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    • These initial pro social preferences are more

    2018-11-14

    These initial pro-social preferences are more complex during the second half of the first year, being influenced by the social context in which an interaction occurs. Eight-month-olds prefer agents that act positively toward pro-social others and negatively toward anti-social others (Hamlin et al., 2011) whereas 9-month-olds prefer agents that treat similar others well and dissimilar others poorly (Hamlin et al., 2013a). At 1 year of age, infants not only attribute dispositional states to these interacting geometric shapes (Kuhlmeier et al., 2003) but also predict that agents will seek out others that have previously helped them (Fawcett and Liszkowski, 2012). Scarf et al. (2012) have criticized the interpretation made by Hamlin et al. (2007). Instead of focusing on helping and hindering actions, Scarf et al. (2012) argue that infants prefer agents that are associated with positive events. Although this was a reasonable criticism of the original study this alternative interpretation cannot account for the conceptual replications of this method that have been performed using different stimuli (Hamlin et al., 2013b; Hamlin and Wynn, 2011), nor can it account for the subsequent more complex findings that infants’ prosocial preferences are not rigid but depend on context (Hamlin et al., 2011, 2013a,b). In sum, there is currently substantial support for the notion that infants are able to interpret the interaction of animate agents as pro- or anti-social and that they use this information to guide their attention and reaching actions (for a review see Hamlin, 2013, 2014). Several different interpretations have been proposed to account for infants’ evaluation of actions’ social valence. One possibility is that early-emerging mentalistic processes such as theory of mind and perspective taking (Kovacs et al., 2010; Onishi and Baillargeon, 2005; Southgate et al., 2007) mediate infants’ pro-social preferences (Hamlin et al., 2013b). In fact, Hamlin et al. (2013b) suggest, based on modeling of empirical data, that 10-month-olds’ pro-social preferences might involve second-order mental-state representations. That is, the goal of one agent relates to the intention of another (here referred to as the mentalistic account). In adults and children the temporal parietal junction (TPJ), and with increased age the pre-frontal GSK503 (Kobayashi et al., 2007), are often implicated in mentalistic processes (Van Overwalle and Baetens, 2009), along with activation in the superior temporal sulcus (STS; Decety, 2011; Decety and Howard, 2013; Moll et al., 2002). Based on neuropsychological investigations of empathy conducted with adults and older children, alternative accounts are also possible. It is conceivable that some pro-social preferences are governed by lower level social perception processes, which relate actions to goals without the need for mentalizing (here referred to as the social perception account). Several indications suggest that these processes are organized by the STS without necessary involvement of higher cognitive functions. Adults showed more activation of the STS for animated geometrical shapes that appeared to interact in an intentional manner when compared to random movements, the activity being related to participant\'s ratings of intentionality (Castelli et al., 2000). In children, a recent fMRI study demonstrated that the STS (as one of several areas) is sensitive to perceived intentional harm in others (Decety et al., 2012). On a larger scale the STS is sensitive to body movement and goal directed actions such as reaching and looking, in addition to being sensitive to faces and emotional expressions in general (Allison et al., 2000). The common denominator of the mentalistic and social perception accounts of processing of socially valenced actions is therefore the involvement of the STS. In infants Amphipathic structure has been argued that the P400 ERP component is an index of STS activity (Gredebäck et al., 2010). There are several lines of enquiry that support this assumption. First of all, the P400 is often described as an infant version of the adult N170–N200 (along with the infant N290; de Haan et al., 2002; Nelson et al., 2006). This is based on studies that demonstrate infant P400 and adult N170–N200 in response to identical stimuli (Gredebäck et al., 2010; Senju et al., 2006) and the observation that similar manipulations alter the amplitude of infant P400 and adult N170–N200 components (Csibra et al., 2008). The N170–N200 in turn has been directly related to the STS via source localization and joint EEG, fMRI measures (Puce et al., 1998; Itier and Taylor, 2004; Dalrymple et al., 2011). On the basis of these arguments, and the observation that both accounts involve STS activity, we hypothesize that an infant P400 ERP component indexes processing of actions’ social valence.