It’s all gone a bit too ‘etc.’, and not enough ‘speech’ for my liking. These gut bacteria have got me thinking though. At some point, I need to become:
- A microbiologist, who understands why we have gut bacteria. I need to know how these bacteria work alongside our hormones. I need to ‘get’ the gut-brain axis.
- A neuropsychologist, who understands how experiences bring about cognitive responses that can be associated with hormonal activity.
For now I’m just going to continue the pragmatic journey. It’s going to get even boggier later, as we work our way back to the gut bacteria in part 2, so bring your boots.
Cognitive reward systems under the ICDT
Not all of this has been explicitly stated in the theory as presented so far.
Sensory information from social sources is processed and systematised in the social domain
- The social domain has some nifty skills (for a concept). These come about through the child’s developing ability to query the social domain quickly, purposefully and intelligently (i.e., engaging their executive resource).
- The social domain is a processor of people and their actions within all contexts. It desires an understanding of human activity.
- It observes what will turn out to be social cues, and it registers any subsequent activity. When a thought relates to an outcome, the social domain is there to catalogue the relationship.
- A heuristic process listens to this noise and, in time, returns a distillation of how the cues associate with the actions. Such a system of knowledge affords an understanding of motivation and beliefs, as well as an understanding of the ‘meaning’ of an action (e.g., MIXING, SORTING, WIPING), within a defined context.
- Initially, all the social domain can really do is to provide an impression of ‘what is happening at the moment’.
- The resulting structure can be characterised as a generative understanding of what people’s mental states will be in any conceivable situation (as they appreciate the situation, as they take actions within the situation) and the manner in which the context of action could be expected to develop next.
- An executive role is gradually established to navigate increasingly advanced uses for this organ of thought. ‘G’ is used below to denote executively motivated outputs of the social domain.
- During co-regulation, activity in the social domain motivates the release of hormones such as oxytocin.
The social domain is just a concept (OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR ACTIONS)
- This means that it will ‘learn’ to filter this understanding through what will become its child concepts, such as MUM. It will also ‘learn’ to filter its response in such a way as to reflect distinct contexts of action, e.g., LOOKING FOR A BOTTLE OPENER, and READING.
- The social domain’s incorporation with the conceptual-motor-sensory representation opens it up to executive oversight.
- In time, the executive resource will understand the social domain so well, it will devise a system that accounts for its experience of how context modulates across different types of activity and interaction. It won’t be long before the child is conjuring with this system, out in the real world. This will see their progression from a personal ‘at-hand-context’ constraint, to a collaborative ‘at-will-context’ approach.
- From the point of integration, at around 18 – 22 months, the child starts to query the social domain in a more purposeful manner.
- Observing their mum, a child can compare their live understanding of their mum’s assumed motivation and observed action (i.e., background G within the at-hand-context) with an average G – effectively a boiled-down assessment of what the average person might do in the same context, and how that context might develop. This comparison provides outputs which help to make MUM more distinct from the average person. The outputs also serve to develop the predictive accuracy of the second order representations that MUM returns in response to a query from the executive resource, while enriching the entire social domain.
- In time, the child learns to broaden the scope of G (i.e., the breadth of context they are ‘interested in’) to include a wider range of associated functions. They can also narrow the scope of G, so as to focus on a specific area of interest.
- For an example of this, take a look at this portion of a video from Dave Hewitt’s Intensive Interaction YouTube channel. Sam bangs his hand hard down on the table, leading with the knuckle of his thumb. When Hayley mirrors this behaviour, Sam scrutinises her hand to confirm that that their actions are identical.
- Within a specific context of action, the child learns to compare current G of SISTER with G of ME. Then they learn to compare G of ME with G of PEOPLE SIMILAR TO ME.
- Incidentally, it seems like a good intervention would be for a child to observe different people going about the same task with comparable but differing motivations, approaches, actions and outcomes. Then, if the child could get hands on with the same task, while continuing to consider the second-hand experience, I feel the experience would be highly integrative.
Activity in the social domain is informationally encapsulated from wider cognitive functioning during the first 18-22 months of life, at least compared with after this point
- My understanding of informational encapsulation follows very broadly from Fodor’s description.
- Child cognitive development, in part, is the reflection of a deepening level of integration between varying cognitive processes and functions in the brain (alongside the accrual of experience, and the development of executive function).
- Deep sensory impressions, such as those relating to touch and smell (as well as the ‘mystery of the mouth’) are baked into the underlying structure of both the social representation, and the motor-sensory representation, giving the representations a similar ‘flavour’.
- As the child engages their conceptual understanding more deeply during their explorations, their behaviour and overall approach becomes more goal-oriented.
- Representations that are broadly about goal-oriented behaviour ‘speak the language’ of the social domain; i.e., both of them deal in motivated activity. It is upon this basis that the two systems of understanding will be stitched together.
- The representation that results is one that is based around the roles of an activity – the agent (along with their motivation), their tools (along with how they are understood by the agent), their concepts, other objects, other people, and all of the actions and outcomes. All of this forms the first order representation. The manner in which our first order representations cohere is the shared context of action. (The manner in which our second order representations cohere is the shared context of interpretation).
- If the child is to integrate an understanding of the actions of others into their conceptual-motor-sensory system of representation, they will need to essentially mirror the structure of the social representation to settle out the argument structure. Integration is the moment the argument structure is settled.
During the ‘peak’ period of of representational assimilation, the last major subconcept in the social domain is substantially formed – ME
- This subconcept is similar to Freud’s ‘Superego’ in many ways.
- Representational assimilation with the social domain can be seen as the child’s systematic evaluation of the quality of their own ideas, and the level of refinement that they are able to demonstrate in action (as a well-conceived response to a given situation, as they understand it) against background G in the at-hand-context.
- The subconcept ME, inside the social domain, results from this process of self-evaluation.
- In a highly abstract manner, a counterpart concept THEM is thrown up alongside ME, outside of the social domain. It expresses itself as a constraint on the form of the first order representation, which must remain true to the basic accord that was struck with the social domain at the moment of peak assimilation. This is an advanced characterisation of the ‘downward pressure effect’ that I have mentioned before.
- The subconcept ME will start out shaky and vague. In time it will enable the child to see themselves in proportion with their overall understanding of typical behaviour, to set goals and experience success among their peers. ME opens up a world of socially mediated emotions for the child.
- The social domain, as a concept, now needs to be described as PEOPLE AND THEIR ACTIONS, since the child’s personal understanding of action has now been absorbed into it.
After encapsulation, various mental events can be ‘encoded for the social domain’ and submitted as a form of development for ME
- Somewhat consciously-noted personal cognitive achievements (e.g., getting faster at a mental task, linking two distinct concepts together productively, making good generalisations, gaining a richer or deeper understanding in an area) and personal achievements (e.g., solving a puzzle, alone) are handled in the same manner.
- The new information in the first order representation is presented to ME – which compares it with the current self-perception of how they would expect to function in such a situation (G of ME), and reports the update to the executive role.
- If the child has found that their innovation is useful, then the update to ME will be praised hormonally, using the same pathway as for co-regulation.
- Here then, we have the brain rewarding its own development, and doing so with joy.
- To be even more vague for a moment, it’s likely that the manner of thought and action that brought the achievement about is reinforced hormonally as well, somehow.
- Personal cognitive failures (e.g., the acknowledgement of ignorance, limited capacity or the inadequacy of ones approach) and moments of personal failure (e.g., giving up on a puzzle, alone) are retrograde for ME. An anticipated upgrade for ME was not realised, or ME needs to be downgraded. The need for revision and development is highlighted and supported through the release of stress hormones.
- During shared activity involving child A and child B, A presents an action (this can include speech) that he feels demonstrates an innovation in understanding or an advanced capacity in relation to the current context-at-hand.
- The development in the first order representation motivates an assessment of his new level of proficiency in action from his social domain. He compares this with G of ME, and experiences joy in his personal growth as he updates ME, just as if he were alone.
- He can also compare it with G of OTHER PEOPLE, which lets him get a measure of himself against his understanding of average performance, and G of B, which will afford him a sense of advancement.
- A would like to see confirmation of B’s acknowledgement of the quality of A’s thought. Since the Social Domain specialises in relating people’s thoughts with their actions, he has the perfect hardware for this. When A senses that B’s thought process has been upgraded by A’s innovation, A’s joy resonates from this second order representation (R2) as pride.
- A also enjoys hearing B tell C about the new approach. Let’s say everyone adopts the new approach, and they acknowledge A’s innovation. Their estimation of A is growing, and A knows it to be growing. The level of pride A feels is amplified by the number of R2s he perceives, by how sure he is of them, by the weight he gives them, and by his anticipation of just how positive the impact on their A subconcepts has been (i.e., their estimation of how well A is able to operate within the world).
- Similarly, A can present an action which he subsequently discovers to be indicative of a level of understanding and functioning which is below other people’s expectations (i.e., below B’s average G; below B’s existing G of A; below B’s G of PEOPLE LIKE A; below B’s G of B).
- Sensing a downgrade in B’s evaluation of A, A experiences a pang of shame.
- Increase the number of R2s, and make the negative interpretation more explicit within these representations, and the hormonal response will be greater.
- This predicts that any situation where somebody is confronted with a gap in skill or knowledge will bring about shame. This is not the case.
- Context is king. Hormones are confirmed executively. Just as we inhibit cortisol production when we are being tickled (because we know we are broadly safe), we inhibit it when we do not sense there is any real possibility of other people downgrading their estimation of us.
- To be specific, the effect will not pertain in a situation where cognitive growth is celebrated. Imagine a classroom, where everyone is learning in their own way, and everyone is respected equally. They offer their ideas freely, and everyone gets things wrong every now and again. In this classroom, making a mistake won’t meaningfully downgrade anyone’s perception of how you are able to operate in the world. Even in such a learning utopia, however, it is possible to imagine a child demonstrating such a significant misapprehension that it would lead to them feeling shame. If not that, then falling over, or a toileting accident, should do the trick.
The Social Domain can now draw upon its hormonal response in respect of a broader realm of thought and experience
- Specifically, hormonal responses that intensify and drive mental activity when speedy reappraisal is required (e.g., cortisol), and hormones that celebrate our positive connections with others (e.g., oxytocin) are now ‘on the menu’ for personal events, for updates in the way the child processes information, and for interactions in the course of shared activity.
Another caveat
- I speak of the ‘big integration’ at 18 – 22 months as being the integration of the Social Domain with the overall conceptual-motor-sensory representation. This over-simplifies the reality of the situation in a way that requires clarification.
- The course of integration of the conceptual element with the (social-)motor-sensory element will be simultaneous with and complementary to the course of integration of the social element with the (conceptual-)motor-sensory element. As described above, both types of integration are working towards a unified representation that will refer to goal directed behaviour in a given context under a similar argument structure. The present theory focuses on the integration of the Social Domain in an attempt to simplify the processes at hand.
Why I am doing this
This restates the current theory, developing the way it characterises the Social Domain, discussing reward systems, and detailing how these could be called upon in the course of personal and social forms of discovery. It’s now fit for purpose, which is to account for an observed reduction in the diversity of gut bacteria in ASD, in Alzheimer’s and after Stroke. I will attempt to do that in part 2.
Additionally, significant progress has been made in terms of how ‘context’ is understood within the theory.
Before I go, a quick prediction: I expect that we would observe a reduction in diversity of gut bacteria after Wernicke’s aphasia. I would not expect to see the same kind of reduction after Broca’s aphasia, since these individuals continue to be able to engage the Social Domain in a productive manner during action and interaction (although the cortisol response may predominate over the oxytocin response).
