ABSTRACT
Definitions of social cognition are diverse and wide ranging. Therefore, we look to various scientific disciplines to delineate this multidisciplinary construct. Social psychologists generally describe social cognition as a range of phenomena including moral reasoning, attitude formation, stereotyping, and related topics (Kunda, 1999). This may include the processes underlying the perception, memory, and judgment of social stimuli, the effects of social, cultural, or affective factors on the processing of information, or even the behavioral and interpersonal consequences of these cognitive processes. In developmental psychology, the depiction of social cognition and its development has focused most frequently upon the study of “theory of mind,” the awareness that other individuals maintain thoughts, beliefs, and desires that are different from our own and that their actions can be explained with reference to their individual mental states (Premack & Woodruff, 1978; Frith & Frith, 1999). The discipline of neuroscience, however, defines social cognition more narrowly. Neuroscientists tend to view this versatile construct as the ability to perceive the intentions, actions, and dispositions of others (Brothers, 1990). In this chapter, we use the term social cognition to refer to the fundamental abilities to perceive, categorize, remember, analyze, reason with, and behave toward other conspecifics (Adolphs, 2001; Pelphrey, Adolphs, & Morris, 2004).
