Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience

Young children have advanced social perceptual and reasoning abilities, but it has been difficult to understand the neural representations underlying these abilities due to challenges in acquiring fMRI data from children. Here, we use data collected while children watched a short, engaging movie rich in social information to investigate developmental changes in social processing. We find that an encoding model trained on social and perceptual features of the movie is able to predict neural activity in 5 year olds as well as in adults, but that social information in the movie has more predictive power in adults than in children, particularly in social processing regions along the superior temporal sulcus. These results highlight key changes that occur in the social brain through development, and, for the first time, link these neural changes to stimulus-driven social features in a natural movie.