Using iLLUSIONS to boost SOcial cognition – Sollusions

Humans have developed amazing abilities aimed at supporting inter-individual interactions (i.e. social cognition) that are essential for many daily life activities. There are many obstacles that can interfere with the functioning of social cognition. In anxious or conflicting situations for example, humans typically tend not to go beyond their own perspective. Numerous clinical conditions are also characterized by altered social cognition. On the basis of recent, very promising studies, the main goal of our interdisciplinary project is to use visual illusions to boost social cognition in healthy participants and patients. In addition to being widely appreciated by people, exposure to illusions help to develop the awareness that our sensory systems do not capture reality. Pioneer works even suggest that this doubt generalizes to more cognitive levels, allowing humans to develop less biased beliefs about others. For these reasons, illusions represent a promising medium to develop to broad audience prosocial interventions. To date however, the psychological mechanisms influenced by the embodied experience of visual illusions remain largely unknown.
In order to shed light on these mechanisms, our project will (1) investigate the nature of the psychological constructs that are influenced by the exposure to visual illusions, (2) test for consequences of this exposure at the level of social interactions, and (3) validate our interventions in patients at the early stages of the schizophrenia spectrum. Our intervention is really innovative as it targets the same objectives than currently in use rehabilitation programs but relies on low-level mechanisms which represent a substantial advantage for two main reasons. First, it can be easily used for bottom-up rehabilitation purposes, even in patients with important deficits. Second, its methodological advantage is that therapists are not training patients to respond to the diagnostic tests, contrasting with most remediation programs.