Understanding orbitofrontal contributions to theory-of-mind reasoning: implications for autism

Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder that is associated with severe difficulties with "theory-of-mind"--the understanding that others' behaviors are motivated by internal mental states. Here, we raise the possibility that research examining the neural bases of theory-of-mind reasoning has the potential to inform researchers about the elusive functional neural impairments associated with autism. Evidence from our lab and others' suggests that theory-of-mind reasoning may be fractionated into at least two functionally and anatomically distinct neural circuits. Specifically, the ability to decode others' mental states from observable cues (such as facial expressions) may rely on contributions from the orbitofrontal/medial temporal circuit within the right hemisphere. In contrast, the ability to reason about others' mental states may rely left medial frontal regions. We conclude by reviewing evidence suggesting that the developmental roots of autism might lie in abnormal functioning of the orbitofrontal/medial temporal circuit which may, in turn, underlie the abnormal development of social-cognitive skills among individuals with autism.     

Children use whole-part juxtaposition as a pragmatic cue to word meaning

When parents label novel parts of familiar objects, they typically provide familiar whole-object terms before offering novel part terms (e.g., "See this cup? This is the rim."). Such whole-part juxtaposition might help children to accurately interpret the meaning of novel part terms, but it can do so only if they recognize the conjunction as a potential cue to part meaning. Two studies examined (a) whether 3- to 4-year-olds use whole-part juxtaposition to accurately interpret novel part terms and (b) how they might do so. Study 1 confirmed that children indeed use juxtaposition to guide learning of novel part terms. Furthermore, 2 control conditions clarified that children's use of juxtaposition was not simply due to memory effects, such as the facilitation of lexical access, nor to recognition of the grammatical frame that typically accompanies juxtaposition. Study 2 revealed that children readily use juxtaposition in a novel, gestural format. Such flexibility in recognizing and utilizing novel variants of juxtaposition strongly suggests that pragmatic understanding lies at the heart of children's sensitivity to whole-part juxtaposition.     

For love or money? What motivates people to know the minds of others?

Mood affects social cognition and "theory of mind", such that people in a persistent negative mood (i.e., dysphoria) have enhanced abilities at making subtle judgements about others' mental states. Theorists have argued that this hypersensitivity to subtle social cues may have adaptive significance in terms of solving interpersonal problems and/or minimising social risk. We tested whether increasing the social salience of a theory of mind task would preferentially increase dyspshoric individuals' performance on the task. Forty-four dysphoric and 51 non-dysphoric undergraduate women participated in a theory of mind decoding task following one of three motivational manipulations: (i) social motivation (ii) monetary motivation, or (iii) no motivation. Social motivation was associated with the greatest accuracy of mental state decoding for the dysphoric group, whereas the non-dysphoric group showed the highest accuracy in the monetary motivation condition. These results suggest that dysphoric individuals may be especially, and preferentially, motivated to understand the mental states of others.