01/07/2016
SOCIAL COGNITION WORKING GROUP
The aim of the research group “social cognition” is to understand how and why we interact with each other.
Humans are social beings. We often search for company and prefer interacting with others. But how exactly does this work? Small body movements, like pointing hands or gaze-shifts, facilitate verbal but also nonverbal communication. With the aid of a gaze-shift, we can redirect the attention of another person on a specific object or situation in the surrounding. The other person can interpret these nonverbal cues and adumbrate what the other person wants to say. This ability is called “theory of mind” and is essential for social interaction.
But what is about people who cannot understand such nonverbal signals? Here, we are interested in “autism”, a general term for a group of complex disorders. These disorders are characterized by, for example, difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication.
What is the difference between a person with and a person without autism? To answer this question, our research group designs simple behavioral experiments and with the aid of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we try to find the neuronal correlates of social interaction. With these results we try to understand the basic principle of the question, why humans like being together.