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Psychology
Selective impairment of reasoning about social exchange in a patient with bilateral limbic system damage
, 
*Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Program, University of
Denver, 2155 South Race Street, Denver, CO 80208-2478;
Center for Evolutionary Psychology, University of
California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106; Department of
Psychology, Young Hall, University of California, Davis, CA 95616;¶
Department of Psychology and the Helen Wills Neuroscience
Institute, Tolman Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720;
and ||Martinez Veterans Medical Center,
Martinez, CA 94553
Communicated by Roger N. Shepard, Stanford University, Stanford, CA and approved June 12, 2002 (received for review December 24, 2001)
Social exchange is a pervasive feature of human social life. Models in evolutionary biology predict that for social exchange to evolve in a species, individuals must be able to detect cheaters (nonreciprocators). Previous research suggests that humans have a cognitive mechanism specialized for detecting cheaters. Here we provide neurological evidence indicating that social exchange reasoning can be selectively impaired while reasoning about other domains is left intact. The patient, R.M., had extensive bilateral limbic system damage, affecting orbitofrontal cortex, temporal pole, and amygdala. We compared his performance on two types of reasoning problem that were closely matched in form and equally difficult for control subjects: social contract rules (of the form, "If you take the benefit, then you must satisfy the requirement") and precaution rules (of the form, "If you engage in hazardous activity X, then you must take precaution Y"). R.M. performed significantly worse in social contract reasoning than in precaution reasoning, when compared both with normal controls and with other brain-damaged subjects. This dissociation in reasoning performance provides evidence that reasoning about social exchange is a specialized and separable component of human social intelligence, and is consistent with other research indicating that the brain processes information about the social world differently from other types of information.
To whom requests for materials or reprints
may be addressed. E-mail: vstone{at}du.edu or cosmides{at}psych.ucsb.edu. ** Manktelow, K. & Over, D., First International Conference on Thinking, 1988, Plymouth, U.K.
Stone, V. & Baron-Cohen, S., Cognitive
Neuroscience Society, March 1994, San Francisco.
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