Key research themes
1. How is the structure and factorization of social cognition processes characterized, and what are their interdependencies?
This theme investigates the empirical and theoretical efforts to identify the core components of social cognition and to understand how these components relate or operate independently. It addresses ambiguities and inconsistencies in the taxonomy and factor structure of sociocognitive processes, with relevance for typical and atypical populations, and explores approaches to delineating domain-specificity, modularity, and dual-process theories in social cognition.
2. What are the theoretical and empirical challenges in explaining social cognition beyond mental state attribution, involving embodied and dynamic interactions?
This theme covers critiques and alternatives to traditional mindreading and Theory of Mind accounts that rely on mental representation and inferential processes. It explores enactivist, embodied, interactionist, and normative perspectives emphasizing real-time social interaction, dynamic coupling, and the role of social norms and embodied experience in social cognition. These frameworks problematize classical inferential models and propose integrated dynamical or norm-based accounts compatible with biological and developmental data.
3. How does social cognition develop and operate within social and cognitive architectures, including group processes, learning, and coordination?
This theme investigates the developmental, computational, and social dynamics underlying social cognition, including acquisition of social models, coordination through common knowledge, group cognition emergence, normative influences, and integration of socio-cognitive processes within cognitive architectures. It encompasses empirical studies of child development, computational modeling approaches, and theoretical analyses on how social cognition functions in real social systems, including collective memory and cooperative coordination.