Early social cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
– the ability to understand other people
– Ability to discriminate between people (social agents) and objects
– Use and interpretation of social signals that help in understanding
of others (e.g., eye contact, engagement and participation in
dyadic and triadic interactions)
– Ability and function of symbolic communication
5 steg nödvändiga för successful reaction i sociala situationer
- Stage 1: the detection of socially relevant organisms
- Stage 2: identification of socially relevant organisms
- Stage 3: assessment of the locus of attention and direction of eye gaze of the
observed individual in relation to the infant - Stage 4: detection of any object-directed attention or object engagement by the
observed individual - Stage 5: infant is able to infer the observed goal and/or prepare an appropriate
response (e.g. establish contact, offer response, etc.)
Vad för information är nyfödda partial to?
human faces, voices, eye contact.
– Prefer for face-like configurations
– Detect faces with direct vs. averted gaze
Bonus: även foster attraheras mot ansikten. Third trimester fetuses orient toward face-like light
configurations
Vad händer vid 3 månader?
- Visual acuity gets increasingly better allowing the infant to focus on
specific parts of the faces such as the eyes and mouth - Sensitivity to social contingency during dyadic interactions (e.g. still face
paradigm) - Increasing initiation of dyadic interactions
- Increasing sensitivity to triadic interactions (person-object-person)
Vad händer vid 6 mån?
- Ability to detect the focus of another
person’s visual attention - Growing sensitivity to ostensive cues
– Eye contact
– Infant-directed speech
– Gaze following (looking where others
are looking)
Vad är joint attention, vilka 2 typer finns det och när utvecklas det?
Koordinering av uppmärskamhet med nån annan. Responding to joint attention och Initiating joint attention. 9-12 månader.
Intentionalitet
- Starting at around 9 months
infants begin to be sensitive to
situations in which agent’s
action is intentional rather than
what the end result is
Moduralist theories
mental state attributions are driven by
innate (domain specific) stimulus cues that activate a prewired triggering mechanism whose output identifies the future goal state that is represented by the intentional mental state of the agent(theory/theory)
According to this theory,1 year olds already take the mentalistic stance (agent has a desire,
they hold a belief, there is an expectation of a goal)
Simulationist theories
others mental states are realized through the
process of identification and/or imitation; infants simulate (internally generate)
intentional states, these are assessed and attributed, by analogy to another
person(“like me”)
According to this theory, 1 year olds already take the mentalistic stance (agent has a desire,
they hold a belief, there is an expectation of a goal)
Teleological stance
infants apply non-mentalistic, reality based
action interpretational system that considers action, goal state and situational constraints by making reference to the relevant aspects of reality as represented by the child when she observes
the action unfold in its situational context.
1 year olds take the teleological stance
Theory of mind
Ability to make inferences about others’ representational states (beliefs,
desires, emotions, intentions) and to predict behaviour according to those
states
* Allows us to understand that what we believe is true (true beliefs) and what is
true in reality may be different from what we believe (false belief
False-belief ascription
Förståelsen att någon annan har en falsk trosföreställning (t.ex unexpected transfer test)
Explicit ToM and it’s domain-general correlates
Positive performance on false belief tasks due to belief reasoning shift that occurs between 3-5 years
* Domain-general correlates
– Executive functioning : working memory, inhibition, shifting
▪ Some executive functioning is necessary to pass explicit ToM tasks
▪ Lack of EF skills may influence performance and results in failure on these tasks
– Language
▪ Exposure to mental state language (frequency and accuracy) as well as quality of the conversational experience; not to direct
attention to mental states but by scaffolding a mature understanding of social situations
Implicit ToM
- Spontaneous or indirect measures of sensitivity to other’s mental states through fast, unconscious and efficient activation of an early developing “mindreading” system
– Preferential looking
– Habituation/dishabituation
– Anticipatory looking
– Violation of expectation
T.ex Infants look longer when observing events that are inconsistent with the actors true or false beliefs
Vad finns det för 4 teorier om förhållandet mellan explicit och implicit theory of mind?
Mentalistic account (aka. Conceptual continuity)
Young infants are capable of mental state ascriptions but explicit tasks are too difficult (require working memory capacities, inhibitory capacities, response – processing load) (Theory/Theory or Simulation Theory)
Minimalistic account
Infants pass implicit ToM tasks because of other low-level processes (perceptual novelty; statistical learning); understanding of beliefs requires
language
Developmental Enrichment account
* Link between implicit fb understanding in infancy and explicit performance at
preschool age independent of language or executive functioning abilities
* Consistent with conceptual continuity account uses longitudinal data as support
* ToM development affected by caregiver/ early experiences
Dual system account of belief ascription
System 1 : fast, implicit, inflexible and early developing system would track someone’s
true and false beliefs in limited range of scenarios
System 2: takes effort, explicit, flexible system supports attribution of beliefs in a wide range of scenarios
