The Psychological World

Question 1

Name 5 mechanisms which facilitate infant social cognition

Answer 1

1) contingency detection & learning, 2) imitation, 3) gaze following, 4) social referencing & 5) joint attention

Question 2

What is contingency understanding?

Answer 2

Understanding that there is a contingency between your own actions e.g. sucking & an external event e.g. mother’s voice, as in DeCasper & Spence

Question 3

Caretakers often make their behaviour ___ on infants’ attempts to ___

Answer 3

Contingency, communicate

Question 4

Striano (2005) used 3 conditions to test whether __m and __m could detect contingencies between their own actions and their mother’s. The 3 conditions were___. The 2 DVs were___

Answer 4

1, 3. Normal/ unintentionally contingent (face-to-face interaction), non-contingent (act according to previous interaction heard via headphones) & imitation/ intentionally contingency (mirror facial expressions). Time spent smiling and gazing at the mother

Question 5

In relation to contingency detection, Striano (2005) found that___

Answer 5

1m did not distinguish between conditions, whereas 3m smiled more in the normal condition and gazed more in the imitation condition i.e. identified the contingency in these conditions

Question 6

Can newborns (12-21 days old) imitate actions according to Meltzoff & Moore? What and when do they imitate? Why is this surprising? The result was replicated in infants as young as___

Answer 6

Yes, newborns imitated (finger m.,) tongue protrusion, lip protrusion and mouth opening, despite never having seen themselves in a mirror i.e. without knowing what actions produce the observed expressions. N.B. expressions were made after observing the experimenter with a pacifier. 42mins

Question 7

What are the rich vs. lean interpretations of Meltzoff’s findings of imitation?

Answer 7

Rich: 1) infants make the ‘like me’ analogy = realise the other person is like me = if he can make those actions, so can I, 2) infants realise the goal-directed nature of the expression I.e. for bonding & so reciprocate. Lean: 1) an automatic, involuntary matching response, 2) arousal = make non-specific expressions

Question 8

Babies are particularly interested in faces but whether this is because they___is debatable. What is the still face paradigm?

Answer 8

Recognise such stimuli as faces or just as more complex stimuli. Infants are disturbed by & show less interest in non-moving faces

Question 9

Hood (1998) investigated 3ms’ use of eye gaze. What did he find? There have been doubts as to whether this behaviour is ___

Answer 9

3m look more quickly at a target when it is preceded by eyes gazing in the same direction as where the target will be located. Socially specific

Question 10

Farroni (2002) found that newborns prefer___ gaze in comparison to___ gaze. Gaze following is established by __-__m. Could this be an innate mechanism?

Answer 10

Mutual/ direct, averted. 2-4. Yes

Question 11

What is social referencing?

Answer 11

When your own appraisal of, & reaction to, a situation is moderated by reference to the emotional expressions & behaviours of others

Question 12

Vaish & Striano (2004) found that 12m are very sensitive to the social cues of others. What were the 3 conditions? What was found?

Answer 12

12m presented with the visual cliff set-up: should they cross? 1) face & voice (mother encourages infant to cross with smiles & vocalisations), 2) face-only (mother smiles & nods to infant), 3) voice-only (vocalises but back to cliff). F & V = fastest, V = mid-speed, F = slowest

Question 13

Which emerges 1st & at what age and what is the difference between protodeclarative & protoimperative pointing? According to Carpenter’s (1998) longitudinal study…

Answer 13

Protodeclarative pointing at 12m = pointing to say ‘look at that!’

Protoimperative pointing at 14m = pointing to say ‘get me that!’

Question 14

Is pointing done with a communicative purpose or does it just reflect…? Joint attention may aid early ToM development. Yet is if really the intention of infants’ pointing? How would we test this?

Answer 14

Failed grasping. Measure infants’ reaction to pointing which was not rewarded by adult attention

Question 15

In investigating the evolutionary roots of eye gaze, Reaux (1999) tested who out of 2 people chimps would use visual cues to beg for food. It was found that whilst…

Answer 15

Chimps did not beg for food off someone with their back turned, they did beg for food from someone with their eyes closed = they didn’t fully understand the importance of joint eye gaze

Question 16

Gergely (2002) investigated whether 14m imitated actions in a rational or blind manner. What was his procedure and findings?

Answer 16

14m watched an adult turn on a light by pressing a button with her head either with her hands free or occupied. 14m were more likely to imitate the head action after observing the hands free scene

Question 17

Random exp: Woodward (1998). 9m habituated to hand reaching for object A in direction X. What do they dishabituate to?

Answer 17

Reaching for a novel object in the same direction, not to a familiar object in a new direction

Question 18

Do 12-18m understand seeing? Do they require eye gaze to know that head turning is worthwhile? What was the procedure of Brooks & Meltzoff (2002)?

Answer 18

12-18m were more likely to turn their heads to look at the target when they observed the experimenter doing so with eyes open compared to closed or with headband on compared to blindfold on

Question 19

Brooks & Meltzoff (2005) found that ___m but not ___m understood the importance of eye age in a replication of their 2002 exp. They also found that eye gaze understanding predicted…

Answer 19

10m, 9m. Language abilities at 14 and 18m

Question 20

Liszkowski (2004) found that 12m looked from the puppet back to the adult more times when the adult…after…

Answer 20

Refused joint visual attention after having interacted with the child before the puppet arrived

Question 21

What is the difference between the rich, psychological view and lean, teological view of infants’ performance in very basic social cognition tasks?

Answer 21

PV: infants understand that actions are goal-directed by attributing intentions to agents
TV: infants need not attribute mental states to agents to understand that actions are goal-directed e.g. non-social stimuli can be deemed to have goals

Question 22

Why are FB tasks the gold standard of social cognition?

Answer 22

Because the agents’ actions are guided by false beliefs rather than observable aspects of reality

Question 23

Define social cognition, ToM & false belief tasks

Answer 23

a) understanding the social world, b) understanding that other people have their own desires, beliefs and interpretations of the world, c) tasks which dissociate belief from reality, requiring children to understand mental states rather than reporting reality

Question 24

What are the 2 types of FB task?

Answer 24

Unexpected location (SAT, Maxi task) & unexpected contents (smarties) tasks

Question 25

Name a SAT control Q. Was memory an issue?

Answer 25

Do you remember where Sally put the chocolate at the beginning? = controlling for memory. No, 80% who got the FB Q wrong got the memory Q right

Question 26

In the unexpected contents task, what is the representational change or memory Q? Is this Q harder or easier than the FB Q?

Answer 26

When you first saw the box, before we opened it, what did you think was inside it? Harder!

Question 27

Russell (1991) found that 3y fail the windows task. What is this?

Answer 27

A task in which 3y are required to point at the empty window in order to gain a chocolate at the other window = requires inhibition of a prepotent response

Question 28

Both the dimensional change card sorting task and FB tasks but not FP tasks require___ & so___. Performance on which tasks is correlated?

Answer 28

If-if-then higher-order rules, representational flexibility. A close r/ship between DCCS and FB task performance but not between DCCS and FP or between FB and FP task performance

Question 29

In terms of the role of language, children tend to pass FB tasks at the same age as they acquire words for…e.g.

Answer 29

Mental states e.g. think, know, remember

Question 30

What is autism? Types or levels of autism lie on a___

Answer 30

A pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by qualitative impairments in social, communicative and imaginative behaviours and the presence of repetitive & stereotyped patterns of activity and interest. Spectrum

Question 31

Name the 3 categories or levels of autism on the spectrum. Are there categorical or continuous differences between the 3?

Answer 31

By increasing severity: PDD-NOS (not otherwise specified), Asperger’s syndrome & autism. Is Asperger’s the same as high functioning autism? This is much debated

Question 32

When 3 types of symptom cluster together, one is diagnosed as autistic. These symptoms are therefore ___ & ___ conditions regardless of ___ level, ___ or ___ level

Answer 32

Necessary, sufficient, severity, age, ability

Question 33

How common is autism? Is it more common in males or females?

Answer 33

10 per 10,000 (old estimate) vs. 60 per 10,000 (new estimate). Males by 3/4:1

Question 34

Is vertical transmission (parent to child) of autism likely? What is the rate of autism in siblings of affected children?

Answer 34

No, 3-4% = small but much higher than the incidence rate in the general population

Question 35

How can we test the genetic component of autism?

Answer 35

Check concordance rates between monozygotic twins vs. dizygotic twins = 60% vs. 5% or 90% vs. 10% for the broader autistic phenotype

Question 36

1 in 4 autistics suffer from___ (an unusually large head circumference) and many show less activity in the ___ but this may just reflect the fact that autistic Pps didn’t___

Answer 36

Macrocephaly, fusiform face area, look at the face stimuli for as long

Question 37

A good theory must…

Answer 37

Go beyond the evidence & do more than just describe findings by making new, concrete predictions

Explain I.e. state causal mechanisms

Question 38

Name two tests of CC

Answer 38

The embedded figures & block design tasks

Question 39

What evidence suggests that weak CC is a low-level, perceptual deficit in the ability to attend to wholes rather than parts?

Answer 39

Happe (1997): autistics are less likely to be fooled by the Titchener ‘s circles visual illusion which demands global processing & are as likely to be fooled by 3D as 2D presentations of the illusion (3D presentation usually reduces then likelihood of being fooled)

Question 40

Is the illusions finding with autistics replicable? What is the argument of Ropar & Mitchell?

Answer 40

No. Weak CC is a feature of autism but only at the visuo-spatial, not perceptual level