8- Social-Cognitive Development Flashcards
What is Theory of Mind
The capacity to attribute mental states (such as desires, beliefs, knowledge) to others in order to predict or explain behaviour.
What are some developments of social cognition
- Visuo-spatial perspective taking
- False-belief understanding
- Appearance-reality
- Situational determinants of emotion; belief-based emotion,
Advanced Theory of Mind
- Second-order false-belief (e.g., double bluff, Happe, 1994)
- Self-conscious awareness and knowledge of social ‘rules’ (fau pas understanding)
- Understanding sarcasm, irony and double entendre humour
- Silent films task (Devine & Hughes, 2013)/Strange Stories (Happe, 1994)
Unexpected Contents False-belief
A child must attribute a false belief about the contents of a prototypical container to someone else.
Unexpected Transfer False-belief
A character leaves an object in one location and while they are outside the room the object is transferred to a new location
Belief based emotion task
Emotions caused by what something thinks is the case, even if what they think conflicts with reality
Second order false-belief
Child is required to determine what one character in a pictured scenario thinks regarding another character’s beliefs
Faux pas understanding
Children understanding a significant or embarrassing error or mistake made by another
Problems with the measures of ToM
- Complexity of language demands
- Implicit vs explicit ToM, ToM in infancy
- Single item at a single point in time
- Appropriate reflection of how ToM is used in everyday situations
- Memory burden
Classic Theories of Theory of Mind
- Theory Theory, Gopnik and Wellman 1992
- Simulation Theory, Harris 1989
- Modularity Theory, Leslie 1991
Mirror neurons
A class of brain cells that fire not only when an individual performs an action, but also when the individual observes someone else making the same movement Play an important role in the anticipation of action, but themselves do not provide an explanation of the complex problems of conceptualising human understanding
Localisation of function
Neuroimaging studies can help reveal if there is a neural correlate of forms of thinking
Individual differences in Theory of Mind
Wellman, Cross & Watson, 2001
- Dramatic increase in FB understanding between 3 and 5
- 50% of children pass FB at 44 months
- 75% pass at 56 months
Theory of Mind can be used to support
- Positive behaviours
- Antisocial behaviours
When examining bullying and Theory of Mind, which scores the highest mean cognitive, emotion and social cognition
Bully then Outsider
Reinforcer lowest
Explanations of autism
-Top down, cognition-> perception
Deficit in innate modules
-Bottom up, perception-> cognition
Differences in identification with others, differences in attention to social stimuli
Different developmental pathways, differences in visual systems
Inconsistencies in social experience due to prolonged brain plasticity
Children with ASD
Impairments in ToM often reported in young children
Failed all second order false-belief understanding in Baron-Cohen study 1989
Older children had no significant difference compared to neurotypical children
Genetic epistemology
The development of knowledge
Basic features of Piaget’s theory
Emphasis on adaption
Children actively construct knowledge
Objective knowledge is not gained by just recording external information but in its interactions of the subject and objects
What knowledge is abstracted from our experience
Physical properties of objects -> physical knowledge
Our actions upon the objects -> logical mathematical knowledge
Schemas
Early schemas involve internalised action
Organised behavioural response to objects
Later schemas can involve intellectual activity
Principles of adaptation
- Assimilation: incorporating new objects into pre existing schema
- Accommodation: modifying or reorganising mental structures to a new object/event
What is equilibration
A sequential pattern of self regulation, achieving balance between maintaining existing schemas and modifying them to deal with new info
Principles of organisation
- How to integrate all your schemas
- How might you put them together to achieve certain aims
Stages of development
- Sensorimotor
- Preoperational
- Concrete operational
- Formal operational
Sensorimotor
Birth-2 years Understands world through senses and actions Object permanence Object concept isn’t mature yet Mental representations
Preoperational
2-7 years
Understands world through language and mental images
Increase in mental representations
Difficulty in manipulation of mental representations
Recognition that others have points of view that may differ from ones own
Learning to engage in decentration
Concrete operational
7-12 years
Understands world through logical thinking and categories
Applying operations to concrete objects
Child has limited ability to reason with abstract representations
Formal operational
12+
Understands world through hypothetical thinking and scientific reasoning
Applying logical operations to abstract intangible entities
Object permanence
Recognition that objects exist in the absence of any sensory perception
Mental representations
- Allows full understanding of object permanence
- Allows deferred imitation
- Allows pretend play
- Beginnings of language
Limitations to Piaget’s theory
- Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognised
- Piaget’s theory is vague about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth
- The stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is
- Piaget’s theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development
Children more competent than Piaget recognised
- Object permanence in young infants
- Contextually meaningful tests of visual perspective-taking
- Understanding of others false belief by age 5
Basic theoretical features
Mind as a computer
Cognitive development arises from children gradually
Surmounting their processing limitations
- Expanding the amount of info they can process at one time
- Increasing their processing speeds
- Acquiring new strategies
What remains consistent from working memory in childhood
Organisation of working memory
Executive functioning
- Relates to efficiency of info processing
- Inhibiting inadvisable actions
- Enhancing working memory
- Cognitive flexibility
- Can be trained and predicts achievement in later life
For optimal storage and retrieval of info
- Rehearsal
- Organisation
Siegler Overlapping Waves model
Changes in strategies do not occur in a sequence of qualitatively different stages
Basic theoretical features of Vygotsky’s social cultural theory
- The relationship between social activity and individual thinking underpins cognitive development
- Children as teachers and learners
- Children as products of their culture
Social scaffolding in ZPD
- Task focused
- Provide appropriate degree of support
- Enables child to think at a higher level than they would by themselves
What is intersubjectivity
The mental understanding that people share during communication
Educational applications
- Lack of mainstream application despite potential, but lots of examples in interventions
- Reciprocal teaching
- Collaborative learning
