Social intuition: behavioral and neurobiological considerations.

Social intuition is instrumental in bringing about successful human interactions, yet its behavioral and neural underpinnings are still poorly understood. We focus in this article on the automatic, involuntary, nature of social intuition, rather than on higher-level cognitive and explicit Theory-of-Mind processes (which contribute to rendering social intuition meaningful in real-life situations). We argue that social-affective implicit learning plays a crucial role in establishing automatic social intuition.

Visual Attention to Dynamic Emotional Faces in Adults on the Autism Spectrum.

Using eye-tracking, we studied allocation of attention to faces where the emotional expression and eye-gaze dynamically changed in an ecologically-valid manner. We tested typically-developed (TD) adults low or high in autistic-like traits (Experiment 1), and adults with high-functioning autism (HFA; Experiment 2). All groups fixated more on the eyes than on any of the other facial area, regardless of emotion and gaze direction, though the HFA group fixated less on the eyes and more on the nose than TD controls.

Could direct and generative retrieval be two flips of the same coin? A dual-task paradigm study.

Autobiographical memories are thought to be retrieved using two possible ways: a generative one, which is effortful and follows a general-to-specific pathway, and a direct one, which is automatic and relatively effortless. These two retrieve processes are known to differ on the quantitative side (especially considering retrieval times), from a qualitative point of view; however, evidence is missing. Here, we aimed to disentangle this question by taking advantage of a dual-task paradigm in which the different tasks tax different executive functions.

Sensorimotor representation of observed dyadic actions with varying agent involvement: an EEG mu study.

Observation of others' actions activates motor representations in sensorimotor cortex. Although action observation in the real-world often involves multiple agents displaying varying degrees of action involvement, most lab studies on action observation studied individual actions. We recorded EEG-mu suppression over sensorimotor cortex to investigate how the multi-agent nature of observed hand/arm actions is incorporated in sensorimotor action representations.

Sensorimotor anticipation of others' actions in real-world and video settings: Modulation by level of engagement?

Electroencephalography (EEG) studies investigating social cognition have used both video and real-world stimuli, often without a strong reasoning as to why one or the other was chosen. Video stimuli can be selected for practical reasons, while naturalistic real-world stimuli are ecologically valid. The current study investigated modulatory effects on EEG mu (8-13 Hz) suppression, directly prior to the onset - and during the course - of observed actions, related to real-world and video settings.

Memory for facial expressions on the autism spectrum: The influence of gaze direction and type of expression.

Face memory research in autism has largely neglected memory for facial expressions, in favor of memory for identity. This study in three experiments examined the role of gaze direction and type of expression on memory for facial expressions in relation to the autism spectrum. In the learning phase, four combinations of facial expressions (joy/anger) and gaze direction (toward/away), displayed by 16 different identities, were presented.

Are adaptation aftereffects for facial emotional expressions affected by prior knowledge about the emotion?

Accurate perception of the emotional signals conveyed by others is crucial for successful social interaction. Such perception is influenced not only by sensory input, but also by knowledge we have about the others' emotions. This study addresses the issue of whether knowing that the other's emotional state is congruent or incongruent with their displayed emotional expression ("genuine" and "fake", respectively) affects the neural mechanisms underpinning the perception of their facial emotional expressions.

"Be careful what you recall": Retrieval-induced forgetting of genuine real-life autobiographical memories.

Which episodes from our lives will be remembered and which will be forgotten, and why? This question has still not been answered satisfactorily by research into autobiographical memory. Previous work has shown that retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) might be a factor responsible for forgetting parts of the autobiographical memory content. However, none of the previous studies assessed RIF in memories for recent, controlled, personal events.

Sensorimotor cortex activation during anticipation of upcoming predictable but not unpredictable actions.

The mirror neuron system (MNS) becomes active during action execution and action observation, which is presumably reflected by reductions in mu (8-13 Hz) activity in the electroencephalogram over the sensorimotor cortex. The function of the MNS is still fiercely debated. The current study aimed to investigate a role of the MNS in anticipating others' actions by examining whether the MNS was activated - indexed by mu power suppression - prior to the onset of observed actions when the onset and type of action could be predicted on the basis of environmental cues.

The Role of Pattern Extrapolation in the Perception of Dynamic Facial Expressions in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Changes in the intensity and type of facial expressions reflect alterations in the emotional state of the agent. Such "direct" access to the other's affective state might, top-down, influence the perception of the facial expressions that gave rise to the affective state inference. Previously, we described a perceptual bias occurring when the last, neutral, expression of offsets of facial expressions (joy-to-neutral and anger-to-neutral), was evaluated.

Action adaptation during natural unfolding social scenes influences action recognition and inferences made about actor beliefs.

When observing another individual's actions, we can both recognize their actions and infer their beliefs concerning the physical and social environment. The extent to which visual adaptation influences action recognition and conceptually later stages of processing involved in deriving the belief state of the actor remains unknown. To explore this we used virtual reality (life-size photorealistic actors presented in stereoscopic three dimensions) to see how visual adaptation influences the perception of individuals in naturally unfolding social scenes at increasingly higher levels of action understanding.

Emotional Actions Are Coded via Two Mechanisms: With and without Identity Representation.

Accurate perception of an individual's identity and emotion derived from their actions and behavior is essential for successful social functioning. Here we determined the role of identity in the representation of emotional whole-body actions using visual adaptation paradigms. Participants adapted to actors performing different whole-body actions in a happy and sad fashion.

Atypical emotional anticipation in high-functioning autism.

Background: Understanding and anticipating others' mental or emotional states relies on the processing of social cues, such as dynamic facial expressions. Individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) may process these cues differently from individuals with typical development (TD) and purportedly use a 'mechanistic' rather than a 'mentalistic' approach, involving rule- and contingency-based interpretations of the stimuli. The study primarily aimed at examining whether the judgments of facial expressions made by individuals with TD and HFA would be similarly affected by the immediately preceding dynamic perceptual history of that face.

Impaired identification of impoverished animate but not inanimate objects in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder.

The ability to identify animate and inanimate objects from impoverished images was investigated in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFA) and in matched typically developed (TD) adults, using a newly developed task. Consecutive frames were presented containing Gabor elements that slightly changed orientation from one frame to the next. For a subset of elements, the changes were such that these elements gradually formed the outline of an object.

Involuntary social cue integration in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder.

Objective: Patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have inferior social functioning compared to healthy controls, but the exact nature of these social deficits, and the underpinning mechanisms, are unknown. We sought to investigate social functioning in patients with OCD by measuring their involuntary/spontaneous processing of social cues using a specifically designed test, which might reveal deficits in these patients that explicit voluntary tasks do not detect.

Methods: The sample of the study consisted of an OCD group (n = 25) and a control group (n = 26).

Beyond face value: does involuntary emotional anticipation shape the perception of dynamic facial expressions?

Emotional facial expressions are immediate indicators of the affective dispositions of others. Recently it has been shown that early stages of social perception can already be influenced by (implicit) attributions made by the observer about the agent's mental state and intentions. In the current study possible mechanisms underpinning distortions in the perception of dynamic, ecologically-valid, facial expressions were explored.

Linguistic alignment in adults with and without Asperger's syndrome.

Individuals with Asperger's syndrome (AS) often have difficulties with social interactions and conversations. We investigated if these difficulties could be attributable to a deficit in the ability to linguistically converge with an interlocutor, which is posited to be important for successful communication. To that end, participants completed two cooperative tasks with a confederate, which allowed us to measure linguistic alignment with the confederate in terms of lexical choice, syntactic structure and spatial frame of reference.

(Re-)conceptualisation in Asperger's syndrome and typical individuals with varying degrees of autistic-like traits.

The abilities to form new concepts from scratch (conceptualisation), and to flexibly switch from one concept to another (re-conceptualisation), were investigated in adults with Asperger's Syndrome and in typically-developed adults with low and high autism spectrum quotients. In consecutively presented morphs, containing increasing percentages of animate or inanimate objects, the emerging objects had to be identified. The abilities to conceptualise and reconceptualise became increasingly impaired with increasing autistic(-like) traits.

Implicit social learning in relation to autistic-like traits.

We investigated if variation in autistic traits in the typically-developed population (using the Autism-spectrum Quotient, AQ) influenced implicit learning of social information. In the learning phase, participants repeatedly observed two identities whose gaze and expression conveyed either a pro- or antisocial disposition. These identities were then employed in a gaze-cueing paradigm.

Unequal impairment in the recognition of positive and negative emotions after right hemisphere lesions: a left hemisphere bias for happy faces.

The processing of several important aspects of a human face was investigated in a single patient (LZ), who had a large infarct of the right hemisphere involving the parietal, and temporal lobes with extensions into the frontal region. LZ showed selective problems with recognizing emotional expressions, whereas she was flawless in recognizing gender, familiarity, and identity. She was very poor in recognizing negative facial expressions (fear, disgust, anger, sadness), but scored as well as the controls on the positive facial expression of happiness.

Anticipation of action intentions in autism spectrum disorder.

We investigated whether individuals with a mild form of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are influenced by an actor's gaze direction when anticipating how an observed action will continue in the immediate future. Participants observed a head rotate towards them, while the gaze direction was either leading, or lagging behind, rotation. They also observed identical rotations of a cylinder containing the geometrical equivalent of the gaze manipulation.

Resolving ambiguous behavioral intentions by means of involuntary prioritization of gaze processing.

Anticipation of others' actions is of paramount importance in social interactions. Cues such as gaze direction and facial expressions can be informative, but can also produce ambiguity with respect to others' intentions. We investigated the combined effect of an actor's gaze and expression on judgments made by observers about the end-point of the actor's head rotation toward the observer.

Visual aftereffects for walking actions reveal underlying neural mechanisms for action recognition.

The results of this study illustrate a new high-level visual aftereffect: Observing actors walking forward, without horizontal translation, makes subsequent actors appear to walk backward, and the opposite effect is obtained after observing backward walking. We used this aftereffect, which cannot be explained by simple low-level adaptation to motion direction, to investigate the properties of neural mechanisms underlying recognition of walking actions. Our results suggest that the perception of walking and the perception of static images of actors in walking postures rely on common brain mechanisms that are primarily object centered, rather than viewer centered, and that are blind to the identity of the actor.

Implied motion activation in cortical area MT can be explained by visual low-level features.

To investigate form-related activity in motion-sensitive cortical areas, we recorded cell responses to animate implied motion in macaque middle temporal (MT) and medial superior temporal (MST) cortex and investigated these areas using fMRI in humans. In the single-cell studies, we compared responses with static images of human or monkey figures walking or running left or right with responses to the same human and monkey figures standing or sitting still. We also investigated whether the view of the animate figure (facing left or right) that elicited the highest response was correlated with the preferred direction for moving random dot patterns.