The developing social brain: implications for education

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of the human social brain. First, I will argue that social cognition is uniquely important and describe evidence that social interaction plays a critical role in early brain development. I will then discuss recent research demonstrating that the social brain undergoes protracted development and that adolescence in particular represents a period of reorganization of the social brain. Finally, I will attempt to draw out potential implications of this new research for education policy and for human wellbeing.

Figure 1

Owen Misses a Goal Phil Noble/Press Association.

Figure 2

Learning Language Sounds Infants were exposed to Mandarin via live interaction with a native Mandarin speaker (A) or via audio-visual (B) or audio-only (not shown). A control group had live exposure to language but heard only English. After exposure, all infants were tested with two Mandarin Chinese sounds. Results indicate learning in the live exposure group, but not in the TV or audio-only groups (C) (from Kuhl et al., 2003).

Figure 3

Medial Prefrontal Activation Decreases during Adolescence A section of the dorsal MPFC that is activated in studies of mentalizing is shown between red lines: Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) y coordinates range from 30 to 60, and z coordinates range from 0 to 40. Colored dots indicate voxels of decreased activity during six mentalizing tasks between late childhood and adulthood (see Blakemore, 2008, for references). The mentalizing tasks ranged from understanding irony, which requires separating the literal from the intended meaning of a comment (green dots), thinking about one's own intentions (blue dots), thinking about whether character traits describe oneself or another familiar other (yellow dots; also Pfeifer et al., 2009; gray dot), watching animations in which characters appear to have intentions and emotions (red dot) and thinking about social emotions such as guilt and embarrassment (Burnett et al., 2009; pink dot). (Adapted from Blakemore, 2008).

Figure 4

The Shelves Task (A and B) Images used to explain the Director condition: participants were shown an example of their view (A) and the corresponding director's view (B) for a typical stimulus with four objects in occluded slots that the director cannot see (e.g., the apple). (C and D) Example of an Experimental (C) and a Control trial (D) in the Director condition. The participant hears the verbal instruction: “Move the small ball left” from the director. In the Experimental trial (C), if the participant ignored the director's perspective, she would choose to move the distractor ball (golf ball), which is the smallest ball in the shelves but which cannot be seen by the director, instead of the larger ball (tennis ball) shared by both the participant's and the instructor's perspective (target). In the Control trial (D), an irrelevant object (plane) replaces the distractor item. (Adapted from Dumontheil et al., 2010).