Social Cognition

Question 1

Theory of mind

Answer 1

Ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others
To understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one’s own

Used to understand social situations.

Question 2

Orientating and engagement hypothesis

Answer 2

Infants have a hardwired automatic ability to orientate themselves to the direction of others from birth. Over time they supplement this with learning (engagement).

Engagement allows infants to determine if adults engaged. Determines if infant will act on signal to find interesting referent.

Question 3

Caron et al. (2002)

Answer 3

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Question 4

False belief

Answer 4

The understanding that an individual’s belief or representation about the world may contrast with reality

Question 5

Caron et al. (2002)

Answer 5

• Older infants = Distinguish between communicative (open eyes) and non-communicative (closed eyes) signals by following head turns.
• Younger infants = Follow communicative signals even when adult eyes closed.

Problems

• Lacks ecological validity
• Ppl with eyes closed usually still.

Question 6

Moll and Tomasello (2004)

Answer 6

• Barrier study
• These studies can help show that infants know the difference between seeing and knowing
• 12m orient behind barriers to see what adults looking at
• Show that at this age they can understand there is a link between where people look and interesting events. Not simply tracking point. Expect adult signals to be communicative.

Question 7

Behne, Carpenter and Tomasello (2005)

Answer 7

• Builds communicative signals into paradigm

Study 1: 14-24m follow adult looks and points to find toys in hidden boxes

Study 2: Adult gazes mindedly between target box and infant. Looks at hand rather than box. Infant doesn’t treat adult as communicating unless look as if they are.

Led to orientating and engagement hypothesis.

14m don’t have an understanding that seeing = knowing.

Question 8

Moll and Tomasello (2006)

Answer 8

• Adult enters room and asks ‘where is it?’
• 2 objects in room. One hidden to experimenter, but infant can see.
• 24m = Give correct object, but 18m don’t
• Young infants don’t know the link between seeing and knowing

Question 9

Tomasello and Haberl (2003)

Answer 9

• Ev against Moll and tomasello (2006)
• Experimenter leaves room so misses play.
• 12-m understand which object an adult expresses surprise at, as they have not seen it before

Question 10

Moll and Tomasello (2007)

Answer 10

• Infant, experimenter 1 and 2 play with objects together.
• Experimenter 1 leaves and misses object, then comes back and asks for it.
• 14- and 18-m hand over unseen (target) object
• Young infants flexibly reason about others’ communicative intentions, but only if experimenter engaging with toy rather than observing.
• Infants need engagement, seeing not sufficient enough.

Question 11

Can 12m olds reason about other’s communicative intentions? What evidence is there for this?

Answer 11

• Liszkowski et al. (2006) - Children understand that adult looking for familiar object in context.
• Damaging for orientating and engagement hypothesis
• Early communication intentional

Question 12

Warneken and Tomasello (2006)

Answer 12

• 18-month-olds take into account others’ goals/intentions with no selfish motives
• Adult has not sent communicative signals, child saw adult trying to achieve something
• Ruling out Orienting and Engagement Hypothesis. Evidence that they have reps of the mental states of others.

Question 13

Repacholi and Gopnik (1997)

Answer 13

• Asked preference. Broccoli or animal crackers?
• Mismatch and match conds
• 14m hand over their own preferences regardless of adult’s preference (egocentrism)
  18-month-olds hand over adult’s preference, reasoning non-egocentrically about others’ desires

Question 14

Explain why intentions and beliefs are important in social cognition

Answer 14

Intentions/Desires

• First step to understanding others minds.
• Subjective

Beliefs

• Mental rep of the world which reflects info available to you.
• For a child to understand this, need to realise that what others know reflects the info they have rather than the objective state of reality.

Measure using false-belief taks

Question 15

Wimmer and Perner (1983)

Answer 15

• False-belief task, Sally-Anne.
• To answer correctly, need to understand diff between real state of the world and that the other person’s mental state will determine where they look.
• 4, not 3-year-olds, predict that others will act contrary to reality based on their false beliefs
• Was first measured by telling children a story, was then developed to add visual support.

Question 16

Unexpected Contents Task - Gopnik & Astington (1988)

Answer 16

• Give child container that usually contains something and ask them what they thought was in the box and what their friend would think.
• 3-yrs answers based on reality
• 4 yrs seem to acknowledge false beliefs and transfer this to others’ states

Not a memory problem as shown by Mitchell & Robinson (1991).

Question 17

Carlson et al. (1998)

Answer 17

• Questioned if children just don’t want to be wrong
• 2 experimenters, want to trick other one when they come back
• Child always up for it, but only 4 year olds follow along (instill false-beliefs). 3yr olds point to where actual object is.

Question 18

Onishi and Baillergeon (2005)

Answer 18

• Looking times for correct and incorrect searches by adult

- 15-month-olds show VoE reactions when observing belief-motivated actions

Question 19

Clements and Perner (1994)

Answer 19

• State that there is earlier evidence of false-belief
• When children not asked to make implicit q, can pass test.
• Anticipatory eye movements in Sally and Anne task. Not just a reaction to perceptual novelty

Question 20

Garnham and Ruffman (2001)

Answer 20

• Study carried out bc perhaps infants visually associate Sally with basket? Used 3 locations.
• 72% of 3- and 4-year-olds looked longer at correct location in false belief task
• 19% verbally gave the correct location

Question 21

Schneider et al. (2012)

Answer 21

• Replications of Garnham and Ruffman
• There may be two Theory of Mind systems in operation
  Implicit and Explicit systems

Question 22

What evidence is there to suggest that young children can pass ToM tasks?

Answer 22

• Interactive communication paradigms can sometimes be better
• Southgate et al. (2010) - 17m old plays game with 2 novel objects in box. Experimenter 1 leaves and experimenter 2 switches object. Exper 1 then asks if they remember the object they put in. They give the correct object.

Question 23

What evidence is there to suggest the reasons why children fail traditional false-belief tasks?

Answer 23

Carpenter et al. (2002)
- Modifications to remove the “pull of reality”, and communicative versions, are successful in traditional false belief tasks

Hala and Russel (2001)

• Windows task. Can see contents of two boxes, but other person can’t. Point to box want them to open.
• Relieving inhibitory demands significantly increased correct answers by 3-year-olds in window task