Social Cognition Flashcards
Naive psychology
Common sense level of understanding other people and oneself
Crucial to normal human functioning and interaction with others
Concepts used to understand behaviour are
>beliefs
>desires
>actions
Infants interest in people
Newborns prefer human faces to other objects and humans moving bodies to moving objects
Imitation, forming bonds and interactions
Toddlers learn about intention, joint attention and intersubjectivity
Meltzoff (1995)
Found in one study children saw an adult do a complete or partial act but completed the act in imitation for both conditions. In another study children either watched a person or a machine complete an action but only those who watched the person imitated.
Theory of Mind
Is an organised understanding of how mental processes such as intentions, desires, beliefs, perceptions and emotions influence behaviour.
Understanding connection between other people’s desires and their actions.
18 month olds can distinguish between their own preferences and others (14 cant)
Phillips, Wellman and Spelke (2002)
Conducted a study where 12 month olds saw experimenter look at one of two stuffed kittens say something in a joyful voice – then screen descended and 2 secs later the experimenter was either holding the kitty he spoke about joyfully or the other one. The 12 month olds looked longer when holding the other one whereas 8 month olds looked similar amounts of time.
Woodward et al (1998)
Used a habituation paradigm in which the child is habituated to a hand grabbing one of two toys and then shown one of two trials either new goal in which the arm is reaching to the same location but retrieving a different toy or new path where the arm is reaching to a different location but retrieving the same toy.
The looking time was longer for the the new goal trial as the infant has habituated to the reaching for the object, showing that infants understand the importance of goals and can interpret the goal of another persons actions.
This understanding changes between 3 and 6 months and there is evidence that experience influences understanding as Gerson and Woodward (2014) conducted the same study but with a sticky mittens intervention or not for 3 month olds and found a better understanding of goal intention after experience.
ToMM
Theory of mind module - hypothesised brain mechanism devoted to understanding other human beings - matures in first 5 years
ASD and ToM
Have greater difficulty with false belief tasks, developing joint attention and show less concern for distressed others
False belief tasks
Tasks that test a child’s understanding that others people will act in accord with their own beliefs even when the child knows that those beliefs are incorrect
Smarties test - given a box labelled smarties that actually has something else in - then asked what they thing person X will think is in the box and if they pass they will say smarties - most cant inhibit their Owen knowledge that its not smarties
Sally-Anne task
Story about two characters and one moves an item when the other is not knowing
Asked where they think the other character will look first for item
Can be adapted to non verbal and not require explicit response
Interpreting facial expressions
Mind and eye tasks - lot of variation in response and accuracy
ASD poor
Is ToM unique to humans?
Rico dog
Dog learns trick for pointing cant generalise when person points using leg
Monkeys only steal grape when one turns back - they must know they’re dealing with a thinking individual
Mirror neuron system is activated when monkeys perform and observe actions
Play
Activities pursued for own sake, with no other motivation than the enjoyment they bring
1 year - banging and throwing objects
18 months - pretend play
2-3 - sociodramatic play
Knowledge of living things and biological processes
Fascinated by living things - majority of first words
Before 5 think animals exist to serve humans and plants are not alive but the moon is
By 3-4 show understanding of biological processes but at 5/6 deny humans are animals
5/6 know plants grow but don’t believe they are alive until 7/9
3-4yo understand traits are passed on but not about DNA and older understand aspects are determined by hereditary
Essentialism - living things have an essence
How do children acquire biological knowledge
Nativists - have biology module
Empiricists - through observations and teaching and reflects culture
