Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 70, April 2015, Pages 1-10
Neuropsychologia

Reviews and perspectives
The overlapping relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.02.018Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Emotion perception (EP) and theory of mind (ToM) are crucial for interpersonal interactions.

  • This review outlines conceptual and neuroanatomical overlaps between EP and ToM.

  • Conceptual models differ in emphasis on ‘hot’ vs. ‘cold’ processes and perception vs. high-level cognition.

  • Lesion studies do not show clear overlap in neural components of EP and ToM.

  • Neuroimaging studies show overlap in some temporal regions and medial prefrontal regions.

Abstract

Socio-cognitive skills are crucial for successful interpersonal interactions. Two particularly important socio-cognitive processes are emotion perception (EP) and theory of mind (ToM), but agreement is lacking on terminology and conceptual links between these constructs. Here we seek to clarify the relationship between the two at multiple levels, from concept to neuroanatomy. EP is often regarded as a low-level perceptual process necessary to decode affective cues, while ToM is usually seen as a higher-level cognitive process involving mental state deduction. In information processing models, EP tends to precede ToM. At the neuroanatomical level, lesion study data suggest that EP and ToM are both right‐hemisphere based, but there is also evidence that ToM requires temporal-cingulate networks, whereas EP requires partially separable regions linked to distinct emotions. Common regions identified in fMRI studies of EP and ToM have included medial prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe areas, but differences emerge depending on the perceptual, cognitive and emotional demands of the EP and ToM tasks. For the future, clarity of definition of EP and ToM will be paramount to produce distinct task manipulations and inform models of socio-cognitive processing.

Section snippets

On the relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind

Cross-fertilisation from the traditionally separate disciplines of social psychology and cognitive neuropsychology in recent years has arguably been one of the most fruitful developments in the study of the human mind and behaviour, and has culminated in an explosion of research on socio-cognitive neuroscience. Social cognition is defined in various ways, but generally refers to the mental operations that underlie social interactions, including perceiving, interpreting, and generating responses

Definitions, distinctions and models

Starting at the most basic level of analysis, we soon arrive at a particularly taxing issue, namely the confusing terminology used to define EP and ToM. The concepts and terminology differ considerably from one author to the next. In some cases, EP and ToM are seen as different facets of a shared core concept (Phillips et al., 2002), such as ‘emotional intelligence’ (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). However, there are other instances where EP and ToM are treated as separate entities (McDonald et al.,

Lesion study data on the relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind

The first set of evidence that we shall consider on the neuroanatomical relationship between EP and ToM comes from studying the effects of localised brain lesions. To orient the reader, focussed literature on the neurology of EP has suggested a number of key themes, namely that EP as a whole may be right-lateralised (Borod, 2002; Yuvaraj et al., 2013), or that it may be lateralised according to valence with the right hemisphere being responsible for the perception of negative emotions and the

Neuroimaging data on the relationship between emotion perception and theory of mind

In the literature on the functional neuroanatomy of healthy young adults (largely neuroimaging studies), there has often been speculation of a partial overlap in the neural systems for EP and ToM. In the discussion that follows, where available, we include the corresponding Brodmann's areas, to facilitate localisation. Fig. 1 may be useful to the reader in understanding the terminology used to parcellate the frontal lobe. It also displays the Brodmann's areas of relevance to studies which have

Concluding remarks

In this review, we have seen that the concepts of EP and ToM are often linked, and at multiple levels. At the conceptual level, two recurrent distinctions were noted. Firstly that EP reflects the processing of emotional information about other people whilst ToM involves processing cognitive information about people; secondly that EP reflects lower-level perceptual processes with ToM reflecting higher-level integration and inference of social information. However, when evaluating more complex

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