Lecture 6 - Social Development Flashcards
Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979)
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.
Povinelli et al (1996)
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.
Lewis and Brooks-Gun’s (1979) - Familiarity
Different behaviour to familiar vs strange adults (7-9 months)
Familiar vs strange peers (10-12 months)
Lewis and Brooks-Gun’s (1979) - Age
Discriminate children and adults by 6-12 months
Use verbal age labels by 18-24 months
Lewis and Brooks-Gun’s (1979) - Gender
Discriminate between female and male strangers (9-12 months)
Use verbal gender labels around 19 months
Production of emotions in the faces
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
Haviland and Lelwica (1987)
Children can discriminate between emotions as early as 10 weeks old
Precursors to understanding others’ mind (Harris, 1989)
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)
Theory of Mind definition
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
Wimmer and Perner (1983)
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
Mental states in language
2 years old - use words about internal states when talking (eg want)
3 years old - use more cognitive terms (eg know or remember)
Baron-Cohen et al (1985)
Sally-Anne task - 4 year olds can solve the task but 3 year olds cannot. Also struggles in autistic children.
Masangkay et al (1974)
By 3-4 years old children understand that seeing something means that you know about it.
Flavell et al (1986)
3 years old and younger have difficulty understanding that 2 representations of an object can be true at the same time for different people.
Predicting behaviour
- 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.
Wellman et al (2001)
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
Southgate et al (2007)
2-3 year olds might look at the correct place in the Sally-Anne task but identify incorrect.
Inishi and Baillargeon (2005)
In some conditions, 15 month olds could successfully predict behaviour on a false belief task
Southgate and Vernetti (2014)
- 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
Language and false belief tasks
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
Hadwin and Perner (1991)
5 year olds chose the correct ‘surprised face’ over a neutral face. 4 year olds could not do this.
Peskin (1992)
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.
Carpendale and Chandler (1996) Ambiguous Drawing Task
- 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
Continual social cognition
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).
