Chapter 15 A Neurocognitive Perspective on the Development of Social Decision-Making

In this chapter, we review evidence for the hypothesis that developmental changes in cognitive control and perspective taking are crucial in understanding age-related changes in social behavior. Studies that have examined the developmental roots of prosocial behavior using experimental economic games show that other-oriented concern and a preference for fairness emerge early in development. Continued development of intentionality understanding and strategic behavior in bargaining situations suggest that perspective taking and cognitive control undergo extended development and continue to contribute to changes in social behavior well into adolescence. Functional neuroimaging studies have shown that these behavioral changes are accompanied by an increased recruitment of brain regions implicated in cognitive control (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) and perspective taking (e.g., temporoparietal junction). Together these studies show that developmental changes in cognitive control and perspective taking and their underlying neural circuitry are associated with progressively more strategic thinking and an increased incorporation of other’s perspectives into social decision-making across development. Beginning early in ontogeny humans show levels of sociality that surpass those of other species (Tomasello and Vaish 2013). For example, 1-year-old toddlers help others to achieve a goal by picking up objects that are needed to successfully complete an action without any explicit request or reward (Warneken and Tomasello 2006). Despite the early emergence of key social tendencies, social G. -J. Will (&) B. Güroğlu Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: g.j.will@fsw.leidenuniv. nl B. Güroğlu e-mail: BGuroglu@fsw.leidenuniv. nl G. -J. Will B. Güroğlu Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC), Leiden University Medical Center, P.O. Box 9600, Leiden 2300 RC, The Netherlands © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 M. Reuter and C. Montag (eds.), Neuroeconomics, Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-35923-1_15 293 behavior continues to develop and grow in complexity across childhood and adolescence. Children expand their behavioral repertoire with social tactics, such as teasing and deception, and they increasingly learn to take other people’s feelings into account in their social responses (Burnett and Blakemore 2009b). For instance, whereas preschoolers mainly use deception to their own benefit, school-aged children increasingly start to use deception to protect other’s feelings (e.g., telling ‘white lies’) (Talwar et al. 2007). Developmental changes in social behavior are thought to be supported by developmental changes in general cognitive functions like impulse control and specific social cognitive functions such as the ability to adopt another person’s perspective (e.g., perspective taking). Cognitively controlling impulses is of crucial importance for the regulation of social behavior and continues to develop across childhood and adolescence (Davidson et al. 2006; Rueda et al. 2005). Children acquire a core component of perspective taking when they develop an understanding that other people’s mental states might differ from their own (Wellman et al. 2001). Even though this ‘theory of mind’ emerges before adolescence, more advanced forms of perspective taking needed to act on the understanding of other people’s mental states continue to develop during adolescence (Dumontheil et al. 2010; Selman 1980). This rather protracted development of both impulse control and perspective taking is likely to contribute to developmental changes in social behavior across adolescence and into adulthood. This implication is central in the neurobiological models of social development which posit that continued structural development of the brain is associated with functional changes in brain networks implicated in cognitive control and social cognition, which in turn contribute to developmental changes in social behavior (Blakemore 2008; Crone and Dahl 2012; Nelson et al. 2005). In this chapter, we review evidence for the hypothesis that the gradual development of impulse control and perspective-taking skills are associated with progressively more strategic thinking and an increased incorporation of other’s intentions in social decision-making. In the following sections, we first describe why paradigms from behavioral economics provide valuable tools to study developmental changes in social behavior and its underlying mechanisms (Sect. 15.1). Subsequently, we describe the age-related behavioral changes in these games (Sect. 15.2), followed by evidence linking these behavioral changes to children’s developing abilities to control selfish impulses and to take other people’s perspective (Sect. 15.3). Next, we focus on functional neuroimaging studies showing that social decision-making in adults relies on separable, but interacting, networks in the brain (Sect. 15.4). Finally, we review recent neuroimaging studies demonstrating differential development of the brain networks involved in social decision-making (Sect. 15.5), supporting the proposition that increased intentionality understanding and strategic motivations in social decision-making are associated with developmental changes in these networks. 294 G. -J. Will and B. Güroğlu