Development of social cognition Flashcards
What is social cognition?
Describes the mental processes we use when engaged in social interaction.
What is social perspective-taking?
Our ability to appreciate a social situation from the point of view of other people. This underlies much of our normal social interaction.
Understanding what someone else is feeling / thinking i.e. social cognition.
What is an example of social perspective taking?
Piaget’s three mountains task – physically understanding what someone else can see.
What did Piaget believe?
Piaget believed in domain-general cognitive development, believed physical and social perspective-taking would occur hand-in hand.
What did Selman propose?
Selman proposed that development of social perspective-taking is a separate process. This is a domain-specific approach to explaining cognitive development.
What did Selman (1971) do and find?
30 boys and 30 girls took part in the study, 20 aged four, 20 aged five and 20 aged six years. All were individually given a task designed to measure role-taking ability. This involved asking them how each person felt in various scenarios. One scenario featured a child called Holly who has promised her father she will no longer climb trees, but who then comes across her friend whose kitten is stuck up a tree. The task was to describe and explain how each person would feel if Holly did or did not climb the tree to rescue the kitten.
A number of distinct levels of role-taking were identified (see below). Selman found that the level of role-taking correlated with age, suggesting a clear developmental sequence.
What’s a key feature of Selman’s stages?
Key feature of the stages is progression from being egocentric and unaware of perspective to considering a number of perspectives and drawing conclusions in line with social norms. NB stages are approx.
What did Selman do?
Propose 5 stages of social cognitive development which were based on children’s responses to perspective-taking scenarios at different ages.
What did Selman believe?
Believed that development through these stages is based on maturity and experience.
What are the 5 stages of development?
Stage 0 (3-6 years) – Egocentric
Stage 1 (6-8 years) – Social informational
Stage 2 (8-10 years) – Self-reflective
Stage 3 (10-12 years) – Mutual
Stage 4 (12 years+) – Social and conventional system
What’s Stage 0 (3-6 years) – Egocentric?
Child in this stage cannot reliably tell difference between own emotions and those of others.
They can identify emotional states in others but do not understand what social behaviour might of caused them.
What’s Stage 1 (6-8 years) – Social informational?
A child can now tell the difference between their own point of view and that of others.
Usually focus on only one of these perspectives.
Assume that the different point of view is because others have different information.
What’s Stage 2 (8-10 years) – Self-reflective?
A child can put themselves in the position of another person and fully appreciate the other’s perspective.
Can recognise that others do the same
Can only take on one point of view at a time
What’s Stage 3 (10-12 years) – Mutual?
Children are now able to look at a situation from their own and another’s point of view at the same time
What’s Stage 4 (12 years+) – Social and conventional system?
Personal decisions are now made with reference to social conventions.
i.e. young people are able to see that sometimes understanding others viewpoints isn’t enough to reach an agreement, which is why social convention is needed.
