"Does culture play a role...?!“

Evaluation of culturaleffects on ToM: neurophysiological and behavioral aspects.

by Blanka Šimůnková, Barbora Chvátalová, Lenka Sakálošová, Lucia Ukropová

Culture as presumption for Theory of Mind

• To posit other people`s mental states is typically human feat.

• Cultural intelligence hypothesis: human beings have evolved some specialized social-cognitive skills for living and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups: communicating with others, learning from others, and "reading the mind" of others in especially complex ways. (Hermann et al, 2007)

Cultural variation exists

• There are some universals, but cultural variation exists.

• Social- culture construction hypothesis : Some mentalistic understandings might come from culture-specific experiences. (Lilard, 1999)

• Cultural differences within USA: rural vs. Urban children (Lilard, 1999)

Some reasons for cultural variations(Lillard, 1998)

• External Differences Reflecting Internal Ones • Optional Constructs• Variation in Precognitions• Existence• Need• Inference• Nuance

• http://gifs.gifbin.com/092012/1346951481_obama_gets_left_hanging_in_russia.gif

Another assumptions about culture and ToM:

• folk /everyday psychology is the same and universal everywhere

• innate predisposition to explain human behavior in terms of beliefs and desires (Fodor, 1987 in Oberle, 2009)

• research with autistic children (Baron – Cohen, 2001) suggests a biological mechanism for the onset of mental reasoning

• different socio-cultural systems form different frameworks for different cognitive categories such are social learning, experience processing, thinking about others etc. (Lillard, 1999)

• Wellman (2001) states, if an understanding of the mind is necessary for any kind of adult-like interaction then the tasks that reflect those interactions should be solved similarly in different cultural milieus

• universal age transition during which children come to understand false

• beliefs could be biologically rooted, although evidence in support of such universality would leave open the question of whether culturally universal childhood experiences are necessary for such understanding (Callaghan et al., 2005)

Another assumptions about culture and ToM:

How is it with non-western countries?

• Most of the research in the field of children’s cognitive development has been carried out with children from Western cultures and even when non-Western cultures are sampled, they are almost exclusively industrial societies with formal, universal education therefore they share some important similarities with western cultures (Lillard, 1999; Callaghan et al., 2005; Oberle, 2009)

Callaghan et al. (2005) investigated children’s performance on the same, standard FB task (hiding a trinket under one of three bowls) administered in 5 different countries:

Sample: 270 children between age 30 to 72 months

• Results: The fundamental shift in understanding the impact of a FB on behavior appears to be a universal milestone of development that occurs between 3 to 5 years of age.

Synchrony in the age at which children of diverse cultures pass the FB task undermines the claim that particular cultural views, such as a Western concept of mind, profoundly influence this very basic aspect of early mental-state reasoning, and strengthens a claim of universality. Whether the synchrony results more from biological maturation or from experiences that are universal across the cultures sampled, or both, remains at issue.

• Eva Oberle (2009) investigated the development of FB understanding was investigated among 3–5-year old Yapese and Fais children in Micronesia

• Why Micronesia?– fishing and gathering culture (coconuts)– independent children from– Children often “adopted” by extended family

• 69 micronesian children in a culturally adjusted surprise content task by Hogrefe, Wimmer and Perner (1986) translated into Yapese and Ulithian

• results: 3-year-old Micronesian preschoolers do not display understanding of FB measured with classical FB tasks, while 5-year-olds do

• support for assumption of an important shift in understanding FB between early and late pre-school age

• support for idea of a universal development of the understanding of FB in preschoolers, only predictor was “age” while “island” did not have a meaningful impact

• limitations: • not included educational variables due to the lack of schooling system in

Micronesia • limited cultural variety across Micronesia islands• FB understanding tested by one test from whole battery

Does the synchrony results more from biological maturation or from experiences that

are universal across the cultures sampled ? Or both ?

• If biological maturation is the main factor responsible for the onset of false-belief understanding, then different cultural experiences would not have tremendous impact on the age of onset.

• An analogous situation is learning to walk. Children the world over learn to walk at around 1 year of age, although one can hasten this achievement, as the Kipsigis (Kenya tribe) do, by providing experiences that strengthen the legs or slow it by providing ‘‘walker’’ experiences that might reduce the child’s drive to walk (Garrett, McElroy, & Staines, 2002) A biological maturation account is consistent with the evidence accrued thus far, including synchrony in the onset of false-belief understanding across cultures.

• Children with autism develop false belief understanding very late, and possibly by different mechanisms than other children (Baron-Cohen, 1995; Leslie & Roth, 1994). Children with older siblings (Perner, Ruffman, & Leekham, 1994; Ruffman, Perner, Naito, Parkin, & Clements, 1998), children who engage in more pretend role play (Lillard, 2002), and children whose parents talk about mental states more understand false belief earlier than other children, but not much earlier (Ruffman, Slade, & Crowe, 2002), and children from low-income homes develop the understanding later than other children, but not much later (Holmes, Black, & Miller,1996).

(Callaghan et.al, 2005; Wellman, 2001; Liu et al. 2008)

• Literature: • Baron-Cohen, S., O’Riordan, M., Stone, V., Jones, R., Plaisted, K. (1999).

Recognition of faux-pas by normally developing children and children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism Development Disorder, 29, 407-418.

• Callaghan, T., Rochat, P., Lillard, A., Claux, M. L., Odden, H., Itakura, S., Tapanya, S. andSingh, S. (2005). Synchrony in the Onset of Mental State reasoning – Evidences from fiv ecultures. Psychological Science 16, 378-384.

• Lillard, A. (1998). Ethnopsychologies: Cultural variations in theories of mind. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 3–32.

• Liu, D., Wellman, H. M., Tardif, T., & Sabbagh, M. A. (2008). Theory of mind development in Chinese children: a meta-analysis of false-belief understanding across cultures and languages. Developmental psychology, 44(2), 523-31.

• Oberle,E. (2009). The development of theory of mind reasoning in Micronesian children. Journal of cognition & culture, 9, 39-56.

• Wellman, H.M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). A meta-analysis of false belief reasoning: The truth about false belief. Child Development, 72, 655–684.

Cross-cultural differences in neural activation during ToM Tasks

ToM: Culture and Beyond

Please click the following link to view the third part of our presentation by Barbora Chvatalova:

http://prezi.com/yo4v6qfdn_m6/culture-and-tom/

recap

• two main approaches:• a)modular b) distributed

core systems and secondary systems

main areas

• medial prefrontal • right temporal-parietal (visuospatial –

tracking)• right hemisphere• amygdala system• language centers ? - mixed evidence

so what does culture have to do with that?

• EASTERN:• interdependent style that

emphasizes the fundamental connections between people in social contexts

• relartional grouping of objects

• attention: • context

• WESTERN:• independent style that stresses self-focused attention

• categorical grouping of objects

• attention: • salient objects

There is a wide range of cognitive differences

2 main studies

• Research team: Chiyoko Kobayashi , Gary H. Glover , Elise Temple

• Cultural and linguistic influence on neural bases of ‘Theory of Mind’: An fMRI study with Japanese bilinguals (adults)

• Cultural and linguistic effects on neural bases of‘Theory of Mind’ in American and Japanese children

Children• 2nd order ToM tasks (he thinks she thinks)• American natives and Japanese bilinguals• 2 types of tasks: cartoons (non-verbal), stories (verbal) +

control • 5 groups: – story:

• American• Japanese with english simuli,• Japanese with japan stimili

– Cartoon: • Japanese• American

• No difference in overal performance between groups

Japanese American explanationLeft superior temporal sulcus

Left inferior temporal gyrusRight tpj weakened self–other

distinction in Japaneseculture, because the ability to distinguishself from others engages the right TPJ75,76

the left anterior superiortemporal sulcus and temporal pole

temporalpole has been suggested to integrate sensoryinformation and limbic inputsand toconnect past experiences with material thatis currently being processed60, the authorssuggested that Japanese children had to integratesensory and limbic inputs more thanAmerican children

Japanese American explanation Left superior temporal sulcus

Left inferior temporal gyrus

Right TPJ Weakened self–other distinction in Japaneseculture, because the ability to distinguishself from others engages the right TPJ

the left anterior superior temporal sulcus and temporal pole

Temporal pole has been suggested to integrate sensory information and limbic inputsand to connect past experiences with material that is currently being processed, the authors suggested that Japanese children had to integratesensory and limbic inputs more than American children

ADULTS

• American monolinguals, Japanese biliguals• 3 groups: – american mono, – Japanese L1 (japanese)– Japanese L2(English)

• 2nd order Tom Task

Monol

Biling (L1) Bilin (l2) explanation

Right insula insular cortex has a central role for connecting limbic system and frontal regions of the brainand processing emotionally laden face stimuli

Bilateral TP The TP area has been suggested to integrate all the sensory modalities and limbic inputs and play a major role in connecting pastexperiences with currently processed material Thus, there may be something in Americanculture that requires the integration of sensory modalities and limbic inputs more than Japanese culture for understandingToM.

Right mPFC right OFG The OFG area has been shown to be

activated during emotional mentalizing tasksIt is possiblethat the brain activity in these brain areas is related to aspeciWc way of processing emotion in Japanese culture. Ithas also been suggested that Japanese use the context/relationship-based ‘intersubjectivity’ (i.e., interpersonal atmosphere,‘ki’, related to speciWc social contexts (Kimura,1976)) more than just a plain subjectivity for processingsocio-emotions (Karasawa, 1995). Thus, the greater ventrofrontalactivation may be related to the particular attributionstyle or the ‘intersubjectivity’ in feeling others’ emotionsspeciWc to Japanese culture.

aright IFG(inferior frontal gyrus)

aright IFG maybe associated with some diVerence in the extent to whichthe autobiographical or episodic memory contributes toToM processing.

IFG and left insular cortex

IFG and left insular cortex

IFG and left insular cortex for the monolingual group thanthe L1 group, and not the L2 group, suggests that theseareas may be important for processing ToM in English.

DLPFC, DLPFC, , left post centralgyrus, and left caudate nucleus. Since we did not find differencein these areas in the monolingual versus bilingual comparison,the activities in these areas may be associated withlanguage-switching (Goetz, 2003) specific to bilingualism.

Monol

Biling (L1) Bilin (l2) explanation

Right insula insular cortex has been suggested to play a central role forconnecting limbic system and frontal regions of the brain(Allman, Watson, Tetreault, & Hakeem, 2005) and processingemotionally laden face stimuli

Bilateral TP 2001). The TP area has been suggested to integrate all thesensory modalities and limbic inputs (Moran, Mufson, &Mesulam, 1987) and play a major role in connecting pastexperiences with currently processed material (Frith &Frith, 2003). Thus, there may be something in Americanculture that requires the integration of sensory modalitiesand limbic inputs more than Japanese culture for understandingToM.

Right mPFC right OFG The OFG area has been shown to be

activated during emotional mentalizing tasks.It is possible that the brain activity in these brain areas is related to a specific way of processing emotion in Japanese culture. It has also been suggested that Japanese use the context/relationship-based ‘intersubjectivity’ (i.e., interpersonal atmosphere,‘ki’, related to specific social contexts more than just a plain subjectivity for processingsocio-emotions. Thus, the greater ventrofrontalactivation may be related to the particular attribution style or the ‘intersubjectivity’ in feeling others’ emotions specific to Japanese culture.

right IFG(inferior frontal gyrus)

right IFG May be associated with some difference in the extent to which the autobiographical or episodic memory contributes to ToM processing.

IFG and left insular cortex

IFG and left insular cortex

IFG and left insular cortex for the monolingual group than the L1 group, and not the L2 group, suggests that these areas may be important for processing ToM in English.

DLPFC DLPFC the activities in these areas may be associated with language-switching specific to bilingualism.

conclusion

• The diminished activity in the TPJ area in Japanese adults and children during the ToM tasks might represent the demoted sense of self-other distinction in the Japanese culture.

• There are differences between adults and children – possibly due to maturation

Resources:• Kobayashi, C., Glover, G.H., Temple, E.: The diminished activity in

the TPJ area in Japanese adults and children during the ToM tasks might represent the demoted sense of self-other distinction in the Japanese culture. Brain and Language, 98, 2006, 210–220

• Kobayashi, C., Glover, G.H., Temple, E.: Cultural and linguistic effects on neural bases of ‘Theory of Mind’ in American and Japanese children. BRAINRESEARCH, 1164, 2007, 95–107

• Siegal, M., Varley, R.: Neural systems involved in “Theory of mind”. NEUROSCIENCE, Vol. 3, 2002, 463-461

• Han, S., Northoff, G.: Culture-sensitive neural substrates of human cognition: a transcultural neuroimaging approach. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2008, vol.9, 646-654