Social cognition and psychopathology: a critical overview

Abstract

The philosophical and interdisciplinary debate about the nature of social cognition, and the processes involved, has important implications for psychiatry. On one account, mindreading depends on making theoretical inferences about another person's mental states based on knowledge of folk psychology, the so-called "theory theory" (TT). On a different account, "simulation theory" (ST), mindreading depends on simulating the other's mental states within one's own mental or motor system. A third approach, "interaction theory" (IT), looks to embodied processes (involving movement, gesture, facial expression, vocal intonation, etc.) and the dynamics of intersubjective interactions (joint attention, joint action, and processes not confined to an individual system) in highly contextualized situations to explain social cognition, and disruptions of these processes in some psychopathological conditions. In this paper, we present a brief summary of these three theoretical frameworks (TT, ST, IT). We then focus on impaired social abilities in autism and schizophrenia from the perspective of the three approaches. We discuss the limitations of such approaches in the scientific studies of these and other pathologies, and we close with a short reflection on the future of the field. In this regard we argue that, to the extent that TT, ST and IT offer explanations that capture different (limited) aspects of social cognition, a pluralist approach might be best.

Enactivism, other minds, and mental disorders

“…Despite much recent interest in these debates, DSP has not found a prominent place within current discussions of mental disorders. But there are a few exceptions: Fuchs (2018), Gallagher and Varga (2015b), Gangopadhyay and Schilbach (2012), and Ratcliffe (2012), for example, endorse views broadly compatible with what I say below. Moreover, Schilbach and colleagues (Schilbach 2016;Schilbach et al 2013;Bolis et al 2017;Bolis and Schilbach 2018) argue that a second-person approach is needed to address the full complexity of mental disorders.…”

Confronting perspectives: Modeling perspectival complexity in language and cognition

“…In the following, ToM is understood as a term for different perspectival tasks of belief understanding without being specifically committed to one of these theories. While consequences for a theoretical account of ToM are not at issue in this paper, the multi-stage-model proposed in Section 5 would call for a pluralist approach as argued for by Gallagher & Varga (2015). 3 But see the two-system approach by Apperly & Butterfill (2009), who claim that the development of ToM is based on two cognitive systems that are conceptually radically different (cf.…”

“…the different (families of) theories such as 'theory theory', 'simulation theory', and 'interaction theory' (see Gallagher & Varga 2015 for an overview). In the following, ToM is understood as a term for different perspectival tasks of belief understanding without being specifically committed to one of these theories.…”

The enactive approach and disorders of the self - the case of schizophrenia

“…There are also approaches that focus on patients' disturbed capacities as a social self. These approaches aim to shed light on understanding the biological mechanisms underlying disturbances of understanding others (the problem of other minds) and the capacity to distinguish between self and others (Frith 2004;Ebisch and Gallese 2015;Ford et al 2008;Gallagher and Vargas 2015). In what follows I focus on two approaches that illustrate how an emphasis on the body and the bodily sense of self, as well as the underlying mechanism of social cognition, can help shed light on disorders of self.…”