**4. Interactionist approach in social cognition**

**3. Cognitive models of mindreading-metacognition relation**

ages the interaction between components [28].

correct answer (option no. 4).

108 Prefrontal Cortex

Contemporary scientific discussions on the relation between metacognition and mindreading result in several theoretical accounts allowing various combinations and configurations of both mechanisms in the formation processes of beliefs, intentions, and decisions with respect to oneself or others [4]. Cognitive architecture that considers possible configurations of these sets of mechanisms must embrace different functions, knowledge structures, as well as mechanisms that provide access to the information [6]. Yet, it seems that the discussion on the adequacy of each theoretical account is still open, and there is no unambiguous evidence pointing out clear superiority of the specific theoretical account on the relation between metacognition and social knowledge.

**Figure 1.** An example of cognitive intervention from the metacognitive training course aimed at cognitive enhancement of social cognition (https://clinical-neuropsychology.de/metacognitive\_training/). The exercise activates formation of social understanding by asking a client to infer emotional states of the actor on the picture. During this exercise a patient attempts to recognize an emotional state of the actor presented on the picture by choosing one of four options and then expresses confidence in his/her responses. The therapist analyzes the client's answers and helps the client to reach a

For example, Nichols and Stich [28] in their theoretical description of how we access and utilize self-knowledge and other-knowledge propose a hybrid architecture composed of metacognition and mindreading as distinct and innate mechanisms. According to this view, the basis of self-knowledge is formed by two metacognitive mechanisms of self-monitoring nature: one responsible for recognizing and providing knowledge about internal states (our own propositional attitudes) and one for recognizing and providing information on our experiential states [4]. Whereas the mindreading faculty constitutes independent mechanism that deals with the attribution of mental states to understand other people. Since metacognitive and mindreading systems are modular, there is a superior coordinating mechanism that man-

In other theoretical proposals, cognitive architecture on social cognition takes on a more radical form, as the cognitive system is greatly simplified to only one capacity, which is, namely, mindreading or metacognition. For example, Carruthers [4] in his theoretical approach denies that there is an introspective access to propositional attitudes and postulates the existence of Interestingly, the latest accounts of the relationship between mindreading and metacognition clearly favor arguments for interactionism in the formation of social knowledge. In particular, Arango-Muñoz [6] presents a two-level architecture (two different levels of complexity) enabling a mutual interaction within a complex metacognitive system that is evolutionary structured into higher- and lower-level metacognition with different functions and tasks. Both metacognitive systems "start to interact and influence each other" by forming a complex social cognition [6]. In particular, mindreading is the higher level structure that engages rational knowledge, which is a psychological concept or naive psychological theory, to interpret and rationalize others' behavior. The main function of this level is therefore to interpret others' behavior, although self-interpretation from this level is possible but is not a priority. Within lower level structures operate unconscious processes of control and evaluation that serve to adjust epistemic states (e.g., subject's feelings) to the individual's current behavior. The dual-process account makes predictions of cognitive regulation based on the bidirectional interactions: (i) a "from-low-to-high-level" direction that predicts possible evaluation and monitoring and then the attribution of a psychological content and (ii) a reverse interaction in a "from-high-to-low-level" direction that activates rational knowledge and control processes to regulate current social responses to others people.

To sum up, the higher-order structures deal with our rationality which is linked with attribution of available psychological concepts and folk theories to interpret oneself and others' behavior, while lower-level functions of control and monitoring attempt to adjust one's cognitive activity in automatic and unreflective manners [6, 20]. Since the dual-process theory implicates different levels of metacognition, the role of interaction itself is to link such different levels of complexity in a single unit of metacognition [20]. This, in turn, indicates that both levels of metacognition influence one another via such interaction [20], which is critical in dynamic formulating and executing complex cognitive operations in our social responses. Therefore, one can expect that selective impairments in the high-level structures can give rise to impairments in the low-level metacognition and vice versa. For instance, impairments in mindreading processes that develop from childhood onward may cause specific abnormalities in metacognition among individuals later in their adulthood diagnosed with schizophrenia [56].

conscious knowledge as well as determine directions of contemporary empirical studies on the brain [35, 36]. One of the most well-known accounts on consciousness is a global workspace theory (GWT) postulated by Bernard Baars [33, 38]. The GWT theory has originated in several empirical studies implicating a notion of a neuronal global workspace that has contributed to numerous findings and concepts on possible neural architecture of access consciousness in the brain [39]. The GWT theory has been also found useful in several computational applica-

Consciousness and Social Cognition from an Interactionist Perspective: A New Approach…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.79584

111

The central claim of GWT is that consciousness has an integrative function that organizes and provides access to a distributed set of knowledge sources that otherwise work as independent structures [25, 34]. According to the conscious access hypothesis, consciousness is considered as an agent that makes the content globally available to unconscious systems [34]. In other words, consciousness enables exchange, coordination, and control of broadcasting the information content among a set of unconscious, specialized, and separate processors [25]. GWT also assumes that the unconscious contents of the mind compete or cooperate with each other in order to gain access to the global workspace. In other words, when the specific information content wins the competition for access over other information, it gets into the neural global workspace that allows its broadcasting to other regions of the brain (specializes processors) in which other processes and resources are activated. In this way, conscious events are results of the interaction between unconscious processors that attempt to spread the information

tions, including the field of artificial intelligence or neural network modeling [40].

content via the global workspace for other specialized areas of the brain [25, 34, 38].

In the area of brain research, significant progress has been made in understanding the cognitive and neuronal basis of consciousness [41]. Given the cognitive division into conscious and unconscious processing, brain research shows that architecture of consciousness in the brain may be reflected by functionally separate brain regions that are associated with conscious representation and other brain regions responsible for the unconscious processing of lowerorder information to which conscious re-representations are referred [37]. According to the cognitive architecture based on GWT, it is assumed that neural underpinnings of conscious access occur in the prefrontal region (hub) of widely distributed reentrant circuity [41]. Other consciousness studies based on metacognitive approach provide evidence that higher-order representations of consciousness are associated with the activity of prefrontal and parietal cortical structures [42] with a high degree of interconnectivity [43]. It is likely that mechanisms of conscious access localized in the prefrontal and parietal regions receive different kinds of inputs that are required to formulate accurate social interpretation. Following the GWT assumption, unconscious, special-purpose brain processes linked with metacognition and mindreading attempt to get access to a neural global workspace which enables reversible broadcasting to the whole system [44, 45]. Therefore, since mindreading and metacognition constitute unconscious domain-specific processes ("modules"), their neural architecture should be also distinct from conscious structures. For instance, Dimaggio and colleagues [8] show that people who mentalize about themselves (metacognition) and about others (mindreading) activate regions associated with medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Interestingly, several regions of the mPFC specialized in social cognition are dissociable when individuals think of others who are perceived as similar or who are dissimilar to the self [8]. Some researchers also suggest that other brain areas such as a bilateral temporal parietal junction (TPJ) may be involved in social cognition as it may be a solid candidate for representing
