The field of social cognition has seen a rapid growth reflected in over 19,000 publications listed in pubmed on that topic, nearly half (8534) in the past 5 years and 457 in 2015 alone, and the year is not half through (retrieving the term “social cognition” from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed on April 21, 2015). Studies range from basic research, including animal models and basic human studies, to clinical investigations, which indicate the translational potential of the construct. It will obviously be beyond our scope to review this literature. Rather, we will outline the general progression of this work, focusing on findings relevant to the RDoC mission of elucidating psychopathology through dimensionally characterized behavioral domains.
