By the age of two, most children are able to embark on pretend play and adopt a perspective that does not fit reality. This enables children to develop the ability to attribute perspective to others that they don't share. Findings suggest the ability to adopt perspectives, an important aspect of developing social cognition and the attribution of mental state, is already present in young children.
People who are more accurate at reading another person's emotions are better able to understand what a musician is trying to convey through their compositions. Additionally, those with higher empathetic accuracy are better able to feel the emotions conveyed through music.
Researchers reveal dopamine, a neurotransmitter commonly associated with reward plays a key role in social cognition and emotional recognition.
From age-related brain shrinkage that may affect our social cognition, to feeling more confident in our own skin, researchers investigate why older people appear to lose their "filter" when it comes to some social interactions.
In order to better understand the role that knowledge serves in human intelligence, it is essential to look beyond the individual and focus studies on the community overall, researchers say.
When people make eye contact with another person, their attention is immediately solicited and this causes a distortion in temporal perception. However, the shift in time perception does not change when people glance at non-social items or objects.
Patients with schizophrenia show increased brain activity in central areas of the brain, but lower activity in the temporal sulcus when hearing metaphors.
Mothers who reported higher levels of parental stress had less synchrony in brain activity with their young children than moms who were more stress-free. The findings shed new light on how parental stress can impact the mother-child relationship on a day-to-day basis.
A new study sheds doubt on existing theories of ape social cognition. Researchers argue it is possible apes and humans are equally capable in some aspects of social cognition, such as social signaling. The study concludes it is essential to not just consider evolution, but also environmental factors when researching ape-human differences.
Findings provide new evidence that autism is linked to lower empathy in the general population, and atypical empathy in ASD is not simply due to alexithymia, or emotional blindness. Researchers stress that the lack of empathy may not always be a negative quality.
Ubiquitous access to the internet may be altering the structure of our brains, as well as influencing our attentional capabilities, memory and social behaviors.
Disruptions in the supply of allopregnanolone, a hormone created by the placenta late in pregnancy, to the developing fetus can leave children more vulnerable to brain injuries associated with ASD. Losing the supply of ALLO alters cerebellar development, an area of the brain critical for motor coordination and social cognition, impacting the post-birth development of cerebellar white matter. An experimental model revealed deficient cerebellar white matter resulted in social impairments and an increase in repetitive behaviors, two hallmark features associated with autism.