Foresight Cognitive Systems Project Social Cognition

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Foresight Cognitive Systems ProjectSocial
Cognition
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience University
College London
Uta Frith and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
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Interdisciplinary interest
Social psychology
Developmental psychology
Comparative psychology
Social Cognition
Cognitive neuroscience
Computer science and artificial intelligence
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Social Cognition a new domain of Cognitive
Neuroscience

• Social Cognition Any cognitive process that
  involves other people
• Focus on computational and neural mechanisms
• gt3 Social Cognition special issues in
  Neuroscience journals in the past year

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Mechanisms of Social Cognition
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• Recognising faces
• Recognising emotional expressions

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• Detecting eye gaze

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• Perceiving biological motion

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• Imitation

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• Theory of Mind

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• Complex Emotions and processes
• Deception
• Trustworthiness
• Embarrassment
• Empathy
• Morality

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When social communication fails

• Antisocial behaviour
• Conduct disorder
• Autism
• Schizophrenia
• Psychopathy

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Current and future interests

• Life span development childhood, adolescence,
  adulthood, old age
• Genetics
• Social IQ
• Prejudice
• Imitating role models
• Fanaticism
• Moral responsibility, free will

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Social Robots?

• Is human social interaction special?
• Artificial agent communication, learning and
  teaching
• Facial and emotion recognition in machines
• Cars that respond to emotion
• Electronic aids for social interaction
• Robot companions, toys