Reflections from the first meeting of IoMH Special Interest Group in Social Cognition and Behaviour

This blog was written by UCL PhD Student and Social Cognition and Behaviour SIG member, Sara De Felice.

On Wednesday 7^th Sept, the Social Cognition and Behaviour Special Interest Group (SIG) hosted its first meeting at UCL.  The SCB is a group of researchers within the Institute of Mental Health from many disciplines who share an interest in improving understanding of the nature and consequences of social cognition and social behaviour in health and disease.  Group meetings aim to strengthen research capacity and enable networking in this area across UCL.

The first SIG meeting was forum for UCL academics, young researchers and clinicians to meet and discuss research. Over 50 attendees were welcomed by Prof Antonia Hamilton and Dr Andrew Sommerlad, who chaired the event. They both outlined the scope of the SIG and how it fits within the Institute of Mental Health, including driving the attention to supports available in the forms of small grants (here and here). After that, they gave space to the two keynote speakers, Prof Katerina Fotopoulou and Prof Elizabeth Pellicano.

The first talk was given by Prof Katerina Fotopoulou, who stressed the importance social touch in understanding ourselves as humans, our healthy development and formation of cognitive structures as well as the ability to regulate our social and affective needs. She also presented the case of anosognosia and other clinical groups as a window to study social (embodied) cognition and its mechanisms more generally. Her talk highlighted that our body – as a tool to interact with the environment and others – has a key role in shaping our social cognition and the sense of self more generally. Prof Fotopoulou did so by presenting decades of works by her and others, ending with recent data collected during the unique circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic, characterised by highly virtual connection with concurrent lack of physical connection.

The second keynote speaker Prof Elizabeth Pellicano shared with the group an original insight into how people with Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC), both adults and young people, experienced the social isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Far from the stereotypical and over simplistic – yet widespread – belief that ASC is characterised by asocial behaviour and even a sense of enjoyment from being isolated, Prof Pellicano showed how people with ASC experienced the prolonged isolation imposed by the Australian government as a very challenging time. In particular, she presented a series of informative extracts from adults and adolescents who shared their struggles as they were forced to isolate for months, without meeting friends and family, and away from even the most accidental encounters in their daily life. Her work highlighted the importance of social contact as part of a healthy life, across age groups and neuro-diverse cohorts.

Following the two keynote speakers’ talks, academics, young researchers and clinicians introduced themselves to the SIG in a series of ‘flash’ talks, where each presenter outlined their research expertise, area of interests and potential routes for collaborations in 2 minutes. During this section the diversity and multidisciplinary approaches to social cognition research at UCL clearly emerged. In particular, Peter Hsu is working on the impact of body-specific social rejection on body-related risk aversion; Dr Marco Wittman is working on maintaining individuality while being part of social groups in neurotypical and autistic cohorts; Max Maier is interested in social and cognitive psychology with focus on topics related to effective altruism and is working on publication bias in research on construal level theory; Dr Giedrė Čepukaitytė is working on the EDoN platform to identify social behaviour markers of early neurodegenerative disease; Dr Lucy Chisman-Russell studies social cognition dysfunction in frontotemporal dementia; Aygun Badalova is developing Gotcha!, a proper-name anomia therapy app for people with dementia; Prof Gabriella Vigliocco is leading research on dyadic interactions and multimodal (verbal and non-verbal) communication in adults and children; Dr Daniel Richardson is leading a series of experiments to study how others influence and shape our behaviours; Nadescha Trudel is working on decision making and how it differs in social and non-social contexts; Benedict Greenwood (working with Prof Sarah Garfinkel) is mapping autonomic signals and their contribution to emotional and cognitive features of ADHD; Sara De Felice is working on neuroimaging of dyadic social interactions and learning; Dr Andrew Sommerlad is working on social functioning in dementia; and Prof Antonia Hamilton is leading work to understand the cognitive mechanisms of naturalistic social interactions.

The ‘flash’ talks were followed by a discussion that engaged the whole audience on the themes that emerged during the presentations, as well as raising some relevant questions such as how the SIG could best support their members, including ways to strengthen clinical and academic collaborations within the community. Feedback suggested the need to produce an ‘academic database’ of experts in different areas within the field of social cognition, providing an easy-to-consult source for potential collaborations in different projects. Also, the idea of a Teams Channel was welcomed with enthusiasm, including the suggestion of a shared calendar for relevant conference events as well as grant key dates for the SIG members to consult as needed.

To find out more about this group and future meeting dates, or if you want to get involved or simply contact us about an idea for this SIG, please visit our page.