Social Cognition : An Important Part Of Social Interactions

The social brain theory merely states that humans have larger proportioned brains than other primates and animals because they have complex social relationships. Robin Dunbar found that “small-brained animals tend to live alone or in small, simple groups, whereas bigger-brained, presumably smarter animals have more relations with each other and more complicated” (Baumeister & Bushman, p. 44). The findings from Dunbar help to explain why humans have evolved as animals with big brains. There is a correlation with the size of the brain and the size and complexity of social relationships. Humans utilize their social animal characteristics by interacting with one another every single day of their lives.

This double dissociation therefore suggests that recognition of faces and common objects is served by different mechanisms that are independent for each other. Although brain cells of face recognition have not been located, some functional models could help us interpret face recognition and prosopagnosia. One of the most influential models was proposed by Bruce and Young (1986). In this model face recognition involves several steps, and three steps more relate to prosopagnosia.

Imagine lacking the ability to recognize the familiar face of a loved one or spouse. Or having to rely on voices, clothing, and certain attributes of that individual in order to have some kind of knowledge on who they actually are. This condition is defined as Prosopagnosia; known as face blindness or facial agnostic. According to Barton (2008), it was first described as a consequence of cerebral damage by Quaking and Bordello in 1867. This term comes from the Greek word “face” and “lack of knowledge.” Stated by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (2007), Prosopagnosia is anticipated to be the result of damages, abnormalities, or destruction in the right fusiform gyrus; part of the brain that controls the perception of faces and the functionality of memory in the neural system. This deficit can be present from birth, the result of a stroke, a traumatic brain injury, or neurodegenerative diseases. In order to help an individual with Prosopagnosia, it is essential to develop compensatory or redeeming strategies, as well as the use of clues or attributes to help them better identify individuals.

Both the fusiform gyrus and the inferior temporal gyrus are used in recognizing emotions made by faces. They help figure out what people are thinking just by looking at facial reactions. In people who have autism, these parts of the brain do not function normally so they are often unresponsive to the emotion written on people’s

Social cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, of information in the brain. It is a process that is generalized within a species, and relates to members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology in which these processes were studied according to the methods of cognitive

Social cognition is our ability to understand other people, and it enables us to predict their behaviour and share experiences.

Therefore social cognition can be defined as the study of the mental process involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about and making sense of the people of all ages in the social world that we live in (Moskowitz, 2005). The development of various forms of social-cognitive understanding is one of the most essential accomplishments of childhood cognitive development.

Imaging studies in the past have reported that the region of the fusiform gyrus is more active during face recognition than object viewing, during face matching than location matching and during viewing normal faces other than scrambled faces or textures. This research was a great beginning, but it does not establish that this FFA is specifically involved in face recognition, as there is a range of alternative interpretations of what can activate our brains. These alternative interpretations include low-level feature extraction, visual attention that is greater in faces and recognition of basic items and recognition of human objects.

Everyday people use social cognition as a tool to help them thrive in social world. There are many important aspects of social cognition that are helpful to us in making decisions and help us to interpret the world around us. An important aspect that is linked to social cognition is that of thought suppression. Thought suppression is when a person tries to force particular thoughts, memories or feelings out of their minds that may be unpleasant or may cause a great deal of stress for the individual. Many people are unaware how often we use thought suppression in our daily lives, but the truth is we use it in almost every aspect of our day.

This implies that bilateral and unilateral hippocampus does not contribute majorly to familiarity and recollection of unknown human’s faces.

judgements, language and control our social behaviour is processed in the frontal lobe. Due to the

This essay will talk about face recognition and several reasons why it has been studied separately. The ability to recognise faces is of huge significance of people’s daily life and differs in important ways from other forms of object recognition (Bruce and Young, 1986). Than this essay will talk about the processes involved in face recognition which comes from the diversity of research about familiar and unfamiliar faces-it includes behavioural studies, studies on brain-damaged patients, and neuroimaging studies. Finally, it will discuss how face recognition differs from the recognition of other object by involving more holistic or configuration processing and different areas of the brain (Eysenck & Keane, 2005).

Prosopagnosia is defined as the difficulty in recognizing an individuals face; it is broken down into 3 main types; Apperceptive prosopagnosia, associative prosopagnosia and developmental prosopagnosia. Perception is an important aspect when recognizing faces, without recognizing the stimulus (face) you would not be able to identify a person. Therefore the individuals who sufferer from this disorder is unable to accurately recognize a face whether that be the face of a familiar person such as a family member or close friend, the face of a famous person, or even their own face. This paper will look at prosopagnosia in greater detail, it will explain the 3 main types, as well as give insight as to why face recognition is important in our

What does the amygdala contribute to social cognition? Choose two or three specific social cognitive processes and review the evidence in support of amygdala participation. (Please note that you DO NOT need to read outside of our articles.

Symbolic interaction offers a dramaturgical perspective of how people identify and create their social self through social interaction. Many social theorist studies social interaction/ self as a function to our society. In addition, microsociology develop the idea of applying social interaction on a smaller sample size within the society. Therefore, there were an increase in the study of human interaction and the self. Mead develop his idea through symbolic interaction and social psychology of the human mind. Simmel develop his idea through the perspective of symbolic interaction of urban sociology. Both sociologist focus on the inter social aspect of the human life.