Sense Of Others Research Articles

Driving Hebbian plasticity over ventral premotor-motor projections transiently enhances motor resonance

BackgroundMaking sense of others' actions relies on the activation of an action observation network (AON), which maps visual information about observed actions onto the observer's motor system. This motor resonance process manifests in the primary motor cortex (M1) as increased corticospinal excitability finely tuned to the muscles engaged in the observed action. Motor resonance in M1 is facilitated by projections from higher-order AON regions. However, whether manipulating the strength of AON-to-M1 connectivity affects motor resonance remains unclear. MethodsWe used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in 48 healthy humans. Cortico-cortical paired associative stimulation (ccPAS) was administered over M1 and the ventral premotor cortex (PMv), a key AON node, to induce spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) in the pathway connecting them. Single-pulse TMS assessed motor resonance during action observation. ResultsBefore ccPAS, action observation increased corticospinal excitability in the muscles corresponding to the observed movements, reflecting motor resonance in M1. Notably, ccPAS aimed at strengthening projections from PMv to M1 (PMv→M1) induced short-term enhancement of motor resonance. The enhancement specifically occurred with the ccPAS configuration consistent with forward PMv→M1 projections and dissipated 20 min post-stimulation; ccPAS administered in the reverse order (M1→PMv) and sham stimulation did not affect motor resonance. ConclusionsThese findings provide the first evidence that inducing STDP to strengthen PMv input to M1 neurons causally enhances muscle-specific motor resonance in M1. Our study sheds light on the plastic mechanisms that shape AON functionality and demonstrates that exogenous manipulation of AON connectivity can influence basic mirror mechanisms that underlie social perception.

The sense-making of social motor competence in autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by deficits in social motor development. Social motor competence plays a vital role in social communication, especially in face-to-face communication. It's an effective way to convey language and emotions so that we are more easily able to understand each other. However, many individuals with ASD demonstrate pervasive deficits in social motor skills. Moreover, the disintegration of the sense-making about social motor competence also affects the coordination between actions. They show sense-making deficits in facial actions, such as gaze direction, gaze following, and mutual gaze. Besides, they also fail to use pointing gestures, head orientation, and body postures to infer other's goals, desires, or interests. This is also their special way of sense-making. Finally, based on the "Qi" theory, we suggest that treatments such as Tai Chi, Wu Qin Xi, and Nei Yang Gong could be more widely used in correcting the social motor competence of individuals with ASD and enhance their social abilities, so they can participate in making sense of others.

Leading urban school teachers of Black and Brown students during social injustice and the pandemic

ABSTRACT This case study illustrates how leadership for learning and cultural competence could be used as theories of action during times of disruption to lead and transform urban teachers’ sense of self, sense of others, and motivation for change. The case study focuses on educators from a large urban charter school whose response to the pandemic and the social justice movements was using a year-long professional development to provide continuous support and foster a growth mindset among educators. Self-evaluation on the cultural proficiency scale showed that the principal and thirty teachers differed in their levels of proficiency. The principal and six teachers with middle and high levels of proficiency were then interviewed to probe their personal interpretations of the connections among their cultural competence, their awareness of structural inequities, and the ways this awareness might have impacted how they teach Black and Brown students in their classrooms. Regardless of where they were on the scale, Black and White educators benefited from self-reflections and group dialogue about how they value, model, and practice cultural proficiency with their Black and Brown students. These findings have implications for urban public charter school leadership during times of continued change and uncertainty.

Making psychology ‘just’? The challenges and opportunities of delivering human rights based pedagogical & experiential teaching to trainee clinical psychologists

There is a long history of human rights violations in healthcare and those perpetrating such human rights violations have included healthcare professionals, including clinical psychologists (Soldz, 2008; Balfe, 2016). Furthermore, individuals who have been subject to human rights violations which can include torture, discrimination, war, genocide, abuse, and trauma to name a few, are more likely to come into contact with mental health services and as a result, with clinical psychologists. Therefore, clinical psychologists have an ethical responsibility to critically engage with and examine issues pertaining to human rights, as well as their own positionality in respect of this (Patel, 2003). To support this examination, Doctorate in Clinical Psychology (DClinPsy) training programmes should include opportunities for exploration and engagement with Human Rights violations as part of the training of clinical psychologists, however this is not currently consistently the case.In this paper the authors outline and examine the delivery of Human Rights Based teaching to trainee clinical psychologists using pedagogical, participatory and experiential learning techniques. The authors offer qualitative and quantitative feedback from four cohorts of trainee clinical psychologists on the impact of the Human Rights based teaching on their sense of self, their sense of others, their practice, and their ability to critically reflect on clinical psychology as an oppressive structure. The authors present some of the challenges and opportunities of embedding a Human Rights based framework in the teaching and education of trainee clinical psychologists and the implications of this on the practice of clinical psychology. The authors make a case that training institutions which embody principles and values connected to human rights and just psychology are likely to foster a psychological workforce that is attuned with ethics, justice and privilege.

Free in Deed: The Heart of Lutheran Ethics by Craig L. Nessan

Reviewed by: Free in Deed: The Heart of Lutheran Ethics by Craig L. Nessan Ned Wisnefske Free in Deed: The Heart of Lutheran Ethics. By Craig L. Nessan. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022. 165 pp. This book is an introduction to Lutheran ethics written for theology students, pastors, and thoughtful lay readers. It succeeds in that, leaving readers with a coherent vision of the way a Lutheran approach to Christian ethics analyzes issues, illuminates them, and inspires us to act on them. Nessan claims that love of neighbor is the overriding concern of Lutheran ethics. "Neighbor" is interpreted expansively to include all people, especially those who are in danger of being disregarded as neighbors, even encompassing all living things. Nessan owes his formation, he writes, to Bonhoeffer's Christocentric theology and to the Christopraxis of liberation theologians. Eight short, readable chapters lay out key Lutheran insights concerning biblical authority, the authority of tradition, reason and experience, the two kingdoms, justification and sanctification, the priesthood of all believers, the theology of the cross, and Christian freedom. Nessan's exposition of these traditional Lutheran themes is [End Page 244] clear and on-the-mark. Often, he distinguishes a Lutheran point of view from other Christian perspectives, or distinguishes among various Lutheran viewpoints. This helps orient the readers' understanding. For example, he contrasts a Lutheran view on biblical authority with literalism and deconstruction; a Lutheran from an American understanding of freedom; contemporary Lutheran views on sanctification in Lazereth and Mannermaa. He presents how the theology of the cross is misunderstood by both triumphalism and trivialization, and how a privatized view of charitable assistance as well as religious identity politics misconceive political advocacy. By the author's own assessment, his chapter "Luther's Two Strategies and Political Advocacy" offers an original interpretation of how Luther's concept of the two kingdoms contributes to our understanding of Christianity and politics. Wanting to avoid past misinterpretations that led to the subservience of the church to political order, or to the rigid separation of church and state, he proposes that God rules one kingdom with two strategies. What emerges is "neighbor politics." Christians participate in God's left-hand strategy by speaking out and engaging in the political process as citizens who advocate for the well-being of the neighbor, using reasonable arguments that appeal to the consciences and common sense of others, building coalitions wherever possible with those who share a common vision, and avoiding special pleading based on a "Christian" agenda narrowly understood (124). A long-standing problem, the "Achilles' heel" for Lutheran ethics (81), is the move from justification to sanctification. Other ways of stating the "unfulfilled promise" (91) of Luther's Reformation is to see that "freedom from" sin, death, and the devil turns to "freedom for" love of the neighbor, or whether we need a "third-use" of the law in Lutheran ethics to motivate Christian living. In Nessan's view, "Only the retrieval of Luther's robust understanding of vocation and the universal priesthood can give expression to the social holiness that is the final goal of the Christian life" (80). Among his suggestions [End Page 245] in this regard is to reimagine the "priesthood of all believers" as the "neighborliness" of all believers (87), and to utilize worship practices to imprint on us "both a way of being and a way of serving neighbors" (89). Nessan's contribution to this long-standing problem is important and energetically pursued. From this reviewer's perspective, the solution to this ethical problem is finally theological. As he notes, what sets up Luther's thinking on the two kingdoms is his view that the world is a battleground between God and Satan. What sets up Luther's freedom from/freedom for dialectic is the acknowledgement that I am convicted by the law as a condemned sinner. This theological confession likely challenges our contemporaries more than does Lutheran ethics. Ned Wisnefske Roanoke College Salem, Virginia Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Cheat to win: Children’s judgements of advantageous vs. disadvantageous rule breaking

Cheating is a complex social phenomenon. However, common across most forms of cheating are two major components: violating a rule and gaining an unfair advantage. Children understand rules and rule violations from early in development, but little is known about how children perceive and judge cheating behavior. In the present study, 5-year-old (n = 31) and 7-year-old children (n = 32) watched videos of games in which one player broke the rules in a manner that advantaged them, and another broke the rules in a manner that disadvantaged them. Overall, both the 5-year-olds and 7-year-olds readily recognized the rule violators by endorsing that both players’ actions were bad and that someone had cheated. However, the older children more readily distinguished the advantageous from the disadvantageous player and were more likely to negatively evaluate the advantageous player. Thus, by the late preschool to early school years, children demonstrate an emerging understanding of the nuances of rule violations. This understanding can help children make sense of others’ actions and draw important inferences about potential social partners.

Understanding preferences in infancy.

A preference is defined as a dispositional state that helps explain why a person chooses one option over another. Preference understanding is a significant part of interpreting and predicting others' behavior, which can also help to guide social encounters, for instance, to initiate interactions and even form relationships based on shared preferences. Cognitive developmental research in the past several decades has revealed that infants have relatively sophisticated understandings about others' preferences, as part of investigations into how young children make sense of others' behavior in terms of mental states such as intentions, dispositions including preferences, and epistemic states. In recent years, research on early psychological knowledge expands to including infant understanding of social situations. As such, infants are also found to use their preference understandings in their social life. They treat favorably others who share their own preferences, and they prefer prosocial and similar others (e.g., those who speak their language). In reviewing these results, we point out future directions for research and conclude with further suggestions and recommendations. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Psychology > Development and Aging.

Religious accommodation, agonism, agnosticism in healthcare: A commentary on Joshua Hordern, 'Accommodating religion and belief in healthcare: Political threats, agonistic democracy and established religion'.

Religious accommodation, agonism, agnosticism in healthcare: A commentary on Joshua Hordern, 'Accommodating religion and belief in healthcare: Political threats, agonistic democracy and established religion'.

David Cockburn Wittgenstein Human Beings and Conversation (London: Anthem Press, 2022)

David Cockburn Wittgenstein Human Beings and Conversation (London: Anthem Press, 2022)

Social Dysfunction in Psychosis Is More Than a Matter of Misperception: Advances From the Study of Metacognition.

Many with psychosis experience substantial difficulties forming and maintaining social bonds leading to persistent social alienation and a lack of a sense of membership in a larger community. While it is clear that social impairments in psychosis cannot be fully explained by symptoms or other traditional features of psychosis, the antecedents of disturbances in social function remain poorly understood. One recent model has proposed that deficits in social cognition may be a root cause of social dysfunction. In this model social relationships become untenable among persons diagnosed with psychosis when deficits in social cognition result in inaccurate ideas of what others feel, think or desire. While there is evidence to support the influence of social cognition upon social function, there are substantial limitations to this point of view. Many with psychosis have social impairments but not significant deficits in social cognition. First person and clinical accounts of the phenomenology of psychosis also do not suggest that persons with psychosis commonly experience making mistakes when trying to understand others. They report instead that intersubjectivity, or the formation of an intimate shared understanding of thoughts and emotions with others, has become extraordinarily difficult. In this paper we explore how research in metacognition in psychosis can transcend these limitations and address some of the ways in which intersubjectivity and more broadly social function is compromised in psychosis. Specifically, research will be reviewed on the relationship between social cognitive abilities and social function in psychosis, including measurement strategies and limits to its explanatory power, in particular with regard to challenges to intersubjectivity. Next, we present research on the integrated model of metacognition in psychosis and its relation to social function. We then discuss how this model might go beyond social cognitive models of social dysfunction in psychosis by describing how compromises in intersubjectivity occur as metacognitive deficits leave persons without an integrated sense of others' purposes, relative positions in the world, possibilities and personal complexities. We suggest that while social cognitive deficits may leave persons with inaccurate ideas about others, metacognitive deficits leave persons ill equipped to make broader sense of the situations in which people interact and this is what leaves them without a holistic sense of the other and what makes it difficult to know others, share experiences, and sustain relationships. The potential of developing clinical interventions focused on metacognition for promoting social recovery will finally be explored.

An Externalist Theory of Social Understanding: Interaction, Psychological Models, and the Frame Problem

I put forward an externalist theory of social understanding. On this view, psychological sense making takes place in environments that contain both agent and interpreter. The spatial structure of such environments is social, in the sense that its occupants locate its objects by an exercise in triangulation relative to each of their standpoints. This triangulation is achieved in intersubjective interaction and gives rise to a triadic model of the social mind. This model can then be used to make sense of others’ observed actions. Its possession plays a vital role in the development of the capacity for false belief reasoning. The view offers an integrated account of the development of social cognition from primary intersubjectivity to level-2 perspective taking. It incorporates insights from interactionism and mindreading theories of social cognition and thus offers a way out of the stalemate between defenders of the two views. Because psychological sense making is perspectival, the frame problem does not arise for social reasoners: the perspective they bring to bear on the action that is to be interpreted constrains the information they can select to make sense of what others do.

How Transgender Adolescents Experience Expressing Their Gender Identity Around New People: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

The literature suggests gender expression to be a key experience of transgender young people that may impact upon the development of their gender identity and psychological well-being. The present study aimed to explore participants’ experiences of expressing their gender identity around others, with a focus on interactions with new people (with whom they do not have an existing relationship). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight young people aged 16 to 17 who identified as male and were assigned female at birth. Three superordinate themes were identified: (a) using gender expression to shape identity; (b) experiencing and making sense of others’ responses; (c) a changing relationship with gender expression. The process of gender expression enabled participants to explore, develop, and strengthen social and self-identity, and had both positive and negative impacts upon their well-being. Initially gender expression seemed to be an effortful process in which participants felt pressured to conform to social expectations to be viewed as male, yet over time they navigated a way to express themselves in a manner that felt more comfortable and authentic. Findings highlight the need to facilitate young people to express and be affirmed in their gender identity, and to provide adequate support with the social experiences surrounding it.

A FAMILY PROBLEM: THE EFFECTS OF PARENTAL ALCOHOL ON CHILDREN

As much as alcohol problem affects an alcoholic parents’ own functioning negatively, it also adversely affects their family. Because of dysfunctionalities of alcoholics such as lack of responsibility and disruption in roles, family home environment may become more chaotic and unstable. In these conditions, non-alcoholic family members may develop problems as well. Therefore alcohol problem is not the only problem which alcoholic people have, but also it is a family problem. In the present review, it is aimed to explain how the alcoholic parents influence their children in means of psychosocial and behavioral outcomes. Family is the most important factor for children socialization process and positive family environment is necessary for children’s well-being. Children learn and develop some basic skills such as sense of self, sense of others, coping strategies and how to regulate their emotions in family environment thanks to their parents. By examining the effects on children of alcoholic parents (CoAs) and by being aware of risk and protective factors, those children’s well-being can be protected.

Five-month-old infants attribute inferences based on general knowledge to agents

To make sense of others’ actions, we generally consider what information is available to them. This information may come from different sources, including perception and inference. Like adults, young infants track what information agents can obtain through perception: If an agent directly observes an event, for example, young infants expect the agent to have information about it. However, no investigation has yet examined whether young infants also track what information agents can obtain through inference, by bringing to bear relevant general knowledge. Building on the finding that by 4 months of age most infants have acquired the physical rule that wide objects can fit into wide containers but not narrow containers, we asked whether 5-month-olds would expect an agent who was searching for a wide toy hidden in her absence to reach for a wide box as opposed to a narrow box. Infants looked significantly longer when the agent selected the narrow box, suggesting that they expected her (a) to share the physical knowledge that wide objects can fit only into wide containers and (b) to infer that the wide toy must be hidden in the wide box. Three additional conditions supported this interpretation. Together, these results cast doubt on two-system accounts of early psychological reasoning, which claim that infants’ early-developing system is too inflexible and encapsulated to integrate inputs from other cognitive processes, such as physical reasoning. Instead, the results support one-system accounts and provide new evidence that young infants’ burgeoning psychological-reasoning system is qualitatively similar to that of older children and adults.

Motivated Interpretations of Deceptive Information.

We examine whether people seek information that might help them make sense of others’ dishonest behavior. Participants were told that a hypothetical partner (either a friend or a stranger) had engaged in a task in which the partner could lie to boost their earnings at the expense of the participant’s earnings. Participants were less likely to search for information that can justify potential dishonest behavior conducted by a friend than by a stranger (Experiment 1). When participants knew for certain that their partners had lied to them, they were less likely to assume that that the lie was justified when told that the partner was a friend rather than a stranger (Experiment 2). The results imply that people are more likely to search for information that may reduce the severity of possible dishonest behavior when a stranger, rather than a friend, is responsible for the behavior.

Associations between countertransference reactions towards patients with borderline personality disorder and therapist experience levels and mentalization ability.

Objective This exploratory study locates countertransference as a pan-theoretical concept, comprising of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors expressed or experienced by therapists toward their patients. It aims to understand the patterns of countertransference experienced in working with borderline personality disorder. Associations between countertransference reactions and therapist-related variables of experience and mentalization ability are also examined.Method Psychotherapists (n = 117) completed the Therapist Response Questionnaire to assess patterns of countertransference experienced with a representative patient diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. They also completed a measure of mentalization ability that examined self-related mentalization, other-related mentalization, and motivation to mentalize.Results The profile of responses across eight countertransference dimensions is discussed, with the most strongly endorsed reactions being positive/satisfying, parental/protective, and helpless/inadequate. More experienced therapists reported less negative countertransference reactions in select dimensions. Therapists’ self-reported ability to reflect on and understand their own mental states was negatively correlated with a range of difficult countertransference experiences. There were few associations between their ability to make sense of others’ mental states, the motivation to mentalize, and the strength of their countertransference reactions.Conclusion The implications for countertransference management as well as therapist training and development are highlighted.

중국인들의 체면민감성이 과시소비성향과 와인구매의도에 미치는 영향

As the importance of quality of life due to improved income levels has emerged, it has been argued that China's consumer market is showing a different characteristic than before and is reaching a transition period toward mature consumption in advanced countries. Amid the establishment of a reasonable consumer culture, value-oriented consumption is established among young consumers, while the consumption pattern of luxury purchases is still in the overall society, so a diverse understanding of consumers' consumption patterns is needed. The study wanted to examine wine consumption and purchasing intentions, which represent a significant growth in luxury goods, and the purpose of this study was to find out whether face sensitivity directly influences the propensity of consumption by changing the subject of consumption from the older generation to the millennials. The purpose of the project is to examine whether this propensity to show off consumption has a significant impact on wine purchase intentions and to provide implications.Firstly, a sense of shame, a sense of other people, and a sense of form, which are lower factors of face sensitivity, were all shown to affect personality-seeking consumption in the positive direction. Secondly, a sense of shame, a sense of others, and a sense of formality were all shown to have an effect on trend-seeking consumption in the positive direction. In addition, as a result of examining the impact of face sensitivity on high-price oriented consumption propensity, only the lower factors of shame and other people's consciousness were statistically significant, and the formal consciousness was not significant. Fifth, impact of ostentatious consumption propensity on wine purchasing intentions, only the lower factors, personality-oriented, brand-oriented, and high-price-oriented consumption propensity, were statistically significant, and the trend of trend-seeking consumption was not significant. Lastly, looking at the impact of face-sensitive sensitivity on wine purchasing intentions, other people's consciousness, and formal consciousness were all statistically significant. This is interpreted as the practice and value system of chinese society, influenced by confucianism, has valued face to show off social status, status, authority, formalities or examples in human interrelationships, and that this sense of face continues to consume to show off one's superiority or self-confidence today.

Discovery from Discomfort; Embracing the Liminal in Auto‐Ethnographic, Biographical and Arts‐Based Research Methods

AbstractIn this article I offer reflections on my experiences of using autoethnographic and arts‐based methodology in order to research within the realm of arts education. This approach enabled me to deeply analyse my own lived‐experiences and interact with the work and responses of others. Liminal spaces between identities of artist, researcher and teacher are explored through the creation of artwork, using discarded and leftover marks found in the classroom or recorded through the lens of a camera. Zones of discovery emerge from embracing initial discomfort. The images and photographs used throughout this research project, alongside the glimpses into both my own and interviewees’ lives, professional and personal, generate stories that begin to create a larger narrative. It has been recognised that stories can be found in moments and the visual representations offered by participants and through my own mark‐making and recording frame these moments. Ideas and findings were recorded as they emerged using a research journal and sketchbook, intentionally accepting my own contribution to the research, building on this, as opposed to pretending, that our interests and ways of making sense of others is, or should be, divorced from the people and experiences we are. This approach provided rich insights. Through shared experiences I felt that there was the space and opportunity for collaboratively generating meaning with participants as ideas, feelings and issues were clarified, mapped and negotiated through discussion, using both image and word.

Aberrant computational mechanisms of social learning and decision-making in schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder.

Psychiatric disorders are ubiquitously characterized by debilitating social impairments. These difficulties are thought to emerge from aberrant social inference. In order to elucidate the underlying computational mechanisms, patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (N = 29), schizophrenia (N = 31), and borderline personality disorder (N = 31) as well as healthy controls (N = 34) performed a probabilistic reward learning task in which participants could learn from social and non-social information. Patients with schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder performed more poorly on the task than healthy controls and patients with major depressive disorder. Broken down by domain, borderline personality disorder patients performed better in the social compared to the non-social domain. In contrast, controls and major depressive disorder patients showed the opposite pattern and schizophrenia patients showed no difference between domains. In effect, borderline personality disorder patients gave up a possible overall performance advantage by concentrating their learning in the social at the expense of the non-social domain. We used computational modeling to assess learning and decision-making parameters estimated for each participant from their behavior. This enabled additional insights into the underlying learning and decision-making mechanisms. Patients with borderline personality disorder showed slower learning from social and non-social information and an exaggerated sensitivity to changes in environmental volatility, both in the non-social and the social domain, but more so in the latter. Regarding decision-making the modeling revealed that compared to controls and major depression patients, patients with borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia showed a stronger reliance on social relative to non-social information when making choices. Depressed patients did not differ significantly from controls in this respect. Overall, our results are consistent with the notion of a general interpersonal hypersensitivity in borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia based on a shared computational mechanism characterized by an over-reliance on beliefs about others in making decisions and by an exaggerated need to make sense of others during learning specifically in borderline personality disorder.

Empathy can be taught: communication training builds upon our innate sense of others

Empathy can be taught: communication training builds upon our innate sense of others