Source Of Social Information Research Articles

Informational Mismatches: A Neglected Threat of Climate Change to Interspecific Interactions

Interspecific interactions are deeply affected by the current scenario of climate change. This is because interactions are sensitive to many traits of interacting species as phenology, distribution, behaviour and relative abundances which may be differently influenced by climate change in each species. In this scenario, positive interactions, which require temporal coordination of events of life history of interacting species, could be particularly altered due to differential effects of climate change on phenology, apart from by the effects on abundance and distribution. Hitherto, studies focusing on the effects of climate change on positive biotic interactions are scarce and mainly focused on plant-pollinator interactions. Here I propose that, by inducing informational mismatches, climate change may lead to individuals from competing species relying on heterospecific social information to making mis- or un-informed decisions. The idea is that competing species are valuable sources of social information to each other provided overlap of their activities occurs. However, whenever coordination of events fails, competing species will co-occur at the wrong moment, co-occur only in small numbers or even not co-occur at all and thus they will not be able to access useful or any social information from heterospecifics. In that scenario, interacting species would be mis- or un- informed, and, consequently, decision taking will be impaired, leading to disequilibrium in the community. Throughout the manuscript, I will develop the idea of mismatches of information and illustrate it with some case studies.

From faces to hands: Changing visual input in the first two years

Human development takes place in a social context. Two pervasive sources of social information are faces and hands. Here, we provide the first report of the visual frequency of faces and hands in the everyday scenes available to infants. These scenes were collected by having infants wear head cameras during unconstrained everyday activities. Our corpus of 143hours of infant-perspective scenes, collected from 34 infants aged 1month to 2years, was sampled for analysis at 1/5Hz. The major finding from this corpus is that the faces and hands of social partners are not equally available throughout the first two years of life. Instead, there is an earlier period of dense face input and a later period of dense hand input. At all ages, hands in these scenes were primarily in contact with objects and the spatio-temporal co-occurrence of hands and faces was greater than expected by chance. The orderliness of the shift from faces to hands suggests a principled transition in the contents of visual experiences and is discussed in terms of the role of developmental gates on the timing and statistics of visual experiences.

The Development of Body Structure Knowledge in Infancy.

Although we know much about the development of face processing, we know considerably less about the development of body knowledge-despite bodies also being significant sources of social information. One set of studies indicated that body structure knowledge is poor during the 1st year of life and spawned a model that posits that, unlike the development of face knowledge, which benefits from innate propensities and dedicated learning mechanisms, the development of body knowledge relies on general learning mechanisms and develops slowly. In this article, we review studies on infants' knowledge about the structure of bodies and their processing of gender and emotion that paint a different picture. Although questions remain, a general social cognition system likely engenders similar trajectories of development of knowledge about faces and bodies, and may equip developing infants with the capacity to obtain socially critical information from many sources.

The use of multiple sources of social information in contest behavior: testing the social cognitive abilities of a cichlid fish

Theory suggests that living in large social groups with dynamic social interactions often favours the evolution of enhanced cognitive abilities. Studies of how animals assess their own contest ability commonly focus on a single cognitive task, and little is known about the diversity or co-occurrence of cognitive abilities in social species. We examined how a highly social cichlid fish Julidochromis transcriptus uses four major cognitive abilities in contest situations; direct experience, winner/loser effects, social eavesdropping and transitive inference (TI). We conducted experiments in which fish assessed the social status of rivals after either direct physical contests or observed contests. Individuals used direct information from a previous physical encounter to re-establish dominance without additional contact, but winner/loser effects were not observed. Social eavesdropping alone was ruled out, but we found that transitive reasoning was used to infer social dominance of other individuals of unknown status. Our results suggest that in stable hierarchical social groups, estimations of contest ability, based on individual recognition pathways such as TI and direct experience, are more prevalent than social eavesdropping or winner/loser effects. We suggest that advanced cognitive abilities might be widespread among highly social fishes, but have previously gone undetected.

Information use in colonial living.

Despite the fact that many animals live in groups, there is still no clear consensus about the ecological or evolutionary mechanisms underlying colonial living. Recently, research has suggested that colonies may be important as sources of social information. The ready availability of information from conspecifics allows animals to make better decisions about avoiding predators, reducing brood parasitism, migratory phenology, mate choice, habitat choice and foraging. These choices can play a large part in the development and maintenance of colonies. Here we review the types of information provided by colonial animals and examine the different ways in which decision-making in colonies can be enhanced by social information. We discuss what roles information might take in the evolution, formation and maintenance of colonies. In the process, we illustrate that information use permeates all aspects of colonial living.

Does Social Information Matter ? The Moderating Effect on Port Reform Trust

Trust is important for assuring the success of organizational change. This paper investigates the influence of social information sources and communication on trust in organizational change, and also tests the moderating effect of the credibility of social information. Taking port reform as an example, this research discovers the following results: (1) communication is significantly related to employee's trust in organizational change; (2) social information from supervisors is positively associated with employee trust in organizational change; but information from unions does not exert a significant influence; and (3) social information credibility from supervisors and unions partially moderates the relationship between social information sources and employee's trust in organizational change. Finally, the results are briefly discussed.

Toward a better understanding of social learning, social deciding, and other-regarding preferences.

Toward a better understanding of social learning, social deciding, and other-regarding preferences.

EPA-0777 – Alexithymia, facial emotion identification and social inference in ed patients: a case-control study

Introduction Alexythimia, reduced cognitive empathy and emotion awareness and understanding are present among individuals with Eating Disorders (EDs). Facial expression is a reliable marker of emotion and an important source of social information. Thus, the ability to judge facial expression is essential for successful interpersonal interactions. Objectives To evaluate alexythimia, facial emotion identification and social inference abilities in a sample of ED patients, compared to a sample of patients with another psychiatric diagnosis and a group of healthy controls, matched by gender and age. Aims To describe a specific pattern of emotional dysregulation in ED patients. Methods ED patients and the Psychiatric Control Group are recruited at the Institute of Psychiatry in Novara, while healthy controls are recruited on a community basis. All patients and controls are females, aged 18–65. All patients are undergoing the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV -Patient version (SCID-I-P), healthy controls are administered the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV – Non Patient version (SCID-I-NP). All subjects are undergoing the following: SCID-II, Eating Disorder Inventory − 3 (EDI-3), Binge Eating Scale (BES), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Symptom Checklist − 90 (SCL-90), Facial Emotion Identification Test (FEIT), The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT), Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Results The recruitment and analysis of the samples are ongoing. The ED sample is expected to show greater alexythimia and a poorer performance at FEIT and TASIT, compared to the control samples. Conclusions Clinical implications will be discussed.

The neural underpinnings of an optimal exploitation of social information under uncertainty

Social information influences decision-making through an integration of information derived from individual experience with that derived from observing the actions of others. This raises the question as to which extent one should utilize social information. One strategy is to make use of uncertainty estimates, leading to a copy-when-uncertain strategy that weights information from individual and social sources based on their respective reliabilities. Here, we investigate this integration process by extending models of Bayes optimal integration of sensory information to a social decision context. We then use a key parameter of our behavioral model in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural substrate that is specifically linked to the fidelity of this integration process. We show that individuals behave near Bayes optimal when integrating two distinct sources of social information but systematically deviate from Bayes optimal choice when integrating individual with social information. This systematic behavioral deviation from optimality is linked to activity of left inferior frontal gyrus. Thus, an ability to optimally exploit social information depends on processes that overcome an egocentric bias, and this regulatory role involves the left inferior prefrontal cortex. The findings provide a mechanistic explanation for observations wherein individuals neglect the benefits from exploiting social information.

Why Don't Men Understand Women? Altered Neural Networks for Reading the Language of Male and Female Eyes

Men are traditionally thought to have more problems in understanding women compared to understanding other men, though evidence supporting this assumption remains sparse. Recently, it has been shown, however, that meńs problems in recognizing women’s emotions could be linked to difficulties in extracting the relevant information from the eye region, which remain one of the richest sources of social information for the attribution of mental states to others. To determine possible differences in the neural correlates underlying emotion recognition from female, as compared to male eyes, a modified version of the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in combination with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was applied to a sample of 22 participants. We found that men actually had twice as many problems in recognizing emotions from female as compared to male eyes, and that these problems were particularly associated with a lack of activation in limbic regions of the brain (including the hippocampus and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex). Moreover, men revealed heightened activation of the right amygdala to male stimuli regardless of condition (sex vs. emotion recognition). Thus, our findings highlight the function of the amygdala in the affective component of theory of mind (ToM) and in empathy, and provide further evidence that men are substantially less able to infer mental states expressed by women, which may be accompanied by sex-specific differences in amygdala activity.

Reward processing in autism: a thematic series

This thematic series presents theoretical and empirical papers focused on understanding autism from the perspective of reward processing deficits. Although the core symptoms of autism have not traditionally been conceptualized with respect to altered reward-based processes, it is clear that brain reward circuitry plays a critical role in guiding social and nonsocial learning and behavior throughout development. Additionally, brain reward circuitry may respond to social sources of information in ways that are similar to responses to primary rewards, and recent clinical data consistently suggest abnormal behavioral and neurobiologic responses to rewards in autism. This thematic series presents empirical data and review papers that highlight the utility of considering autism from the perspective of reward processing deficits. Our hope is that this novel framework may further elucidate autism pathophysiology, with the ultimate goal of yielding novel insights with potential therapeutic implications.

Evidence of social information on food location in a ring-billed gull colony, but the birds do not use it

Bird colonies are potentially rich sources of social information that can be used to compensate for the numerous disadvantages of communal life. This information can reduce uncertainty about nest locations, mates or food sources. However, there is little empirical evidence that colonies can actually serve as an information exchange point. We asked whether a large nesting colony of ring-billed gulls, Larus delawarensis , could provide its members with social information about the quality and location of food resources during the chick-rearing period. We first determined whether social information was available in the colony, then whether it was signalled by some reliable cue, and finally, whether the birds used it by following knowledgeable individuals. We combined observations of flight departure bearings at the colony with flight tracks obtained from birds fitted with global positioning system (GPS) data loggers. We found that reliable information about feeding site locations could be obtained by observing the vanishing bearings of gulls leaving their nest. Birds nesting in different parts of the colony flew in different directions to reach their feeding grounds, but this did not influence the type of food brought to the chicks. To test whether gulls actually followed departing individuals, we searched for temporal clumping of departures and bearings for different time intervals during a day. We found that departures of gulls nesting in the same neighbourhood were not temporally clustered, nor did the gulls tend to leave in the same direction as their previously departing neighbours. We conclude that ring-billed gulls do not appear to use social information at the nest site to locate foraging opportunities. However, stopovers on nearby water or along the colony edge after a short flight from the nest could allow exchange of information that we could not document. ► Reliable information about feeding sites is available in a gull colony. ► Information could be obtained from vanishing bearings of gulls leaving their nest. ► Departures of neighbourhood gulls were not temporally clumped. ► Gulls did not leave in the same direction as their previously departing neighbours. ► We conclude that no information appears to be obtained at the nest site.

Distinct Facial Characteristics Differentiate Communicative Intent of Infant‐Directed Speech

Adults and infants can differentiate communicative messages using the nonlinguistic acoustic properties of infant‐directed (ID) speech. Although the distinct prosodic properties of ID speech have been explored extensively, it is currently unknown whether the visual properties of the face during ID speech similarly convey communicative intent and thus represent an additional source of social information for infants during early interactions. To examine whether the dynamic facial movement associated with ID speech confers affective information independent of the acoustic signal, adults' differentiation of the visual properties of speakers' communicative messages was examined in two experiments in which the adults rated silent videos of approving and comforting ID and neutral adult‐directed speech. In Experiment 1, adults differentiated the facial speech groups on ratings of the intended recipient and the speaker's message. In Experiment 2, an original coding scale identified facial characteristics of the speakers. Discriminant correspondence analysis revealed two factors differentiating the facial speech groups on various characteristics. Implications for perception of ID facial movements in relation to speakers' communicative intent are discussed for both typically and atypically developing infants. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The neural dynamics of updating person impressions

Person perception is a dynamic, evolving process. Because other people are an endless source of social information, people need to update their impressions of others based upon new information. We devised an fMRI study to identify brain regions involved in updating impressions. Participants saw faces paired with valenced behavioral information and were asked to form impressions of these individuals. Each face was seen five times in a row, each time with a different behavioral description. Critically, for half of the faces the behaviors were evaluatively consistent, while for the other half they were inconsistent. In line with prior work, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) was associated with forming impressions of individuals based on behavioral information. More importantly, a whole-brain analysis revealed a network of other regions associated with updating impressions of individuals who exhibited evaluatively inconsistent behaviors, including rostrolateral PFC, superior temporal sulcus, right inferior parietal lobule and posterior cingulate cortex.

Sur le fonctionnement psychologique pervers

ObjectivesThe objective of this paper is to analyze the perverse psychological functioning. The author starts by a reminder of the difference between perversion and perverse psychological functioning. Then, he proposes to approach the subject from an ethological and ecological framework: By distinguishing the meaning between a behavior and its function, it appears that control of territory and social rank are observable perverse skills. The psychoanalytic propositions are also discussed. The propositions of this study have some similarities with Freudian metapsychology (particularly the concept of cleavage) but also a major difference: According to the author, the pleasure principle that is automatically assigned to the pervert need to be revisited. Patients and methodsThis theoretical contribution is based on clinical practice in prison (one of the few places where a pervert is encountered in a clinical setting). We propose a three-arguments based method for understanding the adaptive dimension of perverse psychological functioning. First argument: The first view is the model of depression and social rank according to evolutionary psychology. According to the author, the pervert has high skills to assess his Social Attention Holding Potential (SAHP). Furthermore, he is an expert in mastering human territory. Second argument: The pervert seems opposed to the schizophrenic patient for the perception of salient stimuli that are a source of social information. The theory of salience syndrome (following the social neurocognition) makes it possible to conceptualize the excellent perception's skills of the perverse subject. Third argument: Phenomenological philosophy studies the concept of intuition (as opposed to intelligence). Again, this psychological dimension should be regarded as very well controlled by the perverse subject. ResultsWhen we analyze these results, we note a social “hyperadaptation” of these patients. But we have to note that there are moments (short but important) of mismatch and maladjustment. These “perverse moments” are very important to be observed and regarded as a pathognomonic symptomatology of the perverse functioning. This fact probably distinguishes the “leader” from the “pervert”. The specificity of the perverse functioning should be viewed as a continuum of adaptation along which an individual may pass from “hyperadaptation” on the one hand, to moments of failures and mis-adapting on the other hand. ConclusionsThe pervert is well adapted to his social environment and is a specialist in relationship and “territorialization”. He has excellent perception's skills and relational intuition. But in the other hand there are specific moments for which ones the “mis-adapting” is totally complete. This entity requests a specific diagnostic category. This acknowledgment would facilitate research and studies on this type of psychological functioning. But it is probably difficult to have a nomothetic knowledge about the perverse personality. Indeed, some elements such as the limited number of subjects who accept to be evaluated, their elusive logic, their tendency to refuse to cooperate in a study if there are no benefits represent some obstacles. These arguments force us to have a non-conventional research method even though there is not a lack of a nosographic entity. Finally, we note that a perverse psychological functioning is complex to identify, partly because it requires time as well as an observation framework.

To see ourselves as others see us: An experimental integration of the intra and interpersonal consequences of self-protection in social anxiety disorder.

The current study investigated the mechanism through which safety behaviors perpetuate perceived and actual negative social outcomes hypothesized to maintain social anxiety disorder (SAD). Eighty individuals diagnosed with generalized SAD took part in a "getting acquainted" conversation with a trained experimental confederate. Participants were then randomly assigned to either a safety behavior reduction plus exposure condition (SB + EXP) or a graduated exposure (EXP) control condition and completed a 2nd conversation with the same interaction partner. Mediation analyses revealed that participants instructed to reduce their idiosyncratic safety behaviors displayed significantly greater increases in both perceived and actual positive interpersonal outcomes relative to the EXP group. However, whereas the safety behavior manipulation influenced participants' appraisals of their partner's reaction to them through reducing self-judgments about the visibility of anxiety-related behaviors, in reality, the SB + EXP group elicited more positive partner reactions because they displayed a greater increase in social approach behavior. Thus, although both parties recognized positive changes in the social exchange following the safety behavior manipulation, different sources of social information accounted for participant versus partner interpersonal judgments. The current findings point to the potential value of considering both the intra and interpersonal consequences of safety behaviors in SAD.

Medication Information Seeking Behavior in a Social Context: The Role of Lay and Professional Social Network Contacts

This study provided a view of the social context of medication information seeking from a patient's perspective.This was an exploratory qualitative study with 40 adults to determine how patients communicate within social networks to seek medication information. Semi-structured interviews were used to determine the structure (who), the content provided (what), and the function of social sources of information (how/why). Data underwent ethnographic content analysis using theory and prior research driven themes. Coding matrices were created to identify emerging patterns for who supplied what information and how the information was used. Participants described seeking medication information from health professional or lay social network sources. Health professional sources' strongest role was to provide factual information. In contrast, lay sources provided factual information and affective information such as personal experiences and beliefs or attitudes. Information sought from social sources displayed similar functioning roles in terms of how the information was used by the participants seeking the information. The study concluded that medication information is sought from social sources both inside and outside of healthcare. Emerging patterns found that lay sources may provide patients more than affective information about medications. Further, patients may be receiving factually based information other than from health professionals. By coming to a more complete understanding of the social nature of the information environment, health professionals can better understand information needs from a patient's perspective.
 
 Type: Original Research

Physically Attractive Social Information Sources Lead to Increased Selective Exposure to Information

The present research investigated the impact of a social information source's physical attractiveness on selective exposure to decision-relevant information. In two studies, support was found for the hypothesis that physically attractive information sources lead decision makers into being more selective in both searching for (Studies 1 and 2; selective exposure) and evaluating (Study 2; biased assimilation) decision-relevant information. In both studies, the effect was driven by differences in the selection and evaluation of decision-consistent information, that is, physically attractive information sources led to increases in the perceived quality of decision-consistent information as well as increased selective exposure to this information. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Body Representation in the First Year of Life.

Like faces, bodies are significant sources of social information. However, research suggests that infants do not develop body representation (i.e., knowledge about typical human bodies) until the second year of life, although they are sensitive to facial information much earlier. Yet, previous research only examined whether infants are sensitive to the typical arrangement of body parts. We examined whether younger infants have body knowledge of a different kind, namely the relative size of body parts. Five- and 9-month-old infants were tested for their preference between a normal versus a proportionally distorted body. Nine-month-olds exhibited a preference for the normal body when images were presented upright but not when they were inverted. Five-month-olds failed to exhibit a preference in either condition. These results indicate that infants have knowledge about human bodies by the second half of the first year of life. Moreover, given that better performance on upright than on inverted stimuli has been tied to expertise, the fact that older infants exhibited an inversion effect with body images indicates that at least some level of expertise in body processing develops by 9 months of age.

Neural responses to faces reflect social personality traits

Faces are a developmentally primary and critically important source of social information, and they are processed differently from most other visual percepts. Studies of brain electrophysiology reveal a face-sensitive component, the N170, which is typically enhanced to faces relative to other stimuli. Research in social disabilities suggests that an atypical N170 response in this population may stem from decreased developmental exposure to faces secondary to reduced social interest. Here we examined the relationship between neural responses to faces and social personality characteristics in a normative sample. Participants were pre-screened to identify individuals scoring high on extraversion or introversion. Both groups were presented with upright and inverted face stimuli. An inversion effect, a marker of expertise for faces, was observed in people with high extraversion but not in those with high introversion. These findings suggest that, within typically developing populations, social attitudes are reflected in the neural correlates of face perception.