The self-other distinction in interpersonal interaction: A multi-level exploration

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1042.2020.01890

Abstract

Abstract:

The fundamental problem with interpersonal interaction is how we can understand others’ mental and emotional states while characterizing our own concurrent thoughts and feelings to navigate the complex social world efficiently. Recent studies have showed that individuals understand others mainly by simulating self-processing processes; however, such self-processing and mental simulations confuse the self with others to some extent. Therefore, the brain needs to be able to differentiate between the representation of self and others flexibly to carry out successful interpersonal interactions. This ability is known as self-other distinction (SOD). In the present study, various cognitive operations at different processing levels that require SOD, such as perception, action, cognition, and emotion, as well as the research paradigm applicable to the corresponding field, were reviewed. The study of SOD may be more conducive to comprehensively understand the interpersonal interaction process. Furthermore, it can be a useful intervention to improve social cognition, affective disorder, and people with autism. In addition to focusing on the paradigm, internal mechanism, and influencing factors, this study puts forward the prospects for further research emphasizing interventions for special populations.

Key words: self-other distinction, perception, action, cognition, emotion

CLC Number:

B848

TAN Cheng-hui, MA Shan-shan, ZHU Chuan-lin, ZHAO Yuan, WANG Xuan-yi, SHU De-ming, LIU Dian-zhi. The self-other distinction in interpersonal interaction: A multi-level exploration[J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2020, 28(11): 1890-1900.

References 93

[1]	Ainley, V., Apps, M. A., Fotopoulou, A., & Tsakiris, M . ( 2016). ‘Bodily precision’: A predictive coding account of individual differences in interoceptive accuracy. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371( 1708), 20160003.
[2]	Apperly, I. A., Carroll, D. J., Samson, D., Humphreys, G. W., Qureshi, A., & Moffitt, G . ( 2010). Why are there limits on theory of mind use? Evidence from adults' ability to follow instructions from an ignorant speaker. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63( 6), 1201-1217.
[3]	Apps, M. A., Lesage, E., & Ramnani, N . ( 2015). Vicarious reinforcement learning signals when instructing others. Journal of Neuroscience, 35( 7), 2904-2913.
[4]	Apps, M. A., Tajadura-Jiménez, A., Sereno, M., Blanke, O., & Tsakiris, M . ( 2015). Plasticity in unimodal and multimodal brain areas reflects multisensory changes in self-face identification. Cerebral Cortex, 25( 1), 46-55. URL pmid: 23964067
[5]	Banzhaf, C. ( 2018). Empathy in depression: Egocentric and altercentric biases and the role of alexithymia (Unpublished doctorial dissertation). Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
[6]	Beeney, J. E., Hallquist, M. N., Ellison, W. D., & Levy, K. N . ( 2016). Self-other disturbance in borderline personality disorder: Neural, self-report, and performance-based evidence. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 7( 1), 28-39.
[7]	Begeer, S., Bernstein, D. M., Aßfalg, A., Azdad, H., Glasbergen, T., Wierda, M., & Koot, H. M . ( 2016). Equal egocentric bias in school-aged children with and without autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 144, 15-26.
[8]	Bernstein, D. M., Coolin, A., Fischer, A. L., Thornton, W. L., & Sommerville, J. A . ( 2017). False-belief reasoning from 3 to 92 years of age. PloS One, 12( 9), e0185345.
[9]	Bolognini, N., Rossetti, A., Fusaro, M., Vallar, G., & Miniussi, C . ( 2014). Sharing social touch in the primary somatosensory cortex. Current Biology, 24( 13), 1513-1517.
[10]	Brass, M., Bekkering, H., & Prinz, W . ( 2001). Movement observation affects movement execution in a simple response task. Acta Psychologica, 106( 1-2), 3-22.
[11]	Brass, M., Bekkering, H., Wohlschläger, A., & Prinz, W . ( 2000). Compatibility between observed and executed finger movements: Comparing symbolic, spatial, and imitative cues. Brain and Cognition, 44( 2), 124-143.
[12]	Brass, M., & Heyes, C. ( 2005). Imitation: Is cognitive neuroscience solving the correspondence problem? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9( 10), 489-495.
[13]	Brass, M., Ruby, P., & Spengler, S . ( 2009). Inhibition of imitative behaviour and social cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364( 1528), 2359-2367.
[14]	Brewer, R., Cook, R., & Bird, G . ( 2016). Alexithymia: A general deficit of interoception. Royal Society Open Science, 3( 10), 150664. URL pmid: 27853532
[15]	Chan, A. W. Y., & Baker, C. I . ( 2015). Seeing is not feeling: Posterior parietal but not somatosensory cortex engagement during touch observation. Journal of Neuroscience, 35( 4), 1468-1480.
[16]	Coburn, P. I., Bernstein, D. M., & Begeer, S . ( 2015). A new paper and pencil task reveals adult false belief reasoning bias. Psychological Research, 79( 5), 739-749.
[17]	Craig, A. D . ( 2002). How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3( 8), 655-666.
[18]	Cross, K. A., Torrisi, S., Losin, E. A. R., & Iacoboni, M . ( 2013). Controlling automatic imitative tendencies: Interactions between mirror neuron and cognitive control systems. NeuroImage, 83, 493-504. URL pmid: 23811412
[19]	Czekóová, K., Shaw, D. J., Saxunová, K., Dufek, M., Mareček, R., Vaníček, J., & Brázdil, M . ( 2019). Impaired self-other distinction and subcortical grey-matter alterations characterise socio-cognitive disturbances in multiple sclerosis. Frontiers in Neurology, 10, 525. URL pmid: 31164860
[20]	de Guzman, M., Bird, G., Banissy, M. J., & Catmur, C . ( 2016). Self-other control processes in social cognition: From imitation to empathy. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371( 1686), 20150079.
[21]	Deroualle, D., & Lopez, C. ( 2014). Toward a vestibular contribution to social cognition. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 8, 16.
[22]	Dumontheil, I., Küster, O., Apperly, I. A., & Blakemore, S. J . ( 2010). Taking perspective into account in a communicative task. Neuroimage, 52( 4), 1574-1583.
[23]	Ereira, S., Dolan, R. J., & Kurth-Nelson, Z . ( 2018). Agent-specific learning signals for self-other distinction during mentalising. PloS Biology, 16( 4), e2004752. URL pmid: 29689053
[24]	Foster, N. C., Bennett, S. J., Causer, J., Elliott, D., Bird, G., & Hayes, S. J . ( 2019). Getting off to a shaky start: Specificity in planning and feedforward control during sensorimotor learning in autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 13( 3), 423-435.
[25]	Fotopoulou, A., & Tsakiris, M. ( 2017). Mentalizing homeostasis: The social origins of interoceptive inference. Neuropsychoanalysis, 19( 1), 3-28.
[26]	Garfinkel, S. N., Seth, A. K., Barrett, A. B., Suzuki, K., & Critchley, H. D . ( 2015). Knowing your own heart: Distinguishing interoceptive accuracy from interoceptive awareness. Biological Psychology, 104, 65-74.
[27]	Genschow, O., van Den Bossche, S., Cracco, E., Bardi, L., Rigoni, D., & Brass, M . ( 2017). Mimicry and automatic imitation are not correlated. PloS One, 12( 9), e0183784. URL pmid: 28877197
[28]	Groen, Y., Wijers, A., Tucha, O., & Althaus, M . ( 2013). Are there sex differences in ERPs related to processing empathy-evoking pictures? Neuropsychologia, 51( 1), 142-155. URL pmid: 23174404
[29]	Happé, F., Cook, J. L., & Bird, G . ( 2017). The structure of social cognition: In (ter) dependence of sociocognitive processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 243-267.
[30]	Hayes, S. J., Andrew, M., Foster, N. C., Elliott, D., Gowen, E., & Bennett, S. J . ( 2018). Sensorimotor learning and associated visual perception are intact but unrelated in autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 11( 2), 296-304.
[31]	Heyes, C. ( 2014). Submentalizing: I am not really reading your mind. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9( 2), 131-143. URL pmid: 26173251
[32]	Hoffmann, F., Koehne, S., Steinbeis, N., Dziobek, I., & Singer, T . ( 2016). Preserved self-other distinction during empathy in autism is linked to network integrity of right supramarginal gyrus. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46( 2), 637-648.
[33]	Hogeveen, J., Obhi, S. S., Banissy, M. J., Santiesteban, I., Press, C., Catmur, C. & Bird, G .( 2014). Task-dependent and distinct roles of the temporoparietal junction and inferior frontal cortex in the control of imitation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(7), 1003-1009.
[34]	Holle, H., Banissy, M. J., & Ward, J . ( 2013). Functional and structural brain differences associated with mirror-touch synaesthesia. Neuroimage, 83, 1041-1050. URL pmid: 23921098
[35]	Jenkins, A. C., Macrae, C. N., & Mitchell, J. P . ( 2008). Repetition suppression of ventromedial prefrontal activity during judgments of self and others. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105( 11), 4507-4512.
[36]	Kahl, S., & Kopp, S. ( 2018). A predictive processing model of perception and action for self-other distinction. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2421.
[37]	Keysar, B., Barr, D. J., Balin, J. A., & Brauner, J. S . ( 2000). Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension. Psychological Science, 11( 1), 32-38.
[38]	Klimecki, O. M., Vuilleumier, P., & Sander, D . ( 2016). The impact of emotions and empathy-related traits on punishment behavior: Introduction and validation of the inequality game. PloS One, 11( 3), e0151028. URL pmid: 26978065
[39]	Kuehn, E., Perez-Lopez, M. B., Diersch, N., Dohler, J., Wolbers, T., & Riemer, M . ( 2018). Embodiment in the aging mind. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 86, 207-225. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.11.016 URL
[40]	Ladegaard, N., Videbech, P., Lysaker, P. H., & Larsen, E. R . ( 2016). The course of social cognitive and metacognitive ability in depression: Deficit are only partially normalized after full remission of first episode major depression. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55( 3), 269-286.
[41]	Lamm, C., Bukowski, H., & Silani, G . ( 2016). From shared to distinct self-other representations in empathy: Evidence from neurotypical function and socio-cognitive disorders. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371( 1686), 20150083.
[42]	Lamm, C., Decety, J., & Singer, T . ( 2011). Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain. Neuroimage, 54( 3), 2492-2502.
[43]	Lamm, C., Rütgen, M., & Wagner, I. C . ( 2019). Imaging empathy and prosocial emotions. Neuroscience Letters, 693, 49-53.
[44]	Lockwood, P. L . ( 2016). The anatomy of empathy: Vicarious experience and disorders of social cognition. Behavioural Brain Research, 311, 255-266.
[45]	Lockwood, P. L., Apps, M. A., Roiser, J. P., & Viding, E . ( 2015). Encoding of vicarious reward prediction in anterior cingulate cortex and relationship with trait empathy. Journal of Neuroscience, 35( 40), 13720-13727.
[46]	Longarzo, M., D'Olimpio, F., Chiavazzo, A., Santangelo, G., Trojano, L., & Grossi, D . ( 2015). The relationships between interoception and alexithymic trait. The self-awareness questionnaire in healthy subjects. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1149.
[47]	Luo, P., Wang, J., Jin, Y., Huang, S., Xie, M., Deng, L., … Zheng, X . ( 2015). Gender differences in affective sharing and self-other distinction during empathic neural responses to others’ sadness. Brain Imaging and Behavior, 9( 2), 312-322.
[48]	Mahy, C. E., Bernstein, D. M., Gerrard, L. D., & Atance, C. M . ( 2017). Testing the validity of a continuous false belief task in 3- to 7-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 160, 50-66.
[49]	Marsh, L. E., Bird, G., & Catmur, C . ( 2016). The imitation game: Effects of social cues on ‘imitation’ are domain- general in nature. NeuroImage, 139, 368-375.
[50]	Mitchell, J. P . ( 2005). The false dichotomy between simulation and theory-theory: The argument's error. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9( 8), 363-364.
[51]	Murphy, J., Brewer, R., Catmur, C., & Bird, G . ( 2017). Interoception and psychopathology: A developmental neuroscience perspective. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 45-56.
[52]	Nickerson, R. S . ( 1999). How we know—and sometimes misjudge—what others know: Imputing one's own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125( 6), 737-759.
[53]	Nijhof, A. D., & Bird, G. ( 2019). Self-processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 12( 11), 1580-1584.
[54]	O’Brien, E., & Ellsworth, P. C . ( 2012). More than skin deep: Visceral states are not projected onto dissimilar others. Psychological Science, 23( 4), 391-396. URL pmid: 22402799
[55]	Obhi, S. S., Hogeveen, J., Giacomin, M., & Jordan, C. H . ( 2014). Automatic imitation is reduced in narcissists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 40( 3), 920-928.
[56]	Palmer, C. E., & Tsakiris, M. ( 2018). Going at the heart of social cognition: Is there a role for interoception in self-other distinction? Current Opinion in Psychology, 24, 21-26.
[57]	Pisoni, A., Lauro, L. J. R., Vergallito, A., Maddaluno, O., & Bolognini, N . ( 2018). Cortical dynamics underpinning the self-other distinction of touch: A TMS-EEG study. NeuroImage, 178, 475-484. URL pmid: 29860085
[58]	Preckel, K., Kanske, P., & Singer, T . ( 2018). On the interaction of social affect and cognition: Empathy, compassion and theory of mind. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 19, 1-6.
[59]	Quednow, B. B . ( 2017). Social cognition and interaction in stimulant use disorders. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 13, 55-62.
[60]	Quesque, F., & Brass, M. ( 2019). The role of the temporoparietal junction in self-other distinction. Brain Topogr, 32( 6), 943-955. URL pmid: 31676934
[61]	Rauchbauer, B., Majdandžić, J., Stieger, S., & Lamm, C . ( 2016). The modulation of mimicry by ethnic group-membership and emotional expressions. PloS One, 11( 8), 29-35.
[62]	Riva, F., Triscoli, C., Lamm, C., Carnaghi, A., & Silani, G . ( 2016). Emotional egocentricity bias across the life-span. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 8, 74.
[63]	Robertson, C. E., & Baron-Cohen, S. ( 2017). Sensory perception in autism. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18( 11), 671-684.
[64]	Saito, N., Yokoyama, T., & Ohira, H . ( 2016). Self-other distinction enhanced empathic responses in individuals with alexithymia. Scientific Reports, 6, 35059.
[65]	Samuel, S., Legg, E. W., Lurz, R., & Clayton, N. S . ( 2018a). Egocentric bias across mental and non-mental representations in the sandbox task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71( 11), 2395-2410.
[66]	Samuel, S., Legg, E. W., Lurz, R., & Clayton, N. S . ( 2018b). The unreliability of egocentric bias across self-other and memory-belief distinctions in the sandbox task. Royal Society Open Science, 5( 11), 181355. doi: 10.1098/rsos.181355 URL pmid: 30564420
[67]	Santiesteban, I., Banissy, M. J., Catmur, C., & Bird, G . ( 2012). Enhancing social ability by stimulating right temporoparietal junction. Current Biology, 22( 23), 2274-2277.
[68]	Santiesteban, I., Shah, P., White, S., Bird, G., & Heyes, C . ( 2015). Mentalizing or submentalizing in a communication task? Evidence from autism and a camera control. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22( 3), 844-849.
[69]	Santiesteban, I., White, S., Cook, J., Gilbert, S. J., Heyes, C., & Bird, G . ( 2012). Training social cognition: From imitation to theory of mind. Cognition, 122( 2), 228-235.
[70]	Saxe, R., & Kanwisher, N. ( 2003). People thinking about thinking people: The role of the temporo-parietal junction in “theory of mind”. Neuroimage, 19( 4), 1835-1842.
[71]	Sel, A., Azevedo, R. T., & Tsakiris, M . ( 2017). Heartfelt self: Cardio-visual integration affects self-face recognition and interoceptive cortical processing. Cerebral Cortex, 27( 11), 5144-5155.
[72]	Seth, A. K., & Friston, K. J . ( 2016). Active interoceptive inference and the emotional brain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371( 1708), 20160007.
[73]	Sethi, A., O'Nions, E., McCrory, E., Bird, G., & Viding, E . ( 2018). An fMRI investigation of empathic processing in boys with conduct problems and varying levels of callous-unemotional traits. NeuroImage: Clinical, 18, 298-304.
[74]	Shah, P., Catmur, C., & Bird, G . ( 2017). From heart to mind: Linking interoception, emotion, and theory of mind. Cortex, 93, 220-223.
[75]	Sharma, S., Fiave, P. A., & Nelissen, K . ( 2018). Functional MRI responses to passive, active, and observed touch in somatosensory and insular cortices of the macaque monkey. Journal of Neuroscience, 38( 15), 3689-3707.
[76]	Shaw, D. J., Czekóová, K., & Porubanová, M . ( 2017). Orthogonal-compatibility effects confound automatic imitation: Implications for measuring self-other distinction. Psychological Research, 81( 6), 1152-1165. URL pmid: 27752773
[77]	Silani, G., Lamm, C., Ruff, C. C., & Singer, T . ( 2013). Right supramarginal gyrus is crucial to overcome emotional egocentricity bias in social judgments. Journal of Neuroscience, 33( 39), 15466-15476.
[78]	Singer, T., & Klimecki, O. M . ( 2014). Empathy and compassion. Current Biology, 24( 18), 875-878.
[79]	Singer, T., & Lamm, C. ( 2009). The social neuroscience of empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1156( 1), 81-96.
[80]	Sowden, S., & Catmur, C. ( 2015). The role of the right temporoparietal junction in the control of imitation. Cerebral Cortex, 25( 4), 1107-1113.
[81]	Spengler, S., von Cramon, D. Y., & Brass, M . ( 2009). Control of shared representations relies on key processes involved in mental state attribution. Human Brain Mapping, 30( 11), 3704-3718.
[82]	Steinbeis, N. ( 2016). The role of self-other distinction in understanding others' mental and emotional states: Neurocognitive mechanisms in children and adults. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371( 1686), 20150074.
[83]	Steinbeis, N., Bernhardt, B. C., & Singer, T . ( 2015). Age-related differences in function and structure of rSMG and reduced functional connectivity with DLPFC explains heightened emotional egocentricity bias in childhood. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10( 2), 302-310. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsu057 URL pmid: 24771281
[84]	Steinbeis, N., & Singer, T. ( 2014). Projecting my envy onto you: Neurocognitive mechanisms of an offline emotional egocentricity bias. NeuroImage, 102, 370-380. URL pmid: 25117603
[85]	Sui, J., Chechlacz, M., Rotshtein, P., & Humphreys, G. W . ( 2015). Lesion-symptom mapping of self-prioritization in explicit face categorization: Distinguishing hypo-and hyper-self-biases. Cerebral Cortex, 25( 2), 374-383.
[86]	Thirioux, B., Mercier, M. R., Blanke, O., & Berthoz, A . ( 2014). The cognitive and neural time course of empathy and sympathy: An electrical neuroimaging study on self- other interaction. Neuroscience, 267, 286-306.
[87]	Thirioux, B., Wehrmann, M., Langbour, N., Jaafari, N., & Berthoz, A . ( 2016). Identifying oneself with the face of someone else impairs the egocentered visuo-spatial mechanisms: A new double mirror paradigm to study self-other distinction and interaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1283. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01283 URL pmid: 27610095
[88]	Tomei, A., Besson, J., & Grivel, J . ( 2017). Linking empathy to visuospatial perspective-taking in gambling addiction. Psychiatry Research, 250, 177-184. URL pmid: 28161613
[89]	Tomova, L., Heinrichs, M., & Lamm, C . ( 2019). The other and me: Effects of oxytocin on self-other distinction. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 136, 49-53. URL pmid: 29550334
[90]	Tomova, L., von Dawans, B., Heinrichs, M., Silani, G., & Lamm, C . ( 2014). Is stress affecting our ability to tune into others? Evidence for gender differences in the effects of stress on self-other distinction. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 43, 95-104.
[91]	Wheatley, T., Boncz, A., Toni, I., & Stolk, A . ( 2019). Beyond the isolated brain: The promise and challenge of interacting minds. Neuron, 103( 2), 186-188.
[92]	Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. ( 1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children's understanding of deception. Cognition, 13( 1), 103-128. URL pmid: 6681741
[93]	Zeller, D., Friston, K. J., & Classen, J . ( 2016). Dynamic causal modeling of touch-evoked potentials in the rubber hand illusion. Neuroimage, 138, 266-273.