Presentation
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Neuroanatomical and Developmental Contributions to an Understanding of Mind
Poster A38 in Poster Session A, Thursday, October 6, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm EDT, Millennium Hall
Also presenting in Poster Slam A, Thursday, October 6, 10:00 - 10:15 am EDT, Regency Ballroom
Saskia B.J. Koch1, Hannah Niermann1,2, Anna Tyborowska1,2, Toon Cillessen2, Karin Roelofs1,2, Jana Bašnáková1, Ivan Toni1, Arjen Stolk1,3; 1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 2Behavioral Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 3Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
Given a diverse and ever-changing social world, how can we possibly expect to reliably understand those around us? Social psychologists tend to emphasize the importance of generalizable knowledge such as stereotypes for representing others (Allport, 1954). Other scholars have suggested that we construct an understanding of mind within social interaction, an interpersonal capacity that is thought to develop ontogenetically through experience with social interactions (Carpendale & Lewis, 2004). However, research on understanding other minds has largely probed stereotype beliefs outside social interaction, irrespective of interpersonal dynamics or prior social experience. In this longitudinal study, we aimed to disentangle the contribution of stereotype beliefs and interpersonal cues to understanding other minds in social interaction, taking into account neuroanatomical substrates and socio-developmental trajectories. We build on prior work showing that the degree of non-familial social interaction in the first years of life influences how children communicate at age 5, over and above effects of the familial social environment (Stolk ea., 2013). We recruited ninety-six participants from the Nijmegen Longitudinal Study, a community-based sample which has been followed since infancy, to play a live non-verbal communication game when they were 17 years old. Participants were told that they would be playing the game with two partners, sitting in other rooms, alternating between an adult and a 5-year-old child (8 blocks of 5 trials). In reality, a role-blind confederate experimenter performed both roles, such that the two partners differed only in terms of the participants’ stereotype beliefs about their cognitive abilities. By precisely quantifying participants’ behaviors, we could differentiate between communicative adjustments to stereotype beliefs and interpersonal cues, the latter being embedded in the confederate’s behavior and reflecting the actual level of understanding of the two partners. As before, we quantified developmental exposure to two main sources of social interactions, namely familial (number of siblings, socio-economic status) and non-familial experiences (daycare at 15 and 28 months of age). Furthermore, we acquired T1-weighted MRI scans (n = 71) to identify neuroanatomical variance associated with communicative adjustments to stereotype beliefs and interpersonal cues. Participants placed greater emphasis on communicatively relevant aspects of their behaviors when interacting with the presumed child addressee. These communicative adjustments to stereotype beliefs were prominent at the onset of the game, and correlated with gray matter volume in the right anterior cingulate gyrus (ACCg) as well as cortical thickness across the Theory of Mind (ToM) network, over and above variance associated with adjustments to interpersonal cues. Interpersonal adjustments to the actual communicative behavior of the partners developed through the game, and correlated with the magnitude of non-familial social experiences early in life, over and above variance indexed by neuroanatomical variation in the right ACCg. These findings unify competing accounts of social understanding, showing that stereotype beliefs and interpersonal cues constitute complementary sources of information in developing an understanding of mind in social interaction. Moreover, the findings qualify contributions from cortical regions of the ToM network to social interactions, showing that these regions leverage stereotype representations in tailoring communication to an individual partner.
Topic Areas: Development, Control, Selection, and Executive Processes