L5,6,7 - Social Cognition

Question 1

What is self-recognition and what is the test used for?

Answer 1

• Self-recognition & sense of self can be
  
  • Physical identity
  • Individual identity
  • Understand our point of view
• Potential building block for theory of mind
  
  • Global sense (ToM) → Others are different from you
    
    • Other may be driven by different goals and intentions
  • Narrow sense (ToM) → To be able to represent oneself as a thinker
• Mirror/Mark test is used – Children have mark put on cheek, put in front of mirror and if they touch the mark on their face they are realizing it is their reflection you are seeing

Question 2

What is affective empathy and how can it be measured through contagion?

Answer 2

• Affective empathy
  
  • I feel the way you feel
  • I resonate
  • I don’t necessarily understand why you feel that way
• Idea of mirror neurons – neurons fire when you see emotions being portrayed, causing mimicking
  
  • This is not the sole explanation/cause of empathy
  • Represents the idea of contagion, through other concepts such as yawning
• Research support for contagion
  
  • Campbell and de Wall (2014)
    
    • Study asked how often chimpanzees engage in contagious yawning and how it’s impacted by familiarity and species
    • Found that the more comfortable the chimpanzees felt with the species, the more likely they are to yawn back
      
      • Outgroup chimpanzee and baboon are potentially threatening so don’t mimic behaviour as much
      • Romero et al. (2014) – Perhaps a social mechanism but not a very sophisticated one

Question 3

What is cognitive empathy and how is it shown through helping?

Answer 3

• Cognitive empathy
  
  • Response it not just the mirror of other
  • Demonstrates that the others state is different from the self
• Research support
  
  • Warnken et al. (2007)
    
    • Semi-free ranging chimpanzees helped an unfamiliar human to the same degree as human infants did, irrespective of being rewarded
    • Chimpanzees share crucial aspects of altruism as do humans
      
      • e.g. Signalling/reaching that he wanted stick. Chimpanzee handed stick back after watching two humans fight over stick

Why do they help?

• Intentional helping?
• Reaching associated with reward? No, both children and chimpanzees receive item when adult seems to be reaching for it
• Hierarchical bonds – delayed reward/reciprocation? No, same behaviour with unfamiliar humans

REPLICATED WHEN ANOTHER CHIMPANZEE NEEDED HELP GETTING ACESS TO FOOD. INTENTIONAL HELPING WITHIN SPECIES

Question 4

Can infants understand goals and intentions?

Answer 4

• Gergley et al. (1995); Csibra et al. (1999) - Mummy ball and baby ball experiment
• A = Experimental group where ball movement has = RATIONAL
  
  • Both have same indirect path
• Gergley et al. (1995); Csibra et al. (1999) - Mummy ball and baby ball experiment
• A = Experimental group where ball movement has = RATIONAL
  
  • Both have same indirect path

1. Six and nine month olds are habituated to one of two conditions (A or B)
   
   1. In A, jump of the smaller ball can be judged to be instrumental
2. In test trial infants see wither an old action (c) or novel action (d)
   
   1. D can be interpreted as rational as the obstacle is no longer there
      
      • Difference between groups is the placement of the black rectangle
      • By 9 months, children start to develop understanding of intention and somethings can have their own goals/intentions
      • When new action second, don’t look too much as know the goal
        - In experimental condition - movement is either goal directed or instrumental
        - Test trial - Infants either see old action first or the new action
        - Test question - In which condition did infants see the most attention recovery (look at for longer)
        - New action is rational is goal is to get to mummy ball
        - If infants understand the goal they should look at the irrational pathway for longer as it is a surprise - so the old action is surprising
        - Novel action should be most interesting if don’t understand goal direction
        - In experimental group - very big attentional recovery for old action
        - Not much going on for 6 month olds (compared to nine months)
        - 9 month olds understand that baby ball is trying to get to mummy ball

Question 5

What is the difference between a goal and intention?

Answer 5

• Showed semi-free ranging chimpanzees two conditions
  
  • Man walking along - one condition his hands are full so pushes button with foot - in other conditions he just pushes with his foot with no reason
• If chimpanzee has understanding of goal-directedness - turn on button with hand in picture a but copy and use foot in image b as there is no other reason why they would be doing that differently

Question 6

What abilities do infants have from 9 to 15 months of age?

Answer 6

• Young infants (<6 months) can’t demonstrate their own interest and attention to outside entities
• Evidence emerges in the latter half of their first year of life when objects become part of social interactions with adults
  
  • Very social interactions face to face (e.g. smiling, giggling)
  • Doesn’t mean that they realize the other person has thoughts feelings or goals that may be different from their own
  • The lack of referential communication (shared attention, following of gaze) suggests that infants <6 months old do not appreciate that the other person has their own ‘mind’

Question 7

What are the different types of attention?

Answer 7

• Sharing attention (triadic interactions)
  
  • Joint engagement (are they doing task together or just independently at the same time)
• Following attention
  
  • Skills of attention following
    
    • Gaze-pointing
    • Point-following
  • Skill of imitation
    
    • Instrumental action
    • Arbitrary Action
  • Directing attention and behaviour
    
    • Declarative gesture
    • Imperative gesture

Question 8

How do the different types of attention show us how capable children are between 9 to 15 years?

Answer 8

• By 15 months infants are passing tests for all the types of attention
• Looking at the 12-13 month range we can see how ability changes

Question 9

What is social referencing and how do we test for it?

Answer 9

• When infants are less than 12 months, they encounter a novel object they sometimes look towards a parent and sometimes respond to the object in accord with the affect displayed by the parent
  
  • Visual cliff paradigm – Sorce et al. (1985)
    
    • Cross visual cliff when shown encouragement by parent but not when a fearful face is shown
    • 11 to 12 months look for referral as it’s a source of information
  • Infants appreciate that parents can supply information in the form of an emotional appraisal about novel objects
  • Infants spontaneously use such information from a third party or referee to resolve their own uncertainty

Question 10

What are the pre-requisites for social referencing?

Answer 10

• Infant needs to be able to decode signal
• Infant must understand referential quality of information
• Infant must appreciate the potential for social communication of information

Question 11

How does informing and sharing in social communication work at 12 months?

Answer 11

• Liszkowski, Carpenter and Tomasello (2007)
  
  • Testing if infants update you if a change occurs
    
    • Do they use social gestures to inform others or share mental attitudes
    • All infants experience all E behaviours for neutral or positive conditions
    • Infants also point more when E expressed a positive emotion
    • The authors conclude that these two findings correspond to
      
      • Informing (point)
      • Sharing (commune)
    • Has to have the social context of being comfortable with communicators
    • Updating experiment (infant)
      
      • Interact positively with one toy, someone else puts toy in cupboard, adult doesn’t see but baby sees, adult comes back, point to cupboard (12-14 months) & don’t point if adult sees the move
      • Shows they are pointing to update the parent rather than signalling that they just want the toy

Question 12

How does an infant compare to apes in social communication at 12 months?

Answer 12

• Food competition (Apes) – Hare et al. (2006), Leis et al.(2006)
  
  • When competing for food, chimpanzees take into account what others can and cannot see & hear
  • Evidence that chimps will try to influence what someone can see or hear
  • Chimpanzees, know what other know in the sense that they keep track of what another has just seen a moment before (Call and Tomasello, 2008)
  • Brauer et al. (2007)
  • Three conditions
    
    • Visible 1 – One piece of food on top of the bucket, visible to all
    • Hidden 1 – One piece of food inside bucket, only visible to subordinate
    • Hidden-Visible – One piece of food on top and one inside bucket (only visible to subordinate)
  • Procedure
    
    • Training
    • Experiment: Subordinate allowed out first
  • Results
    
    • Subordinate chimp gets more when only he/she can see where it is
    • When only one piece of food is visible the subordinate chimp selects the hidden piece more often
    • Chimp is behaving in a way that it understands what the other chimp can or cannot see.
    • Studies with chimps and human infants are similar and have similar limitations
• Three conditions
  
  • Visible 1 – One piece of food on top of the bucket, visible to all
  • Hidden 1 – One piece of food inside bucket, only visible to subordinate
  • Hidden-Visible – One piece of food on top and one inside bucket (only visible to subordinate)
• Procedure
  
  • Training
  • Experiment: Subordinate allowed out first
• Results
  
  • Subordinate chimp gets more when only he/she can see where it is
  • When only one piece of food is visible the subordinate chimp selects the hidden piece more often
  • Chimp is behaving in a way that it understands what the other chimp can or cannot see.
  • Studies with chimps and human infants are similar and have similar limitations

Question 13

What are the limitations/questions to consider about primate research?

Answer 13

• Appropriate task
• Testing environment
• Different motivation
• Human exposure
• Personality
• Dominance hierarchies
• Rewarding paradigms
• No language (same problem until children are about 2 ½ years old

Question 14

What is false belief understanding and how is it tested?

Answer 14

• False-belief task is based on false-belief understanding which is the understanding that an individual’s belief or representation about the world may contrast with reality
  
  • Onishi & Baillargeon (2005)
    
    • All infants (15 months) see C (model person in experiment) put watermelon in green box. C is wearing a visor so you can’t see her eyes
    • All infants see C put their hand in the green box as if reaching for the watermelon
    • Create four conditions of true belief green, true belief yellow, false belief green, false belief yellow
    • Infants look longer at something new/wouldn’t expect so in the false belief condition they stare significantly longer at the box if C reaches in the box opposite to what they would expect (where the watermelon is)

Question 15

Do apes track false-belief understanding?

Answer 15

• You can’t use looking time so use 2 chimps in competition
• Understand whether another chimp is informed or uninformed
• Move food while dominant chimp can’t see it
• Does the subordinate expect the dominant to go for the food where he saw it or where it is now?
  
  • They don’t appear to track false belief, they only distinguish between an informed and uninformed competitor but not between an informed and a misinformed competitor (Hare et al., 2001)

Question 16

What are the different ways of explaining early social cognitive understanding?

Answer 16

• Trevarthen & Hubely
  
  • Innate infant intersubjectivity (two subjects and we can understand one another)
  • Secondary intersubjectivity (incorporate objects into their interactions)
• Tomasello & Carpenter
  
  • “Shared Intentionality”

Question 17

What is Tomasello’s idea of shared intentionality?

Answer 17

• Believed human cognition was very different from Apes
  
  • This is due to shared intentionality where humans can collaborate with others in collective activities
  • Shared intentionality is the mechanism put forward to explain the achievement, it is very similar to secondary intersubjectivity
• There are domains that are present in apes in an individualistic way that humans can transform via shared intentionality
  
  • Gaze following → Joint Attention
  • Social manipulation → Cooperative learning
  • Group activity → Collaboration
  • Social learning → Instructed learning

Question 18

Do chimps have the same intentionality as humans in gaze following → Intentionality?

Answer 18

• Behne et al., 2005, Call & Tomasello, 2005
  
  • Apes are good at following “head” gaze – They don’t have trouble following directionality from pointing cue but can’t grasp that partners in a conversation share a joint attentional frame
    
    • E.g. In a game of hide & seek, if the adult points to a bucket, an infant assumes it may reveal something whereas chimps don’t see the significance

Question 19

What are some crucial distinctions to consider with shared intentionality?

Answer 19

• Belief versus ignorance
• Coordination versus collaboration
• Implicit versus explicit ToM
• Chimps can’t understand if another chimp is misinformed, only ill-informed

Question 20

What is involved in false-belief understanding? What is the belief-desire framework?

Answer 20

• Bartsch & Wellman (1995)
  
  • Young children understand the subjective nature of desires (e.g. you may want an apple and I may not)
    
    • Desires = “ a subjective connection between a person and an objective state of affairs”
    • At age 3 or 4 people start to understand differences in what people want
  • A subjective understanding can be contrasted with an understanding of mental states as representations
    
    • Thinking, that object is an apple, involves construing B as representing an apple in his mind
  • Belief-desire framework (Belief trumps desires)
    
    • Beliefs can explain why two people with identical desires might do different things
      
      • g. Look for the apple in a different place
    • Desires can account for why two people with the same beliefs might do different things
      
      • e.g. One person wants the apple so goes to the fridge and the other doesn’t as they don’t want the apple
    • Children work with a desire psychology – sometimes they don’t understand why what they want can’t be fulfilled

Question 21

What is the classic false-belief test?

Answer 21

• The child on the right knows the child on the left likes apples (desire)
• He also knows that the left child believes there to be an apple (belief)
• To demonstrate false-belief understanding, the child on the right needs to be able to think separately about the real state of the world & represented state of the world

1. Subject and story protagonist share a common understanding of the ‘true’ state of the world (there is an apple in the basket)
2. Subject (only) sees a transformation in the true state of the world (apple is replaced with banana)
3. Protagonist returns and his belief no longer matches the true state of the world. The protagonist has a false-belief concerning the baskets contents
   - We can now establish whether the subject understands that the protagonist has a false-belief via direct or indirect actions
   - Once the child has acquired the ability to represent mental states they move from being a desire psychologist to a belief-desire psychologist

Question 22

What does ToM tell us about human understanding? (Baron-Cohen? Happe?)

Answer 22

• Human’s understand (or perceive) that behaviour is not guided by objective reality (Apes do)
• Instead behaviour is guided by what we want AND what we think
• People’s actions are based on their intentions, which balance their desires and their beliefs – complex claim from ToM
• Baron-Cohen et al., 1985
  
  • Assumed autism could be caused by the lack of ToM – concluded that they can’t hold in the other person’s represented state of the world, so cannot understand their point of view, so have no motivation to communicate
  • Matched neurotypical children, children with down syndrome and then with autism on mental age
  • ASD have a much lower pass rate, but still have those who passed the Sally-Anne task so how can a lack of ToM explain autism fully?
• Human’s understand (or perceive) that behaviour is not guided by objective reality (Apes do)
• Instead behaviour is guided by what we want AND what we think
• People’s actions are based on their intentions, which balance their desires and their beliefs – complex claim from ToM
• Baron-Cohen et al., 1985
  
  • Assumed autism could be caused by the lack of ToM – concluded that they can’t hold in the other person’s represented state of the world, so cannot understand their point of view, so have no motivation to communicate
  • Matched neurotypical children, children with down syndrome and then with autism on mental age
  • ASD have a much lower pass rate, but still have those who passed the Sally-Anne task so how can a lack of ToM explain autism fully?

Question 23

What is advance ToM?

Answer 23

• Advance ToM tests = Eclectic mixture of social stories that require some form of second order reasoning
  
  • Second order false belief (ASD < Typical)
  • Strange stories task (e.g. take into account a misunderstanding) (ASD < Typical)
  • Irony, faux pas, display rules, white like, joke, pretence, figure of speech (ASD < Typical)
• ## Since ASD children were found to be in deficit in these tasks also, further research was done

Question 24

What is Scheeren et al., (2013) research on theory of mind?

Answer 24

• Large sample of HFASD with a typical IQ compared against typically developing children in…
  
  • Second order FB, Display rules, Double bluff, Faux Pas, Sarcasm
• Found that HFASD are not bad at explicit ToM at all = Once they can pass the FB test, they are as equally as good as TD children, it just takes longer
  
  • Is ToM anchored to a developmental variable like verbal ability?

Question 25

What is Astington & Jenkins (1999) research on advance ToM?

Answer 25

• Investigated role of linguistic competence
• N = 59 children
• Tested at three time points, approximately 3 years, 4 months
• Linguistic competence à Tests of syntactic and semantic competence in both the receptive and expressive domains
• Theory of mind (ToM) à False belief and appearance/reality distinction tests
• There was continuity in LC and ToM over time
• Linguistic competence, all measures, was strongly correlated with children’s theory of mind (composite score)
• Hierarchical regression analyses showed that linguistic ability at earlier time points predicted theory of mind at later time points, the reverse relationship did not hold
• There was some evidence that children’s syntactic ability was of primary importance for later theory of mind

Follow up:

• Milligan, Astington & Dack (2007)
  
  • Meta-analysis of 104 studies
    
    • Only one study found a negative association between linguistic competence and FB understanding
    • Therefore, maybe explicit FB requires language but what about implicit – is there a conceptual relationship between ToM & language
    • Perhaps those with autism have a limit on implicit ToM

Question 26

What is Senju et al. (2009) study on advanced ToM?

Answer 26

• Same was watermelon task but with puppet to measure FB
• Measuring implicit FB, how long they look at box
• ASD do not pass the implicit false-belief task
• Lack of implicit, explain why it takes longer for explicit ToM to develop