Impaired spontaneous anthropomorphizing despite intact perception and social knowledge

Heberlein, Andrea S.; Adolphs, Ralph

doi:10.1073/pnas.0308220101

Cited by 131 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…When explicit cues are absent, as is the case in most natural social environments, evidence suggests that patients with amygdala lesions fail to exhibit the spontaneous use of ToM (14). Furthermore, there are a variety of ToM tasks that do not depend on language.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Amygdala lesions can impair the ability to impute such mental states spontaneously to animated geometric shapes (13,14) as well as other complex expressions of ToM (15). These impairments in social cognition following amygdala lesions also have been compared with the intensively studied impairments in mental-state understanding observed in autism spectrum disorder (16,17).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Amygdala lesions do not compromise the cortical network for false-belief reasoning

Spunt

Elison

Dufour

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The amygdala plays an integral role in human social cognition and behavior, with clear links to emotion recognition, trust judgments, anthropomorphization, and psychiatric disorders ranging from social phobia to autism. A central feature of human social cognition is a theory-of-mind (ToM) that enables the representation other people's mental states as distinct from one's own. Numerous neuroimaging studies of the best studied use of ToM-false-belief reasoning-suggest that it relies on a specific cortical network; moreover, the amygdala is structurally and functionally connected with many components of this cortical network. It remains unknown whether the cortical implementation of any form of ToM depends on amygdala function. Here we investigated this question directly by conducting functional MRI on two patients with rare bilateral amygdala lesions while they performed a neuroimaging protocol standardized for measuring cortical activity associated with false-belief reasoning. We compared patient responses with those of two healthy comparison groups that included 480 adults. Based on both univariate and multivariate comparisons, neither patient showed any evidence of atypical cortical activity or any evidence of atypical behavioral performance; moreover, this pattern of typical cortical and behavioral response was replicated for both patients in a follow-up session. These findings argue that the amygdala is not necessary for the cortical implementation of ToM in adulthood and suggest a reevaluation of the role of the amygdala and its cortical interactions in human social cognition.theory-of-mind | amygdala | lesions | false-belief | fMRI

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Amygdala lesions do not compromise the cortical network for false-belief reasoning

Spunt

Elison

Dufour

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…For example, amygdala damage in humans may impair the ability to anthropomorphize moving geometric shapes that normal subjects can interpret as characters with motives interacting in a complex social situation [188]. Amygdala damage is also associated with impairments in social judgment, such as overestimation of trustworthiness and approachability of people based on their faces in recognizing negative expressions, such as fear, anger, surprise, and sadness [189][190][191][192][193][194][195][196][197], but not recognizing facial identity [190].…”

Section: The Neural Substrates For Recognition Of Emotion Expressionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autism and the development of face processing

Golarai

Grill-Spector

Reiss

2006

Clinical Neuroscience Research

159

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Autism is a pervasive developmental condition, characterized by impairments in non-verbal communication, social relationships and stereotypical patterns of behavior. A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism, including anomalies in gaze processing, memory for facial identity and recognition of facial expressions of emotion. In search of neural markers of anomalous face processing in autism, much interest has focused on a network of brain regions that are implicated in social cognition and face processing. In this review, we will focus on three such regions, namely the STS for its role in processing gaze and facial movements, the FFA in face detection and identification and the amygdala in processing facial expressions of emotion. Much evidence suggests that a better understanding of the normal development of these specialized regions is essential for discovering the neural bases of face processing anomalies in autism. Thus, we will also examine the available literature on the normal development of face processing. Key unknowns in this research area are the neuro-developmental processes, the role of experience and the interactions among components of the face processing system in shaping each of the specialized regions for processing faces during normal development and in autism. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease.

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“…The perception of video game characters may thus be similar to the perception of TV or movie characters. Further, human perception research suggests that people automatically identify social entities once they have detected biological motion (Ahlstrom, Blake & Ahlstrom, 1997;Morewedge, Preston & Wegner, 2007), RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 5 readily perceive simple action-sequences with artificial objects as social (Heberlein & Adolphs, 2004;Heider & Simmel, 1944;Oatley & Yuill, 1985;Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000), and anthropomorphize non-human characters (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007;Mar & Macrae, 2006). Given humans' tendency to perceive even simple animated objects in a social way, it seems plausible that the sophisticated display of video game characters will trigger intense social perceptions in users.…”

Section: Different From Playing Chess: the Moral Significance Of Virtmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the anecdotal evidence that some players feel irritated or bad when engaged in inappropriate violent actions in video games (like massacring civilians), suggests that the killing of video game characters is accompanied by more intense social and moral responses than the "killing" of chess figures. readily perceive simple action-sequences with artificial objects as social (Heberlein & Adolphs, 2004;Heider & Simmel, 1944;Oatley & Yuill, 1985; Scholl & Tremoulet, 2000), and anthropomorphize non-human characters (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007;Mar & Macrae, 2006). Given humans' tendency to perceive even simple animated objects in a social way, it seems plausible that the sophisticated display of video game characters will trigger intense social perceptions in users.…”

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confidence: 99%

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

Hartmann¹,

Toz²,

Brandon³

2010

Media Psychology

111

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Many avid gamers discount violent conduct in video games as morally insignificant as "it is just a game". However, recent debates among users, regarding video games featuring inappropriate forms of virtual violence, suggest a more complex truth. Two experiments (N 1 = 49, N 2 = 80) examined users' guilt responses in order to explore the moral significance of virtual violence. In both studies, justification of virtual violence and users' trait empathy determined guilt in a structurally similar way to real-world scenarios: people felt guiltier if they engaged in unjustified virtual violence, especially if they were empathetic players. These results show that video games are capable of inducing affective moral responses in users. Accordingly, virtual violence may be considered morally significant action.Keywords: violence, video games, guilt, empathy, justification, morality (Bartle, 2008).Virtual violence may be defined as any behavior intended to do harm to another video game character, who is motivated to avoid the harm-doing (Anderson et al., 2008;Baron & Richardson, 1994). Shooting virtual characters for example, in first-person shooter video games, provides a typical example of virtual violence. While many studies have shown that virtual violence depicted in video games increases aggression in users (Anderson et al., 2010), surprisingly little is known about how users perceive and experience virtual violence themselves (e.g., Scharrer & Leone, 2006, Young & Whitty, 2010.Violent video games are designed for entertainment purposes. Consequently, regular violent game players do not typically feel as though they are doing something wrong when they shoot virtual characters. A frequent argument put forward by avid gamers is that they are well aware that the violence depicted in video games "is not real" (Ladas, 2002). For example, Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Vorderer, and Hartmann (2006, see also Whitty, Young, & Goodings, in press) asked avid gamers how they experience virtual violence personally. The majority of players replied that they enjoyed virtual violence as they believe that shooting virtual characters is "just a game" (comparable to chess) and has "nothing to do with killing". This suggests that players maintain a psychologically detached and unaffected stance when playing violent games and that virtual violence is too artificial to be considered morally significant and thus trigger any moral response in the user.RUNNING HEAD: Virtual Violence and Guilt 2 However, Klimmt et al.'s (2006) study suggests that users may also perceive and judge virtual violence in a moral way. In their study, a number of players indicated that they would find it disturbing if they accidentally shot a child, for example, or if painful injuries were depicted in the video game. Related discussion of "inappropriate" virtual violence also exists in the video game community. Many video game-related online blogs and forums recently featured heated debate regarding a mission included in the popular online-role-playing game "...

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Impaired spontaneous anthropomorphizing despite intact perception and social knowledge

Cited by 131 publications

References 33 publications

Amygdala lesions do not compromise the cortical network for false-belief reasoning

Amygdala lesions do not compromise the cortical network for false-belief reasoning

Autism and the development of face processing

Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players

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