The Role of the Human Prefrontal Cortex in Social Cognition and Moral Judgment

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The Role of the Human Prefrontal Cortex in Social
Cognition and Moral Judgment

• Part I
• Group 1

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Question 1

• The frontal lobe seems very busy. Without
  worrying about a precise definition of what it
  does right now, what sorts of things are
  mentioned in the article? Discuss some things
  that it does.
• Answer
• 1 Integrate information from five senses
• 2 Focus on goal-relevant stimuli and inhabit
  distraction
• 3 Evaluate and interpret information with past
  experience
• 4 Store information about self and others
• 5 Organize action and planned behavior temporally

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Question 2

• What do you think would be a good general
  description of frontal lobe function? I dont
  expect you to be fully correct just yet. Do you
  think it does more than the social cognition
  functions mentioned in the article?
• Answer
• PFC is the information integration center in the
  brain that not only navigates motor skills by
  coordinating our movements and actions., but also
  gives us the capability to have higher order
  cognitive process intelligence, reasoning,
  attention, controlled processing, working memory.

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Question 3

• Describe what Social Cognition refers to, and
  the components of social cognition that are
  mentioned in this section. Explain each.
• Answer
• The processes by which we make sense of
  ourselves, the social environment or culture in
  which we live, and the people around us.
• Any cognitive process engaged to understand and
  interpret the self, others, and the
  self-in-relation-to-others within the social
  environment.
• Can be broken down into several primary
  categories that have both implicit and explicit
  components.
• These categories include
• Social perceptual processes
• Attributional processes
• Social categorization

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Question 4

• What is the difference between implicit and
  explicit in this regard and what roles do they
  play?
• Answer

• Implicit processes
• unfold rapidly,
• require little cognitive effort,
• occur outside individuals conscious awareness,
• involve posterior cortical and subcortical
  regions of the brain.
• face recognition and stereotype activation,
• conditioned, evaluative associations between
  ideas or categories and stimuli that fit those
  categories
• self-serving biases
• Explicit processes
• deliberative, cognitively taxing
• consciously accessible,
• largely rely on the PFC
• deliberative evaluations of objects introspective
  perceptions of self
• and others, and attributions

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Question 5

• Put a copy of Figure 1 in your presentation and
  explain it.
• Answer
• As you move along the arrow from implicit to
  explicit, the amount of cognitive effort
  increases. Things near the implicit end, such as
  emotions (the amygdala) occur automatically. As
  you move towards explicit processes, the PFC is
  more involved and more relied upon.