Lecture 4 - Social Cognition

Question 1

How to define ‘concepts’?

Answer 1

Concepts - general ideas or understandings that can be used to group together objects, events, qualities, or abstractions that are similar in some way

Question 1

What is naive psychology?

Answer 1

Naïve psychology involves expectations and explanations about the actions and minds of the self and others (e.g., motivations, desires, beliefs) (Wellman, 2017).

Question 2

What are the four major themes in this area on infants and social cognition?

Answer 2

1. Nature and nurture
2. Active child
3. How change occurs
4. Socio cultural context

Question 3

Naive psychology in the first year

Answer 3

Infants find people interesting, pay careful attention to
them, and learn an impressive amount about them in the
first year.
* In the first half of the second year, toddlers begin to show
a grasp of several ideas that are crucial for psychological
understanding.
Intention
Joint attention
Intersubjectivity

Question 4

Naive psychology beyond the first year

Question 5

Why is play important?

Question 6

What happens in regards to play as a child gets older?

Question 7

What is the “sticky mittens” study?
What did it find?

Question 8

Tell me about the Meltzoff 1995 study on imitation tasks

Answer 8

Meltzoff (1995)

18 months – they can also understand the accidental not completing of something
 By 18 months, infants complete
the failed actions of other
people.

 In Study 1, children who saw
an adult do a complete or
partial act. Both completed
the act.

 In Study 2, children saw a
person or a machine do a
partial act. Only children who
watched a person
completed the act. (Because they do not think machines have actions and goals). They can differentiate between agents and non agents by abput 18 months of age.

Question 9

Tell me a bit about progressive social cogntive knowledge ages 1 - 5

Answer 9

• A theory of mind is a well-organized understanding of how
  the mind works and how it influences behavior.
• Two-year-olds: Understand the connection between other people’s
  desires and their specific actions, but show little understanding that
  beliefs are also influential
• Three-year-olds: Understand that desires and beliefs affect behavior, but
  have difficulty with false-belief problems
• Five-year-olds: Find false-belief problems very easy

Question 10

Neural underpinnings of social cognition:

Tell me the study on mirror neurons

What are mirror neurons?

What did the study find?

Answer 10

Rizzolatti & Craighero (2004)
Mirror neurons – first discovered in monkeys. When a monkey produces an action and sees an action, the neurons act the same.
Is this neural link meaningful and to what extent is this link meaningful? Can come back to on powerpoint.
Neonate Rhesus Macaques – used EEGs – they found in these monkeys there was a certain frequency of the brain signal that was repressed when the monkeys saw and produced the actions. Same functional properties as the mirror system.
Similarly been found in human adults – but different frequency. This is decrease when people perform actions and see others performing these actions. Also seen in infants. Still a question – what is the functional role of this?

Question 11

What is a key assumption of theory of mind?

Question 12

What is sociodramtic play?

Answer 12

Over the next few years, children’s pretend play becomes more complex and involves a greater number of other people. Toddlers begin to engage in sociodramatic play, a kind of pretend play in which they enact miniature dramas with other children or adults, such as “mother comforting baby” or “doctor helping sick child”

Question 13

Neural underpinnings of social cognition:
Tell me studies and findings on pSTS?

Answer 13

Engaged when infants are in social interaction rather than watching movements that are not related to socialising in any way. Thought to be one region of that social processing network that plays a role in the understanding of others.
Hashmi, Vanderwert, Price & Gerson (2020)
- Expected when infants play with someone out you would see more Psts scitivity and this was seen but they also saw activity in the pSTS when playing alone but with dolls more than playing alone with tablets. Implies with dolls they are practicing social interactions.
- Think there is some way in which dolls allows children to practice social interaction – seen on a neural and language level [go to recording for language bit].

Question 14

What are some key themes in this area?

Answer 14

 Origins of Social Cognition
 Theory of Mind
 Comparative Research
 Neural Underpinnings
 Imagination & Play

Question 15

What is a study that measures false beliefs?

Answer 15

Measuring False Beliefs
Beliefs are more complex than desires and intentions.

False-belief problems are a sophisticated test of the understanding that other people will act in accord with their own beliefs.

 In Wimmer & Perner’s study, most 4- to 5-year-olds answered incorrectly, but older children were correct

[Sally Anne Task]- If they recognise Sally has a false belief she should look for it where she last put it but if they know it is in the box they will get distracted and say it Is in the box.

Question 16

What might stop children passing these tests on false beliefs?

Answer 16

Tend to be passed on average by about 5 years of age

Different theoretical perspectives:

Language demands are too taxing (e.g., de Villiers, 2000) – the language of the task might be too complex and might cause them to respond in a way that is not actually their knowledge state

Executive functioning demands are too high (e.g., Leslie, 2004)
Social factors facilitate perspective taking