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Higher order intentionality tasks are cognitively more demanding.

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Testing the cognitive demands of social cognition reveals mentalizing is time-consuming and neuronally expensive. Higher-order mentalizing tasks recruit more brain regions, challenging assumptions about social cognition in brain evolution.

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fMRIintentionalitymentalisingreaction timesocial brain

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Social cognition's role in brain evolution assumes it is cognitively demanding.
  • This assumption has lacked empirical testing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To empirically test the cognitive demands of social cognition, specifically mentalizing.
  • To compare the cognitive load of mentalizing versus factual memory retrieval.
  • To investigate the neural correlates of varying mentalizing complexity.

Main Methods:

  • A behavioral experiment (N=39) and fMRI study (N=17) were conducted.
  • Participants read stories and answered questions assessing mentalizing and factual memory.
  • Response times and brain activity (fMRI) were analyzed.

Main Results:

  • Mentalizing tasks required significantly longer response times than matched factual memory tasks.
  • Higher orders of mentalizing were disproportionately more demanding.
  • Increased neuronal recruitment was observed in theory of mind regions (insula, posterior STS, temporal pole, cerebellum) with higher mentalizing complexity.

Conclusions:

  • The study provides empirical evidence that mentalizing is cognitively demanding.
  • Findings have significant implications for models of brain function and evolution.
  • The results support the idea that complex social cognition drives neural specialization and brain evolution.