubMed

Shamay-Tsoory, Simone G; Lavidor, Michal; Aharon-Peretz, Judith

2008-08-01

Although neuropsychological studies of lateralization of emotion have emphasized valence (positive vs. negative) or type (basic vs. complex) dimensions, the interaction between the two dimensions has yet to be elucidated. The purpose of the current study was to test the hypothesis that recognition of basic emotions is processed preferentially by the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), whereas recognition of complex social emotions is processed preferentially by the left PFC. Experiment 1 assessed the ability of healthy controls and patients with right and left PFC lesions to recognize basic and complex emotions. Experiment 2 modeled the patient's data of Experiment 1 on healthy participants under lateralized displays of the emotional stimuli. Both experiments support the Type as well as the Valence Hypotheses. However, our findings indicate that the Valence Hypothesis holds for basic but less so for complex emotions. It is suggested that, since social learning overrules the basic preference of valence in the hemispheres, the processing of complex emotions in the hemispheres is less affected by valence.

[Musculoskeletal system as a target organ of a frailty processes].

PubMed

Zlobina, I A; Krivtsunov, A N; Bogat, S V; Prashchayeu, K I

Pathology of the musculoskeletal system is widespread in the population and is one of the most common diseases of patients in older age groups. The most significant of them are osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and sarcopenia. All three components separately, of course, lead to lower quality of life. In our work we show the mechanisms of interference of these states at each other, and their combined impact on the musculoskeletal system as a target organ processes senile asthenia. Osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, and sarcopenia, and especially their combination lead to hypomobility. Hypomobility under the influence of external factors is one of the leading syndromes potentiating aggravation processes senile asthenia. Thus, the mechanism of re-entry is triggered, and a vicious circle leading to fatal medical-social and social consequences. It is shown that changes in the musculoskeletal system should be considered as a single aging within senile asthenia, and all used and newly created medical and social rehabilitation and prevention programs should be integrated in nature.

Participation in the Political Process.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stabler, John B.

This paper describes an undergraduate political science course at Indiana State University (Terre Haute) entitled "Contemporary Political Problems." Current politics, economics, and social problems are emphasized. The underlying objective is to encourage students to participate in a knowledgeable and meaningful manner in the political…

Mathematics, anxiety, and the brain.

PubMed

Moustafa, Ahmed A; Tindle, Richard; Ansari, Zaheda; Doyle, Margery J; Hewedi, Doaa H; Eissa, Abeer

2017-05-24

Given that achievement in learning mathematics at school correlates with work and social achievements, it is important to understand the cognitive processes underlying abilities to learn mathematics efficiently as well as reasons underlying the occurrence of mathematics anxiety (i.e. feelings of tension and fear upon facing mathematical problems or numbers) among certain individuals. Over the last two decades, many studies have shown that learning mathematical and numerical concepts relies on many cognitive processes, including working memory, spatial skills, and linguistic abilities. In this review, we discuss the relationship between mathematical learning and cognitive processes as well as the neural substrates underlying successful mathematical learning and problem solving. More importantly, we also discuss the relationship between these cognitive processes, mathematics anxiety, and mathematics learning disabilities (dyscalculia). Our review shows that mathematical cognition relies on a complex brain network, and dysfunction to different segments of this network leads to varying manifestations of mathematical learning disabilities.

The Mediating Roles of Upward Social Comparison and Self-esteem and the Moderating Role of Social Comparison Orientation in the Association between Social Networking Site Usage and Subjective Well-Being.

PubMed

Wang, Jin-Liang; Wang, Hai-Zhen; Gaskin, James; Hawk, Skyler

2017-01-01

The increased pervasiveness of social media use has raised questions about potential effects on users' subjective well-being, with studies reaching contrasting conclusions. To reconcile these discrepancies and shed new light on this phenomenon, the current study examined: (1) whether upward social comparison and self-esteem mediate the association between social networking site (SNS) usage and users' subjective well-being, and (2) whether the association between SNS usage and upward social comparison is moderated by users' social comparison orientation. Data from 696 participants were collected. Structural equation modeling revealed that upward social comparison and self-esteem mediated the relationship between SNS usage and users' subjective well-being. We found that social comparison orientation moderated the association between passive SNS usage and users' upward social comparison. Specifically, social comparison orientation strengthened the association between passive SNS usage and upward social comparison. The results might suggest a process through which passive SNS usage is related to subjective well-being, and identify a context under which these associations may differ.

The Mediating Roles of Upward Social Comparison and Self-esteem and the Moderating Role of Social Comparison Orientation in the Association between Social Networking Site Usage and Subjective Well-Being

PubMed Central

Wang, Jin-Liang; Wang, Hai-Zhen; Gaskin, James; Hawk, Skyler

2017-01-01

The increased pervasiveness of social media use has raised questions about potential effects on users’ subjective well-being, with studies reaching contrasting conclusions. To reconcile these discrepancies and shed new light on this phenomenon, the current study examined: (1) whether upward social comparison and self-esteem mediate the association between social networking site (SNS) usage and users’ subjective well-being, and (2) whether the association between SNS usage and upward social comparison is moderated by users’ social comparison orientation. Data from 696 participants were collected. Structural equation modeling revealed that upward social comparison and self-esteem mediated the relationship between SNS usage and users’ subjective well-being. We found that social comparison orientation moderated the association between passive SNS usage and users’ upward social comparison. Specifically, social comparison orientation strengthened the association between passive SNS usage and upward social comparison. The results might suggest a process through which passive SNS usage is related to subjective well-being, and identify a context under which these associations may differ. PMID:28553256

Social desirability scales as indicators of self-enhancement and impression management.

PubMed

Parmač Kovačić, Maja; Galić, Zvonimir; Jerneić, Željko

2014-01-01

This article presents 2 studies testing Paulhus's (2002) assumption that unconscious self-enhancement and conscious impression management represent separate processes of socially desirable responding (SDR) that can be observed within 2 content domains (egoistic and moralistic bias). In Study 1, we devised egoistic and moralistic SDR scales intended to measure self-enhancement in honest responding and impression management under demands for positive self-presentation. In Study 2, we correlated scores on these scales with external indicators of self-enhancement and impression management. In honest responding, both SDR scales most strongly correlated with self-enhancement indicators, whereas under demands for positive self-presentation they correlated more strongly with external measures of impression management.

History and challenges of Brazilian social movements for the achievement of the right to adequate food.

PubMed

da Silva, Ana Carolina Feldenheimer; Recine, Elisabetta; Johns, Paula; Gomes, Fabio da Silva; Ferraz, Mariana de Araújo; Faerstein, Eduardo

2018-03-01

The historical struggles that Brazil faced to overcome malnutrition coincided with the empowerment of civil society and social movements which played a crucial role in the affirmation of health and food as social rights. After two decades under military dictatorship, Brazil went through a redemocratization process in the 1980s when activism emerged to demand spaces to participate in policy-making regarding the social agenda, including food and nutrition security (FNS). From 1988 onward institutional structures were established: the National Council of FNS (CONSEA) convenes government and civil society sectors to develop and monitor the implementation of policies, systems and actions. Social participation has been at the heart of structural changes achieved since then. Nevertheless, the country faces multiple challenges regarding FNS such as the double burden of disease, increasing use of pesticides and genetically modified seeds, weak regulation of ultra-processed products, and marketing practices that affect the environment, population health, and food sovereignty. This article aims at examining the development of the participatory political system and the role played by Brazilian social movements in the country's policies on FNS, in addition to outlining challenges faced by those policies.

Complex traffic flow that allows as well as hampers lane-changing intrinsically contains social-dilemma structures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Iwamura, Yoshiro; Tanimoto, Jun

2018-02-01

To investigate an interesting question as to whether or not social dilemma structures can be found in a realistic traffic flow reproduced by a model, we built a new microscopic model in which an intentional driver may try lane-changing to go in front of other vehicles and may hamper others’ lane-changes. Our model consists of twofold parts; cellular automaton emulating a real traffic flow and evolutionary game theory to implement a driver’s decision making-process. Numerical results reveal that a social dilemma like the multi-player chicken game or prisoner’s dilemma game emerges depending on the traffic phase. This finding implies that a social dilemma, which has been investigated by applied mathematics so far, hides behind a traffic flow, which has been explored by fluid dynamics. Highlight - Complex system of traffic flow with consideration of driver’s decision making process is concerned. - A new model dovetailing cellular automaton with game theory is established. - Statistical result from numerical simulations reveals a social dilemma structure underlying traffic flow. - The social dilemma is triggered by a driver’s egocentric actions of lane-changing and hampering other’s lane-change.

Social cognition and underlying cognitive mechanisms in children with an extra X chromosome: a comparison with autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

van Rijn, S; Stockmann, L; van Buggenhout, G; van Ravenswaaij-Arts, C; Swaab, H

2014-06-01

Individuals with an extra X chromosome are at increased risk for autism symptoms. This study is the first to assess theory of mind and facial affect labeling in children with an extra X chromosome. Forty-six children with an extra X chromosome (29 boys with Klinefelter syndrome and 17 girls with Trisomy X), 56 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 88 non-clinical controls, aged 9-18 years, were included. Similar to children with ASD, children with an extra X chromosome showed significant impairments in social cognition. Regression analyses showed that different cognitive functions predicted social cognitive skills in the extra X and ASD groups. The social cognitive deficits were similar for boys and girls with an extra X chromosome, and not specific for a subgroup with high Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised autism scores. Thus, children with an extra X chromosome show social cognitive deficits, which may contribute to social dysfunction, not only in children showing a developmental pattern that is 'typical' for autism but also in those showing mild or late presenting autism symptoms. Our findings may also help explain variance in type of social deficit: children may show similar social difficulties, but these may arise as a consequence of different underlying information processing deficits. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society.

Emotion-focused therapy for the treatment of social anxiety: an overview of the model and a case description.

PubMed

Shahar, Ben

2014-01-01

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) is an integrative and experiential treatment approach that views emotions as fundamentally adaptive and privileges attention to, and exploration of, emotional experiences. EFT has been demonstrated to be efficacious with depression, interpersonal trauma and marital discord, but application to anxiety disorders is in its initial stages. The purpose of this paper is to present the main principles of using EFT with socially anxious patients and to make the case that EFT is particularly well suited for working with this patient group. The primary change processes in EFT for social anxiety include improving emotion awareness, reducing experiential avoidance and the activation and transformation of shame that underlies the symptomatic anxiety. Such processes lead to less self-criticism, to more self-compassion and self-soothing and to a more favourable perception of the self. A case example is used to illustrate how these principles were applied with a socially anxious patient. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Reliance on leaders and social institutions: an attachment perspective.

PubMed

Mayseless, Ofra; Popper, Micha

2007-03-01

The ramifications of attachment processes in adulthood at the societal level are explored, specifically, why and under what circumstances followers form attachment relationships with a leader, and how the variability in these relationships can reflect the followers' internal working models of attachment. It is argued that in crisis situations, individuals tend to form affectional bonds with (mostly charismatic) leaders that function in many respects like an attachment relationship between a child and a parent. Relations between individuals and various social institutions, such as community or state, are likewise portrayed as involving attachment dynamics. The provision of security and protection (the safe haven and the secure base functions) by social structures, institutions, and leaders is seen as needed because of the inherent perceived imperfection and fallibility of "regular" attachment figures in adulthood (e.g., parents, friends, and romantic partners). This reliance on leaders and social institutions is seen as reflecting the normative diversification in attachment dynamics that takes place with development. Cultural and individual variations in these processes are also considered.

Social processes underlying acculturation: a study of drinking behavior among immigrant Latinos in the Northeast United States

PubMed Central

LEE, CHRISTINA S.; LÓPEZ, STEVEN REGESER; COBLY, SUZANNE M.; TEJADA, MONICA; GARCÍA-COLL, CYNTHIA; SMITH, MARCIA

2010-01-01

Study Goals To identify social processes that underlie the relationship of acculturation and heavy drinking behavior among Latinos who have immigrated to the Northeast United States of America (USA). Method Community-based recruitment strategies were used to identify 36 Latinos who reported heavy drinking. Participants were 48% female, 23 to 56 years of age, and were from South or Central America (39%) and the Caribbean (24%). Six focus groups were audiotaped and transcribed. Results Content analyses indicated that the social context of drinking is different in the participants’ countries of origin and in the United States. In Latin America, alcohol consumption was part of everyday living (being with friends and family). Nostalgia and isolation reflected some of the reasons for drinking in the USA. Results suggest that drinking in the Northeastern United States (US) is related to Latinos’ adaptation to a new sociocultural environment. Knowledge of the shifting social contexts of drinking can inform health interventions. PMID:20376331

Ethnic-Racial Stigma and Health Disparities: From Psychological Theory and Evidence to Public Policy Solutions

PubMed Central

Rivera, Luis M.

2014-01-01

The presence of diverse ethnic-racial groups in the United States today is a source of national pride. However, this cultural sentiment is overshadowed by the reality that those ethnic-racial groups that are stigmatized carry a disproportionate burden of negative physical health outcomes. These systematic differences are referred to as health disparities. Although this phenomenon is fairly well documented, relatively little is understood about the social contexts and the psychological processes they activate that contribute to poor health. More importantly, to demonstrate the processes underlying health disparities does not single-handedly address the issue of social injustice in the health of disadvantaged people. Scientists must assume the burden of facilitating the translation of their laboratory and community-based research to public policy recommendations. This volume of the Journal of Social Issues brings together social, developmental, cognitive, and clinical psychological research on the physical health of ethnic-racial stigmatized individuals in the United States. Each contribution explicitly discusses the implications of research for public health policy. PMID:25530632

Co-ordinated structural and functional covariance in the adolescent brain underlies face processing performance

PubMed Central

Joel Shaw, Daniel; Mareček, Radek; Grosbras, Marie-Helene; Leonard, Gabriel; Bruce Pike, G.

2016-01-01

Our ability to process complex social cues presented by faces improves during adolescence. Using multivariate analyses of neuroimaging data collected longitudinally from a sample of 38 adolescents (17 males) when they were 10, 11.5, 13 and 15 years old, we tested the possibility that there exists parallel variations in the structural and functional development of neural systems supporting face processing. By combining measures of task-related functional connectivity and brain morphology, we reveal that both the structural covariance and functional connectivity among ‘distal’ nodes of the face-processing network engaged by ambiguous faces increase during this age range. Furthermore, we show that the trajectory of increasing functional connectivity between the distal nodes occurs in tandem with the development of their structural covariance. This demonstrates a tight coupling between functional and structural maturation within the face-processing network. Finally, we demonstrate that increased functional connectivity is associated with age-related improvements of face-processing performance, particularly in females. We suggest that our findings reflect greater integration among distal elements of the neural systems supporting the processing of facial expressions. This, in turn, might facilitate an enhanced extraction of social information from faces during a time when greater importance is placed on social interactions. PMID:26772669

The representation of self and person knowledge in the medial prefrontal cortex.

PubMed

Wagner, Dylan D; Haxby, James V; Heatherton, Todd F

2012-07-01

Nearly 40 years ago, social psychologists began applying the information processing framework of cognitive psychology to the question of how humans understand and represent knowledge about themselves and others. This approach gave rise to the immensely successful field of social cognition and fundamentally changed the way in which social psychological phenomena are studied. More recently, social scientists of many stripes have turned to the methods of cognitive neuroscience to understand the neural basis of social cognition. A pervasive finding from this research is that social knowledge, be it about one's self or of others, is represented in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). This review focuses on the social cognitive neuroscience of self and person knowledge in the MPFC. We begin with a brief historical overview of social cognition, followed by a review of recent and influential research on the brain basis of self and person knowledge. In the latter half of this review, we discuss the role of familiarity and similarity in person perception and of spontaneous processes in self and other-referential cognition. Throughout, we discuss the myriad ways in which the social cognitive neuroscience approach has provided new insights into the nature and structure of self and person knowledge. WIREs Cogn Sci 2012, 3:451-470. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1183 This article is categorized under: Neuroscience > Cognition. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Social cognition and neurocognition as independent domains in psychosis.

PubMed

van Hooren, S; Versmissen, D; Janssen, I; Myin-Germeys, I; à Campo, J; Mengelers, R; van Os, J; Krabbendam, L

2008-08-01

Patients with psychosis display alterations in social cognition as well as in the realm of neurocognition. It is unclear, however, to what degree these cognitive domains represent two separate dimensions of liability or the pleiotropic expression of a single deficit. The purpose of the present study was to investigate (i) to what extent alterations in social cognition represent an independent area of vulnerability to psychosis, separate from neurocognitive deficits and (ii) whether social cognition is one construct or can be divided into several subcomponents. Five social cognition and three neurocognitive tasks were completed by 186 participants with different levels of vulnerability for psychosis: 44 patients with psychotic disorder; 47 subjects at familial risk; 41 subjects at psychometric risk and 54 control subjects. The social cognition tasks covered important basic subcomponents of social cognition, i.e. mentalisation (or theory of mind), data gathering bias (jumping to conclusions), source monitoring and attribution style. Neurocognitive tasks assessed speed of information processing, inhibition, cognitive shifting and strategy-driven retrieval from semantic memory. The results of factor analysis suggested that neurocognition and social cognition are two separate areas of vulnerability in psychosis. Furthermore, the social cognition measures lacked significant overlap, suggesting a multidimensional construct. Cognitive liabilities to psychosis are manifold, and include key processes underlying basic person-environment interactions in daily life, independent of cognition quantified by neuropsychological tests.

Different gain/loss sensitivity and social adaptation ability in gifted adolescents during a public goods game.

PubMed

Chung, Dongil; Yun, Kyongsik; Kim, Jin Ho; Jang, Bosun; Jeong, Jaeseung

2011-02-16

Gifted adolescents are considered to have high IQs with advanced mathematical and logical performances, but are often thought to suffer from social isolation or emotional mal-adaptation to the social group. The underlying mechanisms that cause stereotypic portrayals of gifted adolescents are not well known. We aimed to investigate behavioral performance of gifted adolescents during social decision-making tasks to assess their affective and social/non-social cognitive abilities. We examined cooperation behaviors of 22 gifted and 26 average adolescents during an iterative binary public goods (PG) game, a multi-player social interaction game, and analyzed strategic decision processes that include cooperation and free-riding. We found that the gifted adolescents were more cooperative than average adolescents. Particularly, comparing the strategies for the PG game between the two groups, gifted adolescents were less sensitive to loss, yet were more sensitive to gain. Additionally, the behavioral characteristics of average adolescents, such as low trust of the group and herding behavior, were not found in gifted adolescents. These results imply that gifted adolescents have a high cognitive ability but a low ability to process affective information or to adapt in social groups compared with average adolescents. We conclude that gain/loss sensitivity and the ability to adapt in social groups develop to different degrees in average and gifted adolescents.

The case for investigating social context in laboratory studies of smoking.

PubMed

Dimoff, John D; Sayette, Michael A

2017-03-01

With increasing frequency, addiction is conceived of as a brain disease, and such accounts seem especially pertinent with regard to the rapid delivery of nicotine to the brain via cigarette smoke. Moreover, drug administration trials (cigarette puffs) suggest that the behavior of smoking becomes automatized, with individuals developing prototypical approaches to smoking a cigarette. Compared with presumably more social activities, such as drinking alcohol, there may be little opportunity for social processes to influence smoking behavior. However, survey research examining smoking motivation often reveals a broadly defined 'social' factor and field research suggests that social context does influence smoking. We posit that laboratory smoking research has largely ignored social contextual factors that may help to understand better the precise mechanisms underlying smoking behavior and smoking motivation. We reviewed laboratory studies examining the effect of social context (operationalized as modeling) on smoking behavior. Studies were identified by searching PsychInfo and Medline using the following keywords: smoking, nicotine, tobacco, cigarette, consumption, topography, puff, smoking behavior, cigarettes smoked, modeling, imitation, social context, social influence and peer pressure. The reference and citation lists of these studies were then searched to identify additional studies. Few laboratory smoking studies target social context. Those few studies indicate that smoking behavior can be influenced by the presence of others. There is also some evidence that social context influences the effects of smoking as well as processes related to self-perception and self-regulation that reinforce smoking and hamper smoking cessation efforts. © 2016 Society for the Study of Addiction.

[Child nutritional status in contexts of urban poverty: a reliable indicator of family health?

PubMed

Huergo, Juliana; Casabona, Eugenia Lourdes

2016-03-01

This work questions the premise that the nutritional status of children under six years of age is a reliable indicator of family health. To do so, a research strategy based in case studies was carried out, following a qualitative design (participant observation and semistructured interviews using intentional sampling) and framed within the interpretivist paradigm. The anthropometric measurements of 20 children under six years of age attending the local Child Care Center in Villa La Tela, Córdoba were evaluated. Nutritional status was understood as an object that includes socially determined biological processes, and was therefore posited analytically as a cross between statistical data and its social determination. As a statistic, child nutritional status is merely descriptive; to assist in the understanding of its social determination, it must be placed in dialectical relationship with the spheres of sociability proposed to analyze the reproduction of health problems.

Sustainability assessment of shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) process

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alkahla, Ibrahim; Pervaiz, Salman

2017-09-01

Shielded metal arc welding (SMAW) process is one of the most commonly employed material joining processes utilized in the various industrial sectors such as marine, ship-building, automotive, aerospace, construction and petrochemicals etc. The increasing pressure on manufacturing sector wants the welding process to be sustainable in nature. The SMAW process incorporates several types of inputs and output streams. The sustainability concerns associated with SMAW process are linked with the various input and output streams such as electrical energy requirement, input material consumptions, slag formation, fumes emission and hazardous working conditions associated with the human health and occupational safety. To enhance the environmental performance of the SMAW welding process, there is a need to characterize the sustainability for the SMAW process under the broad framework of sustainability. Most of the available literature focuses on the technical and economic aspects of the welding process, however the environmental and social aspects are rarely addressed. The study reviews SMAW process with respect to the triple bottom line (economic, environmental and social) sustainability approach. Finally, the study concluded recommendations towards achieving economical and sustainable SMAW welding process.

Overview of Social Cognitive Dysfunctions in Rare Developmental Syndromes With Psychiatric Phenotype

PubMed Central

Morel, Aurore; Peyroux, Elodie; Leleu, Arnaud; Favre, Emilie; Franck, Nicolas; Demily, Caroline

2018-01-01

Rare neurodevelopmental syndromes often present social cognitive deficits that may underlie difficulties in social interactions and increase the risk of psychosis or autism spectrum disorders. However, little is known regarding the specificities of social cognitive impairment across syndromes while it remains a major challenge for the care. Our review provides an overview of social cognitive dysfunctions in rare diseases associated with psychiatric symptoms (with a prevalence estimated between 1 in 1,200 and 1 in 25,000 live births: 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, Angelman syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, Klinefelter syndrome, Prader–Willi syndrome, Rett syndrome, Smith–Magenis syndrome, Turner syndrome, and Williams syndrome) and shed some light on the specific mechanisms that may underlie these skills in each clinical presentation. We first detail the different processes included in the generic expression “social cognition” before summarizing the genotype, psychiatric phenotype, and non-social cognitive profile in each syndrome. Then, we offer a systematic review of the social cognitive abilities and the disturbed mechanisms they are likely associated with. We followed the PRISMA process, including the definition of the relevant search terms, the selection of studies based on clear inclusion, and exclusion criteria and the quality appraisal of papers. We finally provide insights that may have considerable influence on the development of adapted therapeutic interventions such as social cognitive training (SCT) therapies specifically designed to target the psychiatric phenotype. The results of this review suggest that social cognition impairments share some similarities across syndromes. We propose that social cognitive impairments are strongly involved in behavioral symptoms regardless of the overall cognitive level measured by intelligence quotient. Better understanding the mechanisms underlying impaired social cognition may lead to adapt therapeutic interventions. The studies targeting social cognition processes offer new thoughts about the development of specific cognitive training programs, as they highlight the importance of connecting neurocognitive and SCT techniques. PMID:29774207

How social and non-social information influence classification decisions: A computational modelling approach.

PubMed

Puskaric, Marin; von Helversen, Bettina; Rieskamp, Jörg

2017-08-01

Social information such as observing others can improve performance in decision making. In particular, social information has been shown to be useful when finding the best solution on one's own is difficult, costly, or dangerous. However, past research suggests that when making decisions people do not always consider other people's behaviour when it is at odds with their own experiences. Furthermore, the cognitive processes guiding the integration of social information with individual experiences are still under debate. Here, we conducted two experiments to test whether information about other persons' behaviour influenced people's decisions in a classification task. Furthermore, we examined how social information is integrated with individual learning experiences by testing different computational models. Our results show that social information had a small but reliable influence on people's classifications. The best computational model suggests that in categorization people first make up their own mind based on the non-social information, which is then updated by the social information.

Exploring social cognition in patients with apathy following acquired brain damage.

PubMed

Njomboro, Progress; Humphreys, Glyn W; Deb, Shoumitro

2014-01-23

Research on cognition in apathy has largely focused on executive functions. To the best of our knowledge, no studies have investigated the relationship between apathy symptoms and processes involved in social cognition. Apathy symptoms include attenuated emotional behaviour, low social engagement and social withdrawal, all of which may be linked to underlying socio-cognitive deficits. We compared patients with brain damage who also had apathy symptoms against similar patients with brain damage but without apathy symptoms. Both patient groups were also compared against normal controls on key socio-cognitive measures involving moral reasoning, social awareness related to making judgements between normative and non-normative behaviour, Theory of Mind processing, and the perception of facial expressions of emotion. We also controlled for the likely effects of executive deficits and depressive symptoms on these comparisons. Our results indicated that patients with apathy were distinctively impaired in making moral reasoning decisions and in judging the social appropriateness of behaviour. Deficits in Theory of Mind and perception of facial expressions of emotion did not distinguish patients with apathy from those without apathy. Our findings point to a possible socio-cognitive profile for apathy symptoms and provide initial insights into how socio-cognitive deficits in patients with apathy may affect social functioning.

Human vulnerability, dislocation and resettlement: adaptation processes of river-bank erosion-induced displacees in Bangladesh.

PubMed

Hutton, David; Haque, C Emdad

2004-03-01

The purpose of this research was to identify and analyse patterns of economic and social adaptation among river-bank erosion-induced displacees in Bangladesh. It was hypothesised that the role of social demographic and socio-economic variables in determining the coping ability and recovery of the river-bank erosion-induced displacees is quite significant. The findings of the research reveal that displacees experience substantial socio-economic impoverishment and marginalisation as a consequence of involuntary migration. This in part is a socially constructed process, reflecting inequitable access to land and other resources. Vulnerability to disasters is further heightened by a number of identifiable social and demographic factors including gender, education and age, although extreme poverty and marginalisation create complexity to isolate the relative influence of these variables. The need to integrate hazard analysis and mitigation with the broader economic and social context is discussed. It is argued that the capacity of people to respond to environmental threats is a function of not only the physical forces which affect them, but also of underlying economic and social relationships which increase human vulnerability to risk. Hazard analysis and mitigation can be more effective when it takes into account such social and demographic and socio-economic dimensions of disasters.

Social Capital Accumulation in Location-Based Mobile Game Playing: A Multiple-Process Approach.

PubMed

Sung, Hei-Tung; Sigerson, Leif; Cheng, Cecilia

2017-08-01

In the summer of 2016, the widespread popularization of the game Pokémon Go brought the public's attention to the possible socialization benefits associated with location-based mobile games (LBMGs), yet no studies to date have investigated this issue. LBMGs deserve greater research attention because this type of game provides a unique gaming experience that encourages players to leave their homes and navigate around their neighborhood. This distinctive feature may promote more face-to-face interactions among LBMG players. Grounded in social capital theories, the present study compared the levels of both bridging and bonding social capital between LBMG and non-LBMG players. More important, we formulated a multiple-process model to explain the hypothesized psychological mechanisms underlying social capital accumulation among LBMG players. Participants were 349 U.S. participants (57 percent men; M age  = 32.40, SD age  = 7.92, age range = 19-66). Results supported the proposed model by revealing that face-to-face interaction was crucial to the accrual of both bridging and bonding social capital among LBMG players, through enhancing their levels of communication frequency and self-disclosure. The present findings have implications for the utilization of LBMG as a potential tool to promote face-to-face interactions and accumulate social capital.

A Social-Cognitive Approach to Motivation and Personality.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dweck, Carol S.; Leggett, Ellen L.

1988-01-01

A research-based model is presented that accounts for major patterns of adaptive and maladaptive behavior in terms of underlying psychological processes. It is postulated that as individuals' self-attributes are translated into allied goals, these goals generate corresponding behavior patterns. (SLD)

20 CFR 405.360 - Official record.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... in making the decision under review and any additional evidence or written statements that the... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Official record. 405.360 Section 405.360 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW PROCESS FOR ADJUDICATING INITIAL...

20 CFR 411.635 - Can a beneficiary be represented in the dispute resolution process under the Ticket to Work program?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION THE TICKET TO WORK AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROGRAM Ticket to Work Program Dispute Resolution Disputes Between Beneficiaries and Employment Networks § 411.635 Can a beneficiary be...

20 CFR 411.635 - Can a beneficiary be represented in the dispute resolution process under the Ticket to Work program?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION THE TICKET TO WORK AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROGRAM Ticket to Work Program Dispute Resolution Disputes Between Beneficiaries and Employment Networks § 411.635 Can a beneficiary be...

20 CFR 411.635 - Can a beneficiary be represented in the dispute resolution process under the Ticket to Work program?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION THE TICKET TO WORK AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROGRAM Ticket to Work Program Dispute Resolution Disputes Between Beneficiaries and Employment Networks § 411.635 Can a beneficiary be...

20 CFR 411.635 - Can a beneficiary be represented in the dispute resolution process under the Ticket to Work program?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION THE TICKET TO WORK AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROGRAM Ticket to Work Program Dispute Resolution Disputes Between Beneficiaries and Employment Networks § 411.635 Can a beneficiary be...

20 CFR 411.635 - Can a beneficiary be represented in the dispute resolution process under the Ticket to Work program?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-04-01

... SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION THE TICKET TO WORK AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY PROGRAM Ticket to Work Program Dispute Resolution Disputes Between Beneficiaries and Employment Networks § 411.635 Can a beneficiary be...

The Dynamics of Coalition Formation on Complex Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Auer, S.; Heitzig, J.; Kornek, U.; Schöll, E.; Kurths, J.

2015-08-01

Complex networks describe the structure of many socio-economic systems. However, in studies of decision-making processes the evolution of the underlying social relations are disregarded. In this report, we aim to understand the formation of self-organizing domains of cooperation (“coalitions”) on an acquaintance network. We include both the network’s influence on the formation of coalitions and vice versa how the network adapts to the current coalition structure, thus forming a social feedback loop. We increase complexity from simple opinion adaptation processes studied in earlier research to more complex decision-making determined by costs and benefits, and from bilateral to multilateral cooperation. We show how phase transitions emerge from such coevolutionary dynamics, which can be interpreted as processes of great transformations. If the network adaptation rate is high, the social dynamics prevent the formation of a grand coalition and therefore full cooperation. We find some empirical support for our main results: Our model develops a bimodal coalition size distribution over time similar to those found in social structures. Our detection and distinguishing of phase transitions may be exemplary for other models of socio-economic systems with low agent numbers and therefore strong finite-size effects.

The Gendered Family Process Model: An Integrative Framework of Gender in the Family.

PubMed

Endendijk, Joyce J; Groeneveld, Marleen G; Mesman, Judi

2018-05-01

This article reviews and integrates research on gender-related biological, cognitive, and social processes that take place in or between family members, resulting in a newly developed gendered family process (GFP) model. The GFP model serves as a guiding framework for research on gender in the family context, calling for the integration of biological, social, and cognitive factors. Biological factors in the model are prenatal, postnatal, and pubertal androgen levels of children and parents, and genetic effects on parent and child gendered behavior. Social factors are family sex composition (i.e., parent sex, sexual orientation, marriage status, sibling sex composition) and parental gender socialization, such as modeling, gender-differentiated parenting, and gender talk. Cognitive factors are implicit and explicit gender-role cognitions of parents and children. Our review and the GFP model confirm that gender is an important organizer of family processes, but also highlight that much is still unclear about the mechanisms underlying gender-related processes within the family context. Therefore, we stress the need for (1) longitudinal studies that take into account the complex bidirectional relationship between parent and child gendered behavior and cognitions, in which within-family comparisons (comparing behavior of parents toward a boy and a girl in the same family) are made instead of between-family comparisons (comparing parenting between all-boy families and all-girl families, or between mixed-gender families and same-gender families), (2) experimental studies on the influence of testosterone on human gender development, (3) studies examining the interplay between biology with gender socialization and gender-role cognitions in humans.

Face the hierarchy: ERP and oscillatory brain responses in social rank processing.

PubMed

Breton, Audrey; Jerbi, Karim; Henaff, Marie-Anne; Cheylus, Anne; Baudouin, Jean-Yves; Schmitz, Christina; Krolak-Salmon, Pierre; Van der Henst, Jean-Baptiste

2014-01-01

Recognition of social hierarchy is a key feature that helps us navigate through our complex social environment. Neuroimaging studies have identified brain structures involved in the processing of hierarchical stimuli but the precise temporal dynamics of brain activity associated with such processing remains largely unknown. Here, we used electroencephalography to examine the effect of social hierarchy on neural responses elicited by faces. In contrast to previous studies, the key manipulation was that a hierarchical context was constructed, not by varying facial expressions, but by presenting neutral-expression faces in a game setting. Once the performance-based hierarchy was established, participants were presented with high-rank, middle-rank and low-rank player faces and had to evaluate the rank of each face with respect to their own position. Both event-related potentials and task-related oscillatory activity were investigated. Three main findings emerge from the study. First, the experimental manipulation had no effect on the early N170 component, which may suggest that hierarchy did not modulate the structural encoding of neutral-expression faces. Second, hierarchy significantly modulated the amplitude of the late positive potential (LPP) within a 400-700 ms time-window, with more a prominent LPP occurring when the participants processed the face of the highest-rank player. Third, high-rank faces were associated with the highest reduction of alpha power. Taken together these findings provide novel electrophysiological evidence for enhanced allocation of attentional resource in the presence of high-rank faces. At a broader level, this study brings new insights into the neural processing underlying social categorization.

Speech Volume Indexes Sex Differences in the Social-Emotional Effects of Alcohol

PubMed Central

Fairbairn, Catharine E.; Sayette, Michael A.; Amole, Marlissa C.; Dimoff, John D.; Cohn, Jeffrey F.; Girard, Jeffrey M.

2015-01-01

Men and women differ dramatically in their rates of alcohol use disorder (AUD), and researchers have long been interested in identifying mechanisms underlying male vulnerability to problem drinking. Surveys suggest that social processes underlie sex differences in drinking patterns, with men reporting greater social enhancement from alcohol than women, and all-male social drinking contexts being associated with particularly high rates of hazardous drinking. But experimental evidence for sex differences in social-emotional response to alcohol has heretofore been lacking. Research using larger sample sizes, a social context, and more sensitive measures of alcohol’s rewarding effects may be necessary to better understand sex differences in the etiology of AUD. This study explored the acute effects of alcohol during social exchange on speech volume –an objective measure of social-emotional experience that was reliably captured at the group level. Social drinkers (360 male; 360 female) consumed alcohol (.82g/kg males; .74g/kg females), placebo, or a no-alcohol control beverage in groups of three over 36-minutes. Within each of the three beverage conditions, equal numbers of groups consisted of all males, all females, 2 females and 1 male, and 1 female and 2 males. Speech volume was monitored continuously throughout the drink period, and group volume emerged as a robust correlate of self-report and facial indexes of social reward. Notably, alcohol-related increases in group volume were observed selectively in all-male groups but not in groups containing any females. Results point to social enhancement as a promising direction for research exploring factors underlying sex differences in problem drinking. PMID:26237323

Social strain, couple dynamics and gender differences in gambling problems: evidence from Chinese married couples.

PubMed

Cheung, Nicole W T

2015-02-01

Knowledge of the influence of couple dynamics on gender differences in gambling behavior remains meager. Building on general strain theory from the sociology of deviance and stress crossover theory from social psychology, we argue that the strain encountered by one partner in a social setting may affect his or her spouse. For instance, the wife of a man under more social strain may experience more strain in turn and thus be at a higher risk of developing disordered gambling than the wife of a man under less social strain. Using community survey data of 1620 Chinese married couples, we performed multilevel dyad analyses to address social strain and couple dynamics, in addition to their roles as predictors of gambling behavior in both spouses. This was a community survey of Hong Kong and therefore was not representative of China. Based on the DSM-IV screen, the rates of probable problem gambling and pathological gambling among male partners (12.8% vs. 2.5%) were twice those among female partners (5.2% vs. 0.3%). We also found that the social strain experienced by a male partner significantly predicted both his and his wife's likelihood of developing gambling problems. Although a female partner's exposure to social strain was a significant correlate of her gambling problem, it had no significant association with her husband's gambling behavior. These results suggest that the cross-spouse transference of social strain may be a gendered process. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Appraisal, Coping, and Social Support as Mediators of Well-Being in Black and White Family Caregivers of Patients with Alzheimer's Disease.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haley, William E.; And Others

1996-01-01

Family caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) commonly have high levels of psychological distress. Black caregivers often report less depression than white caregivers, but the process underlying this difference is poorly understood. With the use of a stress process model, 123 white and 74 black family caregivers of patients with AD…

Impression Management in Survey Responding: Easier for Collectivists or Individualists?

PubMed

Riemer, Hila; Shavitt, Sharon

2011-04-01

Three experiments indicate that when individualists and collectivists engage in impression management on self-reports, they do so through different psychological mechanism s. Collectivists do so through a relatively automatic process. Thus, they can impression manage even when cognitively busy. Individualists impression manage through a more effortful process. Therefore, they can do so only when the situation permits effortful processing. These findings highlight distinct conditions under which social norms may influence consumer self-reports across cultures.

Serotonin 5-HTTLPR Genotype Modulates Reactive Visual Scanning of Social and Non-social Affective Stimuli in Young Children

PubMed Central

Christou, Antonios I.; Wallis, Yvonne; Bair, Hayley; Zeegers, Maurice; McCleery, Joseph P.

2017-01-01

Previous studies have documented the 5-HTTLPR polymorphisms as genetic variants that are involved in serotonin availability and also associated with emotion regulation and facial emotion processing. In particular, neuroimaging and behavioral studies of healthy populations have produced evidence to suggest that carriers of the Short allele exhibit heightened neurophysiological and behavioral reactivity when processing aversive stimuli, particularly in brain regions involved in fear. However, an additional distinction has emerged in the field, which highlights particular types of fearful information, i.e., aversive information which involves a social component versus non-social aversive stimuli. Although processing of each of these stimulus types (social and non-social) is believed to involve a subcortical neural system which includes the amygdala, evidence also suggests that the amygdala itself may be particularly responsive to socially significant environmental information, potentially due to the critical relevance of social information for humans. Examining individual differences in neurotransmitter systems which operate within this subcortical network, and in particular the serotonin system, may be critically informative for furthering our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying responses to emotional and affective stimuli. In the present study we examine visual scanning patterns in response to both aversive and positive images of a social or non-social nature in relation to 5-HTTLPR genotypes, in 49 children aged 4–7 years. Results indicate that children with at least one Short 5-HTTLPR allele spent less time fixating the threat-related non-social stimuli, compared with participants with two copies of the Long allele. Interestingly, a separate set of analyses suggests that carriers of two copies of the short 5-HTTLPR allele also spent less time fixating both the negative and positive non-social stimuli. Together, these findings support the hypothesis that genetically mediated differences in serotonin availability mediate behavioral responses to different types of emotional stimuli in young children. PMID:28690502

Social Cognition in Psychosis: Multidimensional Structure, Clinical Correlates, and Relationship With Functional Outcome

PubMed Central

Mancuso, Francesco; Horan, William P.; Kern, Robert S.; Green, Michael F.

2010-01-01

Social cognitive impairments are common, detectable across a wide range of tasks, and appear to play a key role in explaining poor outcome in schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders. However, little is known about the underlying factor structure of social cognition in people with psychotic disorders due to a lack of exploratory factor analyses using a relatively comprehensive social cognitive assessment battery. In a sample of 85 outpatients with psychosis, we examined the factor structure and clinical/functional correlates of eight indexes derived from five social cognition tasks that span the domains of emotional processing, social perception, attributional style, and Theory of Mind. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three factors with relatively low inter-correlations that explained a total of 54% of the variance: (1) Hostile attributional style, (2) Lower-level social cue detection, and (3) Higher-level inferential and regulatory processes. None of the factors showed significant correlations with negative symptoms. Factor 1 significantly correlated with clinical symptoms (positive, depression-anxiety, agitation) but not functional outcome, whereas Factors 2 and 3 significantly correlated with functional outcome (functional capacity and real-world social and work functioning) but not clinical symptoms. Furthermore, Factor 2 accounted for unique incremental variance in functional capacity, above and beyond non-social neurocognition (measured with MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery) and negative symptoms. Results suggest that multiple separable dimensions of social cognition can be identified in psychosis, and these factors show distinct patterns of correlation with clinical features and functional outcome. PMID:21112743

The Neural Basis of Social Influence in a Dictator Decision

PubMed Central

Wei, Zhenyu; Zhao, Zhiying; Zheng, Yong

2017-01-01

Humans tend to reduce inequitable distributions. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that inequitable decisions are related to brain regions that associated with negative emotion and signaling conflict. In the highly complex human social environment, our opinions and behaviors can be affected by social information. In current study, we used a modified dictator game to investigate the effect of social influence on making an equitable decision. We found that the choices of participants in present task was influenced by the choices of peers. However, participants’ decisions were influenced by equitable rather than inequitable group choices. fMRI results showed that brain regions that related to norm violation and social conflict were related to the inequitable social influence. The neural responses in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, rostral cingulate zone, and insula predicted subsequent conforming behavior in individuals. Additionally, psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed that the interconnectivity between the dorsal striatum and insula was elevated in advantageous inequity influence versus no-social influence conditions. We found decreased functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and insula, supplementary motor area, posterior cingulate gyrus and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the disadvantageous inequity influence versus no-social influence conditions. This suggests that a disadvantageous inequity influence may decrease the functional connectivity among brain regions that are related to reward processes. Thus, the neural mechanisms underlying social influence in an equitable decision may be similar to those implicated in social norms and reward processing. PMID:29375412

Restoring effects of oxytocin on the attentional preference for faces in autism.

PubMed

Kanat, M; Spenthof, I; Riedel, A; van Elst, L T; Heinrichs, M; Domes, G

2017-04-18

Reduced attentional preference for faces and symptoms of social anxiety are common in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The neuropeptide oxytocin triggers anxiolytic functions and enhances eye gaze, facial emotion recognition and neural correlates of face processing in ASD. Here we investigated whether a single dose of oxytocin increases attention to faces in ASD. As a secondary question, we explored the influence of social anxiety on these effects. We tested for oxytocin's effects on attention to neutral faces as compared to houses in a sample of 29 autistic individuals and 30 control participants using a dot-probe paradigm with two different presentation times (100 or 500 ms). A single dose of 24 IU oxytocin was administered in a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled, cross-over design. Under placebo, ASD individuals paid less attention to faces presented for 500 ms than did controls. Oxytocin administration increased the allocation of attention toward faces in ASD to a level observed in controls. Secondary analyses revealed that these oxytocin effects primarily occurred in ASD individuals with high levels of social anxiety who were characterized by attentional avoidance of faces under placebo. Our results confirm a positive influence of intranasal oxytocin on social attention processes in ASD. Further, they suggest that oxytocin may in particular restore the attentional preference for facial information in ASD individuals with high social anxiety. We conclude that oxytocin's anxiolytic properties may partially account for its positive effects on socio-cognitive functioning in ASD, such as enhanced eye gaze and facial emotion recognition.

Restoring effects of oxytocin on the attentional preference for faces in autism

PubMed Central

Kanat, M; Spenthof, I; Riedel, A; van Elst, L T; Heinrichs, M; Domes, G

2017-01-01

Reduced attentional preference for faces and symptoms of social anxiety are common in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The neuropeptide oxytocin triggers anxiolytic functions and enhances eye gaze, facial emotion recognition and neural correlates of face processing in ASD. Here we investigated whether a single dose of oxytocin increases attention to faces in ASD. As a secondary question, we explored the influence of social anxiety on these effects. We tested for oxytocin's effects on attention to neutral faces as compared to houses in a sample of 29 autistic individuals and 30 control participants using a dot-probe paradigm with two different presentation times (100 or 500 ms). A single dose of 24 IU oxytocin was administered in a randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled, cross-over design. Under placebo, ASD individuals paid less attention to faces presented for 500 ms than did controls. Oxytocin administration increased the allocation of attention toward faces in ASD to a level observed in controls. Secondary analyses revealed that these oxytocin effects primarily occurred in ASD individuals with high levels of social anxiety who were characterized by attentional avoidance of faces under placebo. Our results confirm a positive influence of intranasal oxytocin on social attention processes in ASD. Further, they suggest that oxytocin may in particular restore the attentional preference for facial information in ASD individuals with high social anxiety. We conclude that oxytocin's anxiolytic properties may partially account for its positive effects on socio-cognitive functioning in ASD, such as enhanced eye gaze and facial emotion recognition. PMID:28418399

Monoamines stimulate sex reversal in the saddleback wrasse.

PubMed

Larson, Earl T; Norris, David O; Gordon Grau, E; Summers, Cliff H

2003-02-15

Monoamine neurotransmitters (norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin) play an important role in reproduction and sexual behavior throughout the vertebrates. They are the first endogenous chemical signals in the regulation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis. In teleosts with behavioral sex determination, much is known about behavioral cues that induce sex reversal. The cues are social, processed via the visual system and depend on the ratio of females to males in the population. The mechanisms by which these external behavioral cues are converted to an internal chemical regulatory process are largely unknown. The protogynous Hawaiian saddleback wrasse, Thalassoma duperrey, was used to investigate the biological pathway mediating the conversion of a social cue into neuroendocrine events regulating sex reversal. Because monoamines play an important role in the regulation of the HPG axis, they were selected as likely candidates for such a conversion. To determine if monoamines could affect sex reversal, drugs affecting monoamines were used in an attempt to either induce sex reversal under non-permissive conditions, or prevent sex reversal under permissive conditions. Increasing norepinephrine or blocking dopamine or serotonin lead to sex reversal in experimental animals under non-permissive conditions. Increasing serotonin blocked sex reversal under permissive conditions, while blocking dopamine or norepinephrine retarded the process. The results presented here demonstrate that monoamines contribute significantly to the control sex reversal. Norepinephrine stimulates initiation and completion of gonadal sex of reversal as well as color change perhaps directly via its effects on the HPG axis. Dopamine exercises inhibitory action on the initiation of sex reversal while 5-HT inhibits both initiation and completion of sex reversal. The serotonergic system appears to be an integral part of the pathway mediating the conversion of a social cue into a neuroendocrine event. The complex organization of neurochemical events controlling the psychosocial, physiological, and anatomical events that constitute reversal of sexual identity includes monoamine neurotransmitters. Copyright 2003 Elsevier Science (USA)

Social pain and social gain in the adolescent brain: A common neural circuitry underlying both positive and negative social evaluation

PubMed Central

Dalgleish, Tim; Walsh, Nicholas D.; Mobbs, Dean; Schweizer, Susanne; van Harmelen, Anne-Laura; Dunn, Barnaby; Dunn, Valerie; Goodyer, Ian; Stretton, Jason

2017-01-01

Social interaction inherently involves the subjective evaluation of cues salient to social inclusion and exclusion. Testifying to the importance of such social cues, parts of the neural system dedicated to the detection of physical pain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI), have been shown to be equally sensitive to the detection of social pain experienced after social exclusion. However, recent work suggests that this dACC-AI matrix may index any socially pertinent information. We directly tested the hypothesis that the dACC-AI would respond to cues of both inclusion and exclusion, using a novel social feedback fMRI paradigm in a population-derived sample of adolescents. We show that the dACC and left AI are commonly activated by feedback cues of inclusion and exclusion. Our findings suggest that theoretical accounts of the dACC-AI network as a neural alarm system restricted within the social domain to the processing of signals of exclusion require significant revision. PMID:28169323

Disrupted prediction errors index social deficits in autism spectrum disorder

PubMed Central

Balsters, Joshua H; Apps, Matthew A J; Bolis, Dimitris; Lehner, Rea; Gallagher, Louise; Wenderoth, Nicole

2017-01-01

Abstract Social deficits are a core symptom of autism spectrum disorder; however, the perturbed neural mechanisms underpinning these deficits remain unclear. It has been suggested that social prediction errors—coding discrepancies between the predicted and actual outcome of another’s decisions—might play a crucial role in processing social information. While the gyral surface of the anterior cingulate cortex signalled social prediction errors in typically developing individuals, this crucial social signal was altered in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Importantly, the degree to which social prediction error signalling was aberrant correlated with diagnostic measures of social deficits. Effective connectivity analyses further revealed that, in typically developing individuals but not in autism spectrum disorder, the magnitude of social prediction errors was driven by input from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These data provide a novel insight into the neural substrates underlying autism spectrum disorder social symptom severity, and further research into the gyral surface of the anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex could provide more targeted therapies to help ameliorate social deficits in autism spectrum disorder. PMID:28031223

Social hierarchy modulates neural responses of empathy for pain

PubMed Central

Feng, Chunliang; Li, Zhihao; Feng, Xue; Wang, Lili; Tian, Tengxiang

2016-01-01

Recent evidence indicates that empathic responses to others’ pain are modulated by various situational and individual factors. However, few studies have examined how empathy and underlying brain functions are modulated by social hierarchies, which permeate human society with an enormous impact on social behavior and cognition. In this study, social hierarchies were established based on incidental skill in a perceptual task in which all participants were mediumly ranked. Afterwards, participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while watching inferior-status or superior-status targets receiving painful or non-painful stimulation. The results revealed that painful stimulation applied to inferior-status targets induced higher activations in the anterior insula (AI) and anterior medial cingulate cortex (aMCC), whereas these empathic brain activations were significantly attenuated in response to superior-status targets’ pain. Further, this neural empathic bias to inferior-status targets was accompanied by stronger functional couplings of AI with brain regions important in emotional processing (i.e. thalamus) and cognitive control (i.e. middle frontal gyrus). Our findings indicate that emotional sharing with others’ pain is shaped by relative positions in a social hierarchy such that underlying empathic neural responses are biased toward inferior-status compared with superior-status individuals. PMID:26516169

Social Groups Prioritize Selective Attention to Faces: How Social Identity Shapes Distractor Interference

PubMed Central

Hill, LaBarron K.; Williams, DeWayne P.; Thayer, Julian F.

2016-01-01

Human faces automatically attract visual attention and this process appears to be guided by social group memberships. In two experiments, we examined how social groups guide selective attention toward in-group and out-group faces. Black and White participants detected a target letter among letter strings superimposed on faces (Experiment 1). White participants were less accurate on trials with racial out-group (Black) compared to in-group (White) distractor faces. Likewise, Black participants were less accurate on trials with racial out-group (White) compared to in-group (Black) distractor faces. However, this pattern of out-group bias was only evident under high perceptual load—when the task was visually difficult. To examine the malleability of this pattern of racial bias, a separate sample of participants were assigned to mixed-race minimal groups (Experiment 2). Participants assigned to groups were less accurate on trials with their minimal in-group members compared to minimal out-group distractor faces, regardless of race. Again, this pattern of out-group bias was only evident under high perceptual load. Taken together, these results suggest that social identity guides selective attention toward motivationally relevant social groups—shifting from out-group bias in the domain of race to in-group bias in the domain of minimal groups—when perceptual resources are scarce. PMID:27556646

Psychological needs and the facilitation of integrative processes.

PubMed

Ryan, R M

1995-09-01

The assumption that there are innate integrative or actualizing tendencies underlying personality and social development is reexamined. Rather than viewing such processes as either nonexistent or as automatic, I argue that they are dynamic and dependent upon social-contextual supports pertaining to basic human psychological needs. To develop this viewpoint, I conceptually link the notion of integrative tendencies to specific developmental processes, namely intrinsic motivation; internalization; and emotional integration. These processes are then shown to be facilitated by conditions that fulfill psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and forestalled within contexts that frustrate these needs. Interactions between psychological needs and contextual supports account, in part, for the domain and situational specificity of motivation, experience, and relative integration. The meaning of psychological needs (vs. wants) is directly considered, as are the relations between concepts of integration and autonomy and those of independence, individualism, efficacy, and cognitive models of "multiple selves."

Cultural evolution: The case of babies’ first names

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xi, Ning; Zhang, Zi-Ke; Zhang, Yi-Cheng; Ge, Zehui; She, Li; Zhang, Kui

2014-07-01

In social sciences, there is currently rare consensus on the underlying mechanism for cultural evolution, partially due to lack of suitable data. The evolution of first names of newborn babies offers a remarkable example for such researches. In this paper, we employ the historical data on baby names from the United States to investigate the evolutionary process of culture, in particular focusing on how inequality among baby names changes over time. Then we propose a stochastic model where individual choice is determined by both individual preference and social influence, and show that the decrease in the strength of social influence can account for all the observed empirical features. Therefore, we claim that the weakening of social influence drives cultural evolution.

Preliminary evidence of a neurophysiological basis for individual discrimination in filial imprinting.

PubMed

Town, Stephen Michael

2011-12-01

Filial imprinting involves a predisposition for biologically important stimuli and a learning process directing preferences towards a particular stimulus. Learning underlies discrimination between imprinted and unfamiliar individuals and depends upon the IMM (intermediate and medial mesopallium). Here, IMM neurons responded differentially to familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics following socialization and the neurophysiological effects of social experience differed between hemispheres. Such findings may provide a neurophysiological basis for individual discrimination in imprinting. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Information Dissemination of Public Health Emergency on Social Networks and Intelligent Computation

PubMed Central

Hu, Hongzhi; Mao, Huajuan; Hu, Xiaohua; Hu, Feng; Sun, Xuemin; Jing, Zaiping; Duan, Yunsuo

2015-01-01

Due to the extensive social influence, public health emergency has attracted great attention in today's society. The booming social network is becoming a main information dissemination platform of those events and caused high concerns in emergency management, among which a good prediction of information dissemination in social networks is necessary for estimating the event's social impacts and making a proper strategy. However, information dissemination is largely affected by complex interactive activities and group behaviors in social network; the existing methods and models are limited to achieve a satisfactory prediction result due to the open changeable social connections and uncertain information processing behaviors. ACP (artificial societies, computational experiments, and parallel execution) provides an effective way to simulate the real situation. In order to obtain better information dissemination prediction in social networks, this paper proposes an intelligent computation method under the framework of TDF (Theory-Data-Feedback) based on ACP simulation system which was successfully applied to the analysis of A (H1N1) Flu emergency. PMID:26609303

Information Dissemination of Public Health Emergency on Social Networks and Intelligent Computation.

PubMed

Hu, Hongzhi; Mao, Huajuan; Hu, Xiaohua; Hu, Feng; Sun, Xuemin; Jing, Zaiping; Duan, Yunsuo

2015-01-01

Due to the extensive social influence, public health emergency has attracted great attention in today's society. The booming social network is becoming a main information dissemination platform of those events and caused high concerns in emergency management, among which a good prediction of information dissemination in social networks is necessary for estimating the event's social impacts and making a proper strategy. However, information dissemination is largely affected by complex interactive activities and group behaviors in social network; the existing methods and models are limited to achieve a satisfactory prediction result due to the open changeable social connections and uncertain information processing behaviors. ACP (artificial societies, computational experiments, and parallel execution) provides an effective way to simulate the real situation. In order to obtain better information dissemination prediction in social networks, this paper proposes an intelligent computation method under the framework of TDF (Theory-Data-Feedback) based on ACP simulation system which was successfully applied to the analysis of A (H1N1) Flu emergency.

Traits, States, and Attentional Gates: Temperament and Threat Relevance as Predictors of Attentional Bias to Social Threat

PubMed Central

Helzer, Erik G.; Connor-Smith, Jennifer K.; Reed, Marjorie A.

2009-01-01

This study investigated the influence of situational and dispositional factors on attentional biases toward social threat, and the impact of these attentional biases on distress in a sample of adolescents. Results suggest greater biases for personally-relevant threat cues, as individuals reporting high social stress were vigilant to subliminal social threat cues, but not physical threat cues, and those reporting low social stress showed no attentional biases. Individual differences in fearful temperament and attentional control interacted to influence attentional biases, with fearful temperament predicting biases to supraliminal social threat only for individuals with poor attentional control. Multivariate analyses exploring relations between attentional biases for social threat and symptoms of anxiety and depression revealed that attentional biases alone were rarely related to symptoms. However, biases did interact with social stress, fearful temperament, and attentional control to predict distress. Results are discussed in terms of automatic and effortful cognitive mechanisms underlying threat cue processing. PMID:18791905

Social cognition and the anterior temporal lobes: a review and theoretical framework

PubMed Central

McCoy, David; Klobusicky, Elizabeth; Ross, Lars A.

2013-01-01

Memory for people and their relationships, along with memory for social language and social behaviors, constitutes a specific type of semantic memory termed social knowledge. This review focuses on how and where social knowledge is represented in the brain. We propose that portions of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) play a critical role in representing and retrieving social knowledge. This includes memory about people, their names and biographies and more abstract forms of social memory such as memory for traits and social concepts. This hypothesis is based on the convergence of several lines of research including anatomical findings, lesion evidence from both humans and non-human primates and neuroimaging evidence. Moreover, the ATL is closely interconnected with cortical nuclei of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex via the uncinate fasciculus. We propose that this pattern of connectivity underlies the function of the ATL in encoding and storing emotionally tagged knowledge that is used to guide orbitofrontal-based decision processes. PMID:23051902

Effects of Acute Alcohol Consumption on the Processing of Emotion in Faces: Implications for Understanding Alcohol-Related Aggression

PubMed Central

Attwood, Angela S.; Munafò, Marcus R.

2016-01-01

The negative consequences of chronic alcohol abuse are well known, but heavy episodic consumption ("binge drinking") is also associated with significant personal and societal harms. Aggressive tendencies are increased after alcohol but the mechanisms underlying these changes are not fully understood. While effects on behavioural control are likely to be important, other effects may be involved given the widespread action of alcohol. Altered processing of social signals is associated with changes in social behaviours, including aggression, but until recently there has been little research investigating the effects of acute alcohol consumption on these outcomes. Recent work investigating the effects of acute alcohol on emotional face processing has suggested reduced sensitivity to submissive signals (sad faces) and increased perceptual bias towards provocative signals (angry faces) after alcohol consumption, which may play a role in alcohol-related aggression. Here we discuss a putative mechanism that may explain how alcohol consumption influences emotional processing and subsequent aggressive responding, via disruption of OFC-amygdala connectivity. While the importance of emotional processing on social behaviours is well established, research into acute alcohol consumption and emotional processing is still in its infancy. Further research is needed and we outline a research agenda to address gaps in the literature. PMID:24920135

Oxytocin selectively facilitates learning with social feedback and increases activity and functional connectivity in emotional memory and reward processing regions.

PubMed

Hu, Jiehui; Qi, Song; Becker, Benjamin; Luo, Lizhu; Gao, Shan; Gong, Qiyong; Hurlemann, René; Kendrick, Keith M

2015-06-01

In male Caucasian subjects, learning is facilitated by receipt of social compared with non-social feedback, and the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) facilitates this effect. In this study, we have first shown a cultural difference in that male Chinese subjects actually perform significantly worse in the same reinforcement associated learning task with social (emotional faces) compared with non-social feedback. Nevertheless, in two independent double-blind placebo (PLC) controlled between-subject design experiments we found OXT still selectively facilitated learning with social feedback. Similar to Caucasian subjects this OXT effect was strongest with feedback using female rather than male faces. One experiment performed in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that during the response, but not feedback phase of the task, OXT selectively increased activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and putamen during the social feedback condition, and functional connectivity between the amygdala and insula and caudate. Therefore, OXT may be increasing the salience and reward value of anticipated social feedback. In the PLC group, response times and state anxiety scores during social feedback were associated with signal changes in these same regions but not in the OXT group. OXT may therefore have also facilitated learning by reducing anxiety in the social feedback condition. Overall our results provide the first evidence for cultural differences in social facilitation of learning per se, but a similar selective enhancement of learning with social feedback under OXT. This effect of OXT may be associated with enhanced responses and functional connectivity in emotional memory and reward processing regions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Connections Matter: Social Networks and Lifespan Health in Primate Translational Models

PubMed Central

McCowan, Brenda; Beisner, Brianne; Bliss-Moreau, Eliza; Vandeleest, Jessica; Jin, Jian; Hannibal, Darcy; Hsieh, Fushing

2016-01-01

Humans live in societies full of rich and complex relationships that influence health. The ability to improve human health requires a detailed understanding of the complex interplay of biological systems that contribute to disease processes, including the mechanisms underlying the influence of social contexts on these biological systems. A longitudinal computational systems science approach provides methods uniquely suited to elucidate the mechanisms by which social systems influence health and well-being by investigating how they modulate the interplay among biological systems across the lifespan. In the present report, we argue that nonhuman primate social systems are sufficiently complex to serve as model systems allowing for the development and refinement of both analytical and theoretical frameworks linking social life to health. Ultimately, developing systems science frameworks in nonhuman primate models will speed discovery of the mechanisms that subserve the relationship between social life and human health. PMID:27148103

Neuroimaging studies of social cognition in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Fujiwara, Hironobu; Yassin, Walid; Murai, Toshiya

2015-05-01

Impaired social cognition is considered a core contributor to unfavorable psychosocial functioning in schizophrenia. Rather than being a unitary process, social cognition is a collection of multifaceted processes that recruit multiple brain structures, thus structural and functional neuroimaging techniques are ideal methodologies for revealing the underlying pathophysiology of impaired social cognition. Many neuroimaging studies have suggested that in addition to white-matter deficits, schizophrenia is associated with decreased gray-matter volume in multiple brain areas, especially fronto-temporal and limbic regions. However, few schizophrenia studies have examined associations between brain abnormalities and social cognitive disabilities. During the last decade, we have investigated structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging, and our findings have been confirmed by us and others. By assessing different types of social cognitive abilities, structural abnormalities in multiple brain regions have been found to be associated with disabilities in social cognition, such as recognition of facial emotion, theory of mind, and empathy. These structural deficits have also been associated with alexithymia and quality of life in ways that are closely related to the social cognitive disabilities found in schizophrenia. Here, we overview a series of neuroimaging studies from our laboratory that exemplify current research into this topic, and discuss how it can be further tackled using recent advances in neuroimaging technology. © 2014 The Authors. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences © 2014 Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Dissociative Experience and Cultural Neuroscience: Narrative, Metaphor and Mechanism

PubMed Central

Kirmayer, Laurence J.

2016-01-01

Approaches to trance and possession in anthropology have tended to use outmoded models drawn from psychodynamic theory or treated such dissociative phenomena as purely discursive processes of attributing action and experience to agencies other than the self. Within psychology and psychiatry, understanding of dissociative disorders has been hindered by polemical “either/or” arguments: either dissociative disorders are real, spontaneous alterations in brain states that reflect basic neurobiological phenomena, or they are imaginary, socially constructed role performances dictated by interpersonal expectations, power dynamics and cultural scripts. In this paper, we outline an approach to dissociative phenomena, including trance, possession and spiritual and healing practices, that integrates the neuropsychological notions of underlying mechanism with sociocultural processes of the narrative construction and social presentation of the self. This integrative model, grounded in a cultural neuroscience, can advance ethnographic studies of dissociation and inform clinical approaches to dissociation through careful consideration of the impact of social context. PMID:18213511

Dissociative experience and cultural neuroscience: narrative, metaphor and mechanism.

PubMed

Seligman, Rebecca; Kirmayer, Laurence J

2008-03-01

Approaches to trance and possession in anthropology have tended to use outmoded models drawn from psychodynamic theory or treated such dissociative phenomena as purely discursive processes of attributing action and experience to agencies other than the self. Within psychology and psychiatry, understanding of dissociative disorders has been hindered by polemical "either/or" arguments: either dissociative disorders are real, spontaneous alterations in brain states that reflect basic neurobiological phenomena, or they are imaginary, socially constructed role performances dictated by interpersonal expectations, power dynamics and cultural scripts. In this paper, we outline an approach to dissociative phenomena, including trance, possession and spiritual and healing practices, that integrates the neuropsychological notions of underlying mechanism with sociocultural processes of the narrative construction and social presentation of the self. This integrative model, grounded in a cultural neuroscience, can advance ethnographic studies of dissociation and inform clinical approaches to dissociation through careful consideration of the impact of social context.

20 CFR 422.607 - Limited reopening of assignments.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Limited reopening of assignments. 422.607 Section 422.607 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.607 Limited...

20 CFR 422.607 - Limited reopening of assignments.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Limited reopening of assignments. 422.607 Section 422.607 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.607 Limited...

20 CFR 422.607 - Limited reopening of assignments.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Limited reopening of assignments. 422.607 Section 422.607 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.607 Limited...

20 CFR 422.607 - Limited reopening of assignments.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Limited reopening of assignments. 422.607 Section 422.607 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.607 Limited...

Mental Health and the Economy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferman, Louis A., Ed.; Gordus, Jeanne P., Ed.

This volume offers a collection of papers which explores the relationships between major economic changes and individual and collective mental and physical well-being, including individual distress, deviant behavior, and other symptoms of underlying pathology. The contributors examine the processes leading from macroeconomic change to social and…

Contagion on complex networks with persuasion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Wei-Min; Zhang, Li-Jie; Xu, Xin-Jian; Fu, Xinchu

2016-03-01

The threshold model has been widely adopted as a classic model for studying contagion processes on social networks. We consider asymmetric individual interactions in social networks and introduce a persuasion mechanism into the threshold model. Specifically, we study a combination of adoption and persuasion in cascading processes on complex networks. It is found that with the introduction of the persuasion mechanism, the system may become more vulnerable to global cascades, and the effects of persuasion tend to be more significant in heterogeneous networks than those in homogeneous networks: a comparison between heterogeneous and homogeneous networks shows that under weak persuasion, heterogeneous networks tend to be more robust against random shocks than homogeneous networks; whereas under strong persuasion, homogeneous networks are more stable. Finally, we study the effects of adoption and persuasion threshold heterogeneity on systemic stability. Though both heterogeneities give rise to global cascades, the adoption heterogeneity has an overwhelmingly stronger impact than the persuasion heterogeneity when the network connectivity is sufficiently dense.

Contagion on complex networks with persuasion

PubMed Central

Huang, Wei-Min; Zhang, Li-Jie; Xu, Xin-Jian; Fu, Xinchu

2016-01-01

The threshold model has been widely adopted as a classic model for studying contagion processes on social networks. We consider asymmetric individual interactions in social networks and introduce a persuasion mechanism into the threshold model. Specifically, we study a combination of adoption and persuasion in cascading processes on complex networks. It is found that with the introduction of the persuasion mechanism, the system may become more vulnerable to global cascades, and the effects of persuasion tend to be more significant in heterogeneous networks than those in homogeneous networks: a comparison between heterogeneous and homogeneous networks shows that under weak persuasion, heterogeneous networks tend to be more robust against random shocks than homogeneous networks; whereas under strong persuasion, homogeneous networks are more stable. Finally, we study the effects of adoption and persuasion threshold heterogeneity on systemic stability. Though both heterogeneities give rise to global cascades, the adoption heterogeneity has an overwhelmingly stronger impact than the persuasion heterogeneity when the network connectivity is sufficiently dense. PMID:27029498

Contagion on complex networks with persuasion.

PubMed

Huang, Wei-Min; Zhang, Li-Jie; Xu, Xin-Jian; Fu, Xinchu

2016-03-31

The threshold model has been widely adopted as a classic model for studying contagion processes on social networks. We consider asymmetric individual interactions in social networks and introduce a persuasion mechanism into the threshold model. Specifically, we study a combination of adoption and persuasion in cascading processes on complex networks. It is found that with the introduction of the persuasion mechanism, the system may become more vulnerable to global cascades, and the effects of persuasion tend to be more significant in heterogeneous networks than those in homogeneous networks: a comparison between heterogeneous and homogeneous networks shows that under weak persuasion, heterogeneous networks tend to be more robust against random shocks than homogeneous networks; whereas under strong persuasion, homogeneous networks are more stable. Finally, we study the effects of adoption and persuasion threshold heterogeneity on systemic stability. Though both heterogeneities give rise to global cascades, the adoption heterogeneity has an overwhelmingly stronger impact than the persuasion heterogeneity when the network connectivity is sufficiently dense.

Developmental changes of neuronal networks associated with strategic social decision-making.

PubMed

Steinmann, Elisabeth; Schmalor, Antonia; Prehn-Kristensen, Alexander; Wolff, Stephan; Galka, Andreas; Möhring, Jan; Gerber, Wolf-Dieter; Petermann, Franz; Stephani, Ulrich; Siniatchkin, Michael

2014-04-01

One of the important prerequisites for successful social interaction is the willingness of each individual to cooperate socially. Using the ultimatum game, several studies have demonstrated that the process of decision-making to cooperate or to defeat in interaction with a partner is associated with activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior insula (AI), and inferior frontal cortex (IFC). This study investigates developmental changes in this neuronal network. 15 healthy children (8-12 years), 15 adolescents (13-18 years) and 15 young adults (19-28 years) were investigated using the ultimatum game. Neuronal networks representing decision-making based on strategic thinking were characterized using functional MRI. In all age groups, the process of decision-making in reaction to unfair offers was associated with hemodynamic changes in similar regions. Compared with children, however, healthy adults and adolescents revealed greater activation in the IFC and the fusiform gyrus, as well as the nucleus accumbens. In contrast, healthy children displayed more activation in the AI, the dorsal part of the ACC, and the DLPFC. There were no differences in brain activations between adults and adolescents. The neuronal mechanisms underlying strategic social decision making are already developed by the age of eight. Decision-making based on strategic thinking is associated with age-dependent involvement of different brain regions. Neuronal networks underlying theory of mind and reward anticipation are more activated in adults and adolescents with regard to the increasing perspective taking with age. In relation to emotional reactivity and respective compensatory coping in younger ages, children have higher activations in a neuronal network associated with emotional processing and executive control. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

On cognitive ecology and the environmental factors that promote Alzheimer disease: lessons from Octodon degus (Rodentia: Octodontidae).

PubMed

Rivera, Daniela S; Inestrosa, Nibaldo C; Bozinovic, Francisco

2016-02-20

Cognitive ecologist posits that the more efficiently an animal uses information from the biotic and abiotic environment, the more adaptive are its cognitive abilities. Nevertheless, this approach does not test for natural neurodegenerative processes under field or experimental conditions, which may recover animals information processing and decision making and may explain, mechanistically, maladaptive behaviors. Here, we call for integrative approaches to explain the relationship between ultimate and proximate mechanisms behind social behavior. We highlight the importance of using the endemic caviomorph rodent Octodon degus as a valuable natural model for mechanistic studies of social behavior and to explain how physical environments can shape social experiences that might influence impaired cognitive abilities and the onset and progression of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer disease. We consequently suggest neuroecological approaches to examine how key elements of the environment may affect neural and cognitive mechanisms associated with learning, memory processes and brain structures involved in social behavior. We propose the following three core objectives of a program comprising interdisciplinary research in O. degus, namely: (1) to determine whether diet types provided after weaning can lead to cognitive impairment associated with spatial memory, learning and predisposing to develop Alzheimer disease in younger ages; (2) to examine if early life social experience has long term effects on behavior and cognitive responses and risk for development Alzheimer disease in later life and (3) To determine if an increase of social interactions in adult degu reared in different degree of social stressful conditions alter their behavior and cognitive responses.

Vietnam: expanding the social security system.

PubMed

Pruzin, D

1996-01-01

Viet Nam's shift toward a market-oriented economy has been associated with annual gross domestic product growth of more than 8% over the past 5 years. At the same time, the emergence of private-sector enterprises and subsequent closure of many state-run enterprises have had profound implications for Viet Nam's social protection systems. At present, only 5.6 million of the country's 33 million workers are covered under the state-run social insurance system. In 1995, the government moved to include private enterprises with 10 or more employees in its state benefits system. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has been working with the Vietnamese Government to design and implement a social security system that would extend coverage progressively to excluded sectors and provide support to workers who have become unemployed as a result of the economic transition process. At its Eighth National Congress, the Vietnamese Communist Party approved a 5-year social and economic plan calling for such an expansion of the social insurance system as well as for a guaranteed standard of living for pensioners. To facilitate anticipated changes, activities that were previously divided between the Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs and the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor have been assigned to the newly formed Vietnam Social Insurance (VSI) Organization. Under consideration is a plan to combine some VSI activities with those of the Vietnam Health Insurance Organization. The ILO will assist with training, computerization, and social security fund investing. Noncompliance is a major obstacle to planned expansion of the social security system; about 90% of private firms are still not paying into the system.

MDMA alters emotional processing and facilitates positive social interaction.

PubMed

Wardle, Margaret C; de Wit, Harriet

2014-10-01

±3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "ecstasy") produces "prosocial" effects, such as feelings of empathy and closeness, thought to be important to its abuse and its value in psychotherapy. However, it is not fully understood how MDMA alters basic emotional processes to produce these effects, or whether it produces corresponding changes in actual social behavior. Here, we examined how MDMA affects perceptions of and responses to emotional expressions, and tested its effects on behavior during a social interaction. We also examined whether MDMA's prosocial effects related to a measure of abuse liability. Over three sessions, 36 healthy volunteers with previous ecstasy use received MDMA (0.75, 1.5 mg/kg) and placebo under double-blind conditions. We measured (i) mood and cardiovascular effects, (ii) perception of and psychophysiological responses to emotional expressions, (iii) use of positive and negative words in a social interaction, and (iv) perceptions of an interaction partner. We then tested whether these effects predicted desire to take the drug again. MDMA slowed perception of angry expressions, increased psychophysiological responses to happy expressions, and increased positive word use and perceptions of partner empathy and regard in a social interaction. These effects were not strongly related to desire to take the drug again. MDMA alters basic emotional processes by slowing identification of negative emotions and increasing responses to positive emotions in others. Further, it positively affects behavior and perceptions during actual social interaction. These effects may contribute to the efficacy of MDMA in psychotherapy, but appear less closely related to its abuse potential.

Persistence of social inequalities in modern welfare states: Explanation of a paradox.

PubMed

Mackenbach, Johan P

2017-03-01

Social-epidemiological explanations of health inequalities usually take the existence of social inequality as a given and ignore the fundamental questions of why social inequality exists in the first place and why it is so persistent. I review here theories of the explanation of social inequality to identify the processes and/or structures responsible for its persistence. This paper is a review of the relevant sociological literature. The sociological literature suggests that what persists over long periods of time is not a specific manifestation of social inequality but a 'meta-phenomenon': the fact that there are different social positions, that these social positions give access to different levels of resources in some graded way and that the distribution of individuals over social positions follows rules that create inequalities in the opportunities for achieving a more advantaged social position. The durability of social inequality in this generic form can then be understood from the persistence of the underlying mechanisms and processes - for example, humans are driven by self-interest, while most objects of their striving are in short supply, therefore a struggle for rewards is present in all societies; humans are unequally endowed, therefore some are more successful in this struggle for resources than others; and the inequalities resulting from these individual level actions are structurally fixated through the intergenerational transmission of (dis)advantage, various societal institutions, and cultural factors. The sociological literature suggests that some mechanisms producing and perpetuating social inequality are more 'benign' than others. Health inequalities may be more than a consequence of social inequality and may play a more profound part by amplifying social inequalities.

Conceptual shifts needed to understand the dynamic interactions of genes, environment, epigenetics, social processes, and behavioral choices.

PubMed

Jackson, Fatimah L C; Niculescu, Mihai D; Jackson, Robert T

2013-10-01

Social and behavioral research in public health is often intimately tied to profound, but frequently neglected, biological influences from underlying genetic, environmental, and epigenetic events. The dynamic interplay between the life, social, and behavioral sciences often remains underappreciated and underutilized in addressing complex diseases and disorders and in developing effective remediation strategies. Using a case-study format, we present examples as to how the inclusion of genetic, environmental, and epigenetic data can augment social and behavioral health research by expanding the parameters of such studies, adding specificity to phenotypic assessments, and providing additional internal control in comparative studies. We highlight the important roles of gene-environment interactions and epigenetics as sources of phenotypic change and as a bridge between the life and social and behavioral sciences in the development of robust interdisciplinary analyses.

Social marketing of condoms in India.

PubMed

Thapa, S; Prasad, C V; Rao, P H; Severy, L J; Rao, S R

1994-01-01

Contraceptive social marketing is a way of supplying contraceptives to consumers who cannot afford to buy them at full market price, yet are not reached by the free public distribution program. The process involves supplying a subsidized product through existing commercial distribution networks, using the mass media and other retail marketing techniques to commercially advertise the products. India was the first country to introduce this concept to its family planning program. India's social marketing program is also the largest in the world. Over the past 25 years, total condom sales in India have expanded under the program from less than 10 million per year to more than one billion. The authors present an overview of India's social marketing initiative, describe the firms participating in the program, and summarize the lessons learned from the social marketing experience. Problems and prospects, and experiences and implications are discussed.

Illuminating the dark matter of social neuroscience: Considering the problem of social interaction from philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives.

PubMed

Przyrembel, Marisa; Smallwood, Jonathan; Pauen, Michael; Singer, Tania

2012-01-01

Successful human social interaction depends on our capacity to understand other people's mental states and to anticipate how they will react to our actions. Despite its importance to the human condition, the exact mechanisms underlying our ability to understand another's actions, feelings, and thoughts are still a matter of conjecture. Here, we consider this problem from philosophical, psychological, and neuroscientific perspectives. In a critical review, we demonstrate that attempts to draw parallels across these complementary disciplines is premature: The second-person perspective does not map directly to Interaction or Simulation theories, online social cognition, or shared neural network accounts underlying action observation or empathy. Nor does the third-person perspective map onto Theory-Theory (TT), offline social cognition, or the neural networks that support Theory of Mind (ToM). Moreover, we argue that important qualities of social interaction emerge through the reciprocal interplay of two independent agents whose unpredictable behavior requires that models of their partner's internal state be continually updated. This analysis draws attention to the need for paradigms in social neuroscience that allow two individuals to interact in a spontaneous and natural manner and to adapt their behavior and cognitions in a response contingent fashion due to the inherent unpredictability in another person's behavior. Even if such paradigms were implemented, it is possible that the specific neural correlates supporting such reciprocal interaction would not reflect computation unique to social interaction but rather the use of basic cognitive and emotional processes combined in a unique manner. Finally, we argue that given the crucial role of social interaction in human evolution, ontogeny, and every-day social life, a more theoretically and methodologically nuanced approach to the study of real social interaction will nevertheless help the field of social cognition to evolve.

Adolescents’ risky decision-making activates neural networks related to social cognition and cognitive control processes

PubMed Central

Rodrigo, María José; Padrón, Iván; de Vega, Manuel; Ferstl, Evelyn C.

2014-01-01

This study examines by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging the neural mechanisms underlying adolescents’ risk decision-making in social contexts. We hypothesize that the social context could engage brain regions associated with social cognition processes and developmental changes are also expected. Sixty participants (adolescents: 17–18, and young adults: 21–22 years old) read narratives describing typical situations of decision-making in the presence of peers. They were asked to make choices in risky situations (e.g., taking or refusing a drug) or ambiguous situations (e.g., eating a hamburger or a hotdog). Risky as compared to ambiguous scenarios activated bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ), bilateral middle temporal gyrus (MTG), right medial prefrontal cortex, and the precuneus bilaterally; i.e., brain regions related to social cognition processes, such as self-reflection and theory of mind (ToM). In addition, brain structures related to cognitive control were active [right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), bilateral orbitofrontal cortex], whereas no significant clusters were obtained in the reward system (ventral striatum). Choosing the dangerous option involved a further activation of control areas (ACC) and emotional and social cognition areas (temporal pole). Adolescents employed more neural resources than young adults in the right DLPFC and the right TPJ in risk situations. When choosing the dangerous option, young adults showed a further engagement in ToM related regions (bilateral MTG) and in motor control regions related to the planning of actions (pre-supplementary motor area). Finally, the right insula and the right superior temporal gyrus were more activated in women than in men, suggesting more emotional involvement and more intensive modeling of the others’ perspective in the risky conditions. These findings call for more comprehensive developmental accounts of decision-making in social contexts that incorporate the role of emotional and social cognition processes. PMID:24592227

Contextual Processing of Abstract Concepts Reveals Neural Representations of Non-Linguistic Semantic Content

PubMed Central

Wilson-Mendenhall, Christine D.; Simmons, W. Kyle; Martin, Alex; Barsalou, Lawrence W.

2014-01-01

Concepts develop for many aspects of experience, including abstract internal states and abstract social activities that do not refer to concrete entities in the world. The current study assessed the hypothesis that, like concrete concepts, distributed neural patterns of relevant, non-linguistic semantic content represent the meanings of abstract concepts. In a novel neuroimaging paradigm, participants processed two abstract concepts (convince, arithmetic) and two concrete concepts (rolling, red) deeply and repeatedly during a concept-scene matching task that grounded each concept in typical contexts. Using a catch trial design, neural activity associated with each concept word was separated from neural activity associated with subsequent visual scenes to assess activations underlying the detailed semantics of each concept. We predicted that brain regions underlying mentalizing and social cognition (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal sulcus) would become active to represent semantic content central to convince, whereas brain regions underlying numerical cognition (e.g., bilateral intraparietal sulcus) would become active to represent semantic content central to arithmetic. The results supported these predictions, suggesting that the meanings of abstract concepts arise from distributed neural systems that represent concept-specific content. PMID:23363408

Tracking Effects of Problematic Social Networking on Adolescent Psychopathology: The Mediating Role of Sleep Disruptions.

PubMed

Vernon, Lynette; Modecki, Kathryn L; Barber, Bonnie L

2017-01-01

Concerns are growing about adolescents' problematic social networking and possible links to depressed mood and externalizing behavior. Yet there remains little understanding of underlying processes that may account for these associations, including the mediating role of sleep disruption. This study tests this putative mediating process and examines change in problematic social networking investment and disrupted sleep, in relation to change in depressed mood and externalizing behavior. A sample of 874 students (41% male; 57.2% Caucasian; baseline M age = 14.4 years) from 27 high schools were surveyed. Participants' problematic social networking, sleep disruption, and psychopathology (depressed mood, externalizing behaviors) were measured annually over 3 years. Longitudinal mediation was tested using latent trajectories of problematic social networking use, sleep disruption, and psychopathology. Both problematic social networking and sleep disruption underwent positive linear growth over time. Adolescents who increasingly invested in social networking reported increased depressed mood, with around 53% of this association explained by the indirect effect of increased sleep disruptions. Further, adolescents who increasingly invested in social networking also reported increased externalizing behavior; some of this relation was explained (13%) via increased sleep disruptions. However an alternative model in which increased externalizing was associated with increased social networking, mediated by sleep disruptions, indicated a reciprocal relation of similar magnitude. It is important for parents, teachers, and psychologists to minimize the negative effects of social networking on adolescents' psychopathology. Interventions should potentially target promoting healthy sleep habits through reductions in social networking investment and rescheduling usage away from bedtime.

Social Relationships, Inflammation, and Cancer Survival.

PubMed

Boen, Courtney E; Barrow, David A; Bensen, Jeannette T; Farnan, Laura; Gerstel, Adrian; Hendrix, Laura H; Yang, Yang Claire

2018-05-01

Background: Social stressors, such as social relationship deficits, have been increasingly linked to chronic disease outcomes, including cancer. However, critical gaps exist in our understanding of the nature and strength of such links, as well as the underlying biological mechanisms relating social relationships to cancer progression and survival. Methods: Utilizing novel questionnaire and biomarker data from the UNC Health Registry/Cancer Survivorship Cohort, this study examines the associations between diverse measures of social support and mortality risk among individuals with cancer ( N = 1,004). We further assess the role of multiple serum markers of inflammation, including high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP), IL6, TNFα, and VEGF, as potential mediators in the social relationship-cancer link. Results: The findings revealed that one's appraisal of their social support was associated with cancer mortality, such that individuals reporting higher levels of social support satisfaction had lower mortality risk than individuals reporting lower levels of satisfaction. The amount of support received, on the other hand, was not predictive of cancer survival. We further found evidence that inflammatory processes may undergird the link between social support satisfaction and mortality among individuals with cancer, with individuals reporting higher levels of social support satisfaction having lower levels of CRP, IL6, and TNFα. Conclusions: These results provide new knowledge of the biosocial processes producing population disparities in cancer outcomes. Impact: Our study offers new insights for intervention efforts aimed at promoting social connectedness as a means for improving cancer survival. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 27(5); 541-9. ©2018 AACR . ©2018 American Association for Cancer Research.

Impression Management in Survey Responding: Easier for Collectivists or Individualists?

PubMed Central

Riemer, Hila; Shavitt, Sharon

2012-01-01

Three experiments indicate that when individualists and collectivists engage in impression management on self-reports, they do so through different psychological mechanism s. Collectivists do so through a relatively automatic process. Thus, they can impression manage even when cognitively busy. Individualists impression manage through a more effortful process. Therefore, they can do so only when the situation permits effortful processing. These findings highlight distinct conditions under which social norms may influence consumer self-reports across cultures. PMID:23175618

Partner Influence in Diet and Exercise Behaviors: Testing Behavior Modeling, Social Control, and Normative Body Size.

PubMed

Perry, Brea; Ciciurkaite, Gabriele; Brady, Christy Freadreacea; Garcia, Justin

2016-01-01

Previous research has documented social contagion in obesity and related health behaviors, but less is known about the social processes underlying these patterns. Focusing on married or cohabitating couples, we simultaneously explore three potential social mechanisms influencing obesity: normative body size, social control, and behavior modeling. We analyze the association between partner characteristics and the obesity-related health behaviors of focal respondents, comparing the effects of partners' body type, partners' attempts to manage respondents' eating behaviors, and partners' own health behaviors on respondents' health behaviors (physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, and fast food consumption). Data on 215 partners are extracted from a larger study of social mechanisms of obesity in family and community contexts conducted in 2011 in the United States. Negative binomial regression models indicate that partner behavior is significantly related to respondent behavior (p < .001), net of controls. These results are suggestive of a behavior modeling mechanism in obesity-related patterns of consumption and physical activity. In contrast, we find little support for the influence of normative body size or partner social control in this sample, though generalizations about the relevance of these processes may be inappropriate. These results underscore the importance of policies and interventions that target dyads and social groups, suggesting that adoption of exercise or diet modifications in one individual is likely to spread to others, creating a social environment characterized by mutual reinforcement of healthy behavior.

Effect of direct eye contact in PTSD related to interpersonal trauma: an fMRI study of activation of an innate alarm system.

PubMed

Steuwe, Carolin; Daniels, Judith K; Frewen, Paul A; Densmore, Maria; Pannasch, Sebastian; Beblo, Thomas; Reiss, Jeffrey; Lanius, Ruth A

2014-01-01

In healthy individuals, direct eye contact initially leads to activation of a fast subcortical pathway, which then modulates a cortical route eliciting social cognitive processes. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the neurobiological effects of direct eye-to-eye contact using a virtual reality paradigm in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to prolonged childhood abuse. We examined 16 healthy comparison subjects and 16 patients with a primary diagnosis of PTSD using a virtual reality functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm involving direct vs averted gaze (happy, sad, neutral) as developed by Schrammel et al. in 2009. Irrespective of the displayed emotion, controls exhibited an increased blood oxygenation level-dependent response during direct vs averted gaze within the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, left temporoparietal junction and right temporal pole. Under the same conditions, individuals with PTSD showed increased activation within the superior colliculus (SC)/periaqueductal gray (PAG) and locus coeruleus. Our findings suggest that healthy controls react to the exposure of direct gaze with an activation of a cortical route that enhances evaluative 'top-down' processes underlying social interactions. In individuals with PTSD, however, direct gaze leads to sustained activation of a subcortical route of eye-contact processing, an innate alarm system involving the SC and the underlying circuits of the PAG.

Effect of direct eye contact in PTSD related to interpersonal trauma: an fMRI study of activation of an innate alarm system

PubMed Central

Steuwe, Carolin; Daniels, Judith K.; Frewen, Paul A.; Densmore, Maria; Pannasch, Sebastian; Beblo, Thomas; Reiss, Jeffrey; Lanius, Ruth A.

2014-01-01

In healthy individuals, direct eye contact initially leads to activation of a fast subcortical pathway, which then modulates a cortical route eliciting social cognitive processes. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the neurobiological effects of direct eye-to-eye contact using a virtual reality paradigm in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to prolonged childhood abuse. We examined 16 healthy comparison subjects and 16 patients with a primary diagnosis of PTSD using a virtual reality functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm involving direct vs averted gaze (happy, sad, neutral) as developed by Schrammel et al. in 2009. Irrespective of the displayed emotion, controls exhibited an increased blood oxygenation level-dependent response during direct vs averted gaze within the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, left temporoparietal junction and right temporal pole. Under the same conditions, individuals with PTSD showed increased activation within the superior colliculus (SC)/periaqueductal gray (PAG) and locus coeruleus. Our findings suggest that healthy controls react to the exposure of direct gaze with an activation of a cortical route that enhances evaluative ‘top–down’ processes underlying social interactions. In individuals with PTSD, however, direct gaze leads to sustained activation of a subcortical route of eye-contact processing, an innate alarm system involving the SC and the underlying circuits of the PAG. PMID:22977200

What Do I Want to Be with My PhD? The Roles of Personal Values and Structural Dynamics in Shaping the Career Interests of Recent Biomedical Science PhD Graduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gibbs, Kenneth D., Jr.; Griffin, Kimberly A.

2013-01-01

Interest in faculty careers decreases as graduate training progresses; however, the process underlying career-interest formation remains poorly defined. To better understand this process and whether/how it differs across social identity (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender), we conducted focus groups with 38 biomedical scientists who received PhDs…

Processes of inclusion and adverse incorporation: oil palm and agrarian change in Sumatra, Indonesia.

PubMed

McCarthy, John

2010-01-01

Changes in globalised agriculture raise critical questions as rapid agricultural development leads to widespread social and environmental transformation. With increased global demand for vegetable oils and biofuel, in Indonesia the area under oil palm has doubled over the last decade. This paper presents a case study of how micro-processes that are linked to wider dynamics shape oil palm related agrarian change in villages in Sumatra, Indonesia. It pursues related questions regarding the impact of agribusiness-driven agriculture, the fate of smallholders experiencing contemporary agrarian transition, and the impact of increased demand for vegetable oils and biofuels on agrarian structures in Sumatra. It argues that the paths of agrarian change are highly uneven and depend on how changing livelihood strategies are enabled or constrained by economic, social and political relations that vary over time and space. In contrast to simplifying narratives of inclusion/exclusion, it argues that outcomes depend on the terms under which smallholders engage with oil palm. Distinguishing between exogenous processes of agribusiness expansion and endogenous commodity market expansion, it finds each is associated with characteristic processes of change. It concludes that the way successive policy interventions have worked with the specific characteristics of oil palm have cumulatively shaped the space where agrarian change occurs in Sumatra.

Abnormal Neural Activation to Faces in the Parents of Children with Autism.

PubMed

Yucel, G H; Belger, A; Bizzell, J; Parlier, M; Adolphs, R; Piven, J

2015-12-01

Parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show subtle deficits in aspects of social behavior and face processing, which resemble those seen in ASD, referred to as the "Broad Autism Phenotype " (BAP). While abnormal activation in ASD has been reported in several brain structures linked to social cognition, little is known regarding patterns in the BAP. We compared autism parents with control parents with no family history of ASD using 2 well-validated face-processing tasks. Results indicated increased activation in the autism parents to faces in the amygdala (AMY) and the fusiform gyrus (FG), 2 core face-processing regions. Exploratory analyses revealed hyper-activation of lateral occipital cortex (LOC) bilaterally in autism parents with aloof personality ("BAP+"). Findings suggest that abnormalities of the AMY and FG are related to underlying genetic liability for ASD, whereas abnormalities in the LOC and right FG are more specific to behavioral features of the BAP. Results extend our knowledge of neural circuitry underlying abnormal face processing beyond those previously reported in ASD to individuals with shared genetic liability for autism and a subset of genetically related individuals with the BAP. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The Condition for Generous Trust.

PubMed

Shinya, Obayashi; Yusuke, Inagaki; Hiroki, Takikawa

2016-01-01

Trust has been considered the "cement" of a society and is much studied in sociology and other social sciences. Most studies, however, have neglected one important aspect of trust: it involves an act of forgiving and showing tolerance toward another's failure. In this study, we refer to this concept as "generous trust" and examine the conditions under which generous trust becomes a more viable option when compared to other types of trust. We investigate two settings. First, we introduce two types of uncertainties: uncertainty as to whether trustees have the intention to cooperate, and uncertainty as to whether trustees have enough competence to accomplish the entrusted tasks. Second, we examine the manner in which trust functions in a broader social context, one that involves matching and commitment processes. Since we expect generosity or forgiveness to work differently in the matching and commitment processes, we must differentiate trust strategies into generous trust in the matching process and that in the commitment process. Our analytical strategy is two-fold. First, we analyze the "modified" trust game that incorporates the two types of uncertainties without the matching process. This simplified setting enables us to derive mathematical results using game theory, thereby giving basic insight into the trust mechanism. Second, we investigate socially embedded trust relationships in contexts involving the matching and commitment processes, using agent-based simulation. Results show that uncertainty about partner's intention and competence makes generous trust a viable option. In contrast, too much uncertainty undermines the possibility of generous trust. Furthermore, a strategy that is too generous cannot stand alone. Generosity should be accompanied with moderate punishment. As for socially embedded trust relationships, generosity functions differently in the matching process versus the commitment process. Indeed, these two types of generous trust coexist, and their coexistence enables a society to function well.

20 CFR 422.604 - Request for detailed information.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Request for detailed information. 422.604 Section 422.604 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.604 Request for...

20 CFR 422.604 - Request for detailed information.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Request for detailed information. 422.604 Section 422.604 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.604 Request for...

20 CFR 422.604 - Request for detailed information.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Request for detailed information. 422.604 Section 422.604 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.604 Request for...

20 CFR 422.604 - Request for detailed information.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Request for detailed information. 422.604 Section 422.604 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.604 Request for...

The Biomedicalization of Aging: Dangers and Dilemmas.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Estes, Carroll L.; Binney, Elizabeth A.

1989-01-01

Sees "biomedicalization of aging" as socially constructing old age as process of decremental physical decline and placing aging under domain and control of biomedicine. Examines effects of medicalization on scientific enterprise and development of knowledge base in aging, status and work of professions, policy, and public perception.…

Psychological and Biological Perspectives on Altruism.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoffman, Martin L.

1978-01-01

Explores the case for viewing altruism as an inherent part of human nature. Postulates an altruistic disposition or motive to act which is under the control of perceptual and cognitive processes. Presents psychological evidence complementing this view. Discusses social implications of a biological basis for human altruism. (RH)

The Culture of Mediocrity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hermanowicz, Joseph C.

2013-01-01

Select groups and organizations embrace practices that perpetuate their inferiority. The result is the phenomenon we call "mediocrity." This article examines the conditions under which mediocrity is selected and maintained by groups over time. Mediocrity is maintained by a key social process: the marginalization of the adept, which is a…

Scientific thinking in elementary school: Children's social cognition and their epistemological understanding promote experimentation skills.

PubMed

Osterhaus, Christopher; Koerber, Susanne; Sodian, Beate

2017-03-01

Do social cognition and epistemological understanding promote elementary school children's experimentation skills? To investigate this question, 402 children (ages 8, 9, and 10) in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades were assessed for their experimentation skills, social cognition (advanced theory of mind [AToM]), epistemological understanding (understanding the nature of science), and general information-processing skills (inhibition, intelligence, and language abilities) in a whole-class testing procedure. A multiple indicators multiple causes model revealed a significant influence of social cognition (AToM) on epistemological understanding, and a McNemar test suggested that children's development of AToM is an important precursor for the emergence of an advanced, mature epistemological understanding. Children's epistemological understanding, in turn, predicted their experimentation skills. Importantly, this relation was independent of the common influences of general information processing. Significant relations between experimentation skills and inhibition, and between epistemological understanding, intelligence, and language abilities emerged, suggesting that general information processing contributes to the conceptual development that is involved in scientific thinking. The model of scientific thinking that was tested in this study (social cognition and epistemological understanding promote experimentation skills) fitted the data significantly better than 2 alternative models, which assumed nonspecific, equally strong relations between all constructs under investigation. Our results support the conclusion that social cognition plays a foundational role in the emergence of children's epistemological understanding, which in turn is closely related to the development of experimentation skills. Our findings have significant implications for the teaching of scientific thinking in elementary school and they stress the importance of children's epistemological understanding in scientific-thinking processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Co-ordinated structural and functional covariance in the adolescent brain underlies face processing performance.

PubMed

Shaw, Daniel Joel; Mareček, Radek; Grosbras, Marie-Helene; Leonard, Gabriel; Pike, G Bruce; Paus, Tomáš

2016-04-01

Our ability to process complex social cues presented by faces improves during adolescence. Using multivariate analyses of neuroimaging data collected longitudinally from a sample of 38 adolescents (17 males) when they were 10, 11.5, 13 and 15 years old, we tested the possibility that there exists parallel variations in the structural and functional development of neural systems supporting face processing. By combining measures of task-related functional connectivity and brain morphology, we reveal that both the structural covariance and functional connectivity among 'distal' nodes of the face-processing network engaged by ambiguous faces increase during this age range. Furthermore, we show that the trajectory of increasing functional connectivity between the distal nodes occurs in tandem with the development of their structural covariance. This demonstrates a tight coupling between functional and structural maturation within the face-processing network. Finally, we demonstrate that increased functional connectivity is associated with age-related improvements of face-processing performance, particularly in females. We suggest that our findings reflect greater integration among distal elements of the neural systems supporting the processing of facial expressions. This, in turn, might facilitate an enhanced extraction of social information from faces during a time when greater importance is placed on social interactions. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Associative Account of Self-Cognition: Extended Forward Model and Multi-Layer Structure

PubMed Central

Sugiura, Motoaki

2013-01-01

The neural correlates of “self” identified by neuroimaging studies differ depending on which aspects of self are addressed. Here, three categories of self are proposed based on neuroimaging findings and an evaluation of the likely underlying cognitive processes. The physical self, representing self-agency of action, body-ownership, and bodily self-recognition, is supported by the sensory and motor association cortices located primarily in the right hemisphere. The interpersonal self, representing the attention or intentions of others directed at the self, is supported by several amodal association cortices in the dorsomedial frontal and lateral posterior cortices. The social self, representing the self as a collection of context-dependent social-values, is supported by the ventral aspect of the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex. Despite differences in the underlying cognitive processes and neural substrates, all three categories of self are likely to share the computational characteristics of the forward model, which is underpinned by internal schema or learned associations between one’s behavioral output and the consequential input. Additionally, these three categories exist within a hierarchical layer structure based on developmental processes that updates the schema through the attribution of prediction error. In this account, most of the association cortices critically contribute to some aspect of the self through associative learning while the primary regions involved shift from the lateral to the medial cortices in a sequence from the physical to the interpersonal to the social self. PMID:24009578

Cognitive Load Does Not Affect the Behavioral and Cognitive Foundations of Social Cooperation.

PubMed

Mieth, Laura; Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel

2016-01-01

The present study serves to test whether the cognitive mechanisms underlying social cooperation are affected by cognitive load. Participants interacted with trustworthy-looking and untrustworthy-looking partners in a sequential Prisoner's Dilemma Game. Facial trustworthiness was manipulated to stimulate expectations about the future behavior of the partners which were either violated or confirmed by the partners' cheating or cooperation during the game. In a source memory test, participants were required to recognize the partners and to classify them as cheaters or cooperators. A multinomial model was used to disentangle item memory, source memory and guessing processes. We found an expectancy-congruent bias toward guessing that trustworthy-looking partners were more likely to be associated with cooperation than untrustworthy-looking partners. Source memory was enhanced for cheating that violated the participants' positive expectations about trustworthy-looking partners. We were interested in whether or not this expectancy-violation effect-that helps to revise unjustified expectations about trustworthy-looking partners-depends on cognitive load induced via a secondary continuous reaction time task. Although this secondary task interfered with working memory processes in a validation study, both the expectancy-congruent guessing bias as well as the expectancy-violation effect were obtained with and without cognitive load. These findings support the hypothesis that the expectancy-violation effect is due to a simple mechanism that does not rely on demanding elaborative processes. We conclude that most cognitive mechanisms underlying social cooperation presumably operate automatically so that they remain unaffected by cognitive load.

The neural substrates of social influence on decision making.

PubMed

Tomlin, Damon; Nedic, Andrea; Prentice, Deborah A; Holmes, Philip; Cohen, Jonathan D

2013-01-01

The mechanisms that govern human learning and decision making under uncertainty have been the focus of intense behavioral and, more recently, neuroscientific investigation. Substantial progress has been made in building models of the processes involved, and identifying underlying neural mechanisms using simple, two-alternative forced choice decision tasks. However, less attention has been given to how social information influences these processes, and the neural systems that mediate this influence. Here we sought to address these questions by using tasks similar to ones that have been used to study individual decision making behavior, and adding conditions in which participants were given trial-by-trial information about the performance of other individuals (their choices and/or their rewards) simultaneously playing the same tasks. We asked two questions: How does such information about the behavior of others influence performance in otherwise simple decision tasks, and what neural systems mediate this influence? We found that bilateral insula exhibited a parametric relationship to the degree of misalignment of the individual's performance with those of others in the group. Furthermore, activity in the bilateral insula significantly predicted participants' subsequent choices to align their behavior with others in the group when they were misaligned either in their choices (independent of success) or their degree of success (independent of specific choices). These findings add to the growing body of empirical data suggesting that the insula participates in an important way in social information processing and decision making.

Cognitive Load Does Not Affect the Behavioral and Cognitive Foundations of Social Cooperation

PubMed Central

Mieth, Laura; Bell, Raoul; Buchner, Axel

2016-01-01

The present study serves to test whether the cognitive mechanisms underlying social cooperation are affected by cognitive load. Participants interacted with trustworthy-looking and untrustworthy-looking partners in a sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma Game. Facial trustworthiness was manipulated to stimulate expectations about the future behavior of the partners which were either violated or confirmed by the partners’ cheating or cooperation during the game. In a source memory test, participants were required to recognize the partners and to classify them as cheaters or cooperators. A multinomial model was used to disentangle item memory, source memory and guessing processes. We found an expectancy-congruent bias toward guessing that trustworthy-looking partners were more likely to be associated with cooperation than untrustworthy-looking partners. Source memory was enhanced for cheating that violated the participants’ positive expectations about trustworthy-looking partners. We were interested in whether or not this expectancy-violation effect—that helps to revise unjustified expectations about trustworthy-looking partners—depends on cognitive load induced via a secondary continuous reaction time task. Although this secondary task interfered with working memory processes in a validation study, both the expectancy-congruent guessing bias as well as the expectancy-violation effect were obtained with and without cognitive load. These findings support the hypothesis that the expectancy-violation effect is due to a simple mechanism that does not rely on demanding elaborative processes. We conclude that most cognitive mechanisms underlying social cooperation presumably operate automatically so that they remain unaffected by cognitive load. PMID:27630597

Problems with measuring satisfaction with social care.

PubMed

Willis, Rosalind; Evandrou, Maria; Pathak, Pathik; Khambhaita, Priya

2016-09-01

The measurement of customer satisfaction has become widespread in both healthcare and social care services, and is informative for performance monitoring and service development. Satisfaction with social care services is routinely measured with a single question on overall satisfaction with care, comprising part of the Adult Social Care Survey. The measurement of satisfaction has been problematised, and existing satisfaction measures are known to be under-theorised. In this article, the process of making an evaluation of satisfaction with social care services is first informed by a literature review of the theoretical background, and second examined through qualitative interviews conducted in 2012-2013 with 82 service users and family carers in Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton. Participants in this study were from white British and South Asian backgrounds, and the influence of ethnicity in the process of satisfaction evaluation is discussed. The findings show that the majority of participants selected a positive satisfaction rating even though both positive and negative experiences with services were described in their narratives. It is recommended that surveys provide opportunity for service users and family carers to elaborate on their satisfaction ratings. This addition will provide more scope for services to review their strengths and weaknesses. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Gender Differences in Behavioral and Neural Responses to Unfairness Under Social Pressure.

PubMed

Zheng, Li; Ning, Reipeng; Li, Lin; Wei, Chunli; Cheng, Xuemei; Zhou, Chu; Guo, Xiuyan

2017-10-18

Numerous studies have revealed the key role of social pressure on individuals' decision-making processes. However, the impact of social pressure on unfairness-related decision-making processes remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated how social pressure modulated men's and women's responses in an ultimatum game. Twenty women and eighteen men played the ultimatum game as responders in the scanner, where fair and unfair offers were tendered by proposers acting alone (low pressure) or by proposers endorsed by three supporters (high pressure). Results showed that men rejected more, whereas women accepted more unfair offers in the high versus low pressure context. Neurally, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex activation in women positively predicted their acceptance rate difference between contexts. In men, stronger right anterior insula activation and increased connectivity between right anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex were observed when they receiving unfair offers in the high than low pressure context. Furthermore, more bilateral anterior insula and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activations were found when men rejected (relative to accepted) unfair offers in the high than low pressure context. These findings highlighted gender differences in the modulation of behavioral and neural responses to unfairness by social pressure.

Contemporary Test Validity in Theory and Practice: A Primer for Discipline-Based Education Researchers.

PubMed

Reeves, Todd D; Marbach-Ad, Gili

2016-01-01

Most discipline-based education researchers (DBERs) were formally trained in the methods of scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and physics, rather than social science disciplines such as psychology and education. As a result, DBERs may have never taken specific courses in the social science research methodology--either quantitative or qualitative--on which their scholarship often relies so heavily. One particular aspect of (quantitative) social science research that differs markedly from disciplines such as biology and chemistry is the instrumentation used to quantify phenomena. In response, this Research Methods essay offers a contemporary social science perspective on test validity and the validation process. The instructional piece explores the concepts of test validity, the validation process, validity evidence, and key threats to validity. The essay also includes an in-depth example of a validity argument and validation approach for a test of student argument analysis. In addition to DBERs, this essay should benefit practitioners (e.g., lab directors, faculty members) in the development, evaluation, and/or selection of instruments for their work assessing students or evaluating pedagogical innovations. © 2016 T. D. Reeves and G. Marbach-Ad. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2016 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

A Component-Based Diffusion Model With Structural Diversity for Social Networks.

PubMed

Qing Bao; Cheung, William K; Yu Zhang; Jiming Liu

2017-04-01

Diffusion on social networks refers to the process where opinions are spread via the connected nodes. Given a set of observed information cascades, one can infer the underlying diffusion process for social network analysis. The independent cascade model (IC model) is a widely adopted diffusion model where a node is assumed to be activated independently by any one of its neighbors. In reality, how a node will be activated also depends on how its neighbors are connected and activated. For instance, the opinions from the neighbors of the same social group are often similar and thus redundant. In this paper, we extend the IC model by considering that: 1) the information coming from the connected neighbors are similar and 2) the underlying redundancy can be modeled using a dynamic structural diversity measure of the neighbors. Our proposed model assumes each node to be activated independently by different communities (or components) of its parent nodes, each weighted by its effective size. An expectation maximization algorithm is derived to infer the model parameters. We compare the performance of the proposed model with the basic IC model and its variants using both synthetic data sets and a real-world data set containing news stories and Web blogs. Our empirical results show that incorporating the community structure of neighbors and the structural diversity measure into the diffusion model significantly improves the accuracy of the model, at the expense of only a reasonable increase in run-time.

Contextual and social influences on valuation and choice.

PubMed

Engelmann, Jan B; Hein, Grit

2013-01-01

To survive in our complex environment, we have to adapt to changing contexts. Prior research that investigated how contextual changes are processed in the human brain has demonstrated important modulatory influences on multiple cognitive processes underlying decision-making, including perceptual judgments, working memory, as well as cognitive and attentional control. However, in everyday life, the importance of context is even more obvious during economic and social interactions, which often have implicit rule sets that need to be recognized by a decision-maker. Here, we review recent evidence from an increasing number of studies in the fields of Neuroeconomics and Social Neuroscience that investigate the neurobiological basis of contextual effects on valuation and social choice. Contrary to the assumptions of rational choice theory, multiple contextual factors, such as the availability of alternative choice options, shifts in reference point, and social context, have been shown to modulate behavior, as well as signals in task-relevant neural networks. A consistent picture that emerges from neurobiological results is that valuation-related activity in striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex is highly context dependent during both social and nonsocial choice. Alternative approaches to model and explain choice behavior, such as comparison-based choice models, as well as implications for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Influences of Social Capital on Health and Well-Being from Qualitative Approach

PubMed Central

Yamaguchi, Ayano

2013-01-01

The social capital surrounding health including health and well-being, the way in which they function as multi-dimensional constructs, and the potential stability of relationships among the social capital were examined across universities in Hawaii and Japan. Maintaining or strengthening social factors of collective and individual health and well-being is a core factor of social capital and is instrumental in reducing worry and increasing trust. Qualitative in-depth interviews with 64 male and female college students (32 college students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa; 32 college students at Reitaku University in Japan) were used to collect information on social capital of health and well-being and associated concepts; students’ perceptions were grouped under 11 themes. The data indicates that social capital has an impact on college students’ health and well-being. They also suggest that differences in health status and well-being can be plausibly attributed to processes associated with socio-environmental circumstances and situations. PMID:23985117

Lesion Mapping the Four-Factor Structure of Emotional Intelligence

PubMed Central

Operskalski, Joachim T.; Paul, Erick J.; Colom, Roberto; Barbey, Aron K.; Grafman, Jordan

2015-01-01

Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to an individual’s ability to process and respond to emotions, including recognizing the expression of emotions in others, using emotions to enhance thought and decision making, and regulating emotions to drive effective behaviors. Despite their importance for goal-directed social behavior, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying specific facets of EI. Here, we report findings from a study investigating the neural bases of these specific components for EI in a sample of 130 combat veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury. We examined the neural mechanisms underlying experiential (perceiving and using emotional information) and strategic (understanding and managing emotions) facets of EI. Factor scores were submitted to voxel-based lesion symptom mapping to elucidate their neural substrates. The results indicate that two facets of EI (perceiving and managing emotions) engage common and distinctive neural systems, with shared dependence on the social knowledge network, and selective engagement of the orbitofrontal and parietal cortex for strategic aspects of emotional information processing. The observed pattern of findings suggests that sub-facets of experiential and strategic EI can be characterized as separable but related processes that depend upon a core network of brain structures within frontal, temporal and parietal cortex. PMID:26858627

Social Cognition in Williams Syndrome: Relations between Performance on the Social Attribution Task and Cognitive and Behavioral Characteristics.

PubMed

van der Fluit, Faye; Gaffrey, Michael S; Klein-Tasman, Bonita P

2012-01-01

Williams syndrome (WS) is a developmental disorder of genetic origin, with characteristic cognitive and personality profiles. Studies of WS point to an outgoing and gregarious personality style, often contrasted with autism spectrum disorders; however, recent research has uncovered underlying social reciprocity difficulties in people with WS. Social information processing difficulties that underlie these social reciprocity difficulties have been sparsely examined. Participants in the current study included 24 children with WS ages 8 through 15. A lab-based measure of social perception and social cognition was administered (Social Attribution Test), as well as an intellectual functioning measure (KBIT-II) and parent reports of communication and reciprocal social skills (Social Communication Questionnaire, Social Responsiveness Scale). Relations between social cognition, cognitive abilities, and social-communication were examined. Results demonstrated relations between parent-reported social reciprocity and the typicality of the responses provided in the lab-based measure, even once variability in intellectual functioning was taken into account. Specifically, those individuals who produced narratives in response to the social attribution task (SAT) that were more similar to those described in previous studies of typically developing individuals were also reported to have fewer social reciprocity difficulties in the real world setting as reported by parents. In addition, a significant improvement in performance on the SAT was seen with added scaffolding, particularly for participants with stronger intellectual functioning. These findings indicate that difficulties interpreting the social dynamics between others in ambiguous situations may contribute to the social relationship difficulties observed in people with WS, above and beyond the role of intellectual functioning. Exploratory analyses indicated that performance by individuals with stronger intellectual functioning is improved with additional structure to a greater degree than for those with weaker intellectual functioning. Interventions that specifically target these social information processing of individuals with WS would likely be beneficial.

Social Cognition in Williams Syndrome: Relations between Performance on the Social Attribution Task and Cognitive and Behavioral Characteristics

PubMed Central

van der Fluit, Faye; Gaffrey, Michael S.; Klein-Tasman, Bonita P.

2012-01-01

Williams syndrome (WS) is a developmental disorder of genetic origin, with characteristic cognitive and personality profiles. Studies of WS point to an outgoing and gregarious personality style, often contrasted with autism spectrum disorders; however, recent research has uncovered underlying social reciprocity difficulties in people with WS. Social information processing difficulties that underlie these social reciprocity difficulties have been sparsely examined. Participants in the current study included 24 children with WS ages 8 through 15. A lab-based measure of social perception and social cognition was administered (Social Attribution Test), as well as an intellectual functioning measure (KBIT-II) and parent reports of communication and reciprocal social skills (Social Communication Questionnaire, Social Responsiveness Scale). Relations between social cognition, cognitive abilities, and social-communication were examined. Results demonstrated relations between parent-reported social reciprocity and the typicality of the responses provided in the lab-based measure, even once variability in intellectual functioning was taken into account. Specifically, those individuals who produced narratives in response to the social attribution task (SAT) that were more similar to those described in previous studies of typically developing individuals were also reported to have fewer social reciprocity difficulties in the real world setting as reported by parents. In addition, a significant improvement in performance on the SAT was seen with added scaffolding, particularly for participants with stronger intellectual functioning. These findings indicate that difficulties interpreting the social dynamics between others in ambiguous situations may contribute to the social relationship difficulties observed in people with WS, above and beyond the role of intellectual functioning. Exploratory analyses indicated that performance by individuals with stronger intellectual functioning is improved with additional structure to a greater degree than for those with weaker intellectual functioning. Interventions that specifically target these social information processing of individuals with WS would likely be beneficial. PMID:22737137

Evaluating landscape health: Integrating societal goals and biophysical process

USGS Publications Warehouse

Rapport, D.J.; Gaudet, C.; Karr, J.R.; Baron, Jill S.; Bohlen, C.; Jackson, W.; Jones, Bruce; Naiman, R.J.; Norton, B.; Pollock, M. M.

1998-01-01

Evaluating landscape change requires the integration of the social and natural sciences. The social sciences contribute to articulating societal values that govern landscape change, while the natural sciences contribute to understanding the biophysical processes that are influenced by human activity and result in ecological change. Building upon Aldo Leopold's criteria for landscape health, the roles of societal values and biophysical processes in shaping the landscape are explored. A framework is developed for indicators of landscape health and integrity. Indicators of integrity are useful in measuring biological condition relative to the condition in landscapes largely unaffected by human activity, while indicators of health are useful in evaluating changes in highly modified landscapes. Integrating societal goals and biophysical processes requires identification of ecological services to be sustained within a given landscape. It also requires the proper choice of temporal and spatial scales. Societal values are based upon inter-generational concerns at regional scales (e.g. soil and ground water quality). Assessing the health and integrity of the environment at the landscape scale over a period of decades best integrates societal values with underlying biophysical processes. These principles are illustrated in two contrasting case studies: (1) the South Platte River study demonstrates the role of complex biophysical processes acting at a distance; and (2) the Kissimmee River study illustrates the critical importance of social, cultural and economic concerns in the design of remedial action plans. In both studies, however, interactions between the social and the biophysical governed the landscape outcomes. The legacy of evolution and the legacy of culture requires integration for the purpose of effectively coping with environmental change.

Emotion Unchained: Facial Expression Modulates Gaze Cueing under Cognitive Load.

PubMed

Pecchinenda, Anna; Petrucci, Manuel

2016-01-01

Direction of eye gaze cues spatial attention, and typically this cueing effect is not modulated by the expression of a face unless top-down processes are explicitly or implicitly involved. To investigate the role of cognitive control on gaze cueing by emotional faces, participants performed a gaze cueing task with happy, angry, or neutral faces under high (i.e., counting backward by 7) or low cognitive load (i.e., counting forward by 2). Results show that high cognitive load enhances gaze cueing effects for angry facial expressions. In addition, cognitive load reduces gaze cueing for neutral faces, whereas happy facial expressions and gaze affected object preferences regardless of load. This evidence clearly indicates a differential role of cognitive control in processing gaze direction and facial expression, suggesting that under typical conditions, when we shift attention based on social cues from another person, cognitive control processes are used to reduce interference from emotional information.

Emotion Unchained: Facial Expression Modulates Gaze Cueing under Cognitive Load

PubMed Central

Petrucci, Manuel

2016-01-01

Direction of eye gaze cues spatial attention, and typically this cueing effect is not modulated by the expression of a face unless top-down processes are explicitly or implicitly involved. To investigate the role of cognitive control on gaze cueing by emotional faces, participants performed a gaze cueing task with happy, angry, or neutral faces under high (i.e., counting backward by 7) or low cognitive load (i.e., counting forward by 2). Results show that high cognitive load enhances gaze cueing effects for angry facial expressions. In addition, cognitive load reduces gaze cueing for neutral faces, whereas happy facial expressions and gaze affected object preferences regardless of load. This evidence clearly indicates a differential role of cognitive control in processing gaze direction and facial expression, suggesting that under typical conditions, when we shift attention based on social cues from another person, cognitive control processes are used to reduce interference from emotional information. PMID:27959925

Exploring ecological, emotional and social levers of self-rated health for urban gardeners and non-gardeners: A path analysis.

PubMed

Litt, J S; Schmiege, S J; Hale, J W; Buchenau, M; Sancar, F

2015-11-01

The social, emotional, and mental health benefits associated with gardening have been well documented. However, the processes underlying the relationship between garden participation and improvements in health status have not been sufficiently studied. Using population-based survey data (n = 469 urban residents), objective street environment data, and area-level measures, this research used a path analytic framework to examine several theoretically based constructs as mediators between gardening history and self-reported health. The results showed that garden participation influenced health status indirectly through social involvement with one's community, perceived aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood, and perceived collective efficacy. Gardeners, compared to non-gardeners, reported higher ratings of neighborhood aesthetics and more involvement in social activities, whereas aesthetics and involvement were associated with higher ratings of collective efficacy and neighborhood attachment. Collective efficacy, but not neighborhood attachment, predicted self-rated health. Gardening also directly influenced improved fruit and vegetable intake. The physical and social qualities of garden participation may therefore stimulate a range of interpersonal and social responses that are supportive of positive ratings of health. This research suggests that community planners and health professionals should aim to strengthen the social and aesthetic relationships while designing environments and policies as a way to ignite intermediate processes that may lead to improved health status. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Exploring ecological, emotional and social levers of self-rated health for urban gardeners and non-gardeners: A path analysis

PubMed Central

Schmiege, S; Hale, JW; Buchenau, M.; Sancar, F.

2015-01-01

Rationale The social, emotional, and mental health benefits associated with gardening have been well documented. However, the processes underlying the relationship between garden participation and improvements in health status have not been sufficiently studied. Methods Using population-based survey data (n = 469 urban residents), objective street environment data, and area-level measures, this research used a path analytic framework to examine several theoretically based constructs as mediators between gardening history and self-reported health. Results The results showed that garden participation influenced health status indirectly through social involvement with one’s community, perceived aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood, and perceived collective efficacy. Gardeners, compared to non-gardeners, reported higher ratings of neighborhood aesthetics and more involvement in social activities, whereas aesthetics and involvement were associated with higher ratings of collective efficacy and neighborhood attachment. Collective efficacy, but not neighborhood attachment, predicted self-rated health. Gardening also directly influenced improved fruit and vegetable intake. The physical and social qualities of garden participation may therefore stimulate a range of interpersonal and social responses that are supportive of positive ratings of health. Conclusion This research suggests that community planners and health professionals should aim to strengthen the social and aesthetic relationships while designing environments and policies as a way to ignite intermediate processes that may lead to improved health status. PMID:26372933

Bullying and Social Anxiety in Chinese Children: Moderating Roles of Trait Resilience and Psychological Suzhi.

PubMed

Wu, Lili; Zhang, Dajun; Cheng, Gang; Hu, Tianqiang

2018-02-01

Research examining the relationship between bullying victimization and social anxiety has mainly been conducted in Western countries, and little is known about the mechanisms underlying this relationship. This study explores the correlation between bullying victimization and social anxiety in a Chinese context and determines the moderating roles of psychological suzhi (a mental quality characterized by being steady, essential and implicit that affects adaptive, developmental, and creative behavior) and trait resilience among victims of bullying. Data were obtained from a stratified sample of 1903 children in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. All participants completed measures of bullying victimization, social anxiety, trait resilience, and psychological suzhi. The results indicated that, after controlling for grade, residential area, and parental marital status, bullying victimization positively predicted children's social anxiety. In addition, multi-group analysis suggested that the association in girls was stronger relative to that observed in boys. Regarding underlying processes, trait resilience moderated the effect of bullying victimization on social anxiety only in girls. Further assessment of the latent interaction effects indicated that the protective effect of trait resilience was stronger for girls experiencing high, relative to low, levels of bullying victimization, and psychological suzhi buffered against the detrimental effects of bullying on children's social anxiety. Most notably, unlike the moderating effect of resilience, the buffering effect of psychological suzhi against social anxiety was most prominent when bullying victimization was low. Findings underscore the importance of enhancing trait resilience and psychological suzhi in interventions designed to reduce children's social anxiety. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The impact of the natural environment on the promotion of active living: an integrative systematic review.

PubMed

Calogiuri, Giovanna; Chroni, Stiliani

2014-08-24

An understanding of how the living environment influences physical activity (PA) is of great importance for health promotion. Researchers have reported increased PA when there is a greater availability of nature within people's living environment. However, little has been said about underlying motivational processes. The aim of this study was to review the existing literature on the relationship between the natural environment (NE) and PA, integrating it into a conceptual model that depicts the motivational process underlying this relationship. Through a systematic literature search in line with PRISMA guidelines, peer-reviewed articles were sought using PubMed (search updated to October 2013) and scrutiny of reference lists. In addition, we contacted experts within our network. We reviewed papers in which the research question(s) concerned: 1) Effects of PA in NE on individuals' feelings and beliefs; 2) Relationships between PA and availability of NEs; and 3) Motivational processes underlying visits to NEs in association with PA. Analysis and integration of the 90 selected studies were performed using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). People's experiences in using the NE can enhance attitudes toward PA and perceived behavioural control via positive psychological states and stress-relieving effects, which lead to firmer intentions to engage in PA. Individual and environmental barriers, as expressions of social support and actual behavioural control, impact the process via subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. Instrumental beliefs such as a desire to enjoy nature and the expected health benefits also influence the process via attitudes. Different patterns have been identified for neighbourhood-based PA and outdoor recreations that take place in a NE. The availability of a NE and attractive views of nature within an individual's living environment are important contributors to PA, yet attention should focus on personal characteristics and environmental barriers. Policy and infrastructural interventions should aim to guarantee access and maintenance of the NE, as well as information and programming of social activities. Social campaigns via media and health institutions should highlight how nature can be a source of motivation for maintaining a PA routine, reducing stress and achieving aesthetic and health goals.

OXTR polymorphism predicts social relationships through its effects on social temperament

PubMed Central

Wright, Aidan G. C.; Troxel, Wendy M.; Ferrell, Robert E.; Flory, Janine D.; Manuck, Stephen B.

2015-01-01

Humans have a fundamental need for strong interpersonal bonds, yet individuals differ appreciably in their degree of social integration. That these differences are also substantially heritable has spurred interest in biological mechanisms underlying the quality and quantity of individuals’ social relationships. We propose that polymorphic variation in the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) associates with complex social behaviors and social network composition through intermediate effects on negative affectivity and the psychological processing of socially relevant information. We tested a hypothesized social cascade from the molecular level (OXTR variation) to the social environment, through negative affectivity and inhibited sociality, in a sample of 1295 men and women of European American (N = 1081) and African American (N = 214) ancestry. Compared to European Americans having any T allele of rs1042778, individuals homozygous for the alternate G allele reported significantly lower levels of negative affectivity and inhibited sociality, which in turn predicted significantly higher levels of social support and a larger/more diverse social network. Moreover, the effect of rs1042778 variation on social support was fully accounted for by associated differences in negative affectivity and inhibited sociality. Results replicated in the African American sample. Findings suggest that OXTR variation modulates levels of social support via proximal impacts on individual temperament. PMID:25326040

Sensitivity of the Autonomic Nervous System to Visual and Auditory Affect Across Social and Non-Social Domains in Williams Syndrome

PubMed Central

Järvinen, Anna; Dering, Benjamin; Neumann, Dirk; Ng, Rowena; Crivelli, Davide; Grichanik, Mark; Korenberg, Julie R.; Bellugi, Ursula

2012-01-01

Although individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) typically demonstrate an increased appetitive social drive, their social profile is characterized by dissociations, including socially fearless behavior coupled with anxiousness, and distinct patterns of “peaks and valleys” of ability. The aim of this study was to compare the processing of social and non-social visually and aurally presented affective stimuli, at the levels of behavior and autonomic nervous system (ANS) responsivity, in individuals with WS contrasted with a typically developing (TD) group, with the view of elucidating the highly sociable and emotionally sensitive predisposition noted in WS. Behavioral findings supported previous studies of enhanced competence in processing social over non-social stimuli by individuals with WS; however, the patterns of ANS functioning underlying the behavioral performance revealed a surprising profile previously undocumented in WS. Specifically, increased heart rate (HR) reactivity, and a failure for electrodermal activity to habituate were found in individuals with WS contrasted with the TD group, predominantly in response to visual social affective stimuli. Within the auditory domain, greater arousal linked to variation in heart beat period was observed in relation to music stimuli in individuals with WS. Taken together, the findings suggest that the pattern of ANS response in WS is more complex than previously noted, with increased arousal to face and music stimuli potentially underpinning the heightened behavioral emotionality to such stimuli. The lack of habituation may underlie the increased affiliation and attraction to faces characterizing individuals with WS. Future research directions are suggested. PMID:23049519

Neural mechanisms of behavioral change in young adults with high-functioning autism receiving virtual reality social cognition training: A pilot study.

PubMed

Yang, Y J Daniel; Allen, Tandra; Abdullahi, Sebiha M; Pelphrey, Kevin A; Volkmar, Fred R; Chapman, Sandra B

2018-05-01

Measuring treatment efficacy in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) relies primarily on behaviors, with limited evidence as to the neural mechanisms underlying these behavioral gains. This pilot study addresses this void by investigating neural and behavioral changes in a Phase I trial in young adults with high-functioning ASD who received an evidence-based behavioral intervention, Virtual Reality-Social Cognition Training over 5 weeks for a total of 10 hr. The participants were tested pre- and post-training with a validated biological/social versus scrambled/nonsocial motion neuroimaging task, previously shown to activate regions within the social brain networks. Three significant brain-behavior changes were identified. First, the right posterior superior temporal sulcus, a hub for socio-cognitive processing, showed increased brain activation to social versus nonsocial stimuli in individuals with greater gains on a theory-of-mind measure. Second, the left inferior frontal gyrus, a region for socio-emotional processing, tracked individual gains in emotion recognition with decreased activation to social versus nonsocial stimuli. Finally, the left superior parietal lobule, a region for visual attention, showed significantly decreased activation to nonsocial versus social stimuli across all participants, where heightened attention to nonsocial contingencies has been considered a disabling aspect of ASD. This study provides, albeit preliminary, some of the first evidence of the harnessable neuroplasticity in adults with ASD through an age-appropriate intervention in brain regions tightly linked to social abilities. This pilot trial motivates future efforts to develop and test social interventions to improve behaviors and supporting brain networks in adults with ASD. Autism Res 2018, 11: 713-725. © 2018 The Authors Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This study addresses how the behavioral changes after treatment for ASD reflect underlying brain changes. Before and after receiving VR-SCT, young adults with high-functioning ASD passively viewed biological motion stimuli in a MRI scanner, tapping changes in the social brain network. The results reveal neuroplasticity in this age population, extending the window of opportunity for interventions to impact social competency in adults with ASD. © 2018 The Authors Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Cost of Being Watched: Stroop Interference Increases under Concomitant Eye Contact

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conty, Laurence; Gimmig, David; Belletier, Clement; George, Nathalie; Huguet, Pascal

2010-01-01

Current models in social neuroscience advance that eye contact may automatically recruit cognitive resources. Here, we directly tested this hypothesis by evaluating the distracting strength of eye contact on concurrent visual processing in the well-known Stroop's paradigm. As expected, participants showed stronger Stroop interference under…

20 CFR 422.605 - Request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2014-04-01 2014-04-01 false Request for review. 422.605 Section 422.605 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.605 Request for review. We will review...

20 CFR 422.605 - Request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2012-04-01 2012-04-01 false Request for review. 422.605 Section 422.605 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.605 Request for review. We will review...

20 CFR 422.605 - Request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Request for review. 422.605 Section 422.605 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.605 Request for review. We will review...

Under Construction: Undergraduates' Perceptions of Their Music Teacher Role-Identities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Draves, Tami J.

2014-01-01

The purpose of this research was to explore how participants perceived themselves as preservice music teachers. Bouij's (1998) salient role-identities in music education served as an a priori theoretical framework. By investigating participants' perceptions of role-identity, some of the socialization processes that contributed to identity…

Psychological Processes Underlying Cultivation Effects: Further Tests of Construct Accessibility.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shrum, L. J.

1996-01-01

Describes a study that tested whether the accessibility of information in memory mediates the cultivation effect (the effect of television viewing on social perceptions), consistent with the availability heuristic. Shows that heavy viewers gave higher frequency estimates (cultivation effect) and responded faster (accessibility effect) than did…

20 CFR 422.605 - Request for review.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Request for review. 422.605 Section 422.605 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.605 Request for review. We will review...

20 CFR 422.602 - Terms used in this subpart.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 422.602 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ORGANIZATION AND PROCEDURES Administrative Review Process Under the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 § 422.602 Terms used in this... responsibility of paying the annual health and death benefit premiums of certain coal miners and their eligible...

76 FR 20568 - HHS Plan for Retrospective Review Under Executive Order 13563

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-04-13

... impact on a substantial number of small businesses as required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act; annual... technologies to facilitate greater participation in the rulemaking process, particularly social media and... actual impact? Public Participation--HHS solicits comments on ways to further engage and increase public...

A Qualitative Inquiry of Wisdom Development: Educators' Perspectives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Li-Ming; Wu, Pi-Ju; Cheng, Ying-Yao; Hsueh, Hsiu-I

2011-01-01

This study draws on the perspectives of educators to explore the factors and processes underlying wisdom development. We interviewed 25 wise Taiwanese nominees and used a grounded theory method to analyze the qualitative data. The wise nominees mentioned eight facilitative factors, including work experiences, life experiences, social interactions,…

20 CFR 405.20 - Good cause for extending deadlines.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Good cause for extending deadlines. 405.20 Section 405.20 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW PROCESS FOR... for extending deadlines. (a) If you wish us to extend the deadline to request a review under § 405.210...

20 CFR 405.20 - Good cause for extending deadlines.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... 20 Employees' Benefits 2 2011-04-01 2011-04-01 false Good cause for extending deadlines. 405.20 Section 405.20 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION ADMINISTRATIVE REVIEW PROCESS FOR... for extending deadlines. (a) If you wish us to extend the deadline to request a review under § 405.210...

Emotion Dysregulation as a Mechanism Linking Stress Exposure to Adolescent Aggressive Behavior

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herts, Kate L.; McLaughlin, Katie A.; Hatzenbuehler, Mark L.

2012-01-01

Exposure to stress is associated with a wide range of internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents, including aggressive behavior. Extant research examining mechanisms underlying the associations between stress and youth aggression has consistently identified social information processing pathways that are disrupted by exposure to…

77 FR 11677 - Medicaid Program; Review and Approval Process for Section 1115 Demonstrations

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-02-27

... experimental, pilot, and demonstration projects approved under section 1115 of the Social Security Act relating... selected provisions of section 1902 of the Act for experimental, pilot, or demonstration projects... application, and recommended that CMS allow the State to not post a complete application. The commenters noted...

The Human-Computer Interaction of Cross-Cultural Gaming Strategy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chakraborty, Joyram; Norcio, Anthony F.; Van Der Veer, Jacob J.; Andre, Charles F.; Miller, Zachary; Regelsberger, Alexander

2015-01-01

This article explores the cultural dimensions of the human-computer interaction that underlies gaming strategies. The article is a desktop study of existing literature and is organized into five sections. The first examines the cultural aspects of knowledge processing. The social constructs technology interaction is discussed. Following this, the…

SOCIAL SCIENCE EDUCATION CONSORTIUM. PUBLICATION 122, MORALITY.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

SCRIVEN, MICHAEL

THIS POSITION PAPER PRESENTS AN APPROACH TO THE VERY DIFFICULT PROBLEM OF HANDLING VALUES IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS, PARTICULARLY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. IT DISCUSSES THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS AND THE METHODOLOGICAL BASIS FOR MORAL VALUE JUDGMENTS. THE DISCUSSIONS ARE PRESENTED UNDER THREE GENERAL TOPIC AREAS--(1) "PRELIMINARIES" WHICH…

The interaction between monoamine oxidase A and punitive discipline in the development of antisocial behavior: Mediation by maladaptive social information processing.

PubMed

Galán, Chardée A; Choe, Daniel Ewon; Forbes, Erika E; Shaw, Daniel S

2017-10-01

Previous studies demonstrate that boys' monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) genotype interacts with adverse rearing environments in early childhood, including punitive discipline, to predict later antisocial behavior. Yet the mechanisms by which MAOA and punitive parenting interact during childhood to amplify risk for antisocial behavior are not well understood. In the present study, hostile attributional bias and aggressive response generation during middle childhood, salient aspects of maladaptive social information processing, were tested as possible mediators of this relation in a sample of 187 low-income men followed prospectively from infancy into early adulthood. Given racial-ethnic variation in MAOA allele frequencies, analyses were conducted separately by race. In both African American and Caucasian men, those with the low-activity MAOA allele who experienced more punitive discipline at age 1.5 generated more aggressive responses to perceived threat at age 10 relative to men with the high-activity variant. In the African American subsample only, formal mediation analyses indicated a marginally significant indirect effect of maternal punitiveness on adult arrest records via aggressive response generation in middle childhood. The findings suggest that maladaptive social information processing may be an important mechanism underlying the association between MAOA × Parenting interactions and antisocial behavior in early adulthood. The present study extends previous work in the field by demonstrating that MAOA and harsh parenting assessed in early childhood interact to not only predict antisocial behavior in early adulthood, but also predict social information processing, a well-established social-cognitive correlate of antisocial behavior.

Brain correlates of recognition of communicative interactions from biological motion in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Okruszek, Ł; Wordecha, M; Jarkiewicz, M; Kossowski, B; Lee, J; Marchewka, A

2017-11-27

Recognition of communicative interactions is a complex social cognitive ability which is associated with a specific neural activity in healthy individuals. However, neural correlates of communicative interaction processing from whole-body motion have not been known in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ). Therefore, the current study aims to examine the neural activity associated with recognition of communicative interactions in SCZ by using displays of the dyadic interactions downgraded to minimalistic point-light presentations. Twenty-six healthy controls (HC) and 25 SCZ were asked to judge whether two agents presented only by point-light displays were communicating or acting independently. Task-related activity and functional connectivity of brain structures were examined with General Linear Model and Generalized Psychophysiological Interaction approach, respectively. HC were significantly more efficient in recognizing each type of action than SCZ. At the neural level, the activity of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) was observed to be higher in HC compared with SCZ for communicative v. individual action processing. Importantly, increased connectivity of the right pSTS with structures associated with mentalizing (left pSTS) and mirroring networks (left frontal areas) was observed in HC, but not in SCZ, during the presentation of social interactions. Under-recruitment of the right pSTS, a structure known to have a pivotal role in social processing, may also be of importance for higher-order social cognitive deficits in SCZ. Furthermore, decreased task-related connectivity of the right pSTS may result in reduced use of additional sources of information (for instance motor resonance signals) during social cognitive processing in schizophrenia.

The politics of choice: roles of the medical profession under Nazi rule.

PubMed

Lekisch, K; McDonald, J H

1989-06-01

In 1933, when Adolf Hitler took power, the German medical community was faced with intense crisis and change. Because social processes become more clearly defined in times of crisis, the days of Nazi rule offer an excellent opportunity to examine health care and moral issues. This article describes historical events that illustrate physicians' and medical students' role in the political process. In addition, we detail four types of responses made by physicians and students: flight, conformism, individual resistance, and group resistance. We conclude that if the role of physicians is to aid and protect patients against disease or experimentation on humans, then he or she must maintain heightened political awareness in order to deal with social crises before they overwhelm any response.

Ascribing beliefs to ingroup and outgroup political candidates: neural correlates of perspective-taking, issue importance and days until the election

PubMed Central

Falk, Emily B.; Spunt, Robert P.; Lieberman, Matthew D.

2012-01-01

We used the five weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election as a backdrop to examine the ways that the brain processes attitudes and beliefs under different circumstances. We examined individual differences in personal issue importance and trait perspective-taking, as well as the temporal context in which attitude representation took place (i.e. number of days until the election). Finally, we examined the extent to which similar or dissimilar processes were recruited when considering the attitudes of political ingroup and outgroup candidates. Brain regions involved in social cognition and theory of mind, and to a lesser extent the limbic system, were modulated by these factors. Higher issue importance led to greater recruitment of neural regions involved in social cognition, across target perspectives. Higher trait perspective-taking was also associated with greater recruitment of several regions involved in social cognition, but differed depending on target perspective; greater activity was observed in prefrontal regions associated with social cognition when considering the perspective of one's own candidate compared with the opponent, and this effect was amplified closer to the election. Taken together, these results highlight ways in which ability and motivational relevance modulate socio-affective processing of the attitudes of others. PMID:22271788

Ascribing beliefs to ingroup and outgroup political candidates: neural correlates of perspective-taking, issue importance and days until the election.

PubMed

Falk, Emily B; Spunt, Robert P; Lieberman, Matthew D

2012-03-05

We used the five weeks leading up to the 2008 presidential election as a backdrop to examine the ways that the brain processes attitudes and beliefs under different circumstances. We examined individual differences in personal issue importance and trait perspective-taking, as well as the temporal context in which attitude representation took place (i.e. number of days until the election). Finally, we examined the extent to which similar or dissimilar processes were recruited when considering the attitudes of political ingroup and outgroup candidates. Brain regions involved in social cognition and theory of mind, and to a lesser extent the limbic system, were modulated by these factors. Higher issue importance led to greater recruitment of neural regions involved in social cognition, across target perspectives. Higher trait perspective-taking was also associated with greater recruitment of several regions involved in social cognition, but differed depending on target perspective; greater activity was observed in prefrontal regions associated with social cognition when considering the perspective of one's own candidate compared with the opponent, and this effect was amplified closer to the election. Taken together, these results highlight ways in which ability and motivational relevance modulate socio-affective processing of the attitudes of others.

The interplay of conflict and analogy in multidisciplinary teams.

PubMed

Paletz, Susannah B F; Schunn, Christian D; Kim, Kevin H

2013-01-01

Creative teamwork in multidisciplinary teams is a topic of interest to cognitive psychologists on the one hand, and to both social and organizational psychologists on the other. However, the interconnections between cognitive and social layers have been rarely explored. Drawing on mental models and dissonance theories, the current study takes a central variable studied by cognitive psychologists-analogy-and examines its relationship to a central variable examined by social psychologists-conflict. In an observational, field study, over 11h of audio-video data from conversations of the Mars Exploration Rover scientists were coded for different types of analogy and micro-conflicts that reveal the character of underlying psychological mechanisms. Two different types of time-lagged logistic models applied to these data revealed asymmetric patterns of associations between analogy and conflict. Within-domain analogies, but not within-discipline or outside-discipline analogies, preceded science and work process conflicts, suggesting that in multidisciplinary teams, representational gaps in very close domains will be more likely to spark conflict. But analogies also occurred in reaction to conflict: Process and negative conflicts, but not task conflicts, preceded within-discipline analogies, but not to within-domain or outside-discipline analogies. This study demonstrates ways in which cognition can be bidirectionally tied to social processes and discourse. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social insect colony as a biological regulatory system: modelling information flow in dominance networks.

PubMed

Nandi, Anjan K; Sumana, Annagiri; Bhattacharya, Kunal

2014-12-06

Social insects provide an excellent platform to investigate flow of information in regulatory systems since their successful social organization is essentially achieved by effective information transfer through complex connectivity patterns among the colony members. Network representation of such behavioural interactions offers a powerful tool for structural as well as dynamical analysis of the underlying regulatory systems. In this paper, we focus on the dominance interaction networks in the tropical social wasp Ropalidia marginata-a species where behavioural observations indicate that such interactions are principally responsible for the transfer of information between individuals about their colony needs, resulting in a regulation of their own activities. Our research reveals that the dominance networks of R. marginata are structurally similar to a class of naturally evolved information processing networks, a fact confirmed also by the predominance of a specific substructure-the 'feed-forward loop'-a key functional component in many other information transfer networks. The dynamical analysis through Boolean modelling confirms that the networks are sufficiently stable under small fluctuations and yet capable of more efficient information transfer compared to their randomized counterparts. Our results suggest the involvement of a common structural design principle in different biological regulatory systems and a possible similarity with respect to the effect of selection on the organization levels of such systems. The findings are also consistent with the hypothesis that dominance behaviour has been shaped by natural selection to co-opt the information transfer process in such social insect species, in addition to its primal function of mediation of reproductive competition in the colony. © 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.

Effects of 72hours total sleep deprivation on male astronauts' executive functions and emotion.

PubMed

Liu, Qing; Zhou, Renlai; Liu, Lei; Zhao, Xin

2015-08-01

To provide evidence for better understanding stressful situations, the present study was designed to investigate the specific physiological and psychological responses under stressful situations like social isolation and sleep deprivation. Twelve healthy male adults (age: 18-30years old) who participated in our study were randomized to the 72hours of social isolation and 72hours of sleep deprivation experimental conditions. Performances (event-related potentials and physiological activities) on the Go/Nogo task which reflected the executive functions were accessed at baseline (pretest) and after 72-hour of the experiment (posttest). The results showed that compared to the social isolation, the participants got strengthened heart rate (HR), weakened HR variability and smaller amplitude of the P300 under the sleep deprivation condition; moreover, they had lower positive emotion and higher negative mood in the posttest. The present study indicated that sleep deprivation specifically influenced the intensity of task-relevant information processing, mood and vagal tone. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Genetic underpinnings of division of labor in the honeybee (Apis mellifera).

PubMed

Lattorff, H Michael G; Moritz, Robin F A

2013-11-01

Honeybees have been studied for centuries, starting with Aristotle, who wrote the first book about bee breeding. More than 2000 years later, the honeybee entered the genomic era as the first social insect whose genome was sequenced, leading to significant insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying social behavior. In addition, gene expression studies and knockdown using RNAi have extended the understanding of social interactions. Much of the work has focused on caste determination - the mechanism that results in reproductive division of labor, division of labor within the worker caste, and worker reproduction - an essential process underlying eusociality. Here we review the molecular factors involved in caste determination and the differential regulation of caste-specific genes. Recent findings suggest that division of labor is influenced by a small number of loci showing high levels of pleiotropy, suggesting that changes in a small number of genes lead to large changes in the phenotype. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neural and computational processes underlying dynamic changes in self-esteem

PubMed Central

Rutledge, Robb B; Moutoussis, Michael; Dolan, Raymond J

2017-01-01

Self-esteem is shaped by the appraisals we receive from others. Here, we characterize neural and computational mechanisms underlying this form of social influence. We introduce a computational model that captures fluctuations in self-esteem engendered by prediction errors that quantify the difference between expected and received social feedback. Using functional MRI, we show these social prediction errors correlate with activity in ventral striatum/subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, while updates in self-esteem resulting from these errors co-varied with activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). We linked computational parameters to psychiatric symptoms using canonical correlation analysis to identify an ‘interpersonal vulnerability’ dimension. Vulnerability modulated the expression of prediction error responses in anterior insula and insula-vmPFC connectivity during self-esteem updates. Our findings indicate that updating of self-evaluative beliefs relies on learning mechanisms akin to those used in learning about others. Enhanced insula-vmPFC connectivity during updating of those beliefs may represent a marker for psychiatric vulnerability. PMID:29061228

Neural and computational processes underlying dynamic changes in self-esteem.

PubMed

Will, Geert-Jan; Rutledge, Robb B; Moutoussis, Michael; Dolan, Raymond J

2017-10-24

Self-esteem is shaped by the appraisals we receive from others. Here, we characterize neural and computational mechanisms underlying this form of social influence. We introduce a computational model that captures fluctuations in self-esteem engendered by prediction errors that quantify the difference between expected and received social feedback. Using functional MRI, we show these social prediction errors correlate with activity in ventral striatum/subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, while updates in self-esteem resulting from these errors co-varied with activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). We linked computational parameters to psychiatric symptoms using canonical correlation analysis to identify an 'interpersonal vulnerability' dimension. Vulnerability modulated the expression of prediction error responses in anterior insula and insula-vmPFC connectivity during self-esteem updates. Our findings indicate that updating of self-evaluative beliefs relies on learning mechanisms akin to those used in learning about others. Enhanced insula-vmPFC connectivity during updating of those beliefs may represent a marker for psychiatric vulnerability.

Networked Community Change: Understanding Community Systems Change through the Lens of Social Network Analysis.

PubMed

Lawlor, Jennifer A; Neal, Zachary P

2016-06-01

Addressing complex problems in communities has become a key area of focus in recent years (Kania & Kramer, 2013, Stanford Social Innovation Review). Building on existing approaches to understanding and addressing problems, such as action research, several new approaches have emerged that shift the way communities solve problems (e.g., Burns, 2007, Systemic Action Research; Foth, 2006, Action Research, 4, 205; Kania & Kramer, 2011, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 1, 36). Seeking to bring clarity to the emerging literature on community change strategies, this article identifies the common features of the most widespread community change strategies and explores the conditions under which such strategies have the potential to be effective. We identify and describe five common features among the approaches to change. Then, using an agent-based model, we simulate network-building behavior among stakeholders participating in community change efforts using these approaches. We find that the emergent stakeholder networks are efficient when the processes are implemented under ideal conditions. © Society for Community Research and Action 2016.

Fairness requires deliberation: the primacy of economic over social considerations.

PubMed

Hochman, Guy; Ayal, Shahar; Ariely, Dan

2015-01-01

While both economic and social considerations of fairness and equity play an important role in financial decision-making, it is not clear which of these two motives is more primal and immediate and which one is secondary and slow. Here we used variants of the ultimatum game to examine this question. Experiment 1 shows that acceptance rate of unfair offers increases when participants are asked to base their choice on their gut-feelings, as compared to when they thoroughly consider the available information. In line with these results, Experiments 2 and 3 provide process evidence that individuals prefer to first examine economic information about their own utility rather than social information about equity and fairness, even at the price of foregoing such social information. Our results suggest that people are more economically rational at the core, but social considerations (e.g., inequality aversion) require deliberation, which under certain conditions override their self-interested impulses.

Logical Interactions in AN Expanded Space

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tadić, Bosiljka

Understanding the emergent behavior in many complex systems in the physical world and society requires a detailed study of dynamical phenomena occurring and mutually coupled at different scales. The brain processes underlying the social conduct of each, and the emergent social behavior of interacting individuals on a larger scale, represent striking examples of the multiscale complexity. Studies of the human brain, a paradigm of a complex functional system, are enabled by a wealth of brain imaging data that provide clues of how we comprehend space, time, languages, numbers, and differentiate normal from diseased individuals, for example. The social brain, a neural basis for social cognition, represents a dynamically organized part of the brain which is involved in the inference of thoughts, feelings, and intentions going on in the brains of others. Research in this currently unexplored area opens a new perspective on the genesis of the societal organization at different levels and the associated social values...

Fairness requires deliberation: the primacy of economic over social considerations

PubMed Central

Hochman, Guy; Ayal, Shahar; Ariely, Dan

2015-01-01

While both economic and social considerations of fairness and equity play an important role in financial decision-making, it is not clear which of these two motives is more primal and immediate and which one is secondary and slow. Here we used variants of the ultimatum game to examine this question. Experiment 1 shows that acceptance rate of unfair offers increases when participants are asked to base their choice on their gut-feelings, as compared to when they thoroughly consider the available information. In line with these results, Experiments 2 and 3 provide process evidence that individuals prefer to first examine economic information about their own utility rather than social information about equity and fairness, even at the price of foregoing such social information. Our results suggest that people are more economically rational at the core, but social considerations (e.g., inequality aversion) require deliberation, which under certain conditions override their self-interested impulses. PMID:26106342

Biological embedding of perinatal social relationships in infant stress reactivity.

PubMed

Thomas, Jenna C; Letourneau, Nicole; Bryce, Crystal I; Campbell, Tavis S; Giesbrecht, Gerald F

2017-05-01

Whereas significant advances have been made in understanding how exposure to early adversity "gets under the skin" of children to result in long term changes in developmental outcomes, the processes by which positive social relationships become biologically embedded remain poorly understood. The aim of this study was to understand the pathways by which maternal and infant social environments become biologically embedded in infant cortisol reactivity. Two hundred seventy-two pregnant women and their infants were prospectively assessed during pregnancy and at 6 months postpartum. In serial mediation analyses, higher perceived social support from partners during pregnancy was associated with lower infant cortisol reactivity or larger decreases in cortisol in response to a stressor at 6 months of age via lower self-reported prenatal maternal depression and higher mother-infant interaction quality. The findings add to our understanding of how perinatal social relationships become biologically embedded in child development. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Violence, Older Peers, and the Socialization of Adolescent Boys in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods

PubMed Central

Harding, David J.

2009-01-01

Most theoretical perspectives on neighborhood effects on youth assume that neighborhood context serves as a source of socialization, but the exact sources and processes underlying adolescent socialization in disadvantaged neighborhoods are largely unspecified and unelaborated. This paper proposes that cross-cohort socialization by older neighborhood peers is one source of socialization for adolescent boys in such neighborhoods. Data from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey suggest that adolescents in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to spend time with older individuals. Qualitative interview data from 60 adolescent boys in three neighborhoods in Boston are analyzed to understand the causes and consequences of these interactions and relationships. I find that some of the strategies these adolescents employ to cope with violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods promote interaction with older peers, particularly those who are most disadvantaged, and that such interactions can expose adolescents to local, “unconventional,” or “alternative” cultural models. PMID:20161350

Origins of Aminergic Regulation of Behavior in Complex Insect Social Systems

PubMed Central

Kamhi, J. Frances; Arganda, Sara; Moreau, Corrie S.; Traniello, James F. A.

2017-01-01

Neuromodulators are conserved across insect taxa, but how biogenic amines and their receptors in ancestral solitary forms have been co-opted to control behaviors in derived socially complex species is largely unknown. Here we explore patterns associated with the functions of octopamine (OA), serotonin (5-HT) and dopamine (DA) in solitary ancestral insects and their derived functions in eusocial ants, bees, wasps and termites. Synthesizing current findings that reveal potential ancestral roles of monoamines in insects, we identify physiological processes and conserved behaviors under aminergic control, consider how biogenic amines may have evolved to modulate complex social behavior, and present focal research areas that warrant further study. PMID:29066958

Innovative Technics of Managing Engineers’ Global Competencies

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Khoreshok, A. A.; Zhironkin, S. A.; Tyulenev, M. A.; Barysheva, G. A.; Blumenstein, V. Yu; Hellmer, M. C.; Potyagailov, S. V.

2016-08-01

Higher education modernization in the CIS countries takes place under the conditions of dynamic changes in economy and society. These changes are determined by the social and economic development of the country and the world globalization processes - cross-border intercultural communication, knowledge transparency, and the establishment of information society. Educational globalization is a continuous process of creating a unified global educational system, in which the distinctions between its member educational systems are being blended.

Challenges to understanding spatial patterns of disease: philosophical alternatives to logical positivism.

PubMed

Mayer, J D

1992-08-01

Most studies of disease distribution, in medical geography and other related disciplines, have been empirical in nature and rooted in the assumptions of logical positivism. However, some of the more newly articulated philosophies of the social sciences, and of social theory, have much to add in the understanding of the processes and mechanisms underlying disease distribution. This paper represents a plea for creative synthesis between logical positivism and realism or structuration, and uses specific examples to suggest how disease distribution, as a surface phenomenon, can be explained using deeper analysis.

Socially Isolated Mice Exhibit a Blunted Homeostatic Sleep Response to Acute Sleep Deprivation Compared to Socially Paired Mice

PubMed Central

Kaushal, Navita; Nair, Deepti; Gozal, David; Ramesh, Vijay

2012-01-01

Sleep is an important physiological process underlying maintenance of physical, mental and emotional health. Consequently, sleep deprivation (SD) is associated with adverse consequences and increases the risk for anxiety, immune, and cognitive disorders. SD is characterized by increased energy expenditure responses and sleep rebound upon recovery that are regulated by homeostatic processes, which in turn are influenced by stress. Since all previous studies on SD were conducted in a setting of social isolation, the impact of the social contextual setting is unknown. Therefore, we used a relatively stress-free SD paradigm in mice to assess the impact of social isolation on sleep, wakefulness and delta electroencephalogram (EEG) power during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Paired or isolated C57BL/6J adult chronically-implanted male mice were exposed to SD for 6 hours and telemetric polygraphic recordings were conducted, including 18 hours recovery. Recovery from SD in the paired group showed a significant decrease in wake and significant increase in NREM sleep and rapid eye movement (REM), and a similar, albeit less robust response occurred in the isolated mice. Delta power during NREM sleep was increased in both groups immediately following SD, but paired mice exhibited significantly higher delta power throughout the dark period. The increase in body temperature and gross motor activity observed during the SD procedure was decreased during the dark period. In both open field and elevated plus maze tests, socially isolated mice showed significantly higher anxiety than paired mice. The homeostatic processes altered by SD are differentially affected in paired and isolated mice, suggesting that the social context of isolation stress may adversely affect the quantity and quality of sleep in mice. PMID:22498175

Processes linking cultural ingroup bonds and mental health: the roles of social connection and emotion regulation.

PubMed

Roberts, Nicole A; Burleson, Mary H

2013-01-01

Cultural and ethnic identities influence the relationships individuals seek out and how they feel and behave in these relationships, which can strongly affect mental and physical health through their impacts on emotions, physiology, and behavior. We proposed and tested a model in which ethnocultural identifications and ingroup affiliations were hypothesized explicitly to enhance social connectedness, which would in turn promote expectancy for effective regulation of negative emotions and reduce self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety. Our sample comprised women aged 18-30 currently attending college in the Southwestern US, who self-identified as Hispanic of Mexican descent (MAs; n = 82) or as non-Hispanic White/European American (EAs; n = 234) and who completed an online survey. In the full sample and in each subgroup, stronger ethnocultural group identity and greater comfort with mainstream American culture were associated with higher social connectedness, which in turn was associated with expectancy for more effective regulation of negative emotions, fewer depressive symptoms, and less anxiety. Unexpectedly, preference for ingroup affiliation predicted lower social connectedness in both groups. In addition to indirect effects through social connection, direct paths from mainstream comfort and preference for ingroup affiliation to emotion regulation expectancy were found for EAs. Models of our data underscore that social connection is a central mechanism through which ethnocultural identities-including with one's own group and the mainstream cultural group-relate to mental health, and that emotion regulation may be a key aspect of this linkage. We use the term ethnocultural social connection to make explicit a process that, we believe, has been implied in the ethnic identity literature for many years, and that may have consequential implications for mental health and conceptualizations of processes underlying mental disorders.

Different importance of the volatile and non-volatile fractions of an olfactory signature for individual social recognition in rats versus mice and short-term versus long-term memory.

PubMed

Noack, Julia; Richter, Karin; Laube, Gregor; Haghgoo, Hojjat Allah; Veh, Rüdiger W; Engelmann, Mario

2010-11-01

When tested in the olfactory cued social recognition/discrimination test, rats and mice differ in their retention of a recognition memory for a previously encountered conspecific juvenile: Rats are able to recognize a given juvenile for approximately 45 min only whereas mice show not only short-term, but also long-term recognition memory (≥ 24 h). Here we modified the social recognition/social discrimination procedure to investigate the neurobiological mechanism(s) underlying the species differences. We presented a conspecific juvenile repeatedly to the experimental subjects and monitored the investigation duration as a measure for recognition. Presentation of only the volatile fraction of the juvenile olfactory signature was sufficient for both short- and long-term recognition in mice but not rats. Applying additional volatile, mono-molecular odours to the "to be recognized" juveniles failed to affect short-term memory in both species, but interfered with long-term recognition in mice. Finally immunocytochemical analysis of c-Fos as a marker for cellular activation, revealed that juvenile exposure stimulated areas involved in the processing of olfactory signals in both the main and the accessory olfactory bulb in mice. In rats, we measured an increased c-Fos synthesis almost exclusively in cells of the accessory olfactory bulb. Our data suggest that the species difference in the retention of social recognition memory is based on differences in the processing of the volatile versus non-volatile fraction of the individuals' olfactory signature. The non-volatile fraction is sufficient for retaining a short-term social memory only. Long-term social memory - as observed in mice - requires a processing of both the volatile and non-volatile fractions of the olfactory signature. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Processes linking cultural ingroup bonds and mental health: the roles of social connection and emotion regulation

PubMed Central

Roberts, Nicole A.; Burleson, Mary H.

2013-01-01

Cultural and ethnic identities influence the relationships individuals seek out and how they feel and behave in these relationships, which can strongly affect mental and physical health through their impacts on emotions, physiology, and behavior. We proposed and tested a model in which ethnocultural identifications and ingroup affiliations were hypothesized explicitly to enhance social connectedness, which would in turn promote expectancy for effective regulation of negative emotions and reduce self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety. Our sample comprised women aged 18–30 currently attending college in the Southwestern US, who self-identified as Hispanic of Mexican descent (MAs; n = 82) or as non-Hispanic White/European American (EAs; n = 234) and who completed an online survey. In the full sample and in each subgroup, stronger ethnocultural group identity and greater comfort with mainstream American culture were associated with higher social connectedness, which in turn was associated with expectancy for more effective regulation of negative emotions, fewer depressive symptoms, and less anxiety. Unexpectedly, preference for ingroup affiliation predicted lower social connectedness in both groups. In addition to indirect effects through social connection, direct paths from mainstream comfort and preference for ingroup affiliation to emotion regulation expectancy were found for EAs. Models of our data underscore that social connection is a central mechanism through which ethnocultural identities—including with one's own group and the mainstream cultural group—relate to mental health, and that emotion regulation may be a key aspect of this linkage. We use the term ethnocultural social connection to make explicit a process that, we believe, has been implied in the ethnic identity literature for many years, and that may have consequential implications for mental health and conceptualizations of processes underlying mental disorders. PMID:23450647

Social hierarchy modulates neural responses of empathy for pain.

PubMed

Feng, Chunliang; Li, Zhihao; Feng, Xue; Wang, Lili; Tian, Tengxiang; Luo, Yue-Jia

2016-03-01

Recent evidence indicates that empathic responses to others' pain are modulated by various situational and individual factors. However, few studies have examined how empathy and underlying brain functions are modulated by social hierarchies, which permeate human society with an enormous impact on social behavior and cognition. In this study, social hierarchies were established based on incidental skill in a perceptual task in which all participants were mediumly ranked. Afterwards, participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while watching inferior-status or superior-status targets receiving painful or non-painful stimulation. The results revealed that painful stimulation applied to inferior-status targets induced higher activations in the anterior insula (AI) and anterior medial cingulate cortex (aMCC), whereas these empathic brain activations were significantly attenuated in response to superior-status targets' pain. Further, this neural empathic bias to inferior-status targets was accompanied by stronger functional couplings of AI with brain regions important in emotional processing (i.e. thalamus) and cognitive control (i.e. middle frontal gyrus). Our findings indicate that emotional sharing with others' pain is shaped by relative positions in a social hierarchy such that underlying empathic neural responses are biased toward inferior-status compared with superior-status individuals. © The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Obesity emergence in the Pacific islands: why understanding colonial history and social change is important.

PubMed

McLennan, Amy K; Ulijaszek, Stanley J

2015-06-01

Between 1980 and 2008, two Pacific island nations - Nauru and the Cook Islands - experienced the fastest rates of increasing BMI in the world. Rates were over four times higher than the mean global BMI increase. The aim of the present paper is to examine why these populations have been so prone to obesity increases in recent times. Three explanatory frames that apply to both countries are presented: (i) geographic isolation and genetic predisposition; (ii) small population and low food production capacity; and (iii) social change under colonial influence. These are compared with social changes documented by anthropologists during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Nauru and the Cook Islands. While islands are isolated, islanders are interconnected. Similarly, islands are small, but land use is socially determined. While obesity affects individuals, islanders are interdependent. New social values, which were rapidly propagated through institutions such as the colonial system of education and the cash economy, are today reflected in all aspects of islander life, including diet. Such historical social changes may predispose societies to obesity. Colonial processes may have put in place the conditions for subsequent rapidly escalating obesity. Of the three frameworks discussed, social change under colonial influence is not immutable to further change in the future and could take place rapidly. In theorising obesity emergence in the Pacific islands, there is a need to incorporate the idea of obesity being a product of interdependence and interconnectedness, rather than independence and individual choice.

Infant social attention: an endophenotype of ASD-related traits?

PubMed

Jones, Emily J H; Venema, Kaitlin; Earl, Rachel K; Lowy, Rachel; Webb, Sara J

2017-03-01

As a neurodevelopmental disorder, symptoms of ASD likely emerge from a complex interaction between preexisting genetic vulnerabilities and the child's environment. One way to understand causal paths to ASD is to identify dimensional ASD-related traits that vary in the general population and that predispose individuals with other risk factors toward ASD. Moving beyond behavioral traits to explore underlying neurocognitive processes may further constrain the underlying genetics. Endophenotypes are quantitative, heritable, trait-related differences that are generally assessed with laboratory-based methods, can be identified in the general population, and may be more closely tied to particular causal chains that have a more restricted set of genetic roots. The most fruitful endophenotypes may be those observed in infancy, prior to the emergence of behavioral symptoms that they are hypothesized to cause. Social motivation is an ASD-related trait that is highly heritable. In this study, we investigate whether infant endophenotypes of social attention relate to familial risk for lower social motivation in the general population. We examined whether infant social attention (measured using habituation, EEG power, and event-related potential tasks previously used in infants/toddlers with ASD) varies quantitatively with parental social motivation in 117 six-month-old and 106 twelve-month-old typically developing infants assessed cross-sectionally. To assess heritable aspects of social motivation, primary caregiver biological parents completed two self-report measures of social avoidance and discomfort that have shown high heritability in previous work. Parents with higher social discomfort and avoidance had infants who showed shorter looks to faces but not objects; reduced theta power during naturalistic social attention; and smaller P400 responses to faces versus objects. Early reductions in social attention are continuously related to lower parental social motivation. Alterations in social attention may be infant endophenotypes of social motivation traits related to ASD. © 2016 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Infant social attention: an endophenotype of ASD-related traits?

PubMed Central

Jones, Emily J.H.; Venema, Kaitlin; Earl, Rachel K.; Lowy, Rachel; Webb, Sara J.

2018-01-01

Background As a neurodevelopmental disorder, symptoms of ASD likely emerge from a complex interaction between preexisting genetic vulnerabilities and the child’s environment. One way to understand causal paths to ASD is to identify dimensional ASD-related traits that vary in the general population and that predispose individuals with other risk factors toward ASD. Moving beyond behavioral traits to explore underlying neurocognitive processes may further constrain the underlying genetics. Endophenotypes are quantitative, heritable, trait-related differences that are generally assessed with laboratory-based methods, can be identified in the general population, and may be more closely tied to particular causal chains that have a more restricted set of genetic roots. The most fruitful endophenotypes may be those observed in infancy, prior to the emergence of behavioral symptoms that they are hypothesized to cause. Social motivation is an ASD-related trait that is highly heritable. In this study, we investigate whether infant endophenotypes of social attention relate to familial risk for lower social motivation in the general population. Methods We examined whether infant social attention (measured using habituation, EEG power, and event-related potential tasks previously used in infants/toddlers with ASD) varies quantitatively with parental social motivation in 117 six-month-old and 106 twelve-month-old typically developing infants assessed cross-sectionally. To assess heritable aspects of social motivation, primary caregiver biological parents completed two self-report measures of social avoidance and discomfort that have shown high heritability in previous work. Results Parents with higher social discomfort and avoidance had infants who showed shorter looks to faces but not objects; reduced theta power during naturalistic social attention; and smaller P400 responses to faces versus objects. Conclusions Early reductions in social attention are continuously related to lower parental social motivation. Alterations in social attention may be infant endophenotypes of social motivation traits related to ASD. PMID:27861851

MDMA alters emotional processing and facilitates positive social interaction

PubMed Central

Wardle, Margaret C.; de Wit, Harriet

2014-01-01

Background ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, “ecstasy”) produces “prosocial” effects, such as feelings of empathy and closeness, thought to be important to its abuse and its value in psychotherapy. However, it is not fully understood how MDMA alters basic emotional processes to produce these effects, or whether it produces corresponding changes in actual social behavior. Here we examined how MDMA affects perceptions of and responses to emotional expressions, and tested its effects on behavior during a social interaction. We also examined whether MDMA’s prosocial effects related to a measure of abuse liability. Methods Over three sessions 36 healthy volunteers with previous ecstasy use received MDMA (0.75mg/kg, 1.5mg/kg) and placebo under double-blind conditions. We measured i) mood and cardiovascular effects, ii) perception of and psychophysiological responses to emotional expressions iii) use of positive and negative words in a social interaction and iv) perceptions of an interaction partner. We then tested whether these effects predicted desire to take the drug again. Results MDMA slowed perception of angry expressions, increased psychophysiological responses to happy expressions, and increased positive word use and perceptions of partner empathy and regard in a social interaction. These effects were not strongly related to desire to take the drug again. Conclusions MDMA alters basic emotional processes by slowing identification of negative emotions and increasing responses to positive emotions in others. Further, it positively affects behavior and perceptions during actual social interaction. These effects may contribute to the efficacy of MDMA in psychotherapy, but appear less closely related to its abuse potential. PMID:24728603

Domain-general contributions to social reasoning: theory of mind and deontic reasoning re-explored.

PubMed

McKinnon, Margaret C; Moscovitch, Morris

2007-02-01

Using older adults and dual-task interference, we examined performance on two social reasoning tasks: theory of mind (ToM) tasks and versions of the deontic selection task involving social contracts and hazardous conditions. In line with performance accounts of social reasoning, evidence from both aging and the dual-task method suggested that domain-general resources contribute to performance of these tasks. Specifically, older adults were impaired relative to younger adults on all types of social reasoning tasks tested; performance varied as a function of the demands these tasks placed on domain-general resources. Moreover, in younger adults, simultaneous performance of a working memory task interfered with younger adults' performance on both types of social reasoning tasks; here too, the magnitude of the interference effect varied with the processing demands of each task. Limits placed on social reasoning by executive functions contribute a great deal to performance, even in old age and in healthy younger adults under conditions of divided attention. The role of potentially non-modular and modular contributions to social reasoning is discussed.

Biases in probabilistic category learning in relation to social anxiety

PubMed Central

Abraham, Anna; Hermann, Christiane

2015-01-01

Instrumental learning paradigms are rarely employed to investigate the mechanisms underlying acquired fear responses in social anxiety. Here, we adapted a probabilistic category learning paradigm to assess information processing biases as a function of the degree of social anxiety traits in a sample of healthy individuals without a diagnosis of social phobia. Participants were presented with three pairs of neutral faces with differing probabilistic accuracy contingencies (A/B: 80/20, C/D: 70/30, E/F: 60/40). Upon making their choice, negative and positive feedback was conveyed using angry and happy faces, respectively. The highly socially anxious group showed a strong tendency to be more accurate at learning the probability contingency associated with the most ambiguous stimulus pair (E/F: 60/40). Moreover, when pairing the most positively reinforced stimulus or the most negatively reinforced stimulus with all the other stimuli in a test phase, the highly socially anxious group avoided the most negatively reinforced stimulus significantly more than the control group. The results are discussed with reference to avoidance learning and hypersensitivity to negative socially evaluative information associated with social anxiety. PMID:26347685

An Integrated Process Model of Stereotype Threat Effects on Performance

PubMed Central

Johns, Michael; Forbes, Chad

2008-01-01

Research showing that activation of negative stereotypes can impair the performance of stigmatized individuals on a wide variety of tasks has proliferated. However, a complete understanding of the processes underlying these stereotype threat effects on behavior is still lacking. The authors examine stereotype threat in the context of research on stress arousal, vigilance, working memory, and self-regulation to develop a process model of how negative stereotypes impair performance on cognitive and social tasks that require controlled processing, as well as sensorimotor tasks that require automatic processing. The authors argue that stereotype threat disrupts performance via 3 distinct, yet interrelated, mechanisms: (a) a physiological stress response that directly impairs prefrontal processing, (b) a tendency to actively monitor performance, and (c) efforts to suppress negative thoughts and emotions in the service of self-regulation. These mechanisms combine to consume executive resources needed to perform well on cognitive and social tasks. The active monitoring mechanism disrupts performance on sensorimotor tasks directly. Empirical evidence for these assertions is reviewed, and implications for interventions designed to alleviate stereotype threat are discussed. PMID:18426293

Synchrony and motor mimicking in chimpanzee observational learning

PubMed Central

Fuhrmann, Delia; Ravignani, Andrea; Marshall-Pescini, Sarah; Whiten, Andrew

2014-01-01

Cumulative tool-based culture underwrote our species' evolutionary success, and tool-based nut-cracking is one of the strongest candidates for cultural transmission in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. However the social learning processes that may explain both the similarities and differences between the species remain unclear. A previous study of nut-cracking by initially naïve chimpanzees suggested that a learning chimpanzee holding no hammer nevertheless replicated hammering actions it witnessed. This observation has potentially important implications for the nature of the social learning processes and underlying motor coding involved. In the present study, model and observer actions were quantified frame-by-frame and analysed with stringent statistical methods, demonstrating synchrony between the observer's and model's movements, cross-correlation of these movements above chance level and a unidirectional transmission process from model to observer. These results provide the first quantitative evidence for motor mimicking underlain by motor coding in apes, with implications for mirror neuron function. PMID:24923651

Synchrony and motor mimicking in chimpanzee observational learning.

PubMed

Fuhrmann, Delia; Ravignani, Andrea; Marshall-Pescini, Sarah; Whiten, Andrew

2014-06-13

Cumulative tool-based culture underwrote our species' evolutionary success, and tool-based nut-cracking is one of the strongest candidates for cultural transmission in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. However the social learning processes that may explain both the similarities and differences between the species remain unclear. A previous study of nut-cracking by initially naïve chimpanzees suggested that a learning chimpanzee holding no hammer nevertheless replicated hammering actions it witnessed. This observation has potentially important implications for the nature of the social learning processes and underlying motor coding involved. In the present study, model and observer actions were quantified frame-by-frame and analysed with stringent statistical methods, demonstrating synchrony between the observer's and model's movements, cross-correlation of these movements above chance level and a unidirectional transmission process from model to observer. These results provide the first quantitative evidence for motor mimicking underlain by motor coding in apes, with implications for mirror neuron function.

To be truly alive: motivation among prison inmate hospice volunteers and the transformative process of end-of-life peer care service.

PubMed

Cloyes, Kristin G; Rosenkranz, Susan J; Wold, Dawn; Berry, Patricia H; Supiano, Katherine P

2014-11-01

Some US prisons are meeting the growing need for end-of-life care through inmate volunteer programs, yet knowledge of the motivations of inmate caregivers is underdeveloped. This study explored the motivations of inmate hospice volunteers from across Louisiana State (n = 75) through an open-ended survey, a grounded theory approach to analysis, and comparison of responses by experience level and gender. Participants expressed complex motivations; Inter-related themes on personal growth, social responsibility and ethical service to vulnerable peers suggested that inmate caregivers experience an underlying process of personal and social transformation, from hospice as a source of positive self-identity to peer-caregiving as a foundation for community. Better understanding of inmate caregiver motivations and processes will help prisons devise effective and sustainable end of life peer-care programs. © The Author(s) 2013.

[Early mother-infant interaction and factors negatively affecting parenting].

PubMed

Cerezo, María Angeles; Trenado, Rosa María; Pons-Salvador, Gemma

2006-08-01

The social information-processing model contributes to identifying the psychological processes underlying the construct "sensitivity" in early mother-child interaction. Negative emotional states associated with inadequate self-regulation in coping with stressors affect the mother's attention skills and the processing of the baby's signals. This leads to less synchronous parental practices, particularly unsatisfactory when the baby is unhappy, or crying because the required self-regulation is not provided. This micro-social research studies the sequential profile of maternal reactions to the baby's positive/neutral vs. difficult behaviours and compares them in two groups of dyads, one with mothers who reported high levels of distress and other negative factors for parenting and another group with low levels. The unfavourable circumstances of the high stress group and their negative effects on interaction were observed in some indiscriminate maternal responses and particularly as they reacted to their baby's difficult behaviour, when the mother's regulatory role is more necessary.

Social networks dynamics revealed by temporal analysis: An example in a non-human primate (Macaca sylvanus) in "La Forêt des Singes".

PubMed

Sosa, Sebastian; Zhang, Peng; Cabanes, Guénaël

2017-06-01

This study applied a temporal social network analysis model to describe three affiliative social networks (allogrooming, sleep in contact, and triadic interaction) in a non-human primate species, Macaca sylvanus. Three main social mechanisms were examined to determine interactional patterns among group members, namely preferential attachment (i.e., highly connected individuals are more likely to form new connections), triadic closure (new connections occur via previous close connections), and homophily (individuals interact preferably with others with similar attributes). Preferential attachment was only observed for triadic interaction network. Triadic closure was significant in allogrooming and triadic interaction networks. Finally, gender homophily was seasonal for allogrooming and sleep in contact networks, and observed in each period for triadic interaction network. These individual-based behaviors are based on individual reactions, and their analysis can shed light on the formation of the affiliative networks determining ultimate coalition networks, and how these networks may evolve over time. A focus on individual behaviors is necessary for a global interactional approach to understanding social behavior rules and strategies. When combined, these social processes could make animal social networks more resilient, thus enabling them to face drastic environmental changes. This is the first study to pinpoint some of the processes underlying the formation of a social structure in a non-human primate species, and identify common mechanisms with humans. The approach used in this study provides an ideal tool for further research seeking to answer long-standing questions about social network dynamics. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Formation of homophily in academic performance: Students change their friends rather than performance

PubMed Central

Smirnov, Ivan

2017-01-01

Homophily, the tendency of individuals to associate with others who share similar traits, has been identified as a major driving force in the formation and evolution of social ties. In many cases, it is not clear if homophily is the result of a socialization process, where individuals change their traits according to the dominance of that trait in their local social networks, or if it results from a selection process, in which individuals reshape their social networks so that their traits match those in the new environment. Here we demonstrate the detailed temporal formation of strong homophily in academic achievements of high school and university students. We analyze a unique dataset that contains information about the detailed time evolution of a friendship network of 6,000 students across 42 months. Combining the evolving social network data with the time series of the academic performance (GPA) of individual students, we show that academic homophily is a result of selection: students prefer to gradually reorganize their social networks according to their performance levels, rather than adapting their performance to the level of their local group. We find no signs for a pull effect, where a social environment of good performers motivates bad students to improve their performance. We are able to understand the underlying dynamics of grades and networks with a simple model. The lack of a social pull effect in classical educational settings could have important implications for the understanding of the observed persistence of segregation, inequality and social immobility in societies. PMID:28854202

Health-equity issues related to childhood obesity: a scoping review.

PubMed

Vargas, Clemencia M; Stines, Elsie M; Granado, Herta S

2017-06-01

The purpose of this scoping review was to determine the health-equity issues that relate to childhood obesity. Health-equity issues related to childhood obesity were identified by analyzing food environment, natural and built environment, and social environment. The authors searched Medline, PubMed, and Web of Science, using the keywords "children" and "obesity." Specific terms for each environment were added: "food desert," "advertising," "insecurity," "price," "processing," "trade," and "school" for food environment; "urban design," "land use," "transportation mode," "public facilities," and "market access" for natural and built environment; and "financial capacity/poverty," "living conditions," "transport access," "remoteness," "social support," "social cohesion," "working practices," "eating habits," "time," and "social norms" for social environment. Inclusion criteria were studies or reports with populations under age 12, conducted in the United States, and published in English in 2005 or later. The final search yielded 39 references (16 for food environment, 11 for built environment, and 12 for social environment). Most food-environment elements were associated with obesity, except food insecurity and food deserts. A natural and built environment that hinders access to physical activity resources and access to healthy foods increased the risk of childhood obesity. Similarly, a negative social environment was associated with childhood obesity. More research is needed on the effects of food production, living conditions, time for shopping, and exercise, as related to childhood obesity. Most elements of food, natural and built, and social-environments were associated with weight in children under age 12, except food insecurity and food deserts. © 2017 American Association of Public Health Dentistry.

Racial Socialization, Racial Identity, and Academic Attitudes Among African American Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Influence of Parent-Adolescent Communication.

PubMed

Tang, Sandra; McLoyd, Vonnie C; Hallman, Samantha K

2016-06-01

A significant gap remains in our understanding of the conditions under which parents' racial socialization has consequences for adolescents' functioning. The present study used longitudinal data to examine whether the frequency of communication between African American parents and adolescents (N = 504; 49 % female) moderates the association between parent reports of racial socialization (i.e., cultural socialization and preparation for bias) at 8th grade and adolescent reports of racial identity (perceived structural discrimination, negative public regard, success-oriented centrality) at 11th grade, and in turn, academic attitudes and perceptions. Parents' racial socialization practices were significant predictors of multiple aspects of adolescents' racial identity in families with high levels of communication, but they did not predict any aspects of adolescents' racial identity in families with low levels of communication. Results highlight the importance of including family processes when examining the relations between parents' racial socialization and adolescents' racial identity and academic attitudes and perceptions.

[Differences between proposals for implementation of the social class concept in epidemiological studies

PubMed

Solla

1996-07-01

This article compares different proposals for the implementation of the concept of social class and analyzes the alternatives used in each proposal, considering previous epidemiological studies on this issue and the potential of such a concept as a central category in studies on social determination in the health/disease process. Seven basic differences were identified, pertaining to the following aspects: class structure; research objective; the social class concept as a reference; the decision as to which individual has his/her occupational activity taken as defining the family's social class; the class status of the unemployed, housewives, and the retired; class status of students; and criteria for distinguishing between the "bourgeoisie", "petty bourgeoisie", "new petty bourgeoisie", and "proletariat" and whether there is a specific flow in certain population groups. Given the observed differences and underlying theoretical models, this study discusses problems related to the fact that the use of a specific concept of social class can have various implementation models.

Neuronal Representation of Social Information in the Medial Amygdala of Awake Behaving Mice.

PubMed

Li, Ying; Mathis, Alexander; Grewe, Benjamin F; Osterhout, Jessica A; Ahanonu, Biafra; Schnitzer, Mark J; Murthy, Venkatesh N; Dulac, Catherine

2017-11-16

The medial amygdala (MeA) plays a critical role in processing species- and sex-specific signals that trigger social and defensive behaviors. However, the principles by which this deep brain structure encodes social information is poorly understood. We used a miniature microscope to image the Ca 2+ dynamics of large neural ensembles in awake behaving mice and tracked the responses of MeA neurons over several months. These recordings revealed spatially intermingled subsets of MeA neurons with distinct temporal dynamics. The encoding of social information in the MeA differed between males and females and relied on information from both individual cells and neuronal populations. By performing long-term Ca 2+ imaging across different social contexts, we found that sexual experience triggers lasting and sex-specific changes in MeA activity, which, in males, involve signaling by oxytocin. These findings reveal basic principles underlying the brain's representation of social information and its modulation by intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Racial Socialization, Racial Identity, and Academic Attitudes Among African American Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Influence of Parent–Adolescent Communication

PubMed Central

McLoyd, Vonnie C.; Hallman, Samantha K.

2017-01-01

A significant gap remains in our understanding of the conditions under which parents’ racial socialization has consequences for adolescents’ functioning. The present study used longitudinal data to examine whether the frequency of communication between African American parents and adolescents (N = 504; 49 % female) moderates the association between parent reports of racial socialization (i.e., cultural socialization and preparation for bias) at 8th grade and adolescent reports of racial identity (perceived structural discrimination, negative public regard, success-oriented centrality) at 11th grade, and in turn, academic attitudes and perceptions. Parents’ racial socialization practices were significant predictors of multiple aspects of adolescents’ racial identity in families with high levels of communication, but they did not predict any aspects of adolescents’ racial identity in families with low levels of communication. Results highlight the importance of including family processes when examining the relations between parents’ racial socialization and adolescents’ racial identity and academic attitudes and perceptions. PMID:26369349

Parents' perceptions of child-to-parent socialization in organized youth sport.

PubMed

Dorsch, Travis E; Smith, Alan L; McDonough, Meghan H

2009-08-01

The purpose of this study was to enhance understanding of how parents are socialized by their children's organized youth sport participation. Five semistructured focus groups were conducted with youth sport parents (N = 26) and analyzed using qualitative methods based on Strauss and Corbin (1998). Sixty-three underlying themes reflected parents' perceived socialization experiences resulting from their children's organized youth sport participation. Each theme represented 1 of 11 subcategories of parental change, which were subsumed within four broad categories of parent sport socialization (behavior, cognition, affect, relationships). Each category of parental change was interconnected with the other three categories. Moreover, six potential moderators of parent sport socialization were documented, namely, child age, parent past sport experience, parent and child gender, child temperament, community sport context, and type of sport setting (individual or team). Together, these findings enhance understanding of parent sport socialization processes and outcomes, thus opening avenues for future research on parents in the youth sport setting.

Functional neural correlates of social approval in schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Lepage, Martin

2016-01-01

Social approval is a reward that uses abstract social reinforcers to guide interpersonal interactions. Few studies have specifically explored social reward processing and its related neural substrates in schizophrenia. Fifteen patients with schizophrenia and fifteen healthy controls participated in a two-part study to explore the functional neural correlates of social approval. In the first session, participants were led to believe their personality would be assessed based on their results from various questionnaires and an interview. Participants were then presented with the results of their supposed evaluation in the scanner, while engaging in a relevant fMRI social approval task. Subjects provided subjective reports of pleasure associated with receiving self-directed positive or negative feedback. Higher activation of the right parietal lobe was found in controls compared with individuals with schizophrenia. Both groups rated traits from the high social reward condition as more pleasurable than the low social reward condition, while intergroup differences emerged in the low social reward condition. Positive correlations were found in patients only between subjective ratings of positive feedback and right insula activation, and a relevant behavioural measure. Evidence suggests potential neural substrates underlying the cognitive representation of social reputation in schizophrenia. PMID:26516171

[The concept of social marketing--potential and limitations for health promotion and prevention in Germany].

PubMed

Loss, J; Lang, K; Ultsch, S; Eichhorn, C; Nagel, E

2006-07-01

"Social marketing" is the use of marketing principles to design and implement programmes to promote socially beneficial behaviour changes. In the field of health promotion and prevention, the systematic planning process of social marketing can offer new ideas and perspectives to the traditions of social science. Major characteristics of social marketing encompass continuous market research focussing on attitudes, motives and behavioural patterns of the target group, an integrated mix of strategic key elements, and the perpetual evaluation of all procedures. So far, however, it is unclear in how far social marketing is actually more effective than other concepts of programme planning. Furthermore, it has to be discussed whether the underlying philosophy of social marketing and its implicit understanding of relationships to the public are reconcilable with health promotion principles. In Anglo-Saxon countries, the social marketing concept has achieved widespread application and is subject to controversial scientific discussions, whereas this approach is hardly considered in German health promotion research and practice. Given the increasing call for quality management and evaluation of health promotion interventions, the social marketing concept may contribute useful insights at an operational level and thus add to a discussion on effective approaches for programme planning.

The Time Course of Neural Responses to Social versus Non-social Unfairness in the Ultimatum Game.

PubMed

Chen, Mingliang; Zhao, Zhen; Lai, Hongxia

2018-06-08

The unfairness effects are always the hotspot within social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. However, people's neural responses to social versus non-social unfairness remain under-researched, especially about temporal features. We engaged participants in the Ultimatum Game to respond to human and computer proposers (representing social and non-social contexts respectively) and recorded their event-related potentials. The interactions elicited three components of interest: medial frontal negativity (MFN), late positive potential (LPP) and response related negativity (RRN). First, unfair human offers elicited larger MFN than unfair computer offers did, suggesting a greater perception of unfairness in the social context. Second, rejected unfair human offers elicited smaller LPP than rejected unfair computer offers did. This finding implies that the rejection to social unfairness could down-regulate the unfairness-aversive emotions. These two mechanisms explained the stronger resistance to social unfairness in behavioural results. Last, the RRN for unfairness rejections were larger than for fairness acceptances, but showed no variance to the two types of proposers, signifying a similar degree of response conflict behind rejections to social and non-social unfairness. These results of our exploratory study will be helpful in revealing the sociality effect on the perceptual, emotional and reappraisal processing during the unfairness response.

Challenges and Opportunities for Integrating Social Science Perspectives into Climate and Global Change Assessments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Larson, E. K.; Li, J.; Zycherman, A.

2017-12-01

Integration of social science into climate and global change assessments is fundamental for improving understanding of the drivers, impacts and vulnerability of climate change, and the social, cultural and behavioral challenges related to climate change responses. This requires disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge as well as integrational and translational tools for linking this knowledge with the natural and physical sciences. The USGCRP's Social Science Coordinating Committee (SSCC) is tasked with this challenge and is working to integrate relevant social, economic and behavioral knowledge into processes like sustained assessments. This presentation will discuss outcomes from a recent SSCC workshop, "Social Science Perspectives on Climate Change" and their applications to sustained assessments. The workshop brought academic social scientists from four disciplines - anthropology, sociology, geography and archaeology - together with federal scientists and program managers to discuss three major research areas relevant to the USGCRP and climate assessments: (1) innovative tools, methods, and analyses to clarify the interactions of human and natural systems under climate change, (2) understanding of factors contributing to differences in social vulnerability between and within communities under climate change, and (3) social science perspectives on drivers of global climate change. These disciplines, collectively, emphasize the need to consider socio-cultural, political, economic, geographic, and historic factors, and their dynamic interactions, to understand climate change drivers, social vulnerability, and mitigation and adaptation responses. They also highlight the importance of mixed quantitative and qualitative methods to explain impacts, vulnerability, and responses at different time and spatial scales. This presentation will focus on major contributions of the social sciences to climate and global change research. We will discuss future directions for sustained assessments that integrate and reflect the social science understanding of the complex relationships between social and natural worlds in a changing climate, and factors that impact effective mitigation and adaptation strategies that address risks and vulnerabilities of climate change.

Evolution of cooperation under social pressure in multiplex networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pereda, María

2016-09-01

In this work, we aim to contribute to the understanding of human prosocial behavior by studying the influence that a particular form of social pressure, "being watched," has on the evolution of cooperative behavior. We study how cooperation emerges in multiplex complex topologies by analyzing a particular bidirectionally coupled dynamics on top of a two-layer multiplex network (duplex). The coupled dynamics appears between the prisoner's dilemma game in a network and a threshold cascade model in the other. The threshold model is intended to abstract the behavior of a network of vigilant nodes that impose the pressure of being observed altering hence the temptation to defect of the dilemma. Cooperation or defection in the game also affects the state of a node of being vigilant. We analyze these processes on different duplex networks structures and assess the influence of the topology, average degree and correlated multiplexity, on the outcome of cooperation. Interestingly, we find that the social pressure of vigilance may impact cooperation positively or negatively, depending on the duplex structure, specifically the degree correlations between layers is determinant. Our results give further quantitative insights in the promotion of cooperation under social pressure.

Evolution of cooperation under social pressure in multiplex networks.

PubMed

Pereda, María

2016-09-01

In this work, we aim to contribute to the understanding of human prosocial behavior by studying the influence that a particular form of social pressure, "being watched," has on the evolution of cooperative behavior. We study how cooperation emerges in multiplex complex topologies by analyzing a particular bidirectionally coupled dynamics on top of a two-layer multiplex network (duplex). The coupled dynamics appears between the prisoner's dilemma game in a network and a threshold cascade model in the other. The threshold model is intended to abstract the behavior of a network of vigilant nodes that impose the pressure of being observed altering hence the temptation to defect of the dilemma. Cooperation or defection in the game also affects the state of a node of being vigilant. We analyze these processes on different duplex networks structures and assess the influence of the topology, average degree and correlated multiplexity, on the outcome of cooperation. Interestingly, we find that the social pressure of vigilance may impact cooperation positively or negatively, depending on the duplex structure, specifically the degree correlations between layers is determinant. Our results give further quantitative insights in the promotion of cooperation under social pressure.

20 CFR 404.1402 - When are railroad industry services by a non-vested worker covered under Social Security?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

...-vested worker covered under Social Security? 404.1402 Section 404.1402 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL... When are railroad industry services by a non-vested worker covered under Social Security? If you are a non-vested worker, we (the Social Security Administration) will consider your services in the railroad...

20 CFR 404.1402 - When are railroad industry services by a non-vested worker covered under Social Security?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-04-01

...-vested worker covered under Social Security? 404.1402 Section 404.1402 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL... When are railroad industry services by a non-vested worker covered under Social Security? If you are a non-vested worker, we (the Social Security Administration) will consider your services in the railroad...

20 CFR 404.1402 - When are railroad industry services by a non-vested worker covered under Social Security?

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-04-01

...-vested worker covered under Social Security? 404.1402 Section 404.1402 Employees' Benefits SOCIAL... When are railroad industry services by a non-vested worker covered under Social Security? If you are a non-vested worker, we (the Social Security Administration) will consider your services in the railroad...

What's the Worry with Social Anxiety? Comparing Cognitive Processes in Children with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder.

PubMed

Hearn, Cate S; Donovan, Caroline L; Spence, Susan H; March, Sonja; Holmes, Monique C

2017-10-01

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) in children is often comorbid with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). We investigated whether worry, intolerance of uncertainty, beliefs about worry, negative problem orientation and cognitive avoidance, that are typically associated with GAD, are present in children with SAD. Participants included 60 children (8-12 years), matched on age and gender. Groups included children: with primary GAD and without SAD (GAD); with primary SAD and without GAD (SAD); and without an anxiety disorder (NAD). GAD and SAD groups scored significantly higher than the NAD group on worry, intolerance of uncertainty, negative beliefs about worry and negative problem orientation, however, they did not score differently from each other. Only the GAD group scored significantly higher than the NAD group on cognitive avoidance. These findings further understanding of the structure of SAD and suggest that the high comorbidity between SAD and GAD may be due to similar underlying processes within the disorders.

Modulation of the brain activity in outcome evaluation by the presence of an audience: An electrophysiological investigation.

PubMed

Tian, Tengxiang; Feng, Xue; Gu, Ruolei; Broster, Lucas S; Feng, Chunliang; Wang, Lili; Guan, Qing; Luo, Yue-Jia

2015-07-30

The audience effect refers to the phenomenon that one׳s performance on a task is affected by the presence of others. Here we investigated how the audience effect modulates the neurocognitive signatures underlying people׳s evaluation of their own task performance/outcome. Participants in our study played a gambling game in two social contexts: an "audience" condition and an "alone" condition. The presence of others modulated the feedback-related negativity (FRN), which might reflect enhanced motivational significance or increased reward processing when participants were watched compared to when they were alone. We also observed increased P300 responses to outcome feedback in the audience condition, presumably reflecting more elaborative and sustained evaluation of outcomes in the audience than alone context. This audience effect on the evaluative processes complements previous observations on the social nature of outcome evaluation and extends a traditional topic in social psychology to the neuroscientific field. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Very Beginnings of Togetherness in Shared Play among Young Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rayna, Sylvie

2001-01-01

Presents three examples of the beginnings of togetherness among young peers, ages 1-3 years. Considers psychological processes underlying their activities and the characteristics of the settings in which these activities occur. Discusses these examples in the context of a definition of the social interactive dimension of learning, and the…