Childhood: socioemotional development

Question 1

Social cognition

Answer 1

a subfield of psychology that examines how people process, store and apply information about people and social situations

Question 2

socio-cognitive development

Answer 2

the study of how infants and children reason about people’s beliefs

Question 3

epistemic trait

Answer 3

things that are directly related to a person’s knowledge base
- expertise
- reliability/accuracy
- consensus
- not personality, testimony, appearance, familiarity…

Question 4

reliability and trustworthiness

Answer 4

• children are sensitive to peoples different areas of expertise when making selective social learning decisions
• 3 and 4 years olds were asked to observe unfamiliar people, one knew the names of the tools but didnt know how to use them , and the other could fix but not name. 4 year olds wanted the fixer when 3 were less likely to.
• this gets better over time

Question 5

familiar vs reliable

Answer 5

• 3 year old would choose familiar over reliable
• 4-5 look for reliability
• preference for epistemic traits increase over time

Question 6

theory of mind

Answer 6

• ability to attribute mental states such as knowledge, beliefs and desires to oneself and others and to understand that other people can have knowledge, beliefs and desires that differ from ones own
• assume that everything they know, you must also know

Question 7

sally anne task

Answer 7

sally puts a ball in a box and leaves and then anna moves the ball to a basket. sally will come back and look for it in the box.
false belief: children will assume that other children will know to look for the ball in the basket because they know its there.
- at 5 they can understand that she will look in the box even though they know its not there.

Question 8

theory-theory

Answer 8

• revisions that children make to their theories about the world
• seek out causes about the behaviors of themselves and others
• get better at revising these false ideas of the world

Question 9

executive functioning

Answer 9

theory tasks are too cognitively txing, so as executive functioning improves so do theory of mind tasks

Question 10

brain development

Answer 10

improvement of theory of mind based on maturation of the brain
- eeg test as evidence
- autism

Question 11

Lying in children

Answer 11

lying in children gets better as theory of mind develops
- ex: a musical toy was placed behind a child and they were told not to peek. younger children tended to confess to peeking, while older ones lied
- better on false belief test = better liar

Question 12

white lies in childhood

Answer 12

• develops when theory of mind does at 4-5 years old
• needs tom because need to know if their lie is believable
• imposed through socialization
• cinsidered imperative for succesful emotional maturity
• 85% of 4 and 5 year olds lied about dot on adults face
• 50% correct adults misconception
• authoratative parents made more white lies (permissive was less)

Question 13

intergroup biases and stereotypes

Answer 13

• children were told a short story of someone who was really smart and asked to choose which one from pictures was the protagonist.
• by age 6 girls are less likley than boys to believe that member of their group are really smart and shy away from novel activities hat are said to be for children who are really smart.

Question 14

social essentialism

Answer 14

belief that certain social categories (gender/race) mark fundamentally distinct kinds of people
- could contribute to stereotypes and prejudice
- hearing generic language about a novel social category led both preschool-age children and adults to develop essentialist beliefs about a category