Search results for " theory of mind"

"I Know that You Know that I Know": Neural Substrates Associated with Social Cognition Deficits in DM1 Patients.

2016

Myotonic dystrophy type-1 (DM1) is a genetic multi-systemic disorder involving several organs including the brain. Despite the heterogeneity of this condition, some patients with non-congenital DM1 can present with minimal cognitive impairment on formal testing but with severe difficulties in daily-living activities including social interactions. One explanation for this paradoxical mismatch can be found in patients' dysfunctional social cognition, which can be assessed in the framework of the Theory of Mind (ToM). We hypothesize here that specific disease driven abnormalities in DM1 brains may result in ToM impairments. We recruited 20 DM1 patients who underwent the "Reading the Mind in th…

Theory of mind development from adolescence to adulthood: Testing the two-component model

2020

The ability to infer mental and affective states of others is crucial for social functioning. This ability, denoted as Theory of Mind (ToM), develops rapidly during childhood, yet results on its development across adolescence and into young adulthood are rare. In the present study, we tested the two‐component model, measuring age‐related changes in social‐perceptual and social‐cognitive ToM in a sample of 267 participants between 11 and 25 years of age. Additionally, we measured language, reasoning, and inhibitory control as major covariates. Participants inferred mental states from non‐verbal cues in a social‐perceptual task (Eye Test) and from stories with faux pas in a social‐cognitive t…

Social cognition and executive functions in children and adolescents with focal epilepsy

2020

Objectives: Deficits in facial emotion recognition and Theory of Mind are frequent in patients with epilepsy. Although this evidence, studies on pediatric age are few and the relation between these abilities and other cognitive domain remains to be better elucidated. The purpose of our study is to evaluate facial emotion recognition and Theory of Mind in children and adolescents with focal epilepsy, and correlate them with intelligence and executive functions. Materials and methods: Our work is a cross-sectional observational study. Sixty-two children and adolescents aged between 7-16 years diagnosed by focal epilepsy and 32 sex/age-matched controls were recruited. All participants were adm…

A preliminary characterisation of cognition and social cognition in spinocerebellar ataxia types 2, 1, and 7.

2010

Over the last decade, studies have implicated the cerebellum not only in motor functioning, but also in cognition and social cognition. Although some aspects of cognition have been explored in the five most common forms of Spinocerebellar Ataxia (SCA), social cognition in these patients has rarely been examined. The present study provides a preliminary characterisation of the severity of cognitive and social cognitive impairments in patients with SCA2, SCA1 and SCA7 using an identical battery to the one previously used in SCA3 and SCA6 patients for comparison. The cognitive profiles of SCA1 and SCA7 patients were comparable to that of SCA6 patients; SCA1 patients had relatively intact profi…

The role of mind theory in patients affected by neurodegenerative disorders and impact on caregiver burden

2020

Abstract Background Theory of Mind (ToM) is defined as the ability to understand mental and emotional state. This ability is assessed also in neurodegenerative disease. Few studies have investigated the impact that social cognition of patients could have on caregiver burden. The aim of this study was to investigate a possible correlation in level of social cognition impairment between patients with different neurodegenerative disorders and their caregivers with possible impact on caregivers burden. Methods we enrolled 48 patients with dementia divided in different groups: Fronto-Temporal Dementia (FTD), Alzheimer Disease (AD), and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and also the three groups of…

Implicit perception simplicity and explicit perception complexity in sensorimotor communication: Comment on "The body talks: Sensorimotor communicati…

2019

[No abstract available]

From a bodily-based format of knowledge to symbols. The evolution of human language

2013

Although ontogeny cannot recapitulate phylogeny, a two-level model of the acquisition of language will be here proposed and its implication for the evolution of the faculty of language will be discussed. It is here proposed that the identification of the cognitive requirements of language during ontogeny could help us in the task of identifying the phylogenetic achievements that concurred, at some point, to the acquisition of language during phylogeny. In this model speaking will be considered as a complex ability that arises in two different steps. The first step of competence widely relies on a bodily-based format of knowledge. The second step relies on more abstract meta-representations …

Pragmatic and Informative “Wholes”: the Evolutionary Roots of the Human Language

2011

The study of the origins of language has been the interest of several ungrounded debates which have often affected its scientific plausibility. In this paper, aiming at an internally consistent interdisciplinary approach, I will adopt Botha´s “Windows Approach" (2006) in order to justify the following two assumptions concerning the evolutionary roots of human language: a) despite the uniqueness of human language in sharing and conveying utterances with an open-ended structure, some isolated components of our linguistic competence are somehow shared with non-human primates, grounding a line of evolutionary continuity; b) the evolutionary thesis which sustains that the very first “linguistic”…

Pensiero, percezione e linguaggio in W.V. Quine

2012

Notwithstanding his well known behaviorism, Quine connects language learning to the ability of understanding others by means of empathy, namely perceiving what an other is perceiving. The paper discusses and resolves the prima facie oddity between this thesis and Quine's criticism of propositional attitudes. It analyzes the notion of empathy and the cognitive mechanism underlying it. It explains also the role of empathy and of mindreading abilities in language learning and understanding others. Comparing Quine's account of mindreading to the main options in the current debate on the topic, it assess the validity of the Quinean inspired blend of rationality-based and hybrid view-based strate…

THE INFLUENCE OF SPATIAL COGNITION IN THEORY OF MIND AND CENTRAL COHERENCE TASKS: STUDY IN AUTISM

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS) is a severe developmental disability characterized by impairments in social interaction and communicative skills. Despite a growing research interest in the field, the causes of these impairments remain unknown. Two lines of research, Theory of Mind (ToM) and Central Coherence (CC), using experimental tasks such as visuo-spatial perspective Taking (VPT) and the local and global levels have suggested that visuo-spatial attention and spatial variables in the self-versus other recognition, may be the basis of the cognitive processes underlying social interaction. According to spatial attention, such as observed in the Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) may contribu…