Social cognition Flashcards
Who can pass the mirror mark (self recognition) task?
Roughly half of two year old humans can pass it.
All the great apes, at a certain age, can pass it
What is contagion empathy? What is affective empathy? What neural structure might explain contagion empathy?
Contagion empathy may be considered the building block of empathy.
It is when we copy another person’s emotional state, allowing us to feel how they must be feeling (You smile, I smile, I feel happy, so you must feel happy)
Affective empathy: I feel the way you feel, I don’t understand why you feel that way, but I feel it anyway.
Perhaps mirror neurons explain contagion empathy, but there isn’t much evidence.
Yawning is another example of contagion empathy, which evidence shows chimps engage in.
Contagion empathy is a social mechanism, but not a very complex one, considering even wolves engage in it.
What is helping empathy? Provide an example.
Helping empathy is an extension of contagion empathy, the emotions are not just mirrored. It is also known as cognitive empathy.
An example would be when someone is giving a bad presentation. At first you mirror their emotions and feel bad, but then you smile to make them feel better.
Do chimpanzees intentionally help? What are the proposed reasons against intentional helping in chimps? What is the minimum age humans intentionally help?
There is a range of evidence surrounding intentionally helping due to empathy in chimpanzees.
Evidence has found that while they don’t help (handing out-of-reach object to recipient) as much as human children when there is no reward, they still help a significant amount. This indicates that they aren’t just doing it for reward.
Perhaps they are just helping because they’ve developed hierarchical bonds with trainers? This has also been disproven because they have been shown to help unfamiliar humans.
Perhaps they have just learnt to help humans. They’re trained chimpanzees who are used to performing behaviours to get rewards, so maybe they’re just acting in their own interest? Also proven wrong as they’ve been shown to help other chimpanzees (who can’t get through doors etc).
Research has shown humans as young as 21 months can intentionally help
Goals and intentions: Explain the studies by Gergely et al. (1995) and Csibra et al. (1999). What were the two conditions?
The aim of these studies was figure out the age at which infants are sensitive to goal directed agency.
Six and nine month olds were habituated to one of two conditions: the experimental condition showed the smaller ball jumping over and obstacle to reach the larger ball (ie: instrumental action, rational, intentional). The control condition showed the ball making the same movement but there was no obstacle (irrational, no intention).
In the test trials, the children were either shown an old action (familiar but no longer goal-directed, irrational) or a new action (small ball going directly along the ground to big ball, rational).
Question - which attention more captured their attention?
Results - in the 9 month old control group, there were no major differences between those shown familiar (irrational) action first or second. The important finding was that there was a large difference in looking time between 9 month olds in the experimental condition. Those shown the familiar (irrational) action first had a much larger attention recovery than those shown the new action first, and compared to 6 month olds difference in looking time between those who saw the old action first and the new action first.
Interpretation - this shows 9 month olds were sensitive to the irrational action, over above the novel action, which infants often favour.
What are the three things we look for in 9-15 month olds that suggests that have a more advanced social cognition and social referencing skills than those 6 months old and younger?
First, 9-15 month olds can share attention (triadic interactions), or demonstrate joint engagement.
Secondly, they can follow attention (gaze/point following).
Lastly, they can direct attention through declarative or imperative getsures
What are the pre-requisites of social referencing?
1) Infants need to be able to decode signal
2) Infants must understand the referential quality of the information
3) Infants must appreciate the potential for social communication of information
What are the implications of social referencing (ie: what does it imply about infants and parents/referees)?
1) Infants come to appreciate that parents can provide information - through emotional appraisal - about novel things (people, places, objects, situations etc.)
2) Infants use such information from referees to solve their own uncertainty and guide their actions
How might we go about solving whether social referencing is actually the communication of information or just shared attention?
We can solve this problem by turning the question back on the infant. ie: will they update YOU when a change occurs in your absence?
Do they use social gestures such as pointing to inform you of changes and actually communicate with the intention of communicating?
Explain the study about “under what conditions do infants (12 months) point?” What did infants do when the E showed neutral and positive emotions? What might these findings suggest about parenting styles?
Setup involved infants looking at experimenter with a screen behind them with a puppet on the left or right side of the screen.
When the E looked at wrong side or when they were absent, the baby pointed more to the side the puppet was actually on. This is consistent with the idea that the infants knew the E hadn’t seen the event.
Furthermore, infants pointed more when E showed positive emotions compared to neutral emotions.
These findings suggest that infants are encouraged to communicate with someone who is giving them positive emotional feedback, and thus parents who engage with their children in a positive manner will have more/better quality communication with their children.
Outline the basic experiment to test whether an infant can update someone else.
1) have adult interact positively with toy
2) someone else comes in and hides the toy
3) adult doesn’t see, baby sees
4) adult comes back - what does the baby do?
12-24 month olds will point if the adult doesn’t see, if the adult did see, the baby won’t point.
Can apes update others? What about eye-tracking and gaze following?
Not really. Apes don’t point, but can make basic gestures. Apes don’t do eye-tracking but do follow gaze with movements of the head.
Thus, the question becomes whether apes understand others’ perceptions and knowledge states.
Explain the background, method and findings of the chimp food competition study.
Typically, if there is only one piece of food available, the dominant chimp will get most of it. When competing for food, chimps take into account what others can and cannot see and hear, and they may influence what others can see and hear.
The study involved 3 conditions: one piece of food was visible to all, one piece of food was hidden in a bucket only the subordinate could see, last condition was a piece visible on top to both and one hidden inside the bucket only visible to the subordinate.
It was found the subordinate chimp got more food only when he/she could see it, and when one piece of food is visible and one is hidden, the subordinate picks the hidden one much more often
What were the findings of the green/yellow box false belief understanding study?
15 month olds have a false belief understanding.
What about apes? Do they track false belief? Outline the test and results to examine this, considering looking time can’t be measured for apes. Can they distinguish between informed/uninformed/misinformed agents? PTC: What is the difference between ignorance and false belief?
The usual test to track the false belief of chimps involves having them in competition with a human experimenter. The reward is placed in one container, that only the human sees. While the human isn’t looking, the reward is placed in another container. The human then reaches for the wrong container, and the ape fails to correctly guess the other container. Thus, it appears apes cannot track false belief.
Chimps have the ability to distinguish between an informed and uninformed agent, but they cannot distinguish between an informed and MISinformed agent.
Ignorance = uninformed
False belief = misinformed
