ABSTRACT
The materials summarized in this chapter were presented during symposia on social rule use and moral development that generated spirited discussions between developmental psychologists and neuroscientists of how we acquire and use social rules (from psychological and neuropsychological perspectives) and how to forge a common framework for social cognition and moral processing that might accommodate both developmental and neurobiological approaches. The symposium topics share common foundations in social cognition and social emotions that we describe in this chapter. As our theoretical framework and methodologies are drawn primarily from clinical neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience, we briefly describe our approach to several outstanding questions and issues concerning the role of brain systems in social rule learning and social emotions. The findings are part of ongoing clinical studies of children, adolescents, and adults with acquired injuries to the brain, particularly damage to the prefrontal cortex (PFC), and how these injuries affect their social behavior, cognition, and emotions. Functional brain imaging of typically developing children and adolescents has recently been incorporated as well in order to confirm and extend findings to broader developmental questions. Hence, our approach has been to search for converging evidence with regard to what brain areas are crucial for social cognition and moral development, the individual differences that occur in such neurobiology and behavior, the plasticity of these cerebral regions throughout maturation, and whether neural reorganization can support recovery of social adaptation when one or more of these areas are damaged or dysfunctional early in life.
