“You can't kid a kidder”: association between production and detection of deception in an interactive deception task

Both the ability to deceive others, and the ability to detect deception, has long been proposed to confer an evolutionary advantage. Deception detection has been studied extensively, and the finding that typical individuals fare little better than chance in detecting deception is one of the more robust in the behavioral sciences. Surprisingly, little research has examined individual differences in lie production ability. As a consequence, as far as we are aware, no previous study has investigated whether there exists an association between the ability to lie successfully and the ability to detect lies. Furthermore, only a minority of studies have examined deception as it naturally occurs; in a social, interactive setting. The present study, therefore, explored the relationship between these two facets of deceptive behavior by employing a novel competitive interactive deception task (DeceIT). For the first time, signal detection theory (SDT) was used to measure performance in both the detection and production of deception. A significant relationship was found between the deception-related abilities; those who could accurately detect a lie were able to produce statements that others found difficult to classify as deceptive or truthful. Furthermore, neither ability was related to measures of intelligence or emotional ability. We, therefore, suggest the existence of an underlying deception-general ability that varies across individuals

Reputation Management in Children on the Autism Spectrum

Being able to manage reputation is an important social skill, but it is unclear whether autistic children can manage reputation. This study investigated whether 33 autistic children matched to 33 typical children could implicitly or explicitly manage reputation. Further, we examined whether cognitive processes—theory of mind, social motivation, inhibitory control and reciprocity—contribute to reputation management. Results showed that neither group implicitly managed reputation, and there was no group difference in explicit reputation management. Results suggested different mechanisms contribute to reputation management in these groups—social motivation in typical children and reciprocity in autistic children. Explicit reputation management is achievable for autistic children, and there are individual differences in its relationship to underlying cognitive processes

The imitation game:effects of social cues on ‘imitation’ are domain-general in nature

AbstractImitation has been hailed as ‘social glue’, facilitating rapport with others. Previous studies suggest that social cues modulate imitation but the mechanism of such modulation remains underspecified. Here we examine the locus, specificity, and neural basis of the social control of imitation. Social cues (group membership and eye gaze) were manipulated during an imitation task in which imitative and spatial compatibility could be measured independently. Participants were faster to perform compatible compared to incompatible movements in both spatial and imitative domains. However, only spatial compatibility was modulated by social cues: an interaction between group membership and eye gaze revealed more spatial compatibility for ingroup members with direct gaze and outgroup members with averted gaze. The fMRI data were consistent with this finding. Regions associated with the control of imitative responding (temporoparietal junction, inferior frontal gyrus) were more active during imitatively incompatible compared to imitatively compatible trials. However, this activity was not modulated by social cues. On the contrary, an interaction between group, gaze and spatial compatibility was found in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a pattern consistent with reaction times. This region may be exerting control over the motor system to modulate response inhibition

Mirror neuron brain regions contribute to identifying actions, but not intentions

Previous studies have struggled to determine the relationship between mirror neuron brain regions and two distinct “action understanding” processes: identifying actions and identifying the intentions underlying those actions. This may be because the identification of intentions from others' actions requires an initial action identification process. Disruptive transcranial magnetic stimulation was administered to left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG) during a novel cognitive task to determine which of these “action understanding” processes is subserved by mirror neuron brain regions. Participants identified either the actions performed by observed hand actions or the intentions underlying those actions. The extent to which intention identification was disrupted by lIFG (vs. control site) stimulation was dependent on the level of disruption to action identification. We subsequently performed functional magnetic resonance imaging during the same task. During action identification, responses were widespread within mirror neuron areas including lIFG and inferior parietal lobule. However, no independent responses were found in mirror neuron brain regions during intention identification. Instead, responses occurred in brain regions associated with two distinct mentalizing localizer tasks. This supports an account in which mirror neuron brain regions are involved in an initial action identification process, but the subsequent identification of intentions requires additional processing in mentalizing brain regions

Atypical trait inferences from facial cues in alexithymia

It is often difficult to distinguish strangers’ permanent facial shapes from their transient facial expressions, for example, whether they are scowling or have narrow-set eyes. Overinterpretation of ambiguous cues may contribute to the rapid character judgments we make about others. Someone with narrow eyes might be judged untrustworthy, because of strong associations between facial anger and threat. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the trait judgments made by individuals with severe alexithymia, associated with impaired recognition of facial emotion. Consistent with the hypothesis, alexithymic participants demonstrated reduced interrater consistency when judging the character traits of unfamiliar faces, and the presence of subtle emotions. Nevertheless, where alexithymics perceived, or misperceived, emotion cues, the character traits inferred thereafter were broadly typical. The finding that individuals with developmental deficits of emotion recognition exhibit atypical attribution of character traits, confirms the hypothesis that emotion-recognition mechanisms play a causal role in character judgments

The specificity of the link between alexithymia, interoception and imitation

Alexithymia is a subclinical condition traditionally characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one’s own emotions. Recent formulations of alexithymia, however, suggest that the condition may result from a generalized impairment in the perception of all bodily signals (“interoception”). Interoceptive accuracy has been associated with a variety of deficits in social cognition, but recently with an improved ability to inhibit the automatic tendency to imitate the actions of others. The current study tested the consequences for social cognition of the hypothesized association between alexithymia and impaired interoception by examining the relationship between alexithymia and the ability to inhibit imitation. If alexithymia is best characterized as a general interoceptive impairment, then one would predict that alexithymia would have the same relationship with the ability to control imitation as does interoceptive accuracy. Forty-three healthy adults completed measures of alexithymia, imitation-inhibition, and as a control, inhibition of nonimitative spatial compatibility. Results revealed the predicted relationship, such that increasing alexithymia was associated with an improved ability to inhibit imitation, and that this relationship was specific to imitation-inhibition. These results support the characterization of alexithymia as a general interoceptive impairment and shed light on the social ability of alexithymic individuals—with implications for the multitude of psychiatric, neurological, and neurodevelopmental disorders associated with high rates of alexithymia

Theory of mind is not theory of emotion:A cautionary note on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test

The ability to represent mental states (theory of mind [ToM]) is crucial in understanding individual differences in social ability and social impairments evident in conditions such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is a popular measure of ToM ability, validated in part by the poor performance of those with ASD. However, the RMET requires recognition of facial emotion, which is impaired in those with alexithymia, which frequently co-occurs with ASD. Thus, it is unclear whether the RMET indexes emotion recognition, associated with alexithymia, or ToM, associated with ASD. We therefore investigated the independent contributions of ASD and alexithymia to performance on the RMET. ASD and alexithymia-matched control participants did not differ on RMET performance, whereas ASD participants demonstrated impaired performance on an alternative test of ToM, the Movie for Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC). Furthermore, alexithymia, but not ASD diagnosis, significantly influenced RMET performance but did not affect MASC performance. These results suggest that the RMET measures emotion recognition rather than ToM ability and support the alexithymia hypothesis of emotion-related deficits in ASD

Investigating the sense of agency and its relation to subclinical traits using a novel task

Tasks measuring the sense of agency often manipulate the predictability of action outcomes by introducing spatial deviation. However, the extent to which spatial predictability of an outcome influences the sense of agency when spatial deviation is controlled for remains untested. We used a novel task to investigate the effect of several factors (action–outcome contingency, spatial deviation, and spatial predictability when controlling for spatial deviation of action outcomes) on the sense of agency. We also investigated trait predictors of metacognition of agency—the degree to which participants’ confidence in their agency judgements corresponds to the accuracy of those judgements. Initial and replication samples completed contingency, deviation, and predictability versions of the task. Across samples, participants’ sense of agency was impacted by action–outcome contingency and spatial deviation of action outcomes. Manipulation of the spatial predictability of action outcomes did not reliably impact the sense of agency. Metacognition of agency was related to alexithymic traits—higher alexithymia scores were associated with reduced metacognition of agency

No evidence for a common self-bias across cognitive domains

It is generally acknowledged that humans have an egocentric bias; processing self-related stimuli in a specialised, preferential manner. The self-bias has been studied within cognitive domains such as memory, attention and perception; but never across cognitive domains in order to assess whether self-biases are a product of a common bias, or independent. This has relevance for conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder: certain self-biases are reduced in those with autism, but the pattern of results is not consistent across different cognitive domains. Self-bias was measured across the attentional and perceptual domains on two well-established tasks: the attentional blink (attention) and shape-label matching (perception) tasks. Processing of each participant's own name was compared to processing of the name of another individual very familiar to the participant (to control for familiarity), and the name of an unfamiliar other. In the attentional domain, the attentional blink for the participant's own name was reduced compared to that for the name of a familiar or unfamiliar other. In the perceptual domain, participants showed stronger associations between their own name and a geometric shape than between the other classes of names and associated shapes. Thus, strong evidence of a self-bias, independent of familiarity, was found on both tasks. However, across two experiments, the magnitude of the self-bias on the attentional blink and shape-label matching tasks was not correlated, supporting the idea that self-biases across cognitive domains are distinct. Furthermore, in contrast with extant models, neither type of self-bias was predicted by autistic traits

Robust associations between the 20-item prosopagnosia index and the Cambridge face memory test in the general population

Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a neurodevelopmental condition, characterised by lifelong face recognition deficits. Leading research groups diagnose the condition using complementary computer-based tasks and self-report measures. In an attempt to standardise the reporting of self-report evidence, we recently developed the 20-Item Prosopagnosia Index (PI20), a short questionnaire measure of prosopagnosic traits suitable for screening adult samples for DP. Strong correlations between scores on the PI20 and performance on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) appeared to confirm that individuals possess sufficient insight into their face recognition ability to complete a self-report measure of prosopagnosic traits. However, the extent to which people have insight into their face recognition abilities remains contentious. A lingering concern is that feedback from formal testing, received prior to administration of the PI20, may have augmented the self-insight of some respondents in the original validation study. To determine whether the significant correlation with the CFMT was an artefact of previously delivered feedback, we sought to replicate the validation study in individuals with no history of formal testing. We report highly significant correlations in two independent samples drawn from the general population, confirming i) that a significant relationship exists between PI20 scores and performance on the CFMT, and ii) that this is not dependent on the inclusion of individuals who have previously received feedback. These findings support the view that people have sufficient insight into their face recognition abilities to complete a self-report measure of prosopagnosic traits