Thesis Format
Integrated Article
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Neuroscience
Supervisor
Culham, Jody C.
2nd Supervisor
Duerden, Emma G.
Abstract
As the social brain develops, cognitive processes, such as theory of mind, become increasingly sophisticated allowing for more complex social interactions. The human face plays an important role in facilitating natural interactions, allowing for the recognition and interpretation of emotions. In this thesis, I investigated the neural correlates of social cognition with a focus on skills required for social interaction across development.
To investigate how important a real human face is during interactions, Chapters 2 and 3 explored brain processing of social interactions with humans versus avatars in both live and pre-recorded online environments. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to measure neural responses during a social interaction task.
In Chapter 2 (adults), there were stronger cortical responses in social brain areas for pre-recorded compared to live social interactions, perhaps reflecting how effortful these types of interactions are to process. Results also suggested that some parts of the brain have increased cortical responses for human compared to avatar faces, and that there was a preference for looking at human eyes during a social interaction.
In Chapter 3, I extended the same social interaction paradigm to test a key period for social development: middle childhood (6-11 years). Evoked responses suggested that both how realistic and how live the face was influenced children’s social brain processing, though results were more mixed than in adults.
Chapter 4 examined whether responses to emotional faces in infancy as measured with fNIRS were related to their later development of theory of mind (3 years). Exploratory results indicated that in some social brain areas a potential brain-behaviour relationship exists, though there was little evidence to suggest overall cortical responses were related to theory of mind.
Taken together, these chapters contribute to the idea that theory of mind is somewhat dependent on the ability to identify a face, process facial expressions and infer emotions or intent of another person during social interactions.
Summary for Lay Audience
Learning to understand what someone is thinking or feeling is a skill that develops throughout childhood and into adulthood, enabling humans to deal with increasingly complex social interactions. The ability of the human brain to process and respond to social information is known as social cognition. Two key aspects of social cognition include the ability to recognize and interpret emotions from a human face, and using this information understand the mental state of another person. Faces can convey information about both the emotions and intentions of people, a process that is often subconscious. While there are many other aspects of social cognition, this thesis focusses on how recognizing a face and understanding a mind are crucial for navigating the social world.
Social cognition relies on various brain regions, known as the “social brain network”, which work together to process relevant information. Each of the chapters in this thesis examines how the brain responds to different aspects of social interaction. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a brain imaging method that is increasingly popular, brain responses were measured from babies, children and adults.
In Chapters 2 and 3, I studied how the brain processes social interactions in different environments. For example, does the brain work differently when you are speaking to a human versus an avatar? And how might that change if you are watching videos compared to actually speaking to another person? Specifically, I wanted to understand how important real human faces are when we are trying to interpret what a person is thinking or feeling. Being able to recognize and detect facial emotions also contributes to this, so in Chapter 4, I studied how babies’ brains respond to different emotions (angry, happy and fearful faces). In turn, I studied whether these brain responses were related to later development of social cognition.
Recommended Citation
Kent, Michaela, "From faces to minds: Exploring socio-cognitive development with fNIRS" (2025). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 10751.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/10751
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