Social Cognition

Action perception

There is a network of brain regions involved in organizing action representations in the brain. From Tarhan & Konkle (2019)

Social interaction perception

Infant Understanding of social interactions

Non-human primate understanding of social interactions

Bonobos watched as “E1 played with and ultimately dropped a stuffed animal out of reach. The helper retrieved the toy and attempted to return it to E1, until the hinderer intervened and aggressively stole the toy.” Bonobos could then either approach the helper or the hindered. Both were holding the same food reward. From [Krupenye & Hare (2018)](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16846-w

In many different experiments to ensure validity of their findings, Krupenye & Hare consistently found that Bonobos prefered the hinderer over the helper. From Krupenye & Hare (2018)

Representation in the brain

Participants were separately shown videos of point light figures interating or not interacting and videos similar to Hamlin et al in which one agent either helped or hindered the other. From Isik et al (2017)

Contrasting the interacting and non-interacting point light figures, Isik et al (2017) found a region in the posterior superior temporal sulculs that selectively responds to interacting agents. Further, this region is able to discriminate helping from hindering actions. From Isik et al (2017)

Theory of Mind