Lecture 6 - Social Development

Question 1

Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979)

Answer 1

16 infants in 6 age groups (9 months, 12 months, 15 months, 18 months, 21 months, 24 months). Put a dot on their forehead to see if they’d touch it. Sense of reflection stabilised around 21-24 months.

Question 2

Povinelli et al (1996)

Answer 2

Sticker placed on baby’s head and their videos and photos taken. 3-4 year olds reached for the sticker after seeing the photo and 2 year olds did not.

Question 3

Lewis and Brooks-Gun’s (1979) - Familiarity

Answer 3

Different behaviour to familiar vs strange adults (7-9 months)
Familiar vs strange peers (10-12 months)

Question 4

Lewis and Brooks-Gun’s (1979) - Age

Answer 4

Discriminate children and adults by 6-12 months

Use verbal age labels by 18-24 months

Question 5

Lewis and Brooks-Gun’s (1979) - Gender

Answer 5

Discriminate between female and male strangers (9-12 months)

Use verbal gender labels around 19 months

Question 6

Production of emotions in the faces

Answer 6

A few months old - “primary emotions” (joy, interest, anger, sadness)

7 months - fear responses to anger vs pain (Izard et al, 1987)

2-3 years - “secondary emotions” of embarrassment, pride and shame

Question 7

Haviland and Lelwica (1987)

Answer 7

Children can discriminate between emotions as early as 10 weeks old

Question 8

Precursors to understanding others’ mind (Harris, 1989)

Answer 8

Self awareness (18-20 months),
Verbally express emotional states (2 years)
Capacity for pretence - pretending something in the world is something else (2-3 years)
Distinguishing reality from pretence (3-4 years)

Question 9

Theory of Mind definition

Answer 9

Other people have a mental representation of the world that is different from our own (belief, feelings, etc)
• Theory – cannot see or touch the mind, have infer
• Crucial to success in world
• Not innate, develops with age

Question 10

Wimmer and Perner (1983)

Answer 10

Children read story about a child finding chocolate and it was only answered correctly by children over 4 years old (5-8 years)
It seemed too complicated and too long for the children to understand though

Question 11

Mental states in language

Answer 11

2 years old - use words about internal states when talking (eg want)

3 years old - use more cognitive terms (eg know or remember)

Question 12

Baron-Cohen et al (1985)

Answer 12

Sally-Anne task - 4 year olds can solve the task but 3 year olds cannot. Also struggles in autistic children.

Question 13

Masangkay et al (1974)

Answer 13

By 3-4 years old children understand that seeing something means that you know about it.

Question 14

Flavell et al (1986)

Answer 14

3 years old and younger have difficulty understanding that 2 representations of an object can be true at the same time for different people.

Question 15

Predicting behaviour

Answer 15

• 2yrs understand that people have desires (e.g. Sam and his rabbit)
• 3yrs understand that people have beliefs (e.g. Amy and the books)
• But do not yet understand that others can act on inaccurate beliefs.

Question 16

Wellman et al (2001)

Answer 16

Meta-analysis of 180 false belief studies. Very few 2 year olds passed, a minority of 3 year olds and 4 year olds usually passed

Question 17

Southgate et al (2007)

Answer 17

2-3 year olds might look at the correct place in the Sally-Anne task but identify incorrect.

Question 18

Inishi and Baillargeon (2005)

Answer 18

In some conditions, 15 month olds could successfully predict behaviour on a false belief task

Question 19

Southgate and Vernetti (2014)

Answer 19

• Measured activation in motor cortex of adults (activated when the actor has false belief that ball is in the box)
• 6-month-old infants showed the same brain activity
• Infants make action prediction based on the agent’s beliefs

Question 20

Language and false belief tasks

Answer 20

Children who perform better on false belief tasks tend to have better language abilities. Children with caregivers who use more mental state terms earlier perform better

Question 21

Hadwin and Perner (1991)

Answer 21

5 year olds chose the correct ‘surprised face’ over a neutral face. 4 year olds could not do this.

Question 22

Peskin (1992)

Answer 22

Children asked to lie about preferred sticker to avoid losing it. 5 year olds could lie from beginning, 4 year olds got better with practice and 3 year olds couldn’t lie.

Question 23

Carpendale and Chandler (1996) Ambiguous Drawing Task

Answer 23

• 5-8 yr olds - All succeeded on false belief task
• Make sure child can see both interpretations
• “What will Ann see?”
• 5 yr olds could not give a good answer
• Even some 8 yr olds had trouble

Question 24

Continual social cognition

Answer 24

Development of social cognition doesn’t stop at 8 years (there might be key changes in adolescence) and some developmental disorders impact social cognition (like ASD).