L4 - Social Cognition Flashcards
1
Q
What is naïve psychology?
A
- Infants find people interesting and pay careful attention to them and learn a good amount about them in the first year
- In the first half of the second year, toddlers begin to show understanding intention, joint attention and intersubjectivity
2
Q
What are three properties of naïve psychology?
A
- Invisible mental states: cannot see a desire/belief or other psych concepts
- Psychological concepts are linked to one another in cause-effect relations
- Develop early in life
3
Q
How do we test infants recognition of others intentions? (Puppet grabbing)
A
- Showed infants puppet shows to the point of habituation (two objects in particular positions)
- Switch positioning of objects
- If we understand the goal of an action is about the person and the object they are reaching, we should be surprised (look longer) when we reach for a different object
- New goal trials = hand reaches in same position but for different object
- New path trials = hand reaches to new position to grasp the same first object (relationship is maintained)
- If infants recognise someone’s intention is to retrieve a particular object, should look longer at new goal rather than new trials.
- (5/6mo)Infants will look in new goals trials rather than new path trials showing they know people act in goal directed and intentional ways
4
Q
Emergence of initial action understanding?
A
- Infants have the ability to produce and understand the intention of grasps changes between 3-6 months
- Born with self-consciousness: they are separate to others and can act in ways to accomplish their goals
- Evidence that experience influences understanding
5
Q
Do infants understand the differences between people?
A
- Yes, they have preferences e.g selecting a toy from someone who was holding it who was speaking their language vs not their language
- Accepting cracker from puppet who was nice vs bad at 12 mo
6
Q
What was the sticky mittens interventions?
A
- 3 mo. infants who get to play with the toys and they look very interested but they do not pick up the toy
- Gave some infants some velcro mittens and velcro toys to control where the toy goes by reaching, Getting visual info and physical/motor experience (active condition = produces behaviour themselves)
- Control observational condition where infants saw another hand moving the toy without the infant touching it (he doesn’t produce these movements)
- Do infants who gain experience look like the 5/6 mo. those in the active motoric experience looked at new goals.
7
Q
Do infants recognise the difference between intentional/accidental actions?
A
- By 14 months, infants imitate intentional but not accidental ones
- Cues like language e.g oops and body language
8
Q
What are imitation tasks?
A
- By 18 mo. Infants complete the failed actions of other people e.g trying to pull something apart but the adult slips their fingers
- Infants should pull it apart or imitate the slipping off
- Control was a machine not a human
- The human ones caused the infant to complete the task but the computer ones slipped off
- Machines do not have internal goals so children understand that humans have goals
9
Q
What is progressive social cognitive knowledge? (what is theory of mind and how does this change over the years)
A
- Theory of mind = understanding of how the mind works and how it influences behaviour
- Understand connections between peoples desires and their specific actions but show little understanding that beliefs are influential = 2 years
- 3 yo = Understand that desires and beliefs affect behaviour but have difficulty with false-belief problems
- 5yo = find false belief problems very easy: know how reality and internal beliefs may differ from one another
10
Q
Study for other people’s desire
A
- 18 mo. Olds distinguish between their own preferences and those of an experimenter when sharing food
- Did child give item that child liked/ experimenter liked?
- 14 mo. Old would give them what they wanted but at 18 mo they gave exp. What exp. wanted
- Able to differentiate between own desires and desires of someone else
11
Q
What are false beliefs?
A
- Beliefs are more complex than desires
- Understanding that other people will act in accord with their own beliefs
12
Q
How to measure false-beliefs? (Not sally-Anne)
A
- Child shown box with label e.g plasters
- Asked what is inside the box
- Shown it has something diff inside
- Asked what someone would believe was in the box
- Some kids cannot Inhibit the fact that she knows there is something else in the box
13
Q
What is the Sally-Anne task?
A
- Sally puts her ball in her basket and leaves the room
- Anne moves the ball from the basket to the box
- Sally returns and kids are asked where sally would look for the ball
- Kids know that the ball is in the box and struggle to imagine that sally would not know
- 4-5 yo answered incorrectly but older children were correct
14
Q
What prevents children from passing these tasks?
A
- Language demands are too taxing
- Executive functioning demands are too high - Need to inhibit own knowledge to know others have different knowledge
- Social factors facilitate perspective taking - some are sneaky to siblings etc.
15
Q
What were the different theoretical perspectives as to why children fail these tests?
A
- Core knowledge - Humans possess a brain mechanism devoted to understanding others
- Sociocultural theories - family env influences performance on false-belief tasks
- Info-processing - Understanding other people’s minds places demands an info processing skills so social knowledge increases as info processes increases
