Language & Theory of Mind

Language Use

• Common ground is shared knowledge between speaker and listener
• Audience design involves speakers tailoring their language based on the audience's knowledge
• Levels of language use include lexicon (words), syntax (grammar), speech rate, and accent
• Individuals adjust to similar levels of language use when communicating
• 60-70% of conversations are gossip
• Gossip can serve as socialization
• Ingroup refers to a group one belongs to, while outgroup refers to groups one does not belong to
• The social brain hypothesis: human brains evolved to maintain larger ingroups through complex thoughts
• Linguistic intergroup bias: Ingroups are described positively with permanent adjectives, outgroups are described negatively with specific verbs
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Language determines thoughts
• English speakers are more individualistic due to explicit references to "you" and "I"

Theory of Mind

• The capacity to understand minds with its concepts and processes, is essential for social interactions
• Theory of mind is important in teaching, learning languages, understanding others, sharing, and collaborating
• Agent categorization allows humans to identify moving objects that can act independently
• Recognizing goals involves understanding that agents seek objects
• Intentionality involves recognizing intentional behaviors
• Imitation is the human tendency to mimic others, with mimicry as an automatic form of it
• Mirror neurons activate when performing or observing an action
• Synchrony occurs when two people display the same internal states through the same behaviors
• Automatic empathy involves someone taking on another person's internal state by mimicking their behavior
• Joint attention requires two people to attend to the same object with awareness of their shared attention
• Visual perspective taking requires the ability to perceive something from another's viewpoint
• Social projection is an assumption that others share the same wants, knowledge, or feelings
• Simulation is representing another person's mental state
• Explicit mental state inference is taking another's perspective by separating one's own from their own
• False-Belief Test: Assesses recognition of when another person has a false belief that contradicts reality

Key Concepts and Terms

• Audience Design
• Automatic Empathy
• Common Ground
• False Belief Test
• Folk Explanations of Behaviour
• Ingroup
• Intention
• Intentionality
• Joint Attention
• Lexicon
• Linguistic Intergroup Bias
• Mimicry
• Mirror Neurons
• Outgroup
• Priming
• Projection
• Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
• Simulation
• Situational Model
• Social Brain Hypothesis
• Social Networks
• Synchrony
• Syntax
• Theory of Mind
• Visual Perspective Taking

Practice Questions

• Grammar and semantics are similar, while surface structure and grammar are different in the example sentences
• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis describes the idea that language determines thoughts
• The correct order of tools of theory of mind from simple to complex is imitation, joint attention, projection, assessing intentionality, mental state inference

Week 13 Definitions

• Basic-level category: Neutral, preferred category for an object
• Category: A set of equivalent entities
• Concept: Mental representation of a category
• Exemplar: A memory example labeled in a category
• Psychological essentialism: Category members share an unseen property
• Typicality: Category members' goodness ranges
• Chutes and Ladders: Numerical board game for early numerical building
• Concrete operations stage: Piaget, 7-12 years, logical concrete situations, no systematic reasoning
• Conservation problems: Piaget, physical transformation changes perception, not quantity
• Continuous development: Gradual incremental development
• Depth perception: Perceiving distance
• Discontinuous development: No gradual development
• Formal operations stage: Piaget, 12+ years, adolescents gain educated adult reasoning
• Information processing theories: Cognitive processes underlie thinking/growth
• Nature: Genes influence development
• Numerical magnitudes: Sizes of numbers
• Nurture: Environments influence development
• Object permanence task: Piaget, infants under 9 months fail to search for hidden objects
• Phonemic awareness: Awareness of component sounds
• Piaget's theory: Development in discontinuous stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational)
• Preoperational reasoning stage: Piaget, 2-7 years, represent objects via drawing/language, no logical reasoning/conservation
• Qualitative changes: Large changes, like caterpillar to butterfly
• Quantitative changes: Gradual changes, like pine tree growth
• Sensorimotor stage: Piaget, birth to 2 years, enduring object reality represented
• Sociocultural theories: Vygotsky, culture influences children's development
• Endophenotypes: Genetic liability
• Event-Related potentials (ERP): Measures neuron firing non-invasively
• Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): Measures blood oxygen levels
• Social brain: Neuroanatomical structures understand intentions

Week 13 - Categories and Concepts

• Categories are well-defined
• Fuzzy catergories are borderline items
• A study showed categorization changes; categories are fuzzy
• Typicality: some category items are more typical, and rely on a prototype
• Influences of typicality on cognition include faster judging, learning/categorization
• Typicality source due to more frequent thing encountered
• Family resemblance:
  • frequent features in the category
  • not frequent features in another

Theories of Concept Representation

• Prototype theory: summary mental representation of a category
• Exemplar theory: compares seen objects to previously seen objects
  • The highest score is chosen
• Knowledge helps learn faster
  • Similar well-remembered objects has greatest effect
• Concepts easier to introduce if new concepts are introduced
• Features that connect are learned easily
  • The goal is to connect to knowledge of the world
• Psychological essentialism believes all categories cause features
  • dogs have genes
  • affects which object categories are assigned
• artifacts do not have essence
  • signs are in/out, unchanging, and for living things passed on to progeny

Social and Emotional Competence

• Identify the main areas of cognitive development and describe them
• Describe major theories concerning cognitive development and their differences
• Learn on the roles of nature and nuture
• Learning whether it goes from discontinuous to continuous
  • Can improve understanding of education

Nature vs nuture

• Nature: genetic/inherited
• Nuture: The environment
• Qualitative vs Quantitative changes occur in life cycles

Piaget's stages

• Children develop via stages of reasoning
• Sensorimotor stage: objects become a reality
  • less than 9 months old do not have object permanence
• Preoperational reasoning stage: kids draw and speak, cannot do conservation problems
• Concrete operational reasoning stage: kids think logically concrete, cannot do systematic reasoning
• Formal operational reasoning stage: adolescents reason

Important Application

• Awareness of sounds in words

Autism

• Neural studies suggest a means of diagnosis
• Symptoms described
• Brain structure in ASD
  • Develop disorder in the first 3 years of life and lasts for life
  • Communication issues

Social Brain network

• Neuroanatomy helps figure intentions
• Consist of amygdala (emotions), frontal cortex (relationships), fusiform gyrus (face detection), post. temporal silcus region detects biological motion
• Social brain = neural imaging (fMRI/ERP imaging)
• fMRI = where, ERP = when
• Endophenotypes (internal markers measureable)
  • genetics + early symptoms

Secure infant attachment

• Confidence of infant
  • Secure type is sensitive and consistent which is a high functioning result
• Insecure type is negligence and avoidance
  • Leads to bullying

Parenting Style

• Authoritative: high support, support and interest which supports
• Authoritarian: Low support but high regulation
• Uninvolved
• Permissive = high support but low regulation leads to problems

Early learning

• Mental states can affect baby, they note what you and they perceive
• Kids who are sensitive tend to react well
• Social reference, reading someones face
• Reactivity will allow personality to be shaped

Emotion and Competence

• Good synchrony has more growth
• Concience is important
• Standards of conduct
• Parents can motivate with effortful control

Emotions

• Itrapersonal is an affect on others
• interpersonal is between others
• the functions are social/cultural
• Emotions are awareness, preparation, motivation
• Sympathy expressed easily
• Visual clift - moms can scare away

Socia functions

• Coordination and organization
• Cultural background tells of what emotions are best etc
• Learned rules determine management of rules

Attachment

• Proximity is selected by evolution, behaviours that show attention
• Anxious attached = wants to have support
• John Bowlby had the intense need
• Harlow showed what happens when monkeys don't grow in nurturing sense

A number of terms mentioned

• Behavior
• Affect
• Interpersonal
• etc