Thin-slicing process of preference in EEG

Abstract

“Social skills” are one of the research fields for behavioral and neuronal aspects. However, mechanisms of social skills are still unknown and thin-slicing is one of them. Thin-slicing defines an ability to find patterns based on a narrow slice of experience. Among them, the preference, which shows significant results in a previous study, is the sufficient topic for studying temporal sequence because the preference can divide the acquisition of others’ information and the prediction of their preference. In behavioral aspects, mechanism of the preference can consider the aspects of others and one-self. When a person predicts the preference of others, she/he first considers their own liking and then estimates the other’s preference using perceived difference between the others and oneself. In neural aspects, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and superior parietal lobule are activated when people took either the perspective of others or their-self. Partially brain regions including temporal pole, bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) were only activated when people took the perspective of others. However, we didn’t know what mechanism was made possible to predict other’s preference and temporal information processing as the mechanism is still unknown.

For the analysis of temporal sequence of preference through thin-slicing, electroencephalography (EEG) is the useful tool to measure the temporal information of neural activation. Moreover, the experiment paradigm was composed by acquisition of target person’s information and connecting the information of target person and item with EEG measure. Target person randomly presented 9 others and 1 self-picture. Target item was 10 movie posters and 10 food pictures. Overall, 20 number of women responded with a total of 200 trials.

In the results, there are no response time difference between self-trials and other-trials. However, EEG data revealed that difference of left temporoparietal beta oscillation between self-trials and other-trials show significant correlation (r = -0.8864, Bonferroni corrected, p < 10-6). Subsequently centroparietal alpha oscillation shows the significant difference between other-trials and self-trials until the average time. (Paired t-test, Bonferroni corrected, p<10-6)

Each neural evidence in the present study suggests that the period of connecting information of other people and items are more correlated with individual accuracy than the period of others’ information acquisition. Results indicate the neural explanation of thin-slicing feasibility. Additionally, thin-slicing is composed of minimum of 2 stages, which are self-referential information processing and social information processing before the response. Self-referential information processing occurs faster than social information processing so self-referential information is ranked higher.