Week 6-Social development in early childhood

Question 1

Define social cognition

Answer 1

The mental action/process of gaining knowledge and an understanding in relation to society/its organisation through thought, experience and the senses.

Question 2

How does social cognition work?

Answer 2

It processes info related to the intentions, dispositions, and behaviours of others through:
– Selection
– Encoding
– Storage
– Retrieval
– Processing

Question 3

Define the Theory of Mind

Answer 3

The ability to attribute, to others, mental states (knowledge, intentions, emotions), to explain, predict and justify behaviour. (key to understanding and engaging with others.)

Question 4

How does the Theory of Mind benefit us?

Answer 4

-navigates our personal/social world through explanations and predictions of our behaviour/others
-This can then guide our personal/social actions.
-Can predict what happened in the past to cause (present) mental states and being attuned to other people’s minds broadens our
consciousness of what is going on in the world

Question 5

Explain the Retrodiction Experiment

Answer 5

■ Videos were filmed (3.64-8.96s duration) of spontaneous reactions to 4 different scenarios: being told a joke/having to wait/receiving a compliment/being told a story
■ 35 participants were asked to judge which scenario had elicited each reaction.
-results=subjects successfully deduced which scenario had previously occurred

Question 6

What elements need to be included when assessing children?

Answer 6

even when testing complex hypothesis tasks should be:
–as simple as possible
–as familiar as possible
–as age-appropriate as possible
–Yield answers that are as unambiguous as possible

Question 7

Explain the False Belief: Sally-Anne Test (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, Frith, 1985)

Answer 7

-scenario depicting sally putting a ball somewhere then disappearing where Anne then moves it
-infants are asked where sally will guess her ball is to test theory of mind

Question 8

Define Epistemic perspective-taking (reasoning about beliefs)

Answer 8

Attribution of justified false beliefs: Recognising one can have beliefs diverging from reality but are justified by one’s experience of the world

Question 9

Define Conceptual perspective-taking (distinguishing between appearance and reality)

Answer 9

The ability to recognise that the way things appear is different
from the way that they really are

Question 10

What were the results of the false belief test?

Answer 10

■ Children presented with two stories similar to the Sally-Anne test
Correct location pointed to, in both stories:
– 3-year-olds: 0%
– 4-year-olds: 57%
– 6-9-year-olds: 86%
■ The attribution of false belief to others: developed after the age of four

Question 11

How is attributing false belief to oneself seen in infants?

Answer 11

■ Children shown a tube of popular sweets and asked
to guess what is inside.
■ After children reply ‘sweets’, the experimenter opens the lid, to show there is only a pencil, returns the lid with the pencil still inside, and asks:
– “When you first saw this tube, before we opened it, what did
you think was inside?”
■ Findings:
– 3 year-olds often answer “Pencil”.
– 4-5 year-olds do much better.
■ The attribution of false belief to oneself: developed after the age of four

Question 12

What types of tests are used in distinguishing between appearance and reality in infants?

Answer 12

■ Children are shown joke-shop objects, e.g. sponge/rock. They are shown it is fake, and they are asked:
– “What is this really, really? Is it really, really a rock or really,
really a piece of sponge?” (reality-check)
– “When you look at this with your eyes right now, does it look
like a rock or does it look like a sponge?” (appearance-check)
■ Findings:
– 3 year-olds often give the same answer to both questions
– 4-5 year-olds do much better.
■ The appearance-reality distinction: developed after the age of four

Question 13

When does the full theory of mind develop?

Answer 13

age 4-4.5

Question 14

What main 2 theories are used in how we reason about others minds?

Answer 14

1.“Theory theory”
2.“Simulation theory”

Question 15

Explain Theory theory

Answer 15

■ We understand others’ mental states/behaviours by having a model (theory) of other minds
■ We acquire rules/principles from which we can explain and predict behaviour e.g., like as a physicist has principles for explaining and predicting the motion of objects.

Question 16

Explain Simulation theory

Answer 16

• We understand the minds of others because their mental states can be internally replicated (simulated) in our own minds.
• In a kind of thought experiment, in our own mind, we find out what we would think if we were in a particular situation. We then treat the outcome of the mental simulation as telling us what another person would also think in that situation.

Question 17

Keysar, Barr, Balin and Brauner (2000) Procedure

Answer 17

1.Pairs of participants (one a confederate) asked to play a referential communication game:
2.Several objects were put between the participant and the confederate in a grid (the confederate gave instructions to move things around in the grid)
3.Most objects were mutually visible BUT some more were only visible to the participant

Question 18

Keysar, Barr, Balin & Brauner
(2000) Results

Answer 18

■ When the confederate asked participants to e.g. move the small candle, participants would consider the candle hidden from the confederate e.g. they would gaze at it/reach for it
■ At a first pass the participants did not seem to consider the confederate’s perspective

Question 19

Explain Keysar, Lin and Barr (2003) Procedure

Answer 19

1.P’s again sat opposite C with an object-containing grid between them.
2.Out of view of the C, they received an object (e.g. a roll of tape) + a paper bag. (told to put object in the bag and put it in one of the covered slots in the grid)
3.C would then instruct the P to move things around
4.8 trials with different items, 4 in each of 2 conditions:
Experimental condition=grid contained another object that has the same label as the object in the bag (e.g. a cassette tape)
Baseline condition=bag contained an object that didn’t share a label with another object in the grid

Question 20

What were the aims Keysar, Lin and Barr (2003) experiment?

Answer 20

-it’s a simple task on the p’s part.
-All that P’s would need to do to succeed is follow the director’s instructions and to ignore the existence of the one object
that neither one of them could even see.”

Question 21

Keysar, Lin and Barr (2003) Results

Answer 21

-Over the 4 experimental condition trials:
–71% of P’s attempted to move the object in the bag at least once (control condition: 0%)
– 46% of P’s attempted to move the bag twice or more

Question 22

Define Egocentric Bias

Answer 22

a tendency to be biased by one’s own knowledge when attempting to appreciate a more naïve or uninformed perspective e.g., in a debate (Birch & Bloom, 2004)
■ Overcoming this bias is cognitively demanding (Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, & Gilovich, 2004) Theory of Mind = Automatic Process???

Question 23

What affects adults performance in different belief-reasoning problems potentially supporting that theory of mind is automatic also?

Answer 23

–general processing speed and executive function(German & Hehman, 2006)
–simultaneously performing a task that interferes with working memory(McKinnon & Moscovitch, 2007)
–language processing(Newton & de Villiers, 2007)
–brain injury affecting working memory or other aspects of executive function(Apperly, Samson, & Humphreys, 2005)

Question 24

What does Apperly and Butterfill (2009) argue about Theory of Mind abilities?

Answer 24

highly flexible
BUT
– not automatic
– cognitively demanding
– depends on a limited quantity of cognitive resources

Question 25

What are 3 possible problems of Theory of Mind Tests in Childhood

Answer 25

1.Binary Response: Either correct or incorrect. No detection of degrees of performance + competence that fall somewhere in between.
2.Instruction Comprehension (Temporal Dimension): From: “Where will Sally look for the ball?”
to: “Where will Sally look for the ball, first of all?” (Siegal & Beattie, 1991).
3.Overall linguistic ability
(could ToM be seen in younger infants then?)

Question 26

Explain Onishi and Baillargeon (2005) violation of expectation experiment

Answer 26

1.15- month-olds infants watched as:
– an actor put an object in one of 2 boxes (box A)
–the object was moved to the other box (box B) either with the actor seeing/not seeing
– the actor then looked for the object in one of the boxes
2.infants looked longer when the actor searched in the box that
was inconsistent with their belief (either true – when they had seen – or false).

Question 27

Explain Buttelmann, Carpenter, Tomasello, 2009 procedure

Answer 27

1.18-month-olds: they were shown 2 boxes, and how they
could be locked by putting a wooden pin into a hole in the front.
Two experimenters:
– Having played with a soft toy, the first experimenter put it in a box.
– The second experimenter then moved the soft toy to the other box, in 2 conditions:
■ A) True Belief (the first experimenter saw the hiding of the toy)
■ B) False Belief (the first experimenter does not see the hiding of the toy)
– The two boxes were then locked.

Question 28

Buttelmann, Carpenter, Tomasello, 2009 Results

Answer 28

1.In both conditions, the first experimenter then: attempted to open the box where the toy was originally/failed to open the box/asked the infant to help/the infant chose a box, removed the pin and opened the lid.
The box the infants opened was different in the two conditions:
– False Belief: assuming the adult wanted to retrieve the toy, the infant opened the other box,
where the toy was now located
– True Belief: the infant opened the box where the toy was originally. Because the experimenter had seen the location switch, they assumed the latter wanted to open that box for some reason other than to retrieve the toy.

Question 29

If young infants already show
Theory of Mind abilities, why does literature still use the “4-year-old” threshold?

Answer 29

■ Most studies on early false belief report implicit behaviour (e.g., looking): while understanding false belief might be possible at
a very young age, these infants often cannot explicitly reveal knowledge (e.g., they fail the
Sally-Anne task).
■ This has led to the suggestion that children have “implicit theory of mind” before they have
an explicit theory of mind (one that enables them to make explicit judgements).

Question 30

Which factors,social or personal,
can shape Theory of Mind abilities?:Culture (Valanides, Sheppard, and Mitchell 2017)

Answer 30

–British vs. Mediterranean adult subjects -> ability to infer what others were thinking after observing a brief sample of their behaviour
–generally, P’s were good predictors.
–Mediterranean P’s were better than the British ones.
–This difference was entirely accounted by their level of collectivism.
■ A collectivistic culture stresses conformity, reliability and the
importance of the collective; an individualistic culture stresses the
importance of individuality and uniqueness.

Question 31

Which factors,social or personal,
can shape Theory of Mind abilities?:Family

Answer 31

■ Family size: Having many siblings might lead to exposure to other POV
■ Perner, Ruffman, and Leekam (1994):3-year-olds with siblings: more likely to pass the false belief test and those with several siblings: more likely than those with 1-2 siblings.
■ Jenkins and Astington (1996): Having siblings has beneficial effect only for those with older siblings as children with only younger siblings were no better in false belief test than those with none at all.

Question 32

Lewis, Freeman, Kyriakidou, Maridaki-Kassotaki and Berridge (1996) how does family help with false belief?

Answer 32

–having siblings conferred an advantage in acknowledging false belief.
-greater advantage in those with older rather than younger siblings.
Another social factor was even more strongly related with children’s success in
acknowledging false belief:
– Larger families tended to be extended rather than nuclear.
– There were many opportunities for adults to interact with the children.
– The number of available adults was the best predictor of whether or not a child would succeed
in acknowledging false belief.
■ These findings speak to the effect, on the ability of children to acknowledge false
belief, of adults spontaneously, intuitively offering “tutoring” on the characteristics of
the mind.

Question 33

Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, and Youngblade (1991) what interactions were seen between mums/33-month old toddlers?

Answer 33

-Some mothers provided a narrative on the actions of people/ characters in pretend scenarios:
■offering many references to psychological motives.
–Other mothers would give commentary on behaviour without making reference to thoughts:
■These children did not hear much in the way of psychological
explanations of human behaviour.

Question 34

What did Dunn, Brown, Slomkowski, Tesla, and Youngblade (1991) find 6 months later in the false belief test?

Answer 34

■The children who passed= parents who had given explanations of behaviour with reference to psychological states.
■The children who were unsuccessful=parents who had seldom referred to psychological states.
■Verbal explanations of psychological states of mind, reasons for action, and feelings, can promote Theory of Mind abilities in toddlers. (Ruffman, Slade, Devitt, & Crowe, 2006)

Question 35

What Characteristics of the Child could influence their theory of mind abilities?

Answer 35

■ The characteristics of children could shape the way people
respond to them, affecting the influence of social input:
– Offering explanations to a child with a fractious temperament might be more challenging than offering them to one who has a calmer disposition.
■Autism constrains the ability to understand other people’s minds

Question 36

Impact of divorce on children: What did Hetherington &
Stanley-Hagan (1999) find in a longitudinal study of 144 middle-class US white families (half sample divorced)

Answer 36

■1 year follow up:divorced kids showed higher internalising and externalising problems
6 year follow-up, mums who remained divorced:
■Daughters similarly adjusted like daughters of non-divorced mothers
■Sons showed higher externalising + internalising problems and lower social competence
–Mothers who remarried in the 2 years before follow up
■Daughters and sons showed higher externalising problems
–Mothers who remarried prior to 2 years before follow up
■Daughters showed higher externalising and internalising problems
■Sons no different than non-divorced families.
–It seems from this study that sons benefit from having a father in the
home, but only when the new father figure has been brought into the home sooner than 4 years after the divorce.

Question 37

What did British National Child Development study (Cherlin et al., 1991) n=11,658 find on the impacts of divorce in children

Answer 37

–239 cases of divorce between 7-11 yrs assessment waves
–Higher behaviour problems and lower academic achievement in maths + reading at age 11
–When age 7, behaviour problems and achievement were taken into account, children of divorced families were no longer significantly different from children of non-divorced families (i.e. the problems were evident prior to divorce)
■Likely that the adverse effects of divorce are attributable to both pre-existing conflict and changes from the divorce itself (including impact on parenting)

Question 38

What was found in Hansen et al.’s 2010 Millennium Cohort Study, n=19,000 children born in the year 2000, followed up at 9 months, 3 years and 5 years

Answer 38

■Examined associations with teacher-reported child externalising + internalising
problems
■The lowest externalising and internalising problems are in children who have married parents.
■Highest externalising problems in step-families
■Highest internalising problems in lone-parent families

Question 39

What are the practical issues with involving fathers in research?

Answer 39

–Mums (especially young children) are less likely to work so may have more time for participation
–Not all children have fathers in their lives
–Fathers less likely to remain in children’s lives
–Some children have multiple father figures

Question 40

What effects of father involvement in the UK were seen by Flouri (2010)?

Answer 40

–Some + effects of father involvement were found for their children’s mental health as adults, but only significantly for daughters.
–Father involvement was inversely related to their child’s aggression with peers, and also delinquency in adolescence in the case of sons
–Father involvement generally had + effects on their children’s academic development including, e.g., educational attainment by age 20.

Question 41

What did Bakermans-Kranenburg et al. (2003) find conducting a meta-analysis to review and
synthesise the findings from studies reporting early interventions focusing on
promoting maternal sensitivity?

Answer 41

–70 intervention studies with 88 effect sizes
–Small to medium effect size for changes in sensitivity (d=.33) and small effect for changes in attachment (d=.20)
Characteristics of effective interventions:
■Moderate no. of sessions (5-16 sessions)
■Clear behavioural focus– Example intervention – use video-feedback

Question 42

Sensitivity (to non-distress): What markers of sensitivity are included?

Answer 42

■Acknowledging the child’s affect
■Contingent vocalisations by the parent
■Facilitating the manipulation of an object or child movement
■Appropriate attention focusing
■Evidence of good time paced to the child’s interest and arousal level
■Slowing the pace when the child appears overstimulated or tired
■Picking up on the child’s interest in toys or games
■Shared positive affect
■Encouragement of the child’s efforts
■Providing an appropriate level of stimulation when needed
■Sitting on the floor or low seat, at the child’s level, to interact.
Rated on 5-point scale: 1 = Not at all characteristic – 5 = Highly characteristic

Question 43

Markers of intrusive interactions include what?

Answer 43

■Failing to modulate behaviour that the child turns from, defends against or expresses - effect to
■Offering a continuous barrage of stimulation (physical or verbal), food, or toys
■Not allowing the child to influence the pace or focus of play, interaction or feeding
■Taking away objects or food while the child still appears interested
■Not allowing the child to handle toys he/she reaches for
■Insisting that the child do something (play, eat, interact) in which he/she is not interested
■Not allowing the child to make choices
■Manipulating the child’s body in an intrusive manner
■Physically impairing the child’s movement
Rated on 5-point scale: 1 = Not at all characteristic – 5 = Highly characteristic

Question 44

Markers of detachment and disengagement can include what?

Answer 44

■Putting the child so he/she faces away from the parent, without attempts to visually “check in”
■Presenting toys without first engaging the child or showing him/her how to manipulate them
■Rarely making eye contact or talking to the child
■Not responding to the child’s vocalisations, smile, or reaching for toys
■An unawareness of the child’s capabilities and appropriate activities
■Positioning the child so that he/she cannot reach or manipulate a toy
■Ignoring the interesting things the child does
■Letting the child play unsupervised without checking in
■Continually calling the child “baby” instead of using his/her name
■Directing comments or stares towards the camera
■Behaving in a mechanical or performance-oriented manner
■Behaving in an emotionally uninvolved manner or appearing to be a baby-sitter rather than a parent when interacting with the child.
Rated on 5-point scale: 1 = Not at all characteristic – 5 = Highly characteristic

Question 45

Why were parenting interventions for preschool and school-age childhood behaviour problems
developed?

Answer 45

Parents of children with behaviour problems often show:
-Inconsistent discipline
-Harsh discipline (e.g. physical
punishment)
-Lack of supervision
-Failure to provide consistent, social rules
-Lack of warmth
-Coercive patterns

Question 46

What’s the rationale for parenting management training for child
behavioural problems?

Answer 46

Based on behavioural and social learning theorist’s view of child’s early social learning - That conditioning has so far been ineffective in promoting pro-social development

Question 47

What’s the aims for parenting management training for child
behavioural problems or social learning theory?

Answer 47

■Encourage playful interactions between parent and child to build the relationship
■Giving clear directions and rules
■Enhance levels of warmth and + reinforcement for desirable child behaviours
–Encourage usage of praise and rewards (e.g., social praise, tangibles) to increase socially desirable behaviours
■Modify antecedents (triggers or setting events) for undesirable behaviours
–Reorganise the child’s day to prevent problems
■Modify consequences for undesirable behaviours
–Using consistent and calmly executed consequences for unwanted behaviours
–Use time-out from positive reinforcement to discourage unwanted behaviours
■Use observational learning (modelling by other adults) of adaptive parenting approaches