Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Much social-cognitive processing is believed to occur automatically; however, the relative automaticity of the brain systems underlying social cognition remains largely undetermined. We used functional MRI to test for automaticity in the functioning of two brain systems that research has indicated are important for understanding other people’s behavior: the mirror neuron system and the mentalizing system. Participants remembered either easy phone numbers (low cognitive load) or difficult phone numbers (high cognitive load) while observing actions after adopting one of four comprehension goals. For all four goals, mirror neuron system activation showed relatively little evidence of modulation by load; in contrast, the association of mentalizing system activation with the goal of inferring the actor’s mental state was extinguished by increased cognitive load. These results support a dual-process model of the brain systems underlying action understanding and social cognition; the mirror neuron system supports automatic behavior identification, and the mentalizing system supports controlled social causal attribution.

Keywords

social cognition neuroimaging social perception attribution

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Apperly

I. A.

Riggs

K. J.

Simpson

Chiavarino

Samson

(2006). Is belief reasoning automatic? Psychological Science, 17, 841–844. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01791

Bargh

(1989). Conditional automaticity: Varieties of automatic influence in social perception and cognition. In Uleman

Bargh

(Eds.), Unintended thought (pp. 3–51). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Bargh

Williams

(2006). The automaticity of social life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15, 1–4.

Brainard

D. H.

(1997). The Psychophysics Toolbox. Spatial Vision, 10, 433–436.

Brass

Schmitt

R. M.

Spengler

Gergely

(2007). Investigating action understanding: Inferential processes versus action simulation. Current Biology, 17, 2117–2121. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.11.057

Coricelli

(2005). Two-levels of mental states attribution: From automaticity to voluntariness. Neuropsychologia, 43, 294–300.

de Lange

F. P.

Spronk

Willems

R. M.

Toni

Bekkering

(2008). Complementary systems for understanding action intentions. Current Biology, 18, 454–457. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.02.057

den Ouden

H. E. M.

Frith

Blakemore

S.-J.

(2005). Thinking about intentions. NeuroImage, 28, 787–796. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.05.001

Engel

Burke

Fiehler

Bien

Rösler

(2008). What activates the human mirror neuron system during observation of artificial movements: Bottom-up visual features or top-down intentions? Neuropsychologia, 46, 2033–2042. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.01.025

10.

Frith

C. D.

Frith

(2006). The neural basis of mentalizing. Neuron, 50, 531–534. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2006.05.001

11.

Gilbert

Pelham

Krull

(1988). On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 733–740.

12.

Grèzes

Frith

Passingham

R. E.

(2004). Brain mechanisms for inferring deceit in the actions of others. Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 5500–5505. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0219-04.2004

13.

Hesse

Sparing

Fink

(2009). End or means—the “what” and “how” of observed intentional actions. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 776–790. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21058

14.

Iacoboni

Molnar-Szakacs

Gallese

Buccino

Mazziotta

J. C.

Rizzolatti

(2005). Grasping the intentions of others with one’s own mirror neuron system. PLoS Biology, 3(3), e79. Retrieved from http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030079

15.

Keysers

Gazzola

(2007). Integrating simulation and theory of mind: From self to social cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 194–196. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2007.02.002

16.

Lieberman

(2011). Why symbolic processing of affect can disrupt negative affect: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience investigations. In Todorov

Fiske

Prentice

(Eds.), Social neuroscience: Toward understanding the underpinnings of the social mind (pp. 188–209). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

17.

Lieberman

Gaunt

Gilbert

Trope

(2002). Reflection and reflexion: A social cognitive neuroscience approach to attributional inference. In Zanna

M. P.

(Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 34, pp. 199–249). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

18.

Lin

Keysar

Epley

(2010). Reflexively mindblind: Using theory of mind to interpret behavior requires effortful attention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 551–556. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2009.12.019

19.

Vandekerckhove

Overwalle

F. V.

Seurinck

Fias

(2011). Spontaneous and intentional trait inferences recruit a common mentalizing network to a different degree: Spontaneous inferences activate only its core areas. Social Neuroscience, 6, 123–138. doi:10.1080/17470919.2010.485884

20.

Meyer

M. L.

Spunt

R. P.

Berkman

E. T.

Taylor

S. E.

Lieberman

M. D.

(2012). Evidence for social working memory from a parametric functional MRI study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 109, 1883–1888.

21.

Rameson

L. T.

Morelli

S. A.

Lieberman

M. D.

(2011). The neural correlates of empathy: Experience, automaticity, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 24, 235–245. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00130

22.

Rizzolatti

Craighero

(2004). The mirror neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169–192. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144230

23.

Satpute

A. B.

Lieberman

M. D.

(2006). Integrating automatic and controlled processes into neurocognitive models of social cognition. Brain Research, 1079, 86–97. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.01.005

24.

Senju

Southgate

White

Frith

(2009). Mindblind eyes: An absence of spontaneous theory of mind in Asperger syndrome. Science, 325, 883–885. doi:10.1126/science.1176170

25.

Smith

E. R.

DeCoster

(2000). Dual-process models in social and cognitive psychology: Conceptual integration and links to underlying memory systems. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 108–131. doi:10.1207/S15327957PSPR0402_01

26.

Spreng

R. N.

Mar

R. A.

Kim

A. S. N.

(2009). The common neural basis of autobiographical memory, prospection, navigation, theory of mind, and the default mode: A quantitative meta-analysis. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 489–510. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.21029

27.

Spunt

R. P.

Falk

E. B.

Lieberman

M. D.

(2010). Dissociable neural systems support retrieval of how and why action knowledge. Psychological Science, 21, 1593–1598. doi:10.1177/0956797610386618

28.

Spunt

R. P.

Lieberman

M. D.

(2012). Dissociating modality-specific and supramodal neural systems for action understanding. Journal of Neuroscience, 32, 3575–3583. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5715-11.2012

29.

Spunt

R. P.

Satpute

A. B.

Lieberman

M. D.

(2011). Identifying the what, why, and how of an observed action: An fMRI study of mentalizing and mechanizing during action observation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 63–74. doi:10.1162/jocn.2010.21446

30.

Uleman

Saribay

Gonzalez

(2008). Spontaneous inferences, implicit impressions, and implicit theories. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 329–360.

31.

Van Overwalle

Baetens

(2009). Understanding others’ actions and goals by mirror and mentalizing systems: A meta-analysis. NeuroImage, 48, 564–584. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.06.009

32.

Wagner

D. D.

Kelley

W. M.

Heatherton

T. F.

(2011). Individual differences in the spontaneous recruitment of brain regions supporting mental state understanding when viewing natural social scenes. Cerebral Cortex, 21, 2788–2796. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhr074

33.

Wheatley

Milleville

Martin

(2007). Understanding animate agents: Distinct roles for the social network and mirror system. Psychological Science, 18, 469–474.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.39 MB