Attributing social meaning to animated shapes: A new experimental study of apparent behavior

Two Sides of Theory of Mind: Mental State Attribution to Moving Shapes in Paranoid Schizophrenia Is Independent of the Severity of Positive Symptoms

BACKGROUND

Theory of Mind (ToM) impairment has repeatedly been found in paranoid schizophrenia. The current study aims at investigating whether this is related to a deficit in ToM (undermentalizing) or an increased ToM ability to hyperattribute others' mental states (overmentalizing).

METHODS

Mental state attribution was examined in 24 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (12 acute paranoid (APS) and 12 post-acute paranoid (PPS)) with regard to positive symptoms as well as matched healthy persons using a moving shapes paradigm. We used 3-T-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to provide insights into the neural underpinnings of ToM due to attributional processes in different states of paranoid schizophrenia.

RESULTS

In the condition that makes demands on theory of mind skills (ToM condition), in patients with diagnosed schizophrenia less appropriate mental state descriptions have been used, and they attributed mental states less often to the moving shapes than healthy persons. On a neural level, patients suffering from schizophrenia exhibited within the ToM network hypoactivity in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and hyperactivity in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) as compared to the healthy sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results indicate both undermentalizing and hypoactivity in the MPFC and increased overattribution related to hyperactivity in the TPJ in paranoid schizophrenia, providing new implications for understanding ToM in paranoid schizophrenia.

The Social Shapes Test as a Self-Administered, Online Measure of Social Intelligence: Two Studies with Typically Developing Adults and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

The Social Shapes Test (SST) is a measure of social intelligence which does not use human faces or rely on extensive verbal ability. The SST has shown promising validity among adults without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but it is uncertain whether it is suitable for adults with ASD. We find measurement invariance between adults with (n = 229) or without ASD (n = 1,049) on the 23-item SST. We also find that adults without ASD score higher on the SST than adults with ASD (d = 0.21). We also provide two, 14-item versions which demonstrated good parallel test-retest reliability and are positively related to scores on the Frith-Happé task. The SST is suitable for remote, online research studies.

When shapes are more than shapes: perceptual, developmental, and neurophysiological basis for attributions of animacy and theory of mind

Among a variety of entities in their environment, what do humans consider alive or animate and how does this attribution of animacy promote development of more abstract levels of mentalizing? By decontextualizing the environment of bodily features, we review how physical movements give rise to perceived animacy in Heider-Simmel style animations. We discuss the developmental course of how perceived animacy shapes our interpretation of the social world, and specifically discuss when and how children transition from perceiving actions as goal-directed to attributing behaviors to unobservable mental states. This transition from a teleological stance, asserting a goal-oriented interpretation to an agent's actions, to a mentalistic stance allows older children to reason about more complex actions guided by hidden beliefs. The acquisition of these more complex cognitive behaviors happens developmentally at the same time neural systems for social cognition are coming online in young children. We review perceptual, developmental, and neural evidence to identify the joint cognitive and neural changes associated with when children begin to mentalize and how this ability is instantiated in the brain.

Using game-like animations of geometric shapes to simulate social interactions: An evaluation of group score differences

This study introduces a novel, game-like method for measuring social intelligence: the Social Shapes Test. Unlike other existing video or game-based tests, the Shapes Test uses animations of abstract shapes to represent social interactions. We explore demographic differences in Shapes Test scores compared to a written situational judgment test. Gender and race/ethnicity only had meaningful effects on written SJT scores while no effects were found for Shapes Test scores. This pattern of results remained after controlling for general mental ability and English language exposure. We also found metric invariance between demographic groups for both tests. Our results demonstrate the potential for using animated shape tasks as an alternative to written SJTs when designing future game-based assessments.