Subsequent Social Interactions Research Articles

Embodied Cognition and Empathic Experiences in War Communication


 
 
 Using the perspective of phenomenological-enactive embodied cognition, this paper examines the role of the body in constituting specific social interactions via specific media ecologies (war imagery) during the times of (refugee) crisis. Such media ecologies give affordances that can amplify social beliefs and turn subjective judgments into an intersubjective action. We consider the human body in relation to war media as playing an important role in sustaining social experiences and relations. To that end, the article explores the fundamental experience of empathy, combining the theoretical perspectives of phenomenology and enactivism with the examples from war imagery and refugee embodiment. It is shown that the classical phenomenological tradition offers different yet useful conceptualisations of empathy. We also argue that war images and/or messages should be viewed as means/tools for, rather than representations of, the enaction of certain important experiences. Hence, the article connects the analysis of the affection by war imagery with the subsequent social interactions in the context of refugee crisis.
 
 

Dynamics of Social Experiences in the Context of Extended Lockdown

Social interaction and loneliness have received much research interest. However, the direction of their relationship is unclear—does social interaction shape loneliness, or does loneliness shape willingness to interact? We explored dynamics of these social experiences under exceptional circumstances: COVID-19 lockdowns, which were necessary for public health but impacted people’s social lives. We investigated the relationship between social interaction and loneliness in and out of lockdown in Australia. We used experience sampling methodology to follow 233 people across 1 week (Mage=30; 8,495 surveys) in a period that spanned one of the longest lockdowns in the world. Although loneliness did not predict subsequent social interaction, having a social interaction predicted lower subsequent loneliness, particularly in (vs. out of) lockdown. These findings suggest social interactions may limit loneliness, especially during physical isolation. In short, times when we are apart from others may be times we benefit from interacting with them the most.

Almost half of children and adolescents had unmet need 6 months after their traumatic brain injury.

Very few studies have focused on how children with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) access and use publicly funded healthcare and educational services. We aimed to compare the symptoms, recovery and service use of children with TBIs and a control group with other traumatic injuries. This case-control study was conducted at Oslo University Hospital, Norway, from 2015 to 2020. It focused on 49 patients aged 1-15 years who were hospitalised with TBIs and compared them with 51 matched patients with other traumatic injuries. Unmet needs were based on reports from parents, patients and clinicians 6 months after the injury. Many children hospitalised after TBIs experienced persistent cognitive and emotional symptoms that effected their return to school and subsequent social interactions. These were associated with reduced quality of life. Nearly half (47%) of the children in the TBI group had unmet needs after 6 months, compared to 12% of the controls. Patients with TBIs also had more symptoms and showed less favourable recoveries than the controls. Paediatric patients with TBIs had long-term cognitive and emotional symptoms that affected their return to school and social functioning. Almost half of them had unmet needs 6 months after their acute injury.

Just teasing! - Infants' and toddlers' understanding of teasing interactions and its effect on social bonding

The current study investigates infants' and toddlers' understanding of teasing interactions and its effect on subsequent social interactions. Teasing is a special kind of social interaction due to its dual nature: It consists of a slightly provocative contingent action accompanied by positive ostensive emotional cues. Teasing thus presents an especially interesting test case to inform us about young children's abilities to deal with complex social intentions.In a first experiment, we looked at 9-, 12-, and 18-month-old infants' ability to understand and differentiate a teasing intention from a trying intention and a refuse intention. We found that by 12 months of age, infants react differently (gaze, reach) and by 18 months they smile more in reaction to the Tease condition.In the second experiment, we tested 13-, 20- and 30-month-old children in closely matched purely playful and teasing situations. We also investigated potential social effects of teasing interactions on a subsequent affiliation sequence. Twenty- and 30-month-old children smile more in the Teasing than in the Play condition. For the 30-month-old toddlers, additionally, number of laughs is much higher in the Tease than in the Play condition. No effect on affiliation could be found.Thus, from very early in development, infants and toddlers are able to differentiate teasing from superficially similar but serious behavior and from around 18 months of age they enjoy it more. Infants and toddlers are able to process a complex social intention like teasing. Findings are discussed regarding infant and toddler intention understanding abilities.

From Loss of Control to Social Exclusion: ERP Effects of Preexposure to a Social Threat in the Cyberball Paradigm.

Previous studies indicated that the onsets of different social threats, such as threats to ”belonging” and “control”, are inconsistent with the subjective beliefs of social participation and require readjustment of expectations. Because a common cognitive system is assumed to be involved, the adjustment triggered by the experience of a single social threat should affect the processing of subsequent social interactions. We examined how preexposure to a loss of control affected social exclusion processing by using the Cyberball paradigm. An event-related brain component (P3) served as a probe for the state of the expectancy system, and self-reports reflected the subjective evaluations of the social threats. In the control group (n = 23), the transition to exclusion elicited a significant P3 effect and a high threat to belonging in the self-reports. Both effects were significantly reduced when the exclusion was preceded by preexposure to a loss of control (EG1disc, n = 23). These effects, however, depend on the offset of the preexposure. In case of a continuation (EG2cont, n = 24), the P3 effect was further reduced, but the threat to belonging was restored. We conclude that the P3 data are consistent with predictions of a common expectancy violation account, whereas self-reports are supposed to be affected by additional processes.

Experiencing happiness together facilitates dyadic coordination through the enhanced interpersonal neural synchronization.

Experiencing positive emotions together facilitates interpersonal understanding and promotes subsequent social interaction among individuals. However, the neural underpinnings of such emotional-social effect remain to be discovered. The current study employed the functional near-infrared spectroscopy–based hyperscanning to investigate the abovementioned relationship. After participants in dyad watched movie clips with happily or neutral emotion, they were asked to perform the interpersonal cooperative task, with their neural activation of prefrontal cortex being recorded simultaneously via functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Results suggested that compared with the neutral movie watching together, a higher interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in left inferior frontal gyrus during participant dyads watching happiness movie together was observed. Subsequently, dyads in happiness showed more effective coordination interaction during the interpersonal cooperation task compared to those in the neutral condition, and such facilitated effect was associated with increased cooperation-related INS at left middle frontal cortex. A mediation analysis showed that the coordination interaction fully mediated the relationship between the emotion-induced INS during the happiness movie-viewing and the cooperation-related INS in interpersonal cooperation. Taken together, our findings suggest that the faciliatory effect experiencing happiness together has on interpersonal cooperation can be reliably reflected by the INS magnitude at the brain level.

Five-Year Psychosocial Impact of Living in Postdisaster Prefabricated Temporary Housing.

This study aims to evaluate the long-term impact of living in postdisaster prefabricated temporary housing on social interaction activities and mental health status. A total of 917 adult residents in a coastal town, whose residences were destroyed by the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), were enrolled for the assessment held 5 y after the disaster. They answered questions about their experience and consequence of living in prefabricated temporary housing after the disaster. Their present scores on 5 types of self-reported measures regarding the psychosocial or psychiatric status and their present and recalled social interaction activities were cross-sectionally collected. A total of 587 (64.0%) participants had a history of living in prefabricated temporary housing, while the other 330 (36.0%) had not. The prevalence of social interaction activities significantly decreased after the GEJE. However, the experience of living in prefabricated temporary housing did not adversely affect the subsequent social interaction activities or mental conditions of the participants 5 y after the disaster. Living in postdisaster prefabricated temporary housing may not negatively impact subsequent psychosocial conditions or social interaction activities 5 y later.

Expanding toy play through visually structured tasks and scripting for young children with developmental disabilities

Children first establish the foundations of subsequent social interactions by learning basic toy manipulations skills (Weiss and Harris, 2001). Once the child has established these skills in isolation, they can then be expanded into the symbolic and dramatic levels of play. For children who do not display these foundational toy play skills, the likelihood of isolation in inclusive settings is greater. A multiple baseline design across students and stimuli (i.e., toys) was used to test the effectiveness of an intervention package that included three Evidence Based Practices, Visual Supports, Scripts, and Least to Most Prompting. The following study included three preschool age children (i.e., 4–5) with identified Developmental Disabilities who were participating in an inclusive classroom at a local early learning center. Results of this study indicate an increase in level of play following the implementation of the intervention package. Students were able to progress from basic levels of play (e.g., non‐functional sensory‐based interactions) to more imaginative dramatic levels of play. In addition, students demonstrated the ability to go beyond the play script by bringing in additional play materials and expanding the interactions between objects. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are described.

Imagery of negative interpersonal experiences influence the neural mechanisms of social interaction

Negative interpersonal experiences are a key contributor to psychiatric disorders. While previous research has shown that negative interpersonal experiences influence social cognition, less is known about the effects on participation in social interactions and the underlying neurobiology. To address this, we developed a new naturalistic version of a gaze-contingent paradigm using real video sequences of gaze behaviour that respond to the participants’ gaze in real-time in order to create a believable and continuous interactive social situation. Additionally, participants listened to two autobiographical audio-scripts that guided them to imagine a recent stressful and a relaxing situation and performed the gaze-based social interaction task before and after the presentation of either the stressful or the relaxing audio-script. Our results demonstrate that the social interaction task robustly recruits brain areas with known involvement in social cognition, namely the medial prefrontal cortex, bilateral temporoparietal junction, superior temporal sulcus as well as the precuneus. Imagery of negative interpersonal experiences compared to relaxing imagery led to a prolonged change in affective state and to increased brain responses during the subsequent social interaction paradigm in the temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, precuneus and inferior frontal gyrus. Taken together this study presents a new naturalistic social interaction paradigm suitable to study the neural mechanisms of social interaction and the results demonstrate that the imagery of negative interpersonal experiences affects social interaction on neural levels.

Five-year Psychosocial Impact of Living in Post-Disaster Prefabricated Temporary Housing.

This study aims to evaluate the long-term impact of living in post-disaster prefabricated temporary housing on social interaction activities and mental health status. A total of 917 adult residents in a coastal town, whose residences were destroyed by the tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), were enrolled for the assessment held five years after the disaster. They answered questions about their experience and consequence of living in prefabricated temporary housing after the disaster. Their present scores on five types of self-reported measures regarding the psychosocial or psychiatric status and their present and recalled social interaction activities were cross-sectionally collected. A total of 587 (64.0%) participants had a history of living in prefabricated temporary housing, while the other 330 (36.0%) had not. The prevalence of social interaction activities significantly decreased after the GEJE. However, the experience of living in prefabricated temporary housing did not adversely affect the subsequent social interaction activities or mental conditions of the participants five years after the disaster. Living in post-disaster prefabricated temporary housing may not negatively impact subsequent psychosocial conditions or social interaction activities five years later.

The role of state feelings of loneliness in the situational regulation of social affiliative behavior: Exploring the regulatory relations within a multilevel framework.

Previous empirical evidence suggests that the engagement in social interactions across different everyday contexts occurs in a manner highly responsive to a person's social affiliation needs. As has been shown repeatedly, social engagement (as well as disengagement) can be predicted from earlier situational need states, implying that homeostatic principles underlie a person's social affiliative behaviors. However, little is known about the role of emotion in these regulative processes. For this reason, the present exploratory study investigated the predictive role of state feelings of loneliness in subsequent engagement in social interaction. Since loneliness is conceptually associated with both the need to reaffiliate as well as self-protecting tendencies potentially hindering engagement in social contact, the study investigated the possibility of both increases and decreases in social contacts resulting from state feelings of loneliness. Adopting an experience sampling methodology (ESM), a sample of 65 participants was recruited from a local university and was followed for 14 days. Subjects were prompted several times a day to rate their feeling states and the quantity of social interactions, using a fixed interval assessment schedule. Statistical analyses using multilevel analysis indicated that state feelings of loneliness had complex quadratic effects upon subsequent social interaction, leading to both increases and decreases in subsequent social interaction. Moreover, these effects were contingent upon previous engagement in social interaction, implying spillover effects across social contexts that are conditionally mediated by feelings of loneliness. These findings clearly imply an important, albeit complex role of state feelings of loneliness in the regulation of social affiliation, both as a predictor and a consequence of social interaction. These exploratory findings are discussed against the background of methodological and conceptual limitations, and several recommendations for future studies are made.

Adolescent CB1 receptor antagonism influences subsequent social interactions and neural activity in female rats.

We previously demonstrated that repeated exposure to the CB1 receptor antagonist/inverse agonist AM251 in adolescence (PND 30-44) increased social interactions in female rats when tested 48h after the final exposure to the antagonist. Here, we investigated whether the increased sociality would be present after a longer drug washout period (5days) in both male and female rats (experiment 1), and sought to identify candidate brain regions that may explain the observed differences in social behaviours between AM251 and vehicle-treated female rats (experiment 2). While drug-free, adolescent AM251 treatment increased social interactions in females and not in males. AM251 female rats had increased neural activity (as measured by the expression of early growth response protein-1; EGR-1) in the nucleus accumbens shell and cingulate gyrus of the medial prefrontal cortex, with no observed differences in EGR-1 expression in the dorsal hippocampus, nucleus accumbens core, or prelimbic and infralimbic subdivisions of the medial prefrontal cortex relative to vehicle rats. Together, these results demonstrate a sex-specific role of adolescent endocannabinoid signalling in the normative development of social behaviours and provide further support for adolescence as a vulnerable period for the effects of altered endocannabinoid signalling.

Do First Impressions of Autistic Adults Differ Between Autistic and Nonautistic Observers?

Background: Autistic adults receive unfavorable first impressions from typically developing (TD) adults, but these impressions improve when TD adults are made aware of their diagnosis. It remains u...

Neural representations of honesty predict future trust behavior

Theoretical accounts propose honesty as a central determinant of trustworthiness impressions and trusting behavior. However, behavioral and neural evidence on the relationships between honesty and trust is missing. Here, combining a novel paradigm that successfully induces trustworthiness impressions with functional MRI and multivariate analyses, we demonstrate that honesty-based trustworthiness is represented in the posterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and intraparietal sulcus. Crucially, brain signals in these regions predict individual trust in a subsequent social interaction with the same partner. Honesty recruited the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and stronger functional connectivity between the VMPFC and temporoparietal junction during honesty encoding was associated with higher trust in the subsequent interaction. These results suggest that honesty signals in the VMPFC are integrated into trustworthiness beliefs to inform present and future social behaviors. These findings improve our understanding of the neural representations of an individual’s social character that guide behaviors during interpersonal interactions.

Social Exclusion Shifts Personal Network Scope.

Social exclusion has the potential to alter subsequent social interactions with the members of personal networks, especially given their online availability in contemporary life. Nonetheless, there is minimal research examining how social challenges such as exclusion alter ensuing interactions with personal ties. Here, we tested whether being excluded during a social interaction changed which relationships are most salient in an ostensibly unrelated, online news sharing task. Across three operationalizations of tie strength, exclusion (vs. inclusion) increased sharing to close friends, but (unexpectedly) decreased sharing to close family members. The findings provide preliminary evidence that negative encounters may shift attention toward certain types of network ties and away from others. Future work is needed to examine how social experiences influence personal network scope – i.e., who comes to mind – in the background of daily life.

Biogenic amine modulation of honey bee sociability and nestmate affiliation.

Biogenic amines modulate a range of social behaviours, including sociability and mechanisms of group cohesion, in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Here, we tested if the biogenic amines modulate honey bee (Apis mellifera) sociability and nestmate affiliation. We examined the consequences of treatments with biogenic amines, agonists and antagonists on a bee’s approach to, and subsequent social interactions with, conspecifics in both naturally hive-reared bees and isolated bees. We used two different treatment methods. Bees were first treated topically with compounds dissolved in the solvent dimethylformamide (dMF) applied to the dorsal thorax, but dMF had a significant effect on the locomotion and behaviour of the bees during the behavioural test that interfered with their social responses. Our second method used microinjection to deliver biogenic amines to the head capsule via the ocellar tract. Microinjection of dopamine and a dopamine antagonist had strong effects on bee sociability, likelihood of interaction with bees, and nestmate affiliation. Octopamine treatment reduced social interaction with other bees, and serotonin increased the likelihood of social interactions. HPLC measurements showed that isolation reduced brain levels of biogenic amines compared to hive-reared bees. Our findings suggest that dopamine is an important neurochemical component of social motivation in bees. This finding advances a comparative understanding of the processes of social evolution.

The role of disclosure attitudes in the relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity and perceived social support among emergency service workers

The social-interpersonal framework model of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Maercker and Horn, 2012) highlights the relevance of interpersonal factors in the development and maintenance of PTSD symptoms. Therefore, the present study examined the role of self-perceived disclosure abilities to elucidate the well-known link between PTSD symptom severity and social support. In a cross-sectional design, 131 emergency service workers completed the Impact of Event Scale (IES-R), the Disclosure of Trauma Questionnaire (DTQ) and the Social Acknowledgement Questionnaire (SAQ) as well as answering trauma-specific questions to provide in-depth information regarding their experiences in potentially traumatic incidents and subsequent social interactions. We reveal the predescribed association between PTSD symptom severity and social support. However, bootstrap mediation analyses reveal the self-referential perceptions of disclosure abilities, particularly a reluctance to talk, to fully account for the link between PTSD symptom severity and social acknowledgement. Our findings strongly support the relevance of the self-perceived disclosure abilities in the processing of traumatic events. A reluctance to speak is associated with more severe PTSD symptoms and with lower levels of social support; therefore, facilitating and encouraging disclosure in individuals who feel unable to disclose traumatic contents may be clinically relevant in preventing feelings of social disapproval and isolation.

Orexin signaling during social defeat stress influences subsequent social interaction behaviour and recognition memory

Orexins are neuropeptides synthesized in the lateral hypothalamus that influence arousal, feeding, reward pathways, and the response to stress. However, the role of orexins in repeated stress is not fully characterized. Here, we examined how orexins and their receptors contribute to the coping response during repeated social defeat and subsequent anxiety-like and memory-related behaviors. Specifically, we used Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADDs) to stimulate orexins prior to each of five consecutive days of social defeat stress in adult male rats. Additionally, we determined the role of the orexin 2 receptor in these behaviors by using a selective orexin 2 receptor antagonist (MK-1064) administered prior to each social defeat. Following the 5 day social defeat conditioning period, rats were evaluated in social interaction and novel object recognition paradigms to assess anxiety-like behavior and recognition memory, respectively. Activation of orexin neurons by DREADDs prior to each social defeat decreased the average latency to become defeated across 5 days, indicative of a passive coping strategy that we have previously linked to a stress vulnerable phenotype. Moreover, stimulation of orexin signaling during defeat conditioning decreased subsequent social interaction and performance in the novel object recognition test indicating increased subsequent anxiety-like behavior and reduced recognition memory. Blocking the orexin 2 receptor during repeated defeat did not alter these effects. Together, our results suggest that orexin neuron activation produces a passive coping phenotype during social defeat leading to subsequent anxiety-like behaviors and memory deficits.

Women’s Attention to and Memory for Fertile- and Non-Fertile Phase Women Across the Menstrual Cycle

Across the menstrual cycle, women exhibit fluctuations in psychosocial motivations. Some evidence suggests that near ovulation, women exhibit increased status concerns and behaviors that could be considered intrasexually competitive in nature. Women are sensitive to other women’s fertility, which may be useful for refining expectations about subsequent social interactions, particularly among women who are fertile themselves. Consistent with theories that attentional and memory processes are modulated by motivation, we hypothesized that women would exhibit attentional and memory biases for fertile-phase women, and potentially more so when they were in the fertile phase of their own cycle. However, individuals with higher visual working memory capacity (VWMC) are typically resistant to such biases; thus, we expected bias would be most pronounced among participants with lower VWMC. Fifty-six premenopausal women who were not using hormonal contraceptives completed a visual selective attention task and a visual working memory task at two points in their menstrual cycle, near peak fertility (e.g., the late follicular phase) and during one of two low-fertile phases (either the early-follicular or the mid-luteal phase). Stimuli in the tasks were images of premenopausal women who were not using hormonal contraceptives in fertile- and non-fertile phases. We assessed participants’ response times in the tasks as a function of the fertility of the stimulus woman, participants’ cycle-phase, and participants’ VWMC. We demonstrate that when participants have lower VWMC, images of fertile-phase women capture their attention more than images of non-fertile-phase women. Furthermore, we show preliminary evidence that when participants have lower VWMC, they are faster to identify the face of a woman stored in visual working memory if she is in her fertile, relative to non-fertile, phase and participants are in the early-follicular phase of their own cycle. When VWMC is low, women are sensitive to visual cues of other women’s fertility, such that they exhibit attentional biases for fertile-phase women, and memory biases for fertile-phase women that vary as a function of their own menstrual cycle phase. Our results suggest that visual cues of other’s biological states alter early attentional processes in congruence with one’s broader social goals and motivations.

Does TV viewing during toddlerhood predict social difficulties and conduct problems?

AbstractSome research suggests that various features of screen media use (e.g., television viewing) may promote or interfere with cognitive, social, or behavioural development. Nevertheless, empirical investigations of the link between features of TV/media use among very young subjects (e.g., toddlers) and subsequent social interactions with peers at school using nationally representative samples are lacking. The present study employs data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, and a quasi‐experimental, propensity score matching design to explore the link between 3 components of TV viewing during toddlerhood (excessive viewing, unattended viewing, and adult content viewing), social difficulties, and conduct problems at school during the kindergarten school year. The results reveal that the risk of social difficulties with peers at school is heightened when family members do not engage in interactive TV viewing with toddlers or when toddlers primarily view adult programming. In contrast, excessive TV viewing among toddlers was not predictive of either social or behavioural problems upon entry into kindergarten in the matched sample. Ultimately, and in line with recent American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations, the findings suggest that interactive, engaged viewing of age‐appropriate content may be a more useful approach than simply limiting the amount of TV that toddlers are watching.Highlights The present study explores toddler TV viewing and later social/behavioral development. Using Propensity Score Matching techniques, unattended and age‐inappropriate viewing during toddlerhood was associated with an increased risk of social difficulties during kindergarten. Aspects of viewing content and context during toddlerhood may be linked to social development during early childhood.