Neural empathy mechanisms are shared for physical and social pain, and increase from adolescence to older adulthood.

Empathy is a critical component of social interaction that enables individuals to understand and share the emotions of others. We report a preregistered experiment in which 240 participants, including adolescents, young adults, and older adults, viewed images depicting hands and feet in physically or socially painful situations (versus nonpainful). Empathy was measured using imagined pain ratings and EEG mu suppression.

Cognitive mechanisms of perspective-taking across adulthood: An eye-tracking study using the director task.

Perspective-taking plays an important role in daily life, allowing consideration of other people's perspectives and viewpoints. This study used a large sample of 265 community-based participants (aged 20-86 years) to examine changes in perspective-taking abilities-a component of "Theory of Mind"-across adulthood, and how these changes may relate to individual differences in executive functions at different ages. Participants completed a referential-communication task (the "Director" task) while behavioral responses and eye movements were recorded, along with four measures of executive functions (inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and planning).

Tracking developmental differences in real-world social attention across adolescence, young adulthood and older adulthood.

Detecting and responding appropriately to social information in one's environment is a vital part of everyday social interactions. Here, we report two preregistered experiments that examine how social attention develops across the lifespan, comparing adolescents (10-19 years old), young (20-40 years old) and older (60-80 years old) adults. In two real-world tasks, participants were immersed in different social interaction situations-a face-to-face conversation and navigating an environment-and their attention to social and non-social content was recorded using eye-tracking glasses.

The developmental trajectories of executive function from adolescence to old age.

Executive functions demonstrate variable developmental and aging profiles, with protracted development into early adulthood and declines in older age. However, relatively few studies have specifically included middle-aged adults in investigations of age-related differences in executive functions. This study explored the age-related differences in executive function from late childhood through to old age, allowing a more informed understanding of executive functions across the lifespan.

The neural basis of belief-attribution across the lifespan: False-belief reasoning and the N400 effect.

The current study examined how social cognition - specifically, belief-state processing - changes across the lifespan, using a large sample (N = 309) of participants aged 10-86 years. Participants completed an event-related brain potential study in which they listened to stories involving a character who held either a true- or false-belief about the location of an object, and then acted in a manner consistent or inconsistent to this belief-state. Analysis of the N400 revealed that when the character held a true-belief, inconsistent outcomes led to a more negative-going N400 waveform than consistent outcomes.

Short-term physical training enhances mirror system activation to action observation.

The mirroring of actions is performed by a specialized system of neurons found in the sensorimotor cortex, termed the mirror neuron system. This system is considered an important mechanism that facilitates social understanding. We present a pre-registered experiment that used EEG to investigate whether short-term training via physical rehearsal or observational learning elicit distinct changes in mirror neuron activity for unfamiliar hand actions, and whether these training effects are influenced by the degree of familiarity (i.

Sensorimotor mu rhythm during action observation changes across the lifespan independently from social cognitive processes.

The observation of actions performed by another person activates parts of the brain as if the observer were performing that action, referred to as the 'mirror system'. Very little is currently known about the developmental trajectory of the mirror system and related social cognitive processes. This experimental study sought to explore the modulation of the sensorimotor mu rhythm during action observation using EEG measures, and how these may relate to social cognitive abilities across the lifespan, from late childhood through to old age.

Belief-attribution in adults with and without autistic spectrum disorders.

An important aspect of daily life is the ability to infer information about the contents of other people's minds, such as what they can see and what they know, in order to engage in successful interactions. This is referred to as possession of a "Theory of Mind" (ToM). Past research has shown that adults with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often show deficits in social communication abilities, although can successfully pass tests of explicit ToM.

Age of avatar modulates the altercentric bias in a visual perspective-taking task: ERP and behavioral evidence.

Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples' visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults' visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person's perspective.

Exploring the role of self/other perspective-shifting in theory of mind with behavioural and EEG measures.

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to compute and attribute mental states to oneself and other people. This study sought to assess the extent of differentiation between "Self" and "Other" in ToM processes, and, of particular importance, the key role of perspective-shifting between "Self" and "Other". Utilizing a newly established false-belief paradigm in a matched design, healthy adult participants completed the task whilst behavioural measures (response times, error rates) and electrophysiological (EEG) recordings were taken.

From self to social cognition: Theory of Mind mechanisms and their relation to Executive Functioning.

'Theory of Mind' refers to the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and other people (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). This study examined the extent to which 'Self' and 'Other' belief-attribution processes within the Theory of Mind (ToM) mechanism could be distinguished behaviourally, and whether these separable components differentially related to Executive Functioning (EF) abilities. A computerized false-belief task, utilizing a matched-design to allow direct comparison of self-oriented vs.