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      My Neighbor: Children’s Perception of Agency in Interaction with an Imaginary Agent

      research-article
      Author(s): 1 , 2 , * , 3
      Editor(s):
      Publication date (Electronic):
      Journal: PLoS ONE
      Publisher: Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          Children may treat an invisible entity as a live and thinking entity, known as an imaginary companion (IC). Some researchers suggest that this is simply pretend play, but it is possible that children experience agency in their interactions with ICs. Given the literature on cognitive science and social brain research, we hypothesize that young children may have an agent-perception system that responds to an invisible agent by which they may experience realistic agency in their interactions with ICs. In this study, children were introduced to an invisible agent and an invisible stone. However, they assigned biological and psychological properties to the agent but not the stone. The tendency of assigning such properties was stronger in children with ICs than in those without ICs. These results contribute to our understanding of cognitive and neural development in typical and atypical children.

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          Interacting minds--a biological basis.

          U Frith, Martin Frith (1999)
          The ability to "mentalize," that is to understand and manipulate other people's behavior in terms of their mental states, is a major ingredient in successful social interactions. A rudimentary form of this ability may be seen in great apes, but in humans it is developed to a high level. Specific impairments of mentalizing in both developmental and acquired disorders suggest that this ability depends on a dedicated and circumscribed brain system. Functional imaging studies implicate medial prefrontal cortex and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) as components of this system. Clues to the specific function of these components in mentalizing come from single cell recording studies: STS is concerned with representing the actions of others through the detection of biological motion; medial prefrontal regions are concerned with explicit representation of states of the self. These observations suggest that the ability to mentalize has evolved from a system for representing actions.
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            Autism, the superior temporal sulcus and social perception.

            Monica Zilbovicius, Isabelle Meresse, Nadia Chabane … (2006)
            The most common clinical sign of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is social interaction impairment, which is associated with communication deficits and stereotyped behaviors. Based on recent brain-imaging results, our hypothesis is that abnormalities in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) are highly implicated in ASD. STS abnormalities are characterized by decreased gray matter concentration, rest hypoperfusion and abnormal activation during social tasks. STS anatomical and functional anomalies occurring during early brain development could constitute the first step in the cascade of neural dysfunction underlying ASD. We will focus this review on the STS, which has been highly implicated in social cognition. We will review recent data on the contribution of the STS to normal social cognition and review brain-imaging data implicating this area in ASD. This review is part of the INMED/TINS special issue "Nature and nurture in brain development and neurological disorders", based on presentations at the annual INMED/TINS symposium (http://inmednet.com/).
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              Overlapping and non-overlapping brain regions for theory of mind and self reflection in individual subjects.

              John D. E. Gabrieli, Rebecca Saxe, Jonathan Scholz … (2006)
              When subjects are required to reason about someone's false belief, a consistent pattern of brain regions are recruited including the medial prefrontal cortex, medial precuneus and bilateral temporo-parietal junction. Previous group analyses suggest that the two medial regions, but not the lateral regions, are also recruited when subjects engage in self-reflection. The current study directly compared the results of the 'false belief' and 'self' tasks in individual subjects. Consistent with previous reports, the medial prefrontal and medial precuneus regions recruited by the two tasks significantly overlap in individual subjects, although there was also evidence for non-overlapping voxels in medial regions. The temporo-parietal regions are only recruited for the 'theory of mind' task. Six possible models of the relationship between theory of mind, self-reflection and autobiographical memory, all consistent with both neurobiological and developmental evidence to date, are discussed.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                : Role: Editor
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE
                Journal ID (publisher-id): plos
                Journal ID (pmc): plosone
                Title: PLoS ONE
                Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203
                Publication date Collection: 2012
                Publication date (Electronic): 7 September 2012
                Volume: 7
                Issue: 9
                Electronic Location Identifier: e44463
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of School Education, Joetsu University of Education, Joetsu, Japan
                [2 ]Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Tokyo, Japan
                [3 ]Department of Psychology, Aichi Shukutoku University, Nagakute, Japan
                George Mason University/Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, United States of America
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: YM IS. Performed the experiments: YM. Analyzed the data: YM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YM. Wrote the paper: YM IS.

                Article
                Publisher ID: PONE-D-12-15526
                DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0044463
                PMC ID: 3436893
                PubMed ID: 22970225
                SO-VID: 254319bb-8135-4f15-b2ee-de9149dcefd9
                Copyright statement: Copyright @ 2012
                License:

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                Date received : 27 May 2012
                Date accepted : 2 August 2012
                Page count
                Pages: 6
                Funding
                This research was supported by grants from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, recursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology program to the first author ( http://www.jst.go.jp/kisoken/presto/index_e.html). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Subject: Research Article
                Subject: Biology
                Subject: Neuroscience
                Subject: Neuropsychology
                Subject: Medicine
                Subject: Mental Health
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Developmental Psychology
                Subject: Neuropsychology
                Subject: Pediatrics
                Subject: Child Development
                Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
                Subject: Psychology
                Subject: Cognitive Psychology
                Subject: Developmental Psychology

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized
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                ScienceOpen disciplines: Uncategorized

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