Theory of mind refers to the ability to attribute mental states to others and to predict their behaviour based on inferences about their mental states, for example their perception, desires, or beliefs. Forty years ago, research on theory of mind originated from the question of whether or not chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have a theory of mind, a question that – after all this time – is still debated. In the present thesis, I investigate theory of mind and its precursors in birds of the crow family, specifically Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius), California scrub-jays (Aphelocoma californica), and carrion crows (Corvus corone corone). Corvids have been reported to possess theory of mind-like abilities. This qualification reflects the fact that most research on theory of mind in these birds has revolved around the ability to respond to perceptual and desire states of conspecifics, and so far has not produced evidence for or against an ability to also respond to others’ beliefs. Further, it is unclear which mechanisms could be the basis of corvids’ abilities. Thus, there are two open questions in regard to corvid theory of mind my thesis aims to address. To address these questions, first, I investigated the ability of Eurasian jays to respond to the false belief of a conspecific in a caching paradigm, where the knowledge of a conspecific observer about the accessibility of two caching sites was manipulated (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3 I explore which behavioural cues might present the basis of the jays’ ability to respond to the desire of a conspecific in a caching context. In Chapter 4, I report a study on biological motion perception in scrub-jays, a phenomenon suggested to be crucial for the detection of social agents. In Chapter 5, I assess scrub-jays’ sensitivity to gaze of a human and a conspecific. Finally, in Chapter 6, I report a study investigating the face inversion effect in carrion crows, an effect that is indicative of a ‘special’ relevance of faces. I conclude by discussing how the presented studies could help us inform our understanding of corvid theory of mind-like abilities.

In this study, behavioral (post-error response time) and electrophysiological (ERN amplitude and latency) indices of error-monitoring were examined in individuals with autism and typical development. Participants were presented with a series of faces, and they were asked to quickly and accurately determine the gender or the affect of the faces. Younger participants showed post-error slowing for the Gender Task, while older participants showed post-error slowing for the Affect Task. With age, participants showed a greater differentiation between correct and incorrect responses on both ERN amplitude and ERN latency. For the Gender Task only, participants with typical development showed a greater differentiation between correct and incorrect responses than participants with autism on ERN amplitude. Evidence of more error monitoring on the Affect Task was associated with less autistic symptomology, fewer internalizing problems, and better social skills. Evidence of more error monitoring on the Gender Task was associated with greater autistic symptomology and fewer internalizing problems. Overall, age, regardless of diagnostic group, had a substantial effect on face processing and error monitoring abilities. Individuals with autism showed an ability to engage in error monitoring, with only mild impairments in error monitoring. The data suggest that error monitoring is not a core deficit of autism; however, individual differences in error monitoring may significantly moderate the expression of autism.

This study applied Andersen??s social cognitive paradigm for the experimental study of transference to the problem of understanding transference effects on the affective interactions and clinical inferences of student physicians with standardized patients. The investigator designed a 2X2 experimental study in which the independent variables were: source of information for statements about a standardized patient (participant??s own or matched participant??s) and valence of information in statements about the patient (positive or negative). Dependent variables were: affect expressed by a student physician in videotapes of a medical interview with a standardized patient, as measured by a modified version of the Specific Affect ?? 16 code system (SPAFF-16), and clinical inferences by the student physician as measured by the Physician Clinical Inferences Scale (PCIS) developed by the investigator. Covariates included gender, physician verbosity, and intergenerational family relationship variables as measured by the Personal Authority in the Family System Questionnaire ?? Version C (PAFS-QVC). A 2X2 MANCOVA was conducted, along with hierarchical regressions of gender and PAFSQVC variables as predictors of negative and positive affect and clinical inferences (likelihood of treatment success and patient as partner). One sample of undergraduate medical students (n= 71) provided data for the study. Results indicated no statistically significant differences between experimental groups regarding the effect of the experimental manipulation of patient information on student physicians?? affective interactions and clinical inferences with patients when gender, physician verbosity, and related PAFS-QVC variables were controlled. Hierarchical regression analyses of gender and related PAFS-QVC variables onto positive affect, negative affect, clinical inferences (patient as partner) and clinical inferences (likelihood of treatment success) revealed statistically significant effects of intergenerational family relationship and peer relationship variables on student physicians?? affective interactions and clinical inferences with patients.

How, at a fundamental level, do people construe their social world? Mainstream perspectives on social cognition posit that we do so largely by applying hierarchically structured concepts (or schemas) about similar classes of people and events to selectively interpret and elaborate on the complex array of social information. In this dissertation I propose a complementary perspective according to which people lend meaning to the social world in large part through conceptual metaphors that use the structure of familiar, typically concrete concepts to reason about and evaluate information in dissimilar, typically more abstract conceptual domains. I describe a model of metaphor-enriched social cognition (MESC) that provides a preliminary framework for understanding the role of conceptual metaphor in everyday social thought and action. I review research supporting hypotheses derived from the model with respect to the effects of conceptual metaphor on social perception, attitudes, and behavior, and I present four studies designed to further test these hypotheses. Study 1 shows that the sensation of being physically burdened increased the subjective obligatory nature of everyday activities. Study 2 shows that images depicting historically significant people and events (both positively and negatively valenced) were perceived as larger in size than those depicting historically insignificant people and events. In Study 3, priming participants with the beneficial consequences of physical covering led to more permissive attitudes toward the government withholding information from the public, and this effect was specific to those with ambivalent prior attitudes toward the value of governmental secrecy. Study 4 showed that a heightened motivation to protect one's own body from contamination led to harsher attitudes toward immigrants entering the United States among those subtly primed to conceptualize the country as a body but not those primed with a literal conception of the country. Although further research and theoretical refinement are necessary, the MESC model is a step toward acquiring a richer, more general conception of everyday social meaning-making and its implications for social life.

Historically, a dominant view has been that we understand others by directly matching their actions to our own motor system, emphasising the importance of bottom-up processes during social perception. However, more recent theories suggest that instead we actively anticipate others actions based upon intentions inferred outside of the motor system, from social cues such as language, eye gaze and object information. Across 13 experiments, the established representational momentum paradigm, as well as a cross-modal visuotactile paradigm were employed to test the hypothesis that people’s perceptual processes while observing the actions of others would be affected by such top-down cues about the actor’s intentions. We found, first, that people overestimate other people’s actions in the direction of motion. Importantly, these overestimations were directly influenced by social cues. Saying or hearing a word congruent with a subsequently observed action resulted in the action being perceived as further along its trajectory. Second, we found that people anticipate the tactile outcomes of other people’s actions with their own sensory tactile systems but that the mechanisms differed for bottom-up and top-down driven predictions. In a task in which people had to detect tactile stimulation while watching others, seeing impending hand-object contact increased the bias to perceive tactile stimulation, even when there was none, while impending contact that could not be seen but only inferred increased tactile sensitivity. These findings are discussed in the context of recent theories of top-down predictive processing during social perception and from the perspective of multisensory integration.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Background: People with schizophrenia experience significant deficits in empathic skills, which are important for effective interpersonal relationships. Researchers have speculated about the roles of personal distress, emotion regulation, and metacognition in empathic interaction, but the impact of these constructs on empathy has yet to be empirically investigated. This study examines the relationships among these constructs in a sample of people with schizophrenia receiving community-based treatment (N = 58). It was hypothesized that better emotion regulation and metacognition, as well as reduced personal distress, would predict empathy. Further, emotion regulation was expected to mediate the relationship between personal distress and empathy, and metacognition was expected to moderate the relationship between personal distress and empathy. Method: Participants with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder completed self-report questionnaires of emotion regulation and personal distress, a performance-based measure of empathy, and an observer-rated interview to assess metacognition. Results: Metacognition, but not emotion regulation or personal distress, significantly predicted cognitive empathy performance, with a trend-level association for affective empathy performance. Mediation analyses revealed that emotion regulation mediates the relationship between personal distress and affective empathy performance, and moderation analyses revealed that metacognition moderates the same relationship. Moderation results suggest the relationship between personal distress and affective empathy performance is significant for those with low metacognition, but that the relationship is the opposite of hypotheses – increased personal distress is associated with better performance. Conclusions: This study is the first of its kind to examine performance-based empathy with personal distress, emotion regulation, and metacognition. Results suggest interventions targeted to improve metacognition may be useful in enhancing empathic skills. Future work is needed to improve existing measures of empathy and personal distress, and to parse apart the intricacies of the relationships among personal distress, emotion regulation, and empathy.

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Essentialist thinking refers to the intuition that category membership and category-specific features are caused by an internal, invisible, essence. Across three studies, we investigated essentialism from a developmental, a cognitive, and a social perspective. In the first study, using a structured interview, we investigated whether Canadian children aged 5-to-8 hold an essentialist view of national identity, and whether their view differs from that of American children. Compared to older children, younger Canadian children were more likely to believe that Canadian identity was biologically based, and that traits associated with Canadian identity were heritable. However, we found no differences between Canadian and American children in terms of essentialist thinking. In the next study, we tested whether adults obscure their essentialist thinking and whether it may be unveiled by cognitive demand. We presented participants with a switched-at-birth paradigm where some participants were under time pressure and others were not. We found that adults under time pressure were more essentialist about national identity and gender than adults not under time pressure, though we saw no effect on race. This suggests that adults obscure their essentialist thinking, but it can be unveiled during cognitive demand. Finally, we assessed whether essentialist thinking is associated with addiction stigma. We presented participants with fictional news articles about scientific studies to prime either essentialist or anti-essentialist views about addiction. Both participants’ biological and non-biological essentialism were associated with addiction stigma, with the latter being a stronger correlate. This suggests that the extent to which individuals view addiction as a fundamentally distinct category has more impact on stigma than whether adults view addiction as genetically based. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Essentialism is the human intuition that category membership is caused by an internal, invisible, source. Humans treat category members as if there is something deep inside them that makes them who they are. Across three chapters, we investigated whether people are essentialist about social categories, and the subsequent consequences. In the first study, we showed that younger children, more than older children, believed in an internal, Canadian, essence. There was no difference between Canadian and American children in how they viewed national identity. Next, we demonstrated that adults are more essentialist about social categories like national identity and gender when they are under time pressure. Finally, we showed that thinking about addiction as a biologically based and distinct category is associated with addiction stigma.

No description available.