A novel social attribution paradigm: The Dynamic Interacting Shape Clips (DISC)

The Dynamic Interacting Shape Clips (DISC) is a novel stimulus set designed to examine mentalizing, specifically social attribution, suitable for use with diverse methodologies including fMRI. The DISC offer some advantages compared to other social attribution stimuli including a large number of stimuli, subsets of stimuli depicting different kinds of social interactions (i.e., friendly approach, aggression, and avoidance), and two control tasks-one that contrasts interpretations of socially contingent movement versus random, inanimate movement, and the other that examines the impact of attentional shifts on mentalizing using the same visual stimuli with a different cue. This study describes both behavioral and fMRI findings from a sample of 22 typically developing adults (m_age = 21.7 years, SD = 1.72). Behavioral data supports participants anthropomorphized the stimuli and the social intent of the clips were perceived as intended. Neuroimaging findings demonstrate that brain areas associated with processing animacy and mental state attribution were activated when participants were shown clips featuring social interactions compared to random movement, and when attention was cued to social versus physical aspects of the same stimuli. Results lend empirical support for the use of the DISC in future studies of social cognition.