人际互动中社会学习的计算神经机制

人类在社会互动中通过他人的行为对他人特质、意图及特定情境下的社会规范进行学习, 是优化决策、维护积极社会互动的重要条件。近年来, 越来越多的研究通过结合计算模型与神经影像技术对社会学习的认知计算机制及其神经基础进行了深入考察。已有研究发现, 人类的社会学习过程能够较好地被强化学习模型与贝叶斯模型刻画, 主要涉及的认知计算过程包括主观期望、预期误差和不确定性的表征以及信息整合的过程。大脑对这些计算过程的执行主要涉及奖惩加工相关脑区(如腹侧纹状体与腹内侧前额叶)、社会认知加工相关脑区(如背内侧前额叶和颞顶联合区)及认知控制相关脑区(如背外侧前额叶)。需要指出的是, 计算过程与大脑区域之间并不是一一映射的关系, 提示未来研究可借助多变量分析与脑网络分析等技术从系统神经科学的角度来考察大尺度脑网络如何执行不同计算过程。此外, 将来研究应注重生态效度, 利用超扫描技术考察真实互动下的社会学习过程, 并更多地关注内隐社会学习的计算与神经机制。     

The processing and remembering of congruent and incongruent sentences

Complex sentences, withwhile, before, after, because, orin order to, and other presented clauses were to be conjoined together by using eitherand, orbut. Congruent cases, in which subjects were expected to respond withand, had shorter response latencies than incongruent cases, with expectedbut responses. This indicated a semantic incongruence effect. But the latter were remembered better, indicating a motivational salience effect due to contradiction of expectation. Whether the main clause preceded or followed the subordinate clause was not significant, in terms of either reponse latencies or sentence memory. Sentences withafter had faster response times than those withbefore, although identical constituent clauses were used.     

Quantifying social asymmetric structures

Many social phenomena involve a set of dyadic relations among agents whose actions may be dependent. Although individualistic approaches have frequently been applied to analyze social processes, these are not generally concerned with dyadic relations, nor do they deal with dependency. This article describes a mathematical procedure for analyzing dyadic interactions in a social system. The proposed method consists mainly of decomposing asymmetric data into their symmetric and skew-symmetric parts. A quantification of skew symmetry for a social system can be obtained by dividing the norm of the skew-symmetric matrix by the norm of the asymmetric matrix. This calculation makes available to researchers a quantity related to the amount of dyadic reciprocity. With regard to agents, the procedure enables researchers to identify those whose behavior is asymmetric with respect to all agents. It is also possible to derive symmetric measurements among agents and to use multivariate statistical techniques.     

Clinical pastoral education and social structures

Since the contemporary church no longer reflects the simple and clear attitudes to social structure evident in the creeds and confessions, is it possible for clinical pastoral education (CPE) and the insights and understandings it represents to contribute to the quest for new structures? In the areas of motivation, power, confrontation, and conflict management, the possibility for contribution seems real. At the same time, CPE must take social structures more seriously and broaden its understanding of the minister's role.     

The use of social and salience cues in early word learning

This article explores young infants' ability to learn new words in situations providing tightly controlled social and salience cues to their reference. Four experiments investigated whether, given two potential referents, 15-month-olds would attach novel labels to (a) an image toward which a digital recording of a face turned and gazed, (b) a moving image versus a stationary image, (c) a moving image toward which the face gazed, and (d) a gazed-on image versus a moving image. Infants successfully used the recorded gaze cue to form new word-referent associations and also showed learning in the salience condition. However, their behavior in the salience condition and in the experiments that followed suggests that, rather than basing their judgments of the words' reference on the mere presence or absence of the referent's motion, infants were strongly biased to attend to the consistency with which potential referents moved when a word was heard.     

Implicit learning of social predictions

Humans exchange a range of nonverbal social signals in every interaction. It is an open question whether people use these signals, consciously or unconsciously, to guide social behavior. This experiment directly tested whether participants could learn to predict another person’s behavior using nonverbal cues in a single interaction, and whether explicit knowledge of the cue-outcome relationship was necessary for successful prediction. Participants played a computerized game of rock-paper-scissors against an avatar they believed was another participant. Sometimes the avatar generated a predictive facial cue before the play. On these trials, participants’ win-frequency increased over time, even if they did not acquire explicit knowledge of the predictive cue. The degree to which participants could predict the avatar (wins on cued trials) related to their self-reported liking of the avatar. These findings demonstrate the importance of implicit associative learning mechanisms in guiding social behavior on a moment-to-moment basis during interaction.