I tried to access the study, but it's for-fee, and I'm broke. Perhaps
I can find it in a Library, tomorrow.
>From what you quoted, it doesn't [yet] make much sense because the
task' is actually a delayed-discrimination task, with respect to
stated expectations.
Phineas Gage would've scored poorly too, but his lesions were in
prefrontal cortex.
The 'relative-familiarity' thing is also problematic.
Everyone knows of stories with respect to tourists' cultural faux
pas, which are the same sort of thing, and, on the other hand, the
task of understanding an experimenter's directions is generic stuff
that everyone learns, with one's Parents in the 'role' of the one who
gives direction.
I'm only online for a couple of more days, but I'll try to get to the
bottom of this before I have to log-off.
Either the 'blurb' is 'slanted', or there's something 'amiss' in the
study itself.
I expect what's actually involved is a focused 'disconnect' re PF Cx,
and not a specifically-limbic thing.
I'll try to get-back on this tomorrow .
k. p. collins
Ian Goddard wrote in message <3d585bfb.166425528 at news.erols.com>...
>Possibly seen as supplemental to (Neuro-Cooperation):
>>http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3d35e5d2.340387416%40news.erols.com
>>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992663>>>Brain's 'cheat detector' is revealed
>>22:00 12 August 02
>Emma Young
>>Part of the human brain is dedicated to detecting cheats, say
>evolutionary psychologists, after a study with a brain-damaged man.
>>"We think it develops in all normal individuals, and that it
develops
>in part because our brains were selected to develop this
competence,"
>says John Tooby at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
>>Tooby and his colleagues studied a man who suffered accidental
damage
>to the limbic system, a brain region involved in processing
emotional
>and social information. RM, as he is referred to, performed as well
>as other people on one set of reasoning problems, did much worse on
>problems specifically designed to test reasoning about social
>exchanges.
>>At its simplest, social exchange runs along the lines of "you
scratch
>my back and I'll scratch yours". Previous work has shown that
people,
>and some animals, are extremely good at keeping a check of who owes
>who within a group - and at spotting and punishing cheaters.
>>Researchers had proposed that general reasoning abilities could
>account for this. But RM's deficit suggests that detecting social
>cheaters depends on specialised neural circuitry, the team says.
>>Their conclusion is "robust," says Nigel Nicholson, an evolutionary
>psychologist and director of the Centre for Organisational Research
>the London Business School. "It's essential we have trusting
>relationships with people in communities where we are highly
>interdependent for survival and reproduction. Cheat detection is
>very important," he adds.
>>Separable component
>>The first problems given to RM and the 37 non-brain-damaged controls
>concerned so-called precaution rules. For example: "If you work with
>toxic chemicals, you have to wear a safety mask." The second tested
>social contracts, for example: "If you go canoeing on the lake, you
>have to have a clean bunk house."
>>RM recorded a score of 70 per cent on the precaution rule tests -
the
>same as the controls. But he scored only 39 per cent on the social
>contract tests, compared with 70 per cent for the non-brain damaged
>people.
>>Identical tests on two other people with brain damage similar to
BM's,
>but with a slightly different pattern of damage, showed that their
>social contract reasoning was unimpaired.
>>"RM's differential impairment indicates that being able to detect
>potential cheaters may be a separable component of the human mind,"
>the researchers conclude in the journal Proceedings of the National
>Academy of Sciences.
>>Utterly unfamiliar
>>However, if a region of the brain has evolved to specialise in cheat
>detection, it should be present in all people, the team reasoned.
>Most experiments are performed on people living in modern, western
>societies.
>>So they studied people living in traditional, non-developed
>communities in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. And they found that
>these people were equally proficient at social exchange tasks, even
>when the problems concerned social rules that were unfamiliar to
them.
>>"What is quite amazing about their performance on cheater detection
>is that it flies in the face of all ordinary ideas about learning a
>higher level cognitive skill," Tooby told New Scientist. "People are
>just as good at utterly unfamiliar rules as they are with rules that
>are personally and culturally highly familiar."
>>Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
>(DOI: 10.1073/pnas.122352699 and DOI:10.1073/pnas122352999)
>>> Out-of-Body Explanation: http://IanGoddard.net/paranorm.htm>>
