Levels of naturalism in social neuroscience research

iScience

Steve W.C. Chang¹  Olga Dal Monte²  Siqi Fan² 

[1] Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Torino, Italy;Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA;

关键词: Behavioral neuroscience;    Biological sciences;    Cognitive neuroscience;    Neuroscience;    Sensory neuroscience;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Summary: In order to understand ecologically meaningful social behaviors and their neural substrates in humans and other animals, researchers have been using a variety of social stimuli in the laboratory with a goal of extracting specific processes in real-life scenarios. However, certain stimuli may not be sufficiently effective at evoking typical social behaviors and neural responses. Here, we review empirical research employing different types of social stimuli by classifying them into five levels of naturalism. We describe the advantages and limitations while providing selected example studies for each level. We emphasize the important trade-off between experimental control and ecological validity across the five levels of naturalism. Taking advantage of newly emerging tools, such as real-time videos, virtual avatars, and wireless neural sampling techniques, researchers are now more than ever able to adopt social stimuli at a higher level of naturalism to better capture the dynamics and contingency of real-life social interaction.

【 授权许可】

Unknown