Lecture 4: Development of social cognition

Question 1

What’s in a mind?

Answer 1

• Full of desires, knowledge, intentions, beliefs
• All of these have to be inferred, cannot be observed (not concrete)
• Children come to understand each of these at different ages

Question 2

Understanding Action Intentions

Answer 2

• 6 months: Emergence of understanding others’ intentions (come to understand the intentions behind people’s actions)

Study: Violation of expectation paradigm
* 6 month olds were habituated to a hand reaching for a ball that was beside a doll
* Test:
- Some infants shown a hand reaching for the ball
- Other infants shown a hand reaching for the doll
* Which display do infants look at longer

Question 3

Understanding Action intentions (results)

Answer 3

• Results: Infants who saw the hand reach for the doll looked longer at the display than infants who saw the hand reach for the ball –> the kids are looking longer for the hand reaching for the doll - because they are expecting it to reach for the ball (habituated).
• Suggests that infants understand the intentions behind action

Question 4

Understanding Action Intentions as Goal Directed (follow-up)

Answer 4

• Results: Even when the position of the ball and the doll were reversed, infants who saw the hand reach for the doll still looked longer at the display than infants who saw the hand reach for the ball
• Shows that the infants (6 months old) understood that the original action was directed at a specific object, not at a specific location

Question 5

Understanding Action Intentions as Uniquely Human (mechanical claw instead of hand)

Answer 5

• Results: Infants only look longer at goal-directed reaches if performed by a human, but not when a mechanical claw “reaches” for the toy
• Shows that the infants understand that only humans can have intentions. Mechanical claw does not have a mind so cannot have intention.

Question 6

Understanding Intentions vs. Accidents

Answer 6

**9 month olds **can distinguish between intentional and accidental actions
* More frustrated when adult purposely doesn’t give them a toy vs. when an adult tries to give a toy, but accidentally drops
* understand what is intentional and accidental

Question 7

Importance of Understanding Intention

Answer 7

• Step towards understanding the minds of others
  
  • But cannot yet understand the psychological motivations behind intentions (don’t understand why would someone reach for this object).
• Enables joint attention

Question 8

Joint Attention

Answer 8

• The shared attention of 2 people on the same object/event AND awareness that they are paying attention to the same thing (both are aware that the other is looking at it)
• Emerges between 9-12 months old
• Difficulty with joint attention is an early indicator autism spectrum disorder

Question 9

Joint Attention and Learning

Answer 9

• Joint attention is critical for learning from others (learning is difficult if a kid can’t engage in joint attention)
  
  • Especially language development and social communication

Question 10

Importance of Understanding Intentions

Answer 10

• Step towards understanding the minds of others
• Enables joint attention
• Enables imitation

Question 11

Imitation

Answer 11

• Voluntarily matching another person’s behaviour
• Emerges between 9-12 months old (period also called Cognitive revolution - because a lot of cognitive developments/milestones)

Question 12

Innate Basis of Imitation?

Answer 12

• Nativists argue that newborns’ matching of sticking tongue out is evidence that imitation is innate.
• BUT…
• Newborns don’t match any other behaviour, except sticking tongue out
• Sticking tongue out is a common, more general newborn response to stimuli they find interesting (they do this often, and when others are not even present) –> indicator of general interest.
• Suggests that newborns’ matching of adult’s sticking tongue out is coincidental and simply an indication of interest

Question 13

Imitation and Learning

Answer 13

• Imitation is critical for observational learning
  - One of the most fundamental ways that children learn most things
• Not passively imitating, but actively interpreting actions to figure out what to imitate
• bobo doll: only immitated if parent did not get punished (nothing or got reward). DID not immitate if parent was punished.

Question 14

Imitating Intentional Actions

Answer 14

• Study: 12 month olds observed an adult turn on a light with her head
  
  • Hands occupied: forced to use head
  • Hands free: freely choosing to use her head
• What does the infant imitate?

Question 15

Imitating Intentional Actions

Answer 15

Results: Depends what adult they observed.
* Saw Hands occupied: turned on light using hand (infer that the only way they could turn on light)
* Hands free + uses head: turned on light using head (infer there must be a reason for turning it on with head so copied it)

Conclusions
- Shows that children imitate the goals of actions, not actions themselves
- More generally, implies that children are actively thinking about what they are observing
- Not passive!

Question 16

Summary so far

Answer 16

• Understanding others begins at 6 months with the ability to understand the intentions of others’ actions
• Understanding intentions enables the emergence of joint attention and imitation at 9-12 months
• Joint attention and imitation open new possibilities for learning from other

Question 17

The theory of mind

Answer 17

• Ability to attribute mental states (ie:desired,beliefs) to oneself and others, and to understand that other people can have desires, knowledge, and beliefs that differ from one’s own

Question 18

Understanding Others’ desired

Answer 18

• Understanding that desires lead to actions emerges around 1 year of age
• Study: Violation of expectation paradigm
  * 12 month olds saw an experimenter look at one of 2 stuffed kittens with vocal and facial expressions of joy
  * Screen descended and when raised, the experimenter was holding one of the kittens
• Does the child understand which kitten the experimenter wants to hold?
• Which scenario did the child look at longer?

expect the child to look at bottom display (unexpected)

Question 19

Understanding Others’ Desires (results)

Answer 19

Results:
* 12 month olds look longer when the experimenter was holding the other kitten vs. the one they were originally looking at
* Suggests that 12 month olds understand that desires are linked with actions
* 8 month olds look at the 2 displays for similar amounts of time
* Suggests that they don’t understand that desires are linked with action

Question 20

Distinguishing the Self from Others

Answer 20

• Fully understanding others’ desires requires the appreciation that other people are separate from the self
• Born with implicit sense of self as separate from others:
  - Rooting reflex: if someone brushes their cheek, infant will turn in direction of touch and open their mouth
  - If infant touches their own cheek, will not turn in that direction (some kind of understanding that own body is seperate from someone elses body)
• More explicit sense of self develops later:
  
  • 18-24 month olds pass “rouge test”
  • Recognize themselves in a mirror

Question 21

Rouge test

Answer 21

• self-recognition test
• red mark is placed on child forehead
• < 18 months: child looks behind the mirror for the child it sees
• by 18 months: child notices the red dot and the link between the image in the mirror and themselves. Touches their own forehead = realize its them.

Question 22

Understanding Others’ Desires (2yrs old)

Answer 22

• Being able to distinguish self from others enables better understanding of others’ unique desires
  
  • 2 year olds can predict a character’s actions based on the character’s desires, rather than based on their own desires
  • Younger children use own desires to predict a character’s actions

Question 23

Kids understanding

Answer 23

Can kids understand that adults can be wrong?
- study presented kids with objects they were already familiar with
- 2 adults: one said the correct object name, the other said wrong object name

Question 24

Evaluating Others’ Knowledge (3 yrs old)

Answer 24

• 3 year olds understand what people know and what they don’t know
• Study: Watched 2 adults name familiar objects
  
  • One adult named objects correctly and the other adult named the objects incorrectly
  • Then, child learned names for new objects

Question 25

Evaluating Others’ Knowledge (3 yrs old - results)

Answer 25

• Results: more likely to learn a new word from adult who previously named familiar objects correctly.
• Shows that 3 year olds make judgments about others’ reliability

Question 26

Understanding Expertise (study)

Answer 26

• 3-4 year olds understand that specific people may have specific knowledge in certain areas
• Study: Observed 2 strangers interacting with tools and broken toys
  
  • Adult 1: Knew the names of tool but not how to fix the toys
  • Adult 2: Knew how to fix the toys but not the names of the tools
  • Children turned to different adults depending on what they wanted to achieve
    
    • Went to Adult 1 if wanted to know the names of new things
    • Went to Adult 2 if wanted to fix a broken object

Question 27

Implications for Learning

Answer 27

• Children are selective in who they choose to learn from
  - Learn from reliable others
  - Learn specific knowledge from people that they perceive to be experts in that topic
  - They are figuring this out all from observation (no one is telling them this)

Question 28

Understanding Knowledge Leads to Action

Answer 28

• 3 years olds: Emergence of rudimentary understanding that beliefs’ lead to actions
  
  • When asked why a person is behaving in a certain way, will answer by making referenceto beliefs
  • E.g. Q: “Why is Matt looking for his dog?”; A: “He thinks the dog ran away”
• But understanding of others’ beliefs is limited in important ways
  - Difficulties understanding that people will act according to their beliefs, even if they’re false

Question 29

False-Belief Problem

Answer 29

• Tasks that test a child’s understanding that other people will behave consistent with their knowledge/beliefs even if a child knows this knowledge/beliefs are false
• Most 3 year olds fail
• Most 5 year olds pass
  
  • Correct responses indicate a developed theory of mind

Question 30

Example: Smarties Task

Answer 30

• 3 year olds fail: Incorrectly think that other children will know that there are pencils inside the box + say that they always knew there were pencils in the box (they can’t distinguish that what they know, hard time understanding that knowledge can be shifted).
• 5 year olds pass: Correctly say that others will think there are Smarties inside the box

Question 31

Social Cognition Development Timeline

Answer 31

• 6 months: understanding others’ action intentions
• 9-12 months: joint attention and imitation
• 1 year old:basic understanding others’ desires
• 1.5 -2 years old: explicit sense of self indicated by passing Rouge test
• 2 years old: greater understanding that others’ desires can be different from one’s own (andy’s colour crayon question)
• 3 years old: sensitive to whether someone is knowledgeable in a topic or not + basic understanding that beliefs lead to action but fail at false-belief tests
• 5 years old: more fully developed theory of mind and pass false-belief tes

Question 32

Stability of Social Cognition Skill

Answer 32

• Children that are better able to understand goal-directed action at 6 months also show better performance on false belief tasks at 4 years
• Suggests that individual differences in social cognitive skills are stable

(similar to the motor milestone theory)

Question 33

Explaining development in theory of mind 1) Nativist theory

Answer 33

• Theory of mind module: Innate brain mechanism devoted to understanding other people that matures over the first 5 years of life
• Evidence:
  
  • Newborns have an inherent interest in faces (we’ve seen that this is not really the case - top-heavy stimuli)
  • Culturally universal developmental trajectory of theory of mind
  • Temporoparietal junction and autism spectrum disorder

Question 34

False-Belief Tasks Around the World

Answer 34

• Across countries, most 3 year oldsfail (14% pass rate) and most 5 year oldspass (85%) false belief tasks
• Doesnt matter where from - indicates strong biological basis

Question 35

Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ)

Answer 35

• Brain area consistently active across different theory of mind tasks (processing complex social information)
  
  • Different brains areas are involved in other complex cognitive process

Question 36

TPJ and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Answer 36

• Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle with theory of mind
  
  • Find false-belief tasks very difficult even as teenagers
  • Children with ASD have atypical sizes in TPJ and activity in TPJ (some paper find increase and some find decrease in gray matter)

Question 37

2) Improvements in Executive Functioning

Answer 37

• False belief tasks require executive functioning skills
• Evidence that as executive functioning improves, so does theory of mind
  
  • r = 0.4
• Implies that individual differences in executive functioning are responsible for individual differences in theory of mind (need to have well developed working memory, cognitive flexibility).
• As they get older, theory of mind improves
• Strong correlation between executive functioning skills and theory of mind

Question 38

3) Contribution of Social Interactions

Answer 38

• Interactions with other people are critical for the development of theory of mind
• Evidence:
  
  • Caregivers’ use of mental state talk is correlated with preschooler’s theory of mind ability
  • Mental state talk: Statements and questions that refer to other people’s “minds” using words such as “think”, “know”, and “want” (they want, they believe…)
  • Preschoolers that have siblings (vs. no siblings) are better at theory of mind tasks
  • Especially if sibling is of a different gender (tend to be more different from them - lots of practice interacting and understanding someone that is different than them)

Question 39

Implications

Answer 39

• Caregivers can foster children’s social cognition by:
  
  • Using mental state talk
  • Providing opportunities for interactions with different people
  • Encouraging joint attention

Question 40

How does theory of mind develop?

Answer 40

• All these explanations/perspectives likely play a role
  
  • Maturation of brain regions involved in understanding others
  • Improved executive functioning ability
  • Interactions with other people

Question 41

How do children learn? What are the mechanisms of learning?

Answer 41

• Trial and error
  
  • From birth
• Statistical learning
  
  • From birth
• Observation and imitation
  
  • 9-12 months old
• Being taught by others:
  
  • 3 year oldsare more likely to learn from adults they see as reliable and expert in a domain
  • Teaching is optimized when scaffolding is provided in the zone of proximal development

Question 42

Summary of Development of Social Cognition

Answer 42

• The ability to understand others’ minds develops gradually, starting with understanding others’ intentions
• Basic theory of mind is developed by age 5
• Development of theory of mind is due to maturation of brain regions involved in social cognition, improved executive functioning, and social interactions
• Improvements in social cognition enable learning from others through social learning through joint attention and imitation