The neurogenesis of social cognition: evidence from impaired populations Talk at the Social cognitio

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The neurogenesis of social cognition evidence
from impaired populationsTalk at the Social
cognition Evolutionary and cultural
perspectives meeting, Budapest, 18th July, 2003

• Csaba Pléh, Ágnes Lukács, Miklós Gyori
• Budapest U. of Technology and Economics and HAS,
  L. Eötvös U.
• pleh_at_itm.bme.hu

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Outline of the talk

• Biological interpretations of the social mind
• Logic of studying impaired populations
• Dissociations between autistic spectrum and
  Williams syndrome
• Aspects of pragmatics in ASD and WS
• Varieties of the social mind

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Biological interpretations of the social mind

• Forget the traditional individual brain-mind
  approach intrinsically social mind (Humphrey)
• Social control and attribution in evolution
  Tomasello
• The social brain revealed in brain damage
  Damasio
• Social modules and major psychiatry Crow
• The unfolding of social competence in
  neurodevelopmental disorders Intricacies of the
  social mind brain

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Standard logic of studying impaired populations
to understand the organization of social cognition

• Modular organization of the human mind
• Search for double dissociations
• Social cognition as a unified module
• Evidence for a social mind and its lack
• Evolutionary interpretation, e.g. language,
  social teaching, directed attention
• Evidence for varieties of the social mind

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The hope to find a social double dissociation
Autism and WS

• Autistic spectrum disorders communication,
  eye-contact, social incompetence syndromes,
  stereotyped and rigid behavior
• Williams syndrome low IQ, severe visuo-spatial
  impairments, at the same time good language, and
  very sociable behavior
• Is that so simple no social mind vs. intact
  social mind?

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Typical stereotyped autistic activity
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A typical WS teenager
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Contrasting autism and WS

• Autistic spectrum
• Unclear genetics, multifactoral
• 1 in 1-500
• Impairments in reciprocal sociality
• Weak reciprocal communication
• Stereotyped behavior

• Williams syndrome
• Clear genetic identity, chromosome 7
• 1 in 20.0000
• Impairments in spatial cognition
• Relatively good language
• Social openness

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Pragmatics and the social mind

• Social interpretation and language learning
• ToM and language
• elementary forms of ToM as preconditions of
  language
• language influences on ToM, e.g. mental verbs
• Relevance and rules of communication
• Non-literal meaning metaphor, irony, jokes

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Pragmatic issues in our studies

• Autistic spectrum
• Various explanations of ToM passing
• Pragmatic tasks to study them
• Varieties of compensation
• An epigenetic model of social mind

• Williams syndrome
• Differentiating sociality from ToM
• Evidence for skilfull use of ToM-like attribution
• Word-learning and referential intentionality
• Language related social skills intact

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The Theory of Mind hypothesis in autism
(Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith)

• Theory of Mind/ ToM
• the human capacity to understand, explain and
  predict various agents behaviors by attributing
  mental states to them, and interpreting behavior
  as causal consequence of the assigned mental
  states.
• Defining features of autism can be explained by
  assuming
• a developmentally impaired theory of mind
  ability in this population except rigid and
  stereotyped behaviors

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The Theory of Mind hypothesis Contrasting
typicals with ASD

• Typicals
• Early appearance (2 years)
• Domain specific system
• Plays a central role in communication and
  interaction
• Is it unified or several layers?

• ASD persons
• It is impaired in the majority
• Social/communicative symptoms explained
• Not reduced to coherence/executive impairments
• What happens in passers?

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Passers of ToM and autistic spectrum

• These subjects
• usually have their IQ in the non-impaired
  range
• usually have formally unimpaired language
• have a verbal mental age usually above 11
  years
• their ratio in various studies is between
  15-90
• The main questions
• Do these subjects have a genuine ToM ability?
• If so, how did they acquire it?
• If so, what maintains impaired social
  competence in them?
• If not, what else underlies their tasks
  success, in cognitive/neural terms?

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Suggested solutions for passers

• ToM ability is intact, but executive
  dysfunctioning
• developmental delay in passers
• domain-general problem solving abilities underlie
  passing, not ToM
• an explicitly represented ToM which is acquired
  and applied via verbal mediation
• mixed data on the different proposals

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Experimental pragmatic paradigms to study passers

• Understanding simple stories with literal or
  ironic meaning
• Checking for processing, understanding, and
  empathy
• It can reveal the mechanisms behind varieties of
  passers

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Example of a simple irony task

• John was hungry. He opened a food can. The stew
  smelled rotten. John said
• This is a nice lunch indeed!

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Performance in simple irony tasks

• control group outperformed the ASD group
• but counter-intuitively high performance in the
  ASD group
• different patterns of variable effects in the two
  groups
• more errors if there are NO mental state terms
• in control group ToM and irony r0.42, in ASD
  0.08

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False irony and False literal task

• Kate and Eve decided to go to a cinema, because
  it kept raining all the day. They did not know
  that it stopped raining outside, and the sun
  began to shine. When the movie was over, and they
  stood up, Eve said
• Now, it's time to go back to the rain!

• John built a house, and he asked his brother to
  help him. The brother did not come, so John went
  home. However, later the brother arrived and
  worked alone. Monday morning, when they met each
  other, John said only this
• You have really helped me a lot!

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Subgroups in the false tasks

• Sub-group A -- mentalizers
• success in all tasks (False Ironic, False
  Literal, Simple Irony)
• success in false belief tasks
• complex and productive ToM competence
• Sub-group B -- short-cutters
• consequential failure in False Irony False
  Literal Tasks
• success in Simple Irony Task
• subjects use the Reality Based Shortcut Strategy
• Sub-group C -- complexity limitation
• consequential failure in representing context
  in FIT
• better performance in FLT SIT
• subjects have complexity limitations in
  representing context

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Comparing sub-groups
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A tentative model on varieties of ToM development
in ASD
The model is in line with the findings/speculation
s ofLeslie, 2000 Klin et al., 2000, 2002, etc.
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Two questions in examining pragmatic abilities in
WS about WS what aspects of pragmatic
abilities are preserved and what aspects are
impaired? about the architecture of the mind
based on findings in WS, what can we infer about
pragmatic abilities and social skills in general?
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Storytelling and conversation (Reilly et al.,
1993 Bernicot, 2002 Garayzabal et al.,
2002) WS people tell long stories, using
complex linguistic structures, frequent use of
social evaluative devices and expressive speech
acts Communicative relevance is absent, fewer
interpretative comments, rules of cooperation are
violated, informative contributions are poor,
little coherence and cohesion, literality
although WS people are affective and sociable,
they have many problems in cooperating with the
interlocutor
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Laing et al. (2000) Early Communication Scales
(Mundy and Hogan, 1996 the WS group showed less
social referencing than controls WS group
produced less pointing, but showed equivalent
comprehension skills as controls Jones et al.
(2000) abnormal social attention, perform poorly
on Bayley test because of strong engagement with
the experimenter
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Mentalizing Strong social interest, anxious
personality, good face processing suggests
relatively spared theory of mind
abilities Karmiloff-Smith et al. (1995) standard
ToM tests spared ToM in WS Tager-Flusberg
Sullivan (2000) intact social-perceptual but
impaired social cognitive abilities their
concern for others is matched by a strength in
judging ones affective perspective, even when
they are unable to assess others cognitive
perspective.
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Considering the gaze of the partner in word
learning (Lukács-Pléh, Baron-Cohen et
al.)(referential intent)
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General consclusionsLanguage pragmatics is a
useful tool to study the social mind in
disordered populations

• WS
• Primary social skills of language are intact in
  WS.
• The referential use of the social mind is
  intact? Age?
• They have ToM but may have many problems with
  social metacognition.

• ASD
• Weak ToM but strongly varying degree/form of
  impairment
• Several forms of compensation
• Using both verbal tools, and general cognition
• This suggests that the social mind is more
  varied than a single-module view suggests

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Acknowledgments

• The Autism Foundation and the Hungarian Williams
  Syndrome Association
• NSF, OTKA, and NKFP granting agencies
• Krisztina Stefanik, Mihály Racsmány and Ilona
  Kovács for many ideas
• Our willing students and subjects