Lecture 17 Flashcards
What kinds of pretending are there?
You can pretend one object is another (which is often thought of as the only type of pretending), you can pretend to be someone else and you can pretend your desires or intentions.
Is teasing a form of pretending?
It can be argued that it is because it involves pretending about the meaning of things as you are often deceiving the other.
What are the similarities and differences between pretending and believing?
Similarities: logical similarities (both pretending and believing are involved when you pretend a banana is a phone because in the moment, you believe it is). Social embeddedness (both are part of social routines).
Differences: the age at which they develop (pretending begins at 18 months, believing begins at 2-4 months when one begins having expectations of events). Cognitive actions (pretending involves decoupling whereas believing involves meta-representation)
When can we begin telling secrets and lies?
When we develop ToM because that is when we are able to separate intentions from actions and beliefs from reality.
What did Lippard’s results find about the common types of deception in adults?
All participants perform some type of deception regularly.
The most common type of deception is outright lies, then distortion but the least common is cheating.
These acts of deception are most commonly motivated by the avoidance of conflict and they aren’t often motivated by manipulation.
When does deception develop?
It’s believed to develop at 4 years of age when they could pass the false belief understanding test. An example of this is the Sally Anne test; people with autism often fail this. The test aims to test for ToM and 3 year olds almost always fail so if they are unable to understand that other people have different experiences then they shouldn’t be able to deceive. However, there is evidence of children verbally deceiving; false blame, false excuses, false stories etc. There has also been evidence of children under one year of age concealing things (hiding a toy), distracting others, attracting others (fake laughter) and creating an image (feigning innocence). At 3 years of age, children begin showing self competence to create an image, for example, that didn’t hurt or false boasting. Fake crying is also extremely common in infants under 4 years of age. Reddy also found that truth and lies emerge in parallel in development. Additionally, there is some evidence of 15 month olds passing the non-verbal false belief task which was communicated via the infant’s gaze length at the correct object. It’s now thought that deception is explained as a gradual understanding and pretending begins as an interpersonal skill rather than intrapersonal.
When did people used to think children were able to pretend?
It used to be thought that children could begin pretending at 18 months because this was when the onset of symbolic representational abilities develop, e.g. Pretending a banana is a phone. It is also when de-coupling abilities develop, e.g. Understanding the banana is a banana but pretending it’s a phone in that moment. Finally, it’s when children begin to have in interest in joining in with others.
