social cognitive theories

Question 1

children

Answer 1

• Are active processors of social information
• Have the ability to think and reason about their own and other people’s thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors
• Use self-socialization to shape their own development

Question 2

Selman’s stage theory of role taking

Answer 2

• role taking: the ability to adopt the perspective of another person and to think about something from another’s point of view
• <6 years: unaware of others’ perspectives (similar to theory of mind)
• increasing capacity to consider multiple perspectives

Question 3

Selman’s stage theory of role taking ages

Answer 3

6-8 years: others have own perspective, based on not having same information
8-10 years: recognize and consider others’ perspective
10-12 years: can compare own and others perspectives
12+ years: understand others’ perspective based on social norms/group

Question 4

Dodge’s information-processing theory

Answer 4

• children process others reactions in a way that aligns with their own views
• Hostile attributional bias: general expectation that others are antagonistic to self
• Children assume that other people’s ambiguous actions stem from a hostile intent → react aggressively to provocation
• Potential causes: physical abuse increases sensitivity to anger cues, leads to difficulty in reasoning about emotions
  + harder time understanding an emotion that is not anger
  + can’t tell whether person is sorry, surprised, or malicious
• Interventions targeting information processing may be helpful
  + try to help the child see a different point of view and find alternative explanations that don’t show malice

Question 5

Dweck’s theory of self-attributions and achievement motivation

Answer 5

• Children are motivated by:
  + Learning goals: seeking to improve their competence and master new material
  + Performance goals: seeking to receive positive assessments of their competence or to avoid negative assessments
• Related to earlier discussions on:
  + Entity vs. incremental mindsets
• When parents/teachers praise effort → incremental mindset

Question 6

current perspectives

Answer 6

• Supported by empirical research showing that:
• Children are active seekers of information about the social world
• Effect of social experience is influenced by their interpretations

Limitations
- Like learning theories, lack insight into biological factors in social development