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Extensive research has supported the existence of a specialized face-processing network that is distinct from the visual processing areas used for general object recognition. The majority of this work has been aimed at characterizing the response properties of the fusiform face area (FFA) and the occipital face area (OFA), which together are thought to constitute the core network of brain areas responsible for facial identification. Although accruing evidence has shown that face-selective patches in the ventral anterior temporal lobes (vATLs), within perirhinal cortex, play a necessary role in facial identification, the relative contribution of these brain areas to the core face-processing network has remained unarticulated. The current study assessed the relative sensitivity of the anterior face patch, the OFA, and the FFA, to different aspects of person information. Participants learned to associate a name and occupation label, or a name only, with different facial identities. The sensitivity of the face processing areas to facial identity, occupation, and the amount of information associated with a face was then assessed. The results of a multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) revealed that distributed activity patterns in the anterior face patch contained information about facial identity, occupation, and the amount of information associated with a face, with the sensitivity of the anterior face patch to occupation and amount of information being greater than the more posterior face processing regions. When a similar analysis was conducted that included all voxels in the perirhinal cortex, sensitivity to every aspect of person information increased. These results suggest that the human ventral anterior temporal lobes may be critically involved in representing social, categorical, information about individual identities. / Psychology

Yes / It has been proposed that mentalising involves retrodicting as well as predicting behaviour, by inferring previous mental states of a target. This study investigated whether retrodiction is impaired in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Participants watched videos of real people reacting to the researcher behaving in one of four possible ways. Their task was to decide which of these four “scenarios” each person responded to. Participants’ eye movements were recorded. Participants with ASD were poorer than comparison participants at identifying the scenario to which people in the videos were responding. There were no group differences in time spent looking at the eyes or mouth. The findings imply those with ASD are impaired in using mentalising skills for retrodiction.

Very few studies have attempted to directly explore the relationship between psychopathic traits and prejudice. Among the scant studies that do exist, interpretation is often clouded by measurement limitations. The current study surveyed a large sample of adults from the general U.S. population to further our understanding of the associations between psychopathic traits and prejudicial attitudes, as well as critical constructs linked to prejudice. By using modern and well-validated measures of the target constructs new relationships were documented for the first time. A path analytic framework was utilized to represent the network of construct inter-relations. Finally, the current study examined the relationships between psychopathic traits, in relation to the other members of the Dark Triad and positive human traits, referred to as the Light Triad, as well as how the latter may serve as ‘buffers' from prejudicial attitudes.

Although it is understood that stigma about mental ill-health emerges in middle childhood, and that parental communications are highly influential in children’s developing attitudes, almost nothing is known about the messages parents communicate to young children about mental health problems and how these might contribute to the perpetuation of stigma. This study aimed to address this gap in the literature by exploring parents' communications to their primary-school aged children around mental health and ill-health. Semi structured interviews were carried out with ten parents of children aged 7-11. Data collection and analysis was performed according to a Grounded Theory approach; a theoretical model was developed. The model highlights factors that govern parents’ communications to children about mental health issues, and the impact of this on communication purpose and approach. Parents’ communications were governed by the extent to which parents’ representations of ‘Them’ (mental illness) and ‘Us’ (mental health) overlapped or remained distinct. Communications about mental health were deliberate, comfortable, and aimed to promote child wellbeing, whilst unconscious processes driven by taboo meant communications about mental illness were characterized by avoidance, awkwardness, and ambivalence. Factors such as parent experiences, communication context, and child characteristics, fluidly influenced parents’ overlap of ‘Them’ and ‘Us’, and hence the purpose and approach of their communications to their children. Parents’ context-dependent conceptualizations of mental health and ill-health mean children are receiving complex verbal and non-verbal messages from parents, which may contribute to children’s development of stigmatized views via conscious and unconscious processes. Interventions and policy that harness parents’ existing understandings of mental wellbeing to promote a spectrum model of mental health and ill-health may lead to more open parent-child communication, increased help-seeking, and reduced stigma.

Researchers have long argued that ritual plays a crucial role in marking social identities and binding individuals together in a system of shared actions and beliefs. The psychological processes underlying how and why ritual promotes group bonding and influences in- and out-group biases have not yet been fully elucidated. The research presented in this thesis was designed to examine the social and cognitive developmental underpinnings of conventional/ ritualistic behavior. Because learning cultural conventions is essential for participation in group behavior and for signaling group membership and commitment, I propose that conventional/ ritualistic learning is motivated by a drive to affiliate. Experiment 1 investigated the affiliative nature of ritualistic learning by examining the effects of third-party ostracism on imitation of an instrumental versus ritual action sequence and prosocial behavior. Individuals who do not participate in shared group conventions often face the threat of ostracism from the group. Given that attempting re-inclusion is an established response to ostracism, I predicted that the threat of ostracism increases affiliative motivations and thus will increase imitative fidelity, especially in the context of conventional learning. Experiment 2 examined the effects of first-person ostracism in the context of in- and out-groups on children’s imitation of a ritualistic action sequence and pro-social behavior. I predicted that the experience of ostracism by an in-group versus an out-group has important implications for the construal of social exclusion and affiliative behavior. I hypothesized that children would be motivated to re-affiliate by imitating the model and acting pro-socially towards the group, especially when ostracized by in-group members. Based on the findings of this research and insight from anthropology, and social and developmental psychology, I will present a picture of how children acquire the conventions of their group and how these conventions influence social group cognition.