The excellent article of @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social proposes three core categories underlying human understanding of social relationship. In a commentary, we explore how infants come to discover such categories in the first place. I recommend both readings 😎 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New research in 'Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders' shows that attitudes toward social touch play a central role in how autistic adults experience touch, influencing perceptions of pleasantness, appropriateness, and erogeneity. bit.ly/48V81Pb @mmellon.bsky.social #AcademicSky #EduSky

Centrality of Touch Avoidance in Social Touch Experiences in Autism - Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Purpose Social touch is ubiquitous in social species, and it represents an important driving force of human development. Mounting evidence suggests that social touch may be perceived and processed differently in autistic and neurotypical individuals. For instance, feelings of erogeneity, pleasantness, and appropriateness of social touch throughout the whole body and in different contexts were reported to be overall lower by autistic adults, compared with a non-autistic sample, and that participants’ sex modulated these feelings differently in the two groups. Here, we expand on these findings by taking a multidimensional approach and exploring individual traits that might be linked to social touch processing differences in autism. Methods We implemented exploratory network analysis and moderated parallel mediation analyses considering measures of attitudes towards social touch, non-social touch sensitivity, social anxiety, and alexithymia. We investigated how these individual dispositions might impact group differences in social touch erogeneity, pleasantness, and appropriateness, and evaluated how sex assigned at birth might moderate these relationships. Results Both exploratory and confirmatory analysis approaches converged in showing that one’s attitude toward social touch represents a central disposition contributing to lower levels of social touch erogeneity, pleasantness, and appropriateness in autistic individuals. Moreover, these mediation relationships were stronger in autistic male participants. Conclusion These results pave the way for a deeper, more targeted investigation of the structure and dy namics underlying the relationships between social touch processing differences in autism and specific individual dispositions. Moreover, they bring about new evidence on how the sex of the receiver might influence such social touch experiences.

bit.ly

Led by master's student Macy, with collaboration from @kerenmaclennan.bsky.social and @mmellon.bsky.social. @durhampsych.bsky.social. 1. Autistic adults engage in social touch as frequently as non-autistic adults, with similar satisfaction. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Autistic adults prefer social touch less but engage just as much: The impact of social context, relationship type, sensory responsivity, and psychological factors - Macy Tsz Wing Li, Manuel Mello, Ker...

Autistic people face touch-related challenges, yet the factors influencing these difficulties are not well understood. We developed a novel instrument to captur...

journals.sagepub.com

AND 🗣️ new paper out in JADD: "Centrality of touch avoidance in social touch experiences in autism". In collaboration with the @scnl-agliotilab.bsky.social. 👉 rdcu.be/eH3H5 The second of the series aimed at elucidating how autistic adults perceive social touch.

👀 Interacting or non-interacting: that is the research question... 📢 New pre-print out on social interaction perception in preverbal infants: osf.io/preprints/ps.... In collaboration with @Emilie Serraille, @jrhochmann.bsky.social and @ljubapi.bsky.social. 🧵 An animated thread 👇 #neuroskyence

‼️ Preprint alert ‼️ Led by master's student Macy, with collaboration from @kerenmaclennan.bsky.social and @mmellon.bsky.social. Link: osf.io/preprints/ps... 1. Autistic adults engage in social touch as frequently as non-autistic adults, with similar satisfaction.

You wouldn’t drink from a glass if a fish is IN the glass, or would not grab a chair if one is already sitting ON it. How do we represent relations between things? And how does it relate to object and action recognition? New paper out osf.io/preprints/ps... @mmellon.bsky.social

I am honoured to have received the Doctoral Thesis Award from La Sapienza University, accompanied by the publication of my thesis by Sapienza Università Editrice, available in open access here: doi.org/10.13133/978...

Well hello Bluesky. For my first (proper) post, here's my take on the IIT brouhaha and some of the wider issues involved, out now in Nautilus. It's called The Worth of Wild Ideas (and The Right To Be Wrong). nautil.us/the-worth-of...

The Worth of Wild Ideas

Even if a leading theory of consciousness is wrong, it can still be useful to science.

nautil.us

Are you an early career affective scientist (broadly defined)? Be sure to check out our discord channel! Our aim is to create a supportive community where we share research, resources, jobs (academic and others), etc. We have 150+ members and growing -- join us! #AffectSci discord.gg/caGd3XTN

Check out our latest preprint on Research Square: "The neuroscience of human empathy for pleasure: Protocol for a scoping review" www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-2... #Neuroscience

Today's read: "Within-participant statistics for cognitive science" by Ince et al., 2022. #Neuroskyence | #CogSci | #brain

Today's read: "Living on the edge: network neuroscience beyond nodes" by Betzel et al., 2023. #Neuroskyence | #CogSci | #brain

If you are new here, don't miss the #neuroscience channel! We're one of the largest science channels on blue sky - lots of fun content and people there. Tags are #neuroscience and #neuroskyence. bsky.app/profile/did:...

New challenge: A daily read, for at least one month, of a Neuroscience article not necessarily related to my field of research. (Clearly, to sum to those I "need" to read 😂.) Today's: "The socio-temporal brain: connecting people in time" by Schirmer et al., 2016. #Neuroskyence | #CogSci | #brain

The MIT Press announces the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, a paradigm shift in open access reference works #Neuroscience #Psycholinguistics #Psychology

The MIT Press announces the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, a paradigm shift in open access ...

The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science will equip readers with essential tools to grapple with the profound implications of cognition and intelligence in today's society.

mitpress.mit.edu

What is, in your opinion, the best (contemporary) book giving an overarching view of brain functioning relating to complex behavior? #Neuroskyence | #CogSci | #PsychSciSky |