Emotional Intelligence (EI) and forgiveness both involve interpreting emotional content. Empirical study of a relationship between these two constructs is lacking. This is a problem as many psychological studies infer a relationship between these two constructs. The purposes of this study were to explore whether EI and forgiveness are correlated and to identify whether predictor variables (empathy, life satisfaction, emotional management, and emotional understanding) contribute to the probability of forgiveness within an interpersonal relationship. A quantitative, nonexperimental research design, based on the theory of mind, was used to answer two research questions: Does a correlational relationship exist between the two EI domains (emotional understanding and emotional management ability) and the three forgiveness domains (affective, behavioral, and cognitive)? And do empathy, life satisfaction, emotional management ability, and emotional understanding predict forgiveness? The sampling strategy involved a convenience sample of Internet users. There were a total of 142 participants. Statistical analysis of data were carried out on the 95 participants whom completed all of the survey items. Results of a Pearson r correlational analysis show no significant relationship between study variables was detected. A multiple regression analysis was planned but not implemented. EI ability directly impacting the process of forgiveness and the process of forgiveness directly impacting EI was unsubstantiated. Social change implications involve consideration of situations and conflict resolution rather than a specific emphasis on EI ability or ability to forgive. Doing so may promote research fostering positive mental health outcomes.

Autismspektrumtillstånd (AST), är ett spektrum av funktionsvariationer som visar sig i sociala-, emotionella- samt empatiska interaktioner. AST-personers tolkning samt brist i inkännandet av andra personer bidrar till sociala-, empatiska-, samt emotionella problem. Resultat presenterade från kognitiv neurovetenskap studier visar positiv korrelation för förmågan att mentalisera, även känt som Theory of Mind (ToM), och hjärnregionen mediala prefrontala hjärnbarken (mPFC) som modererar, det vill säga styr sociala beteenden, exekutiva funktioner (handlingsförmågan) samt tolkningen av andra människors mentala tillstånd. Prefrontala hjärnregioner samt limbiska systemet visar på positiv korrelation till empatiska-, emotionella- samt sociala förmågor. Huvudfråga för denna systematiska översikt var hur personer med AST påverkas socialt, empatiskt samt emotionellt i interventionsutövandet av ToM och sociala förmågor. Fem studier fokuserade på AST-personer (vuxna, unga vuxna eller barn) och deras förmågor inom sociala-, empatiska- samt emotionella områden. Olika interventionsprogram (ToM och sociala förmågor) och mätningsinstrument bidrog till resultat gällande AST-deltagares potentiella utveckling. Slutresultaten visade på varierat utfall gällande vilka interventionsprogram som bidrog till ökad social-, empatisk- eller emotionell förståelse, vilket slutligen demonstrerade att mer empirisk data anses nödvändig inom AST-forskningen.

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Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to infer mental states of others and this skill relies on a distributed network of brain regions. A brain region that has been traditionally disregarded in relation to non-motor functions is the cerebellum. Here, we leveraged large-scale multimodal neuroimaging data to elucidate the structural and functional role of the cerebellum in ToM. We used functional activations to determine whether the cerebellum has a domain-general or domain-specific functional role. We found that the cerebellum is organized in a domain-specific way. We used effective connectivity and probabilistic tractography to map the cerebello-cerebral ToM network. We found a left cerebellar effective and structural lateralization, with more and stronger effective connections from the left cerebellar hemisphere to the contralateral cerebral ToM areas and greater cerebello-thalamo-cortical (CTC) and cortico-ponto-cerebellar (CPC) streamline counts from and to the left cerebellum. Lastly, we examined the relationship between CTC and CPC white matter and ToM speed and accuracy but found no correlation. Our study provides novel insights to the network organization of the cerebellum, an overlooked brain structure, and ToM, one of humans’ most essential abilities to navigate the social world. / Psychology

Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) exhibit impaired performance on social cognition and theory of mind (ToM) measures, like the Video Social Inference Test (VSIT). The frontal lobe, being the primary region involved in higher level cognitive functions mediates the neural mechanisms involved in social cognition and ToM abilities, according to studies on brain and behaviour. The goal of this study was to examine if individuals with TBI who did not damage their frontal lobe would perform differently on the VSIT than individuals with TBI who did. This study was a secondary analysis of documented imaging data and VSIT scores obtained from 51 adults with moderate-to-severe TBI (23 females). A comparison was made between scores obtained on the VSIT between participants with and without frontal lobe lesions. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups, in other words, site of lesion in participants with TBI did not predict performance on the VSIT. The results suggest that while the VSIT may yield critical information about social cognition, it is not sensitive to individual site of lesion. There is evidence that aspects of social cognition are impaired in this clinical population, however, most research in this area is obstructed by the complex nature of TBI neuropathology in addition to small heterogenous samples involved in studies. Further research in this area is required in order to reveal and enhance our understanding of social cognition deficits following TBI. Keywords: social cognition, traumatic brain injury, theory of mind, frontal lobe lesions, video social inference test / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Ironic statements are commonly used in our everyday communication. They are characterised by a meaning opposite to the literal one. They rely on mutual understanding of the contrast in the expressed ironic statement, which is based on common experience, knowledge, or understanding of the situational context. In this experiment, we aimed to find the neural correlates involved in the understanding of irony, as well as differences between brain regions involved in the understanding of deceits and the truth. The theoretical part of this thesis places irony into the broader context of higher cognitive functions and provides a solid theoretical background for its understanding from different points of view, such as neurobiological and psychological. Moreover, it describes a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a non-invasive imaging technique allowing researchers to have deeper understanding and locate activations in various conditions. Practical part provides a detailed description of the experiment, including description of participants, methods, and analysis methods. Specifically, 17 healthy volunteers - 10 females and 7 males took part in this fMRI project. They were to evaluate 20 statements in 3 different contexts - ironic, deceitful, and truthful. Measured data in form of...

Embodied cognition is the study of how actions and interactions with objects and individuals affect cognitive processing. Neuroaesthetics deals with the neural, biological and evolutionary aspects of aesthetic experience which occur through the senses and consist of the emotional value placed onto objects, for example the appreciation of art work, dance, or music. These are individual and differ depending on level of expertise and experience within the art. The main aim of the thesis was to investigate the link between embodiment and aesthetics through examining people’s level of creativity, colour perception and sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) in relation to levels of empathy and theory of mind (ToM). Research into this is sparse as the role of the body in relation to aesthetic experiences is a relatively new concept. Preference for portraits versus landscapes was also investigated to look at any role of social stimuli in aesthetic preference. Results demonstrate that participants with (i) higher levels of creativity (for some types of creativity) and (ii) more acute colour perception had higher levels of empathy/ToM. Individuals who had higher SPS demonstrated higher empathy/ToM. It was also found that colour perception and empathy levels decrease with age, and aesthetic preference for portraits increase with age. These results have implications for education/schools, the prison service, for specific clinical conditions such as autism, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, particularly given the role of dopamine in these disorders and in colour perception. Future research should investigate these findings using brain imaging and physiological measures.

This dissertation investigates self-projection (i.e., future and past preferences reasoning) and possible underlying mechanisms [Theory of Mind (ToM), executive function (EF)] in early development. All children were tested in person prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first objective was to explore preschoolers' understanding that the preferences they may hold in the future (Future Preferences task, adapted from Bélanger, Atance, Varghese, Nguyen, & Vendetti, 2014; Experiment 1), and likely held in the past (Past Preferences task; Experiment 2), differ from their current preferences. To do so, we implemented a novel continuous measure of children's preferences (faces rating scale; Kopp et al., 2017; adapted from; Wong & Baker, 1988) in addition to the more standard categorical response measure (item selection) used in children's future preferences reasoning research (Bélanger et al.). In addressing our second objective to investigate children's past preferences reasoning, we designed a new task (Past Preferences task) to complement our Future Preferences task. In Chapter 2 (Experiments 1 & 2), we found 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds' success in reasoning about their future and past preferences generally improved with age. Results from our continuous preferences measure further revealed subtle developments in preschoolers' preferences reasoning not gleaned from our categorical data alone. We found that, around age 4, children demonstrate some understanding that they will prefer child items less and adult items more in the future (as an adult) than they do now and, around age 3, children similarly demonstrate some understanding that they preferred child items less in the past (as a baby) than they do now. While cross-experiment comparison in Chapter 2 revealed asymmetry in preschoolers' preferences reasoning (future, relative to past, preferences reasoning was more challenging), this asymmetry was not replicated in Chapter 3 using a more rigorous within-subjects design. Besides clarification of asymmetry in preferences reasoning, our final objectives were to confirm the relation between preschoolers' reasoning about changes in their future and past preferences and explore possible mechanisms underlying children’s self-projective abilities. In Chapter 3, children's ability to reason about their future and past preferences were significantly correlated - but not after controlling for their receptive language ability. Unexpectedly, we did not find support for asymmetry in children's self-projection abilities; that is, children did not find it more difficult to reason about their future as compared to their past preferences. Finally, children's future and past preferences reasoning were not related to or predicted by their performance on the ToM and EF tasks after controlling for age, language ability, and sex. Taken together, this dissertation provides unique and timely contributions to the literature on self-projection and, specifically, how this capacity develops, as well as children’s reasoning about how preferences change over time.

Theory of Mind (ToM) has repeatedly been defined as the ability to understand that others believe their own things based on their own subjective interpretations and experiences, and that their thoughts are determined independently from your own. In this study, we wanted to see if individual differences in ToM are capable of causing different perceptions of an individual's interactions with human like robotics and highlight whether or not individual differences in ToM account for different levels of how individuals experience what is called the "Uncanny Valley phenomenon" and to see whether or not having a fully developed theory of mind is essential to the perception of the interaction. This was assessed by inquiring whether or not individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) perceive robotics and artificially intelligent technology in the same ways that typically developed individuals do; we focused on the growing use of social robotics in ASD therapies. Studies have indicated that differences of ToM exist between individuals with ASD and those who are typically developed. Comparably, we were also curious to see if differences in empathy levels also accounted for differences in ToM and thus a difference in the perceptions of human like robotics. A robotic image rating survey was administered to a group of University of central Florida students, as well as 2 surveys - the Autism Spectrum Quotient (ASQ) and the Basic Empathy Scale (BES), which helped optimize a measurement for theory of mind. Although the results of this study did not support the claim that individuals with ASD do not experience the uncanny valley differently than typically developed individuals, there were significant enough results to conclude that different levels of empathy may account for individual differences in the uncanny valley. People with low empathy seemed to have experienced less of an uncanny valley feeling, while people with higher recorded empathy showed to experience more of an uncanny valley sensitivity.

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