Cognition + Development - Social cognition - theory of mind, mirror neurons and perspective taking

Question 1

What is social cognition?

Answer 1

The cognitive processes involved in social interaction.
The understanding we develop about other people and the decisions we make about our interactions are both cognitive processes.

Question 2

What are the 3 areas of social cognition?

Answer 2

• Perspective taking
• Theory of mind
• Mirror neurons

Question 3

What are Selman’s levels of perspective taking?

not the actual levels but a description

Answer 3

The ability to see a social situation from another’s perspective.
He believed this was a social development (nurture) not just a biologically-driven cognitive one.
Much of our social functioning relies on this ability.

Question 4

How did Selman propose that the ability to take other’s perspective develops?

Answer 4

He proposed that the ability to take other’s perspectives develops through 5 levels.
The levels show an age-related shift from egocentric view to a broader cultural/moral understanding of other people’s points of view.

Question 5

How did Selman research perspective-taking?

Answer 5

Used a sample of 225 participants aged 4.5 to 32 years of age.
Level of perspective-taking correlated with age.
This was a cross-sectional study (snapshot).

Question 6

What are the 5 levels of perspective taking?

Answer 6

• Egocentric
• Social-informational
• Self-reflective
• Mutual
• Societal

Hi all Becky here, I forget this one alot so I came up with an inventive acronym

MESS’S

(pronounced like messes)

hope it helps
Love Termite

Question 7

What are the characteristics of the egocentric level of perspective taking?

Answer 7

• 3-6 years

- Children may recognise that the self and others can have different points of view, but frequently confuse the two

Question 8

What are the characteristics of the social-informational level of perspective taking?

Answer 8

• 6-8 years
• Children understand that different perspectives may result because people have access to different information
• Will not understand differences in opinion if information is the same, so not truly able to imagine a different point of view

Question 9

What are the characteristics of the self-reflective level of perspective taking?

Answer 9

• 8-10 years
• Child can now view things from someone else’s perspective in addition to their own and understands others are able to do this too
• But they will only be able to consider one point of view at a time

Question 10

What are the characteristics of the mutual level of perspective taking?

Answer 10

• 10-12 years

- Child can consider two people’s points of view at the same time

Question 11

What are the characteristics of the societal level of perspective taking?

Answer 11

• 12+ years
• Individuals understand that decisions are now made with reference to social conventions as understanding another’s point of view may not be enough to ensure agreement

Question 12

How did Selman test children’s perspective-taking?

Answer 12

Selman used dilemmas based on scenarios to test children’s perspective-taking.
A dilemma is a problem offering two possibilities, neither of which is unambiguously preferable.
One of the scenarios he used is the Holly Dilemma.
From this research he identified 5 distinct levels of perspective-taking.
He found that these correlate with age; higher levels enable better social functioning.

Question 13

What is the Holly Dilemma?

Answer 13

Holly loves to climb trees
One day she falls but does not hurt herself
Her father is upset and asks her to promise never to climb another tree
Holly promises
Later, her friend’s kitten is caught up in a tree
Something needs to be done right away or the kitten may fall
Holly is the only one who can climb trees well enough
She remembers her promise to her father

Will her father understand why she climbed the tree?
Should she be punished?

Question 14

How did egocentric children answer the Holly Dilemma?

Answer 14

“He will understand because he loves kittens too, he’ll be happy”.
If the child loves kittens, they think everyone will love kittens.

Question 15

How did social-informational children answer the Holly Dilemma?

Answer 15

“If Holly showed him the kitten he might change his mind”.

Will not understand differences in opinion when information is the same.

Question 16

How did self-reflective children answer the Holly Dilemma?

Answer 16

“He will understand because he can put himself in her shoes and understand how she feels so won’t punish her”.
Can understand Holly’s perspective, but not more than one, and so they don’t understand the father can have a different view to Holly.

Question 17

How did mutual children answer the Holly Dilemma?

Answer 17

“He may feel differently to Holly, because she knows by climbing she is putting herself in danger and he is worried about her. He will think she shouldn’t have broken her promise but maybe should have gone for help. Holly will still think she has done the right thing”.
The child can now see both Holly’s and her father’s perspective.

Question 18

How did societal people answer the Holly Dilemma?

Answer 18

“Her father will think that the right thing to do is to save the animal’s life because all lives, even animal ones, have value. He therefore won’t punish her”.
Understanding another’s point of view may not be enough to ensure agreement.

Question 19

What did Selman believe perspective-taking was vitally important for?

Answer 19

Vitally important for all social behaviour, particularly pro-social behaviour.
Children with poor perspective-taking skills had more difficulty with relationships and were less popular.
Positive correlation: between perspective-taking skills and pro-social behaviour
Negative correlation: between perspective-taking skills and aggression

Question 20

What support is there for the progressive nature of Selman’s levels?

Answer 20

2 years after Selman’s original study 48 boys were re-interviewed: 40 had made gains in their level of perspective-taking; none had regressed.
3 years after that 41 boys were re-interviewed: most had made gains in their level of perspective-taking; none had regressed or skipped a stage.
These findings support Selman’s theory that children pass through a series of levels of perspective-taking as they mature.

Question 21

What support is there for experience being an essential part of the process?

Answer 21

Study looked at the development of perspective-taking skills in relation to parental style.
Children whose parents encouraged them to take the perspective of the victim, showed higher levels of perspective-taking.
If it was just a biological process, parental style wouldn’t speed it up. Parents who encouraged perspective-taking had children who had accelerated their own perspective-taking, suggesting this parenting allowed this to happen.

Question 22

What more evidence is there that shows perspective-taking skills is not just a biological process?

Answer 22

Study compared Chinese adults with American adults and the Chinese adults did significantly better than their matched American partners in perspective-taking exercises.
This shows it is not just a biological process because the Chinese and American young people are biologically extremely similar, but their cultures are very different.
In particular, Chinese culture is collectivist and emphases other people, whereas the US is individualist and emphases the self over others.

Question 23

Why is application a strength of perspective-taking research?

Answer 23

If perspective-taking can be developed by experienced then there are applications for schools and prisons.
Social skills training programmes are used in therapeutic and prison settings to help develop perspective-taking and improve people’s social skills and ultimately their quality of life.
Prisoners could meet with victim’s families “restorative justice” to understand how they were affected and seeing their perspective of the crime.

Question 24

Why may Selman’s theory be incomplete?

Answer 24

Not all research shows that having perspective-taking skills is associated with pro-social behaviour; research in 2009 with bullies found that they showed no impairments in their perspective-taking.
This suggests that Selman may not be right all the time, or their may be unknown non-cognitive factors involved in determining pro-social behaviour such as empathy and emotion which he ignored.

Question 25

Why is the fact that Selman’s research has low temporal validity a limitation?

Answer 25

The explanation does not take account of children’s complex social worlds in modern society eg. family, nursery, step-families, cultural differences which are very different from when he did his studies 50 years ago.
Social role-taking may be different now because children have much more complex social interactions from a young age.
Therefore modern children may progress more quickly through the levels.

Question 26

What is theory of mind?

Answer 26

The recognition that another person has different thoughts and feelings.
The ability to attribute mental states - beliefs, intents, desires, emotions, knowledge, to oneself and to others and to understand that others have them that are different from oneself.

Question 27

What is lack of theory of mind?

Answer 27

Also called ‘mind blindness’
The inability to read others’ minds
Put forward as an explanation for autism spectrum disorder
Lack of theory of mind is theorised to be due to a failure of an innate, biological Theory of Mind Mechanism (ToMM)

Question 28

What tests can be used to show when a child lacks theory of mind?

Answer 28

• False belief tests eg. Sally-Anne test
• Sees if a child can understand that someone can hold a belief which you know to be false
• See is they understand that they have a separate mind with its own beliefs which can be different to your own

Question 29

How did Baron-Cohen develop a ‘false belief’ test?

Answer 29

• Baron-Cohen developed this test to research lack of theory of mind in children with autism
• 3 groups of participants: children with autism, children with Down’s syndrome with lower IQs than the other groups, and ‘normal’ children

Question 30

Why was there a group of children with Down’s syndrome?

Answer 30

To show that it wasn’t testing IQ.

Also to control for having any diagnosis in childhood.

Question 31

What happens in the Sally-Anne test?

Answer 31

Sally puts her ball in a basket and leaves
Anne moves the ball into a box
Sally comes back
Children are asked: where will Sally look for her ball?

Question 32

Children watched Anne move the ball and were then asked ‘where is the ball?’ - why were they asked this question?

Answer 32

To show that they understood where it had been and where it ended up. Prevents a wild guess.

Question 33

What were the findings of the Sally-Anne test?

Answer 33

85% of the ‘normal’ and Down’s groups correctly answered the question as basket.
Only 20% of the children with autism answered correctly.

Question 34

What do the results of the Sally-Anne test show?

Answer 34

• Theory of mind is impaired in most children with autism (80%)
• Children with Down’s syndrome scored the same as the ‘normal’ group, meaning it was not because of IQ
• This is not a universal impairment in autism (20% passed and have a working theory of mind)
• Also, 15% of ‘normal’ group had impaired theory of mind

Question 35

What test is used for adults to test theory of mind?

Answer 35

• The Eyes Task
• Adults with autism could often pass the Sally-Anne test; they used reasoning and experience to work out the correct answer
• The Eyes Task tests whether adults with autism could ‘read’ the mental state of other people from their eyes; that is whether they showed an understanding that the appearance of the eyes would be different depending on the person’s state of mind

Question 36

What were the findings of the Eyes Task?

Answer 36

Autism group:
- Mean score: 16.3
- Range: 13-23
'Normal' group:
- Mean score: 20.3
- Range: 16-25

Question 37

What do the findings of the Eyes Task tell us about autism and ToM?

Answer 37

• Autism does less well on the task suggesting impaired theory of mind
• At least one person with autism scored higher than the mean for the normal group which shows theory of mind cannot be a full explanation for autism

Question 38

What are the strengths of Theory of Mind?

Answer 38

• There is lots of evidence to support ToM as an explanation for autism (Sally-Anne, Eyes Task)
• There is neuroscientific evidence to support the idea of ToMM (evidence from brain scanning research suggests areas of brain are activated when ToM tasks are being performed, shows theory is innate
• ToM has applications to real life - lead to interventions to improve the functioning of people with autism eg. TV show The Transporters (helps children with autism to learn what emotions are associated with certain facial expressions)

Question 39

What are the limitations of Theory of Mind as an explanation for autism?

Answer 39

• Findings of Eyes Task show that ToM is an incomplete explanation for autism: it is not a universal lack of theory of mind, some were able to score highly
• Eyes Task lacks ecological validity - in real life, you get to see a person’s whole face, their body language, their tone of voice, you get a wider range of emotions of choice and you get longer than 3 seconds to look

Question 40

What are mirror neurons?

Answer 40

Neurons in various parts of the brain that activate when a person/monkey performs an action and also when another individual performs the same action.
This means an observer’s brain experiences the actions of another as if it were their own.

Question 41

What happened in Rizzolatti’s research on mirror neurons?

Answer 41

• They discovered that when a monkey saw a person or another monkey performing an action, some of the same neurons activated in the motor areas of the monkey’s brain as when that monkey performed the task themselves
• The researchers tested what they had seen by getting the monkey’s to perform an action and noted which neurons fired
• When the monkey observed a person doing the same action, they saw that the same neurons fired
• This can explain how motor behaviour is learnt. We can learn skilled behaviour from observing others

Question 42

What do we encode?

Answer 42

Intention as well as action; why a person is doing what they are doing.
Our mirror neurons fire in response to seeing someone cry, laugh etc, and by experiencing the firing of these mirror neurons we also become aware of their intentions.
This understanding of intention through mirror neurons may be an essential part of development of a theory of mind and perspective-taking.

Question 43

What are the role of mirror neurons in social cognition?

Answer 43

Researchers believe that social cognition develops due to mirror neurons.
They say we can experience emotion as if we are the person we are observing. This is the beginning of empathy.

Question 44

What did VS Ramachandran believe?

Answer 44

He says that the development of mirror neurons has allowed us to excel in social relationships, and that this may be the evolutionary basis for our success as a species.
Imitation > intention > empathy

Question 45

What is human research on mirror neurons like?

Answer 45

Humans research into mirror neurons usually uses fMRI or EEG.
There are differences in the neuron activity of areas of the brain (not individual neurons) which can be measured.
Activity at rest is compared to activity when watching someone else perform a function or performing it yourself.
This has provided evidence that, like monkeys, we have mirror neurons.

Question 46

How is human research carried out for mirror neurons?

Answer 46

In human EEG research, mu desynchronisation is measured. Mu refers to a type of brain wave.
When the brain is at rest, neurons in the sensorimotor cortex fire in synchrony (creating mu waves).
When a person performs or observes an action, the firing of these cells becomes desynchronised.
This desynchronisation leads to reduced mu power, compared to when the cells were firing together.
Because this reduced power is seen both when an individual performs and when they observe an action, it has been taken as evidence of a human mirror neuron system.

Question 47

What is the broken mirror theory of autism?

Answer 47

Explains autism as due to faulty mirror neurons system - suggested by babies later diagnosed with autism mimic adults less than other babies do.
This difference in mirror neuron activity may explain later social communication difficulties in autism.

Question 48

What study shows autism linked to mirror neuron dysfunction?

Answer 48

Studied 10 EEG recordings of males with autism who were considered ‘high functioning’ and 10 gender-matched control subjects.
Individuals with autism showed a dysfunctional mirror neuron system: their mirror neurons responded only to what they did and not the doings of others.

Question 49

What is a limitation of the theory of the role of mirror neurons in social cognition?

Answer 49

There is still a lot we do not know about mirror neurons. There is very little direct research at the individual neuronal level in humans because EEG is not invasive.
Invasive research is unethical on humans. We don’t really know if it is the exact same neurons, could just be the same areas of the brain.
Basing a theory on animal studies is a limitation because our brains and biologies are not the same. Intentions may be different and we don’t know whether monkeys have empathy and think the same.

Question 50

Why is the fact that there is support from invasive human studies a strength of the role of mirror neurons in social cognition?

Answer 50

A study published in 2010 reported recordings from single neurons with mirror properties in the human brain.
Recordings were made from the brains of 21 patients who were being treated for intractable epilepsy. The patients had been implanted with intracranial depth electrodes to identify the focal point of seizures for potential surgical treatment.
Electrode location was based solely on clinical criteria; the researchers, with the patients’ consent, used the same electrodes. The researchers found a small number of neurons that fired or showed their greatest activity both when the individual performed a task and when they observed a task.

Question 51

Why is the fact that there is support for the idea that mirror neurons are involved in social cognition in humans a strength?

Answer 51

Many experiments using fMRI and EEG have shown that certain brain regions are active when people experience an emotion and when they see another person experiencing an emotion.
Researchers have shown that people who are more empathic according to self-report questionnaires have stronger activations both in the mirror system for hand actions and the mirror system for emotions, providing more direct support for the idea that the mirror system is linked to empathy.
However, fMRI and EEG only identify a general area of activity, we can’t be sure it’s exactly the same neurons firing. Self-report data may not be valid due to social desirability bias.

Question 52

Why is the fact that there is evidence that Ramachandran may be right in thinking we have evolved to have mirror neurons, and they are therefore innate a strength?

Answer 52

Meltzoff and Moore found that babies as young as 3 days old imitate facial expressions.
This supports Ramachandran’s evolutionary theory because at 3 days of age, the babies were too young to have learnt this behaviour which suggests there is an innate, biological mirror neuron system.