Figure 2 - uploaded by Yiwen Wang
Content may be subject to copyright.
(a) Grand average ERP waveforms in false belief (green lines) and true belief (red lines) conditions from 3 electrodes on the scalp. The blue lines stand for the difference waveform (false belief minus true belief). (b) Topographic voltage map of scalp electrical activity of LNC at 400―800 ms.
Source publication
Understanding others mind and interpersonal interaction are the cognitive basis of successful social interactions. People's mental states and behaviors rely on their holding beliefs for self and others. To investigate the neural substrates of false belief reasoning, the 32 channels event-related potentials (ERP) of 14 normal adults were measured wh...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... were no significant differences of accu- racies and latencies between the consistent and incon- sistent trials for the other three questions. Figure 2(a) shows the ERP waveforms from the grand average of 14 subjects for false belief and true belief reasoning. Visual inspection of the ERP waveforms suggested that the general pattern and orientation of ERPs elicited by false belief were similar to true belief. ...
Context 2
... dif- ferences of electrophysiological potentials between false belief and true belief reasoning were the greatest at left frontal sites. This is further illustrated by the topog- raphic map of scalp electrical activity, shown in Figure 2(b), which is computed as the mean amplitude for two conditions in the 400-800 ms epoch. The results sug- gest that reasoning about false belief vs. true belief is associated with a late ERP component (LNC) in the frontal area. ...
Similar publications
Background. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a successful treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). It is known to induce changes in cerebral metabolism; however, the dynamics of these changes and their relation to clinical change remain largely unknown, precluding the identification of individualized response biomarkers. Method. In o...
Changes in preference are inherently subjective and internal psychological events. We have identified brain events that presage
ultimate (rather than intervening) choices, and signal the finality of a choice. At the first exposure to a pair of faces,
caudate activity reflected the face of final choice, even if an initial choice was different. Furth...
Reduced awareness of illness is a well-known phenomenon that has been studied in patients with vascular disease, but the precise nature of their executive dysfunction is an intriguing question that still has to be resolved. It would be particularly interesting to study patients with reduced awareness of disease possibly related to vascular lesions...
Although the regulatory role of cognitive reappraisal in negative emotional responses is widely recognized, this reappraisal's effect on acute saliva secretory immunoglobulin A (SIgA), as well as the relationships among affective, immunological, and event-related potential (ERP) changes, remains unclear. In this study, we selected only people with...
Everyday choice options have advantages (positive values) and disadvantages (negative values) that need to be integrated into an overall subjective value. For decades, economic models have assumed that when a person evaluates a choice option, different values contribute independently to the overall subjective value of the option. However, human cho...
Citations
... Participants with higher agreeableness scores exhibited a significantly higher difference between the ERPs associated with the two conditions, particularly driven by a heightened neural responsivity to emotional trials compared to non-emotional trials, which was reduced in less agreeable participants. This is consistent with the literature reporting that a late slow ERP component over frontal regions is associated with ToM processing (e.g., Liu et al., 2004;Meinhardt et al., 2011;Sabbagh & Taylor, 2000;Tesar et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2008;Zhang et al., 2009). ...
Agreeableness is one of the five personality traits which is associated with theory of mind (ToM) abilities. One of the critical processes involved in ToM is the decoding of emotional cues. In the present study, we investigated whether this process is modulated by agreeableness using electroencephalography (EEG) while taking into account task complexity and sex differences that are expected to moderate the relationship between emotional decoding and agreeableness. This approach allowed us to identify at which stage of the neural processing agreeableness kicks in, in order to distinguish the impact on early, perceptual processes from slower, inferential processing. Two tasks were employed and submitted to 62 participants during EEG recording: the reading the mind in the eyes (RME) task, requiring the decoding of complex mental states from eye expressions, and the biological (e)motion task, involving the perception of basic emotional actions through point‐light body stimuli. Event‐related potential (ERP) results showed a significant correlation between agreeableness and the contrast for emotional and non‐emotional trials in a late time window only during the RME task. Specifically, higher levels of agreeableness were associated with a deeper neural processing of emotional versus non‐emotional trials within the whole and male samples. In contrast, the modulation in females was negligible. The source analysis highlighted that this ERP‐agreeableness association engages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Our findings expand previous research on personality and social processing and confirm that sex modulates this relationship.
... Therefore, a process of conflict control before the complete separation 306 of the self and others may be especially important. This assumption is consistent with the research on how 307 people control their imitative behaviors, which claimed that there might be information exchange between 308 Wang et al., 2008) and some early components, such as N100 and P200 (Wang 316 et al., 2008). Similarly, in the present study, the ERP results revealed that the relative difficulty of belief 317 attribution in the false-belief scenario induced a larger amplitude on the two early components, N100 and 318 N250, as well as a larger longer-lasting late slow wave. ...
... We selected eight 208 representative electrodes for LNC (E16, E11, E18, E19, E12, E10, E4, and E5), and eight representative 209 electrodes for LPC (E60, E66, E67, and E71 in the left hemisphere; E85, E84, E77, and E76 in the right 210 hemisphere). These representative electrodes indicate the loci of maximal difference effects and are marked 211 with white dots inFigure 2. Furthermore, broadly consistent with a prior ERP study(Wang et al., 2008), we 212 also found two early components (N100: 80~140ms; N250: 200~370ms) revealing the differences between 213 true-and false-belief conditions in the electrodes of interest for LNC. ...
Theory of mind (ToM) refers to the ability to infer others’ mental states. In our everyday lives, we need to constantly and appropriately interact with others. Not only is ToM involved in understanding of others’ mental states (other-oriented mental inferences), but it also helps to keep our own mental states (self-oriented mental inferences). In this study, we designed a false-belief task using event-related potential (ERP) measures to investigate the dynamic differences between the two types of mental inferences. In the false-belief task, participants were prompted with a cue to attribute a belief to either themselves (self-oriented) or another person (other-oriented). Results showed that other-oriented false-belief attribution elicited a larger late positive component (LPC; 320~440 ms post-cue onset) than the one elicited by self-oriented attribution at bilateral parieto-occipital electrodes, and also a larger late negative component (LNC; 380~500 ms post-cue onset) at frontal-central electrodes. In addition, the difference in amplitude of LPC between the two types of false-belief attribution was positively correlated with self-reported autistic traits measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Based on prior literature, we propose that the LPC and LNC reflect the processes of self-other distinction and conflict control, respectively. Moreover, the difficulty in distinguishing other from the self is related to one’s degree of autistic traits.
... Many researchers believed that inhibitory control (IC), the capability to suppress one's own prepotent responses (Brass et al., 2005;Diamond, 2006;Miyake et al., 2000), is a pivotal contributor to the development of ToM (Benson et al., 2013;Wade et al., 2018). Because IC helps to overcome one's own egocentricity, one can successfully understand others' mental states (Leslie & Polizzi, 1998;Wang et al., 2008). However, recent evidence suggested that the self-other control (SOC), the ability to distinguish self-and other-related representations (de Guzman et al., 2016), is also very necessary for ToM processing (Santiesteban et al., 2012). ...
... Current findings provide further understanding on how SOC and IC jointly contribute to individual differences in ToM of both adolescents and young adults. Although IC has been demonstrated as an important determinant to the development of ToM (Benson et al., 2013;Leslie & Polizzi, 1998;Nilsen & Graham, 2009;Symeonidou et al., 2016;Wade et al., 2018;Wang et al., 2008), the present study revealed that the effect of IC on false-belief inference is moderated by SOC. Despite SOC alone is not sufficient to account for the development of ToM in its entirety, current findings implied that the SOC is also an important determinant to individual differences in the performance of adolescents' ToM. ...
Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to infer others’ mental states, undergoes an ongoing development from adolescence to early adulthood. The present study investigated how self-other control (SOC), the ability to distinguish self- and other-related representations, contributed to individual differences in false-belief inference (a common measure of ToM) in young adults (Study 1) and adolescents (Study 2). Although previous studies have suggested that inhibitory control (IC), the ability to suppress own prepotent responses to help overcome egocentricity, is a crucial determinant to the development of ToM, the present results showed that in both samples, SOC worked as a moderator on the effect of IC when participants inferred others’ false beliefs. Specifically, IC predicted the performance of false-belief inference only in participants with higher SOC. These findings indicate that apart from IC, SOC is also an indispensable determinant to individual differences in ToM of both young adults and adolescents. In addition, the ability to integrate SOC and IC may play an essential role in the development of adolescents’ ToM.
... 2009;Wang et al., 2008)。常见的测量方法有 go/ no-go 和 Stroop 等任务。 已有大量研究证实, 抑制 ...
... To date only one study has applied this technique to the avatar visual perspective-taking paradigm (McCleery et al., 2011); however, a growing number of studies have used ERPs to examine other aspects of ToM. Many of these studies have examined the brain's response as participants answer explicit belief questions (e.g., Bwhere does X think the Y is?^, e.g., Liu et al., 2004Liu et al., , 2009Sabbagh & Taylor, 2000;Wang et al., 2008;Zhang et al., 2009), or passively observe pictorial sequences of events depicting beliefs and desires (e.g., Geangu et al., 2013;Kühn-Popp et al., 2013;Meinhardt et al., 2012), and have consistently demonstrated a positive-going late frontal slow wave (LFSW,~300 ms onwards) when people are required to reason about others' (false) beliefs versus reality. Though there is general agreement that differences on the LFSW reflect the key processes that distinguish mental states from reality (Liu et al., 2004;Sabbagh & Taylor, 2000), the exact mechanisms that underlie this component remain controversial due to the variety of paradigms and component definitions (i.e., time course or topography) that have been used in existing studies. ...
Despite being able to rapidly and accurately infer their own and other peoples’ visual perspectives, healthy adults experience difficulty ignoring the irrelevant perspective when the two perspectives are in conflict; they experience egocentric and altercentric interference. We examine for the first time how the age of an observed person (adult vs. child avatar) influences adults’ visual perspective-taking, particularly the degree to which they experience interference from their own or the other person’s perspective. Participants completed the avatar visual perspective-taking task, in which they verified the number of discs in a visual scene according to either their own or an on-screen avatar’s perspective (Experiments 1 and 2) or only from their own perspective (Experiment 3), where the two perspectives could be consistent or in conflict. Age of avatar was manipulated between (Experiment 1) or within (Experiments 2 and 3) participants, and interference was assessed using behavioral (Experiments 1–3) and ERP (Experiment 1) measures. Results revealed that altercentric interference is reduced or eliminated when a child avatar was present, suggesting that adults do not automatically compute a child avatar’s perspective. We attribute this pattern to either enhanced visual processing for own-age others or an inference on reduced mental awareness in younger children. The findings argue against a purely attentional basis for the altercentric effect, and instead support an account where both mentalising and directional processes modulate automatic visual perspective-taking, and perspective-taking effects are strongly influenced by experimental context.
... Late negative ERP effects have also rarely been reported in studies investigating the neural time course of ToM processing and, more specifically, the differences between belief reasoning and reality reasoning. Wang et al. (2008) used electrophysiological recording to investigate neural substrates of false-belief versus true-belief reasoning in a deceptive appearance task. Compared with true-belief reasoning, for which information can simply be derived from reality with no ToM reasoning required to accomplish the task, a significantly decreased amplitude of the late negative component (LNC, 400-800 ms) over centro-frontal sites was elicited by false-belief reasoning (for which ToM reasoning is required). ...
... It must be noted that in the present study, differences were obtained at centro-parietal sites. Wang et al. (2008) concluded that in their study the brain was not able to differentiate trueand false-belief reasoning before 400 ms after stimulus onset and that the subsequent decreased amplitude may reflect a decoupling mechanism that distinguishes between mental states and reality (also see Liu et al., 2004). Given this, the ToM and non-ToM tasks contrasted in the present study and thus also the obtained results cannot be fairly compared with the study results based on contrasting true-versus false-belief reasoning. ...
We used event-related brain potentials to explore the impact of mental perspective taking on processes of aesthetic appreciation of visual art. Participants (non-experts) were first presented with information about the life and attitudes of a fictitious artist. Subsequently, they were cued trial-wise to make an aesthetic judgment regarding an image depicting a piece of abstract art either from their own perspective or from the imagined perspective of the fictitious artist [i.e., theory of mind (ToM) condition]. Positive self-referential judgments were made more quickly and negative self-referential judgments were made more slowly than the corresponding judgments from the imagined perspective. Event-related potential analyses revealed significant differences between the two tasks both within the preparation period (i.e., during the cue-stimulus interval) and within the stimulus presentation period. For the ToM condition we observed a relative centro-parietal negativity during the preparation period (700–330 ms preceding picture onset) and a relative centro-parietal positivity during the stimulus presentation period (700–1100 ms after stimulus onset). These findings suggest that different subprocesses are involved in aesthetic appreciation and judgment of visual abstract art from one’s own vs. from another person’s perspective.
... The present intention ERP effect can also be discussed regarding the literature on ERP investigation of ToM processes. It is worth noting that these previous studies found inconsistent results about the ToM effect chronometry (hypothetically explained by the diversity of the employed experimental tasks) while reporting a quasi-systematic frontal distribution, whether it concerned a positive (Cao, Li, & Li, 2012;Geangu, Gibson, Kaduk, & Reid, 2013;Meinhardt et al., 2011;Meinhardt, Kuhn-Popp, Sommer, & Sodian, 2012;Sabbagh, Moulson, & Harkness, 2004;Sabbagh & Taylor, 2000;Van der Cruyssen et al., 2009;Wang et al., 2010;Zhang, Sha, Zheng, Ouyang, & Li, 2009) or a negative component (Liu, Sabbagh, Gehring, & Wellman, 2004Wang et al., 2008), regardless the reference electrode used. Although some of these works reported additional posterior effects (Geangu et al., 2013;Liu, Meltzoff, & Wellman, 2009;Meinhardt et al., 2011;Van der Cruyssen et al., 2009), topographic distinctions appear between previous ERP studies and the present work, as we did not report any frontal effect. ...
Chronometric properties of theory of mind and intentions understanding more specifically are well documented. Notably, it was demonstrated using magnetoencephalography that the brain regions involved were recruited as soon as 200 ms post-stimulus. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to characterize an electrophysiological marker of attribution of intentions. We also explored the robustness of this ERP signature under two conditions corresponding to either explicit instructions to focus on others' intentions or implicit instructions with no reference to mental states. Two matched groups of 16 healthy volunteers each received either explicit or no instructions about intentions and performed a nonverbal attribution of intentions task based on sequential four-image comic strips depicting either intentional or physical causality. A bilateral posterior positive component, ranging from 250 to 650 ms post-stimulus, showed greater amplitude in intentional than in physical condition (the intention ERP effect). This effect occurs during the third image only, suggesting that it reflects the integration of information depicted in the third image to the contextual cues given by the first two. The intention effect was similar in the two groups of subjects. Overall, our results identify a clear ERP marker of the first hundreds of milliseconds of intentions processing probably related to a contextual integrative mechanism and suggest its robustness by showing its blindness to task demands manipulation.
... Source reconstruction is an inverse problem and this problem does not have a unique solution. Principal component analysis (PCA) was employed to identify the amount of dipoles (Wang et al., 2008). A PCA decomposes the data in hand into contributions of mutually orthogonal topographies. ...
Neuroscience research suggests that inferring neutral intentions of other people recruits a specific brain network within the inferior fronto-parietal action observation network as well as a putative social network including brain areas subserving theory of mind, such as the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and also the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Recent studies on harmful intentions have refined this network by showing the specific involvement of the ACC, amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in early stages (within 200 ms) of information processing. However, the functional dynamics for kind intentions within and among these networks remains unclear. To address this question, we measured electrical brain activity from 18 healthy adult participants while they were performing an intention inference task with three different types of intentions: kind, hostile and non-interactive. Electrophysiological results revealed that kind intentions were characterized by significantly larger peak amplitudes of N2 over the frontal sites than those for hostile and non-interactive intentions. On the other hand, there were no significant differences between hostile and non-interactive intentions at N2. The source analysis suggested that the vicinity of the left cingulate gyrus contributed to the N2 effect by subtracting the kindness condition from the non-interactive condition within 250-350 ms. At a later stage (i.e., during the 270-500 ms epoch), the peak amplitude of the P3 over the parietal sites and the right hemisphere was significantly larger for hostile intentions compared to the kind and non-interactive intentions. No significant differences were observed at P3 between kind and non-interactive intentions. The source analysis showed that the vicinity of the left anterior cingulate cortex contributed to the P3 effect by subtracting the hostility condition from the non-interactive condition within 450-550 ms. The present study provides preliminary evidence of the spatio-temporal dynamics sustaining the dissociation between the understandings of different types of social intentions.
... " where does X think the Y is? " ), and have demonstrated a frontally-distributed late slow wave (LSW) when people are required to reason about others' (false) beliefs versus reality (e.g. Liu et al., 2004; Sabbagh & Taylor, 2000; Wang et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2009). This difference is thought to reflect the key processes that distinguish mental states from reality (Liu et al., 2004; Sabbagh & Taylor, 2000), including the experience of conflicting perspectives, and the need to inhibit the self-perspective when inferring others' beliefs (Zhang et al., 2009). ...
... It is interesting to note that this modulation occurred even in a passive reading task such as this where ToM use was not an explicit part of the task, and in fact did not benefit participants (c.f. Liu et al., 2004; Sabbagh & Taylor, 2000; Wang, Liu et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2009). Although modulating a different ERP component (due to task differences), this finding fits with recent studies that have examined ToM under implicit conditions, and have reported evidence of implicit monitoring of others' beliefs without explicit instructions to track others' mental states (Geangu et al., 2013; Kuhn-Popp et al., 2013; Meinhardt et al., 2012). ...
Interpreting others’ actions relies on an understanding of their current mental state. Emerging research has begun to identify
a number of factors that give rise to individual differences in this ability. We report an event-related brain potential study
where participants (N = 28) read contexts that described a character having a true belief (TB) or false belief (FB) about an object’s location.
A second sentence described where that character would look for the object. Critically, this sentence included a sentence-final
noun that was either consistent or inconsistent with the character’s belief. Participants also completed the Empathy Quotient
questionnaire. Analysis of the N400 revealed that when the character held a TB about the object’s location, the N400 waveform
was more negative-going for belief inconsistent vs belief consistent critical words. However, when the character held an FB about the object’s location the opposite pattern
was found. Intriguingly, correlations between the N400 inconsistency effect and individuals’ empathy scores showed a significant
correlation for FB but not TB. This suggests that people who are high in empathy can successfully interpret events according
to the character’s FB, while low empathizers bias their interpretation of events to their own egocentric view.
... Recently, several studies have addressed this issue by investigating the time-course of inference making when reasoners deal with linguistic conditional arguments (Bonnefond, Kaliuzhna, Van der Henst, & De Neys, 2014;Bonnefond & Van der Henst, 2009Bonnefond et al., 2012Luo, Yang, Du, & Zhang, 2011;Luo et al., 2013;Pijnacker, Geurts, van Lambalgen, Buitelaar, & Hagoort, 2011;Wang et al., 2008): If P then Q If John is sleeping; then he is snoring P John is sleeping Therefore Q Therefore John is snoring: ...
