Studying the neurobiology of human social interaction: Making the case for ecological validity

Abstract

With this commentary we make the case for an increased focus on the ecological validity of the measures used to assess aspects of human social functioning. Impairments in social functioning are seen in many types of psychopathology, negatively affecting the lives of psychiatric patients and those around them. Yet the neurobiology underlying abnormal social interaction remains unclear. As an example of human social neuroscience research with relevance to biological psychiatry and clinical psychopharmacology, this commentary discusses published experimental studies involving manipulation of the human brain serotonin system that included assessments of social behavior. To date, these studies have mostly been laboratory-based and included computer tasks, observations by others, or single-administration self-report measures. Most laboratory measures used so far inform about the role of serotonin in aspects of social interaction, but the relevance for real-life interaction is often unclear. Few studies have used naturalistic assessments in real life. We suggest several laboratory methods with high ecological validity as well as ecological momentary assessment, which involves intensive repeated measures in naturalistic settings. In sum, this commentary intends to stimulate experimental research on the neurobiology of human social interaction as it occurs in real life.

Change in Objective Measure of Empathic Accuracy Following Social Cognitive Training

“…Moment-to-moment agreement between the perceiver and target can then be used to generate an objective empirical accuracy measure for the perceiver. These paradigms require the perceiver to use facial expressions, verbal content, vocal tone, posture, and other non-verbal cues to continuously track changes in emotional intensity, which closely mimics the skills needed in real-life social situations and requires coordination of abilities particularly tied to cognitive empathy (36,37). Empirical empathic accuracy measures are an important addition to empathy research as they have been shown to be reliable, can be applied in a variety of contexts, do not correlate particularly strongly with self-report measures and are more predictive of life outcome measures (38).…”

Virtual Reality for Research in Social Neuroscience

“…The first, and perhaps most obvious asset offered by this technology, is that it allows the generation of life-like simulations of social information. As noted by [15], the stimuli that are used in many social neuroscience studies lack important aspects of actual live social interaction; this concern is shared by other authors [72,73,74,75]. On the other hand, the use of unnaturalistic stimuli is necessary in order to exert control on potential extraneous variables, which would be difficult or impossible to control in field or natural experiments.…”

Brain activation during social cognition predicts everyday perspective-taking: A combined fMRI and ecological momentary assessment study of the social brain

“…One aim of neuroscience is to gain further insight into how the human mind functions in everyday life. Yet, little is known about the link between neural activation and psychological experience outside the lab ( Eisenberger et al, 2007 ; Hogenelst et al, 2015 ). This is due to the local constraints of neuroscience methodology, especially fMRI, confining its use to the laboratory.…”

“…Hence, the construct of interest is assessed only via psychological and neural processes in the laboratory and not as part of ongoing daily experience. High ecological validity is achieved when a measurement closely represents the usual conditions under which the process of interest occurs ( Hogenelst et al, 2015 ). The first step towards improving ecological validity is the development of naturalistic paradigms.…”