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why/how task TASK
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The Why/How Task is a neuroimaging task for manipulating and measuring abstract conceptualization of sensory stimuli, especially social stimuli. In the version validated in Spunt and Adolphs (2014, NeuroImage), participants answer attributional (why) and factual (how) questions about visual social scenes using a yes/no manual response. The Why/How manipulation is attentional: Each photograph appears once as the target of a Why question, and once as the target of a How question. A standardized version of this task is available for download here: http://bobspunt.com/whyhow-localizer/. Further information can be acquired in the following paper: Spunt, R. P., & Adolphs, R. (2014). Validating why/how the contrast for functional MRI studies of Theory of Mind. NeuroImage. 99, 301-311.


Alias(es)

yes/no why/how task, why/how localizer

Definition contributed by Anonymous
Phenotypes associated with why/how task

Disorders

No associations have been added.

Traits

No associations have been added.

Behaviors

No associations have been added.


IMPLEMENTATIONS of why/how task
Implementation Name Placeholder
The Why/How Localizer Task is a robust, efficient, and standardized task for investigating social cognition. Participants answer attributional (why) and factual (how) questions about facial expressions (face) and hand actions (hand) shown in naturalistic photographs.
EXTERNAL DATASETS for why/how task
Validating the Why/How contrast for functional MRI studies of Theory of Mind
http://neurovault.org/collections/445
CONDITIONS

Experimental conditions are the subsets of an experiment that define the relevant experimental manipulation.

CONTRASTS

You must specify conditions before you can define contrasts.

why nonsocial minus how nonsocial(edit)
why hand minus how hand(edit)
why face minus how face(edit)
belief minus photo(edit)
why minus how(edit)

In the Cognitive Atlas, we define a contrast as any function over experimental conditions. The simplest contrast is the indicator value for a specific condition; more complex contrasts include linear or nonlinear functions of the indicator across different experimental conditions.

INDICATORS

No indicators have yet been associated.

An indicator is a specific quantitative or qualitative variable that is recorded for analysis. These may include behavioral variables (such as response time, accuracy, or other measures of performance) or physiological variables (including genetics, psychophysiology, or brain imaging data).

Term BIBLIOGRAPHY

The effects of an action's
Gilead M, Liberman N, Maril A
NeuroImage (Neuroimage)
2016 Nov 1
The neural basis of conceptualizing the same action at different levels of abstraction.
Spunt RP, Kemmerer D, Adolphs R
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience (Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci)
2016 Jul
Dissociable neural systems support retrieval of how and why action knowledge.
Spunt RP, Falk EB, Lieberman MD
Psychological science (Psychol Sci)
2010 Nov
Identifying the what, why, and how of an observed action: an fMRI study of mentalizing and mechanizing during action observation.
Spunt RP, Satpute AB, Lieberman MD
Journal of cognitive neuroscience (J Cogn Neurosci)
2011 Jan
Dissociating modality-specific and supramodal neural systems for action understanding.
Spunt RP, Lieberman MD
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience (J Neurosci)
2012 Mar 7
Folk explanations of behavior: a specialized use of a domain-general mechanism.
Spunt RP, Adolphs R
Psychological science (Psychol Sci)
2015 Jun
The Default Mode of Human Brain Function Primes the Intentional Stance.
Spunt RP, Meyer ML, Lieberman MD
Journal of cognitive neuroscience (J Cogn Neurosci)
2015 Jan 20
The neural basis of understanding the expression of the emotions in man and animals.
Spunt RP, Ellsworth E, Adolphs R
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience (Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci)
2016 Nov 1
Validating the Why/How contrast for functional MRI studies of Theory of Mind.
Spunt RP, Adolphs R
NeuroImage (Neuroimage)
2014 Oct 1