Required Readings (Social Cognition) Flashcards
1
Q
Birch and Bloom: Research Question
A
- Do young children find it easier to assess what someone else will know when they are not “cursed” with knowledge?
- Are younger children more susceptible to the curse of knowledge than older children?
- Why study this? To figure out whether failure at false belief tasks is due to curse of knowledge rather than something else (ie. Egocentrism)
2
Q
Birch and Bloom: Method
A
- Counterbalanced within-subjects design
- Showed children (ages 3, 4, and 5) a set of toys that was supposedly familiar to her puppet Percy
- Showed children another set of toys that was supposedly unfamiliar to her puppet Percy
- Then they opened up one toy from each group, which had a smaller toy inside
- Asked: “Does Percy know what’s in this one? What about this one?
3
Q
Birch and Bloom: Results
A
- 3- and 4-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds, overestimated Percy’s knowledge when they were knowledgeable.
- The magnitude of the curse significantly decreased from age 3 to age 5.
- Asymmetry in perspective taking: No “curse of ignorance” - kids can understand that even if they don’t know something, that doesn’t mean that someone else might not know either (Ex. If they didn’t know what was in the box, they didn’t assume that Percy wouldn’t know either)
4
Q
Birch and Bloom: Conclusion
A
- Children are sensitive to the knowledge states of others, but the curse of knowledge can work against this sensitivity
- The magnitude of the curse of knowledge decreases significantly from age 3 to age 5
- Children’s knowledge assessments are biased asymmetrically
- They are biased by their knowledge when assessing what someone else knows, but are not biased by their ignorance
- Not a problem taking someone else’s perspective
- Limitations: not a false belief task
5
Q
Baron-Cohen: Research Question
A
do autistic kids have theory of mind?
6
Q
Baron-Cohen: Method
A
- Studied kids with ASD and used typical kids and kids with downs syndom as controls
- Did Sally Ann task, asking the Critical Belief (false belief) question: “where will Sally look for her marble?”
- As well as 2 control questions (reality: “where is the marble really?” And memory: “where was the marble at the beginning?”
- Objective: to prove kids with ASD don’t have theory of mind
7
Q
Baron-Cohen: Results
A
- All kids correctly answered control questions (reality and memory questions)
- Downs syndrome and typical children correctly answered false belief question, but kids with ASD did not (they pointed to actual location of the marble)
8
Q
Baron-Cohen: Conclusions
A
- Kids with ASD display a specific cognitive deficit
- Kids with ASD fail to employ a theory of mind and reason about mental states
9
Q
He et al: Research Question
A
- “Why do younger children pass nonverbal false belief tasks but older children fail verbal ones?”
- Why study it: Good to know at which age people can understand mental states
10
Q
He et al: Method
A
- Studied typically developing 2-year-olds
- Manipulation: difference between elicited and non-elicited (spontaneous) tasks
- Experimental design
- Objective: wanted to know why young kids pass these tests
- Hypothesis: Not about language per say, but about another processing demand (ex. Inhibition, response selection)
11
Q
He et al: Results
A
kids did better on spontenous tasks (pass), failed when elicited task
12
Q
He et al: Conclusion
A
- kids can pass false belief tasks earlier than previously thought; they’re more developmentally competent in social cognition than previously thought
- Children do better on spontaneous tasks than elicited
- By asking kids a direct question, it triggers a process in the brain that isn’t involved if a person’s just speculating, also switches perspective to them because they now have to answer, and they may struggle to inhibit their own perspective
- Supports processing demands theory (interactionist)
