![Valerie E. Stone](http://Valerie-Stone.socialpsychology.org/2403/photo.jpg)
Valerie E. Stone
- Media Contact
I am no longer an academic researcher. I got tenure in 2006, and once I didn't need to prove that I could get tenure anymore, decided that I wanted to do more to help those with traumatic brain injury (TBI), who had been the subject of my research for so long. I am in the process of respecializing in clinical psychology, working to help those with brain injury.
Sleep deprivation and insomnia are problems for people with TBI (or for academics, for that matter!), and often serve to make people more impulsive, more likely to rely on stereotypes, and less likely to make good decisions. I work to help those with insomnia get consistent, restorative sleep without drugs, using specific techniques from behavioral psychology. I hope to be licensed in Colorado soon - I graduated with my Respecialization in Clinical Psychology in Dec. 2017.
My research in social neuroscience looked at the nature of human social intelligence, from both applied and theoretical perspectives.
Social competence: My applied research focused on the importance of assessing social judgment in determinations of legal competency, e.g., in deciding whether to appoint a financial conservator for someone with a head injury. Neuropsychologists are often called on to provide assessments in such cases, yet often do not have good tools to assess social judgment. With colleagues, I have developed several measures to fill this gap.
Theoretical perspectives: I combined perspectives from the study of human evolution and from cognitive neuroscience in studying the social brain. I am particularly interested in the evolution of the frontal lobes and their role in social intelligence.
Place attachment and interpersonal attachment: I have also focused on how people form place attachments. The interpersonal attachment system is common to mammals, and depends on the neuropeptide oxytocin. Territoriality, or attachment to place, is far more ancient evolutionarily, and depends on neuropeptides called nonapeptides, from which oxytocin may have been derived in evolution. My research has found that there are strong similarities in the dimensions of people's emotional attachments to places and to people: safe haven, secure base, separation protest, and proximity seeking.
Primary Interests:
- Applied Social Psychology
- Emotion, Mood, Affect
- Evolution and Genetics
- Neuroscience, Psychophysiology
- Nonverbal Behavior
- Person Perception
- Social Cognition
Research Group or Laboratory:
- Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Laboratory
Journal Articles:
- Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Stone, V. E., Jones, R., & Plaisted, K. (1999). Recognition of faux pas by normally developing children and children with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29, 407-418.
- Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Stone, V. E., & Rutherford, M. D. (1999). A mathematician, a physicist and a computer scientist with Asperger Syndrome: Performance on folk psychology and folk physics tests. Neurocase, 5, 475-483.
- Gregory, C., Lough, S., Stone, V.E., Erzinclioglu, S., Martin, L., Baron-Cohen, S., & Hodges, J. (2002). Theory of mind in patients with frontal variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease: Theoretical and practical implications. Brain, 125, 752-764.
- Hargrave, R., Maddock, R. J., & Stone, V. (2002). Impaired recognition of facial expressions of emotion in Alzheimer's disease. Journal of Neuropsychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences, 14(1), 64-71.
- Pinsker, D., Stone, V. E., Pachana, N. A., & Greenspan, S. (2006). The Social Vulnerability Scale for Older Adults: A validation study. Clinical Psychologist.
- Reed, C. L., Stone, V. E., Grubb, J. D., & McGoldrick, J. E. (2006). Turning configural processing upside down: Part and whole body postures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 67-83.
- Reed, C., Stone, V. E., Bozova, S., & Tanaka, J. (2003). The body-inversion effect. Psychological Science, 14(4), 302-308.
- Slaugher, V., Stone, V. E., & Reed, C.E. (2004). Perception of faces and bodies: Similar or different? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(6), 219-223.
- Stone, V. E. (2006). The moral dimensions of human social intelligence: Domain-specific and domain-general mechanisms. Philosophical Explorations, 9(1), 55-68.
- Stone, V. E., Baron-Cohen, S., & Knight, R. T. (1998). Frontal lobe contributions to theory of mind. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10, 640-656.
- Stone, V. E., Baron-Cohen, S., Stone, V. E., Baron-Cohen, S., Calder, A. C., Keane, J., & Young, A. W. (2003). Acquired theory of mind impairments in individuals with bilateral amygdala lesions. Neuropsychologia, 41, 209-220.
- Stone, V. E., & Gerrans, P. (2006). Does the normal brain have a theory of mind? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(1), 3-4.
- Stone, V. E., & Gerrans, P. (2006). What's domain-specific about theory of mind? Social Neuroscience, 1(3-4).
Other Publications:
- Stone, V. E. (2005). Theory of mind and the evolution of social intelligence. In J. Cacciopo (Ed.), Social neuroscience: People thinking about people. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Stone, V. E., Cosmides, L., Tooby, J., Kroll, N., & Knight, R. T. (2002). Selective impairment of reasoning about social exchange in a patient with bilateral limbic system damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(17), 11531-11536.
Courses Taught:
- Evolutionary Approaches to Human Behavior
- Neuroscience for Psychologists
- Social Neuroscience
- Phone: +1 303 669 8528
Valerie E. Stone
PO Box 270194
Littleton, Colorado 80127
United States of America