CL: Social Development in Early Childhood PDF

CL: Social Development in Early Childhood Social Cognition Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and sense. Social- relating to society Soc...

CL: Social Development in Early Childhood Social Cognition Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and sense. Social- relating to society Social cognition is the mental action of acquiring knowledge and understanding relating to society or its organization. Social cognition is the processing of information about the intentions and behaviours of others through selection, encoding, storage, retrieval and processing. Theory of Mind The ability to attribute mental states, to explain, predict and justify behaviours in others. This is key to understanding and engaging with others. This is the awareness that we are psychological entities surrounded by other psychological entities with their own thoughts and feelings. It lets us navigate the complexities of our personal/social world through explanations of our behaviours and that of others and predictions of our behaviours and that of others. This can guide our personal/social actions We are also pretty good at predicting what happened in the past (retrodicting) to cause mental states. Being attuned to other people’s minds broadens our consciousness of what is happening in the world. Retrodicting Participants are shown short videos of reactions to something. They had four scenarios like ‘having to wait’ or ‘being told a compliment’. The participants had to guess what scenario caused the reaction that they watched. They were CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 1  able to deduce what scenario caused the reaction which shows we are very well attuned to other people's minds. However, we can’t assume this is something we are born with. When assessing children they need to make sure the task is as simple, familiar and age-appropriate as possible and yield answers that are as unambiguous as possible. They use dolls Testing theory of mind in children CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 2  If the child answers that Sally will look for the ball in the box then we can infer that the child is deducing the fact that in Sally’s mind, there is an idea that the ball is in the box and we could potentially assume that the child is infer that Sally knows where the ball may be and go and retrieve it. An issue with this design is that we can’t differentiate what the child knows from what the child may be thinking Sally knows. We can't be sure whether the child is assuming Sally would look for the ball in the box because they are thinking that CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 3  Sally knows the ball in the box or because the child knows the ball is in the box and because they know this, Sally will look for the ball in the box. We can’t detangle whether the mental content is the child’s mental content or whether they are assigning this mental content to Sally. Investigators added an extra step to remedy this… False-belief: Sally-Ann Test (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, Frith, 1985) Having Sally leave means that she doesn't see everything that happens later on. If the child answers, she would look for it in the box then we can know that the child is describing their mental state as just saying what they know. Not ascribing mental content to Sally. But if the child responds, she will look for it in the basket then we know that the child has ascribed the mental state to Sally. They know that Sally did not see Anne move the ball the the box so she would not look for the ball in the box. CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 4  This is why it is called the test of false belief because it tests the child’s ability to ascribe to someone else a belief that is true according to the information the other person has but is false because it doesn't match what is actually true and what the child knows to be true. The ability to pass this false belief test suggests that the child has developed the theory of mind. Perspective-taking Epistemic perspective-taking Reasoning about beliefs. Attribution of justified false beliefs: recognising that one can have beliefs that diverge from reality but are justified by one’s experience of the world. Conceptual perspective-taking Distinguishing between appearance and reality. The ability to recognize that the way things appear is different from the way that they are. These perspective-takings have particular developmental trajectories. Attributing false beliefs to others can be tested by presenting children with stories similar to the Sally-Anne test. 0% of the 3yo pointed to the correct location; 57% of the 4yo were correct; 86% of the 6-9yo were correct. This suggests that the attribution of false beliefs to others develops after the age of 4. (Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Theory of mind is the ability to understand other people's mental content but also the ability to make reasoned and purposeful judgements and evaluations about that content. Attributing false belief to oneself Children are shown a tube of popular sweets and asked to guess what's inside. After the 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 I opened it, what did you think was inside?’ They found that children aged 3yo often answered ‘pencil’ they had a harder time disentangling what they know now and the mental contents they had CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 5  previously. While 4-5yo did much better and was able to separate the two. Testing the child's ability to detangle what they know now about reality and the particular mental state they had previously. The attribution of false belief to oneself develops after the age of 4. Distinguishing between appearance and reality Children are shown joke-shop objects like a sponge rock. They are shown it is fake, and they are asked: “what is this really? Is it really, really a rock or really, really a sponge?” (reality check), “when you look at this with your eyes tight now, does it look like a rock or does it look like a sponge?” (appearance check). They found that 3-year-olds often give same answer to both questions while 4-5 year-olds do much better. The appearance-reality distinction is developed after the age of four. Other minds ‘Theory theory’ We understand others’ mental states and behaviours by having a model of other minds, in the same way that we understand the movement of non-animate entities on the basis of naïve physics notions. We acquire rules and principles from which we can explain and predict behaviour, just as a physicist has principles for explaining and predicting the motion of objects. ‘Stimulation theory’ We understand the minds of others because their mental states can me internally replicated 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. Keysar, Barr, Balin and Brauner (2000) CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 6  Pairs of participants (one is a confederate) asked to play a referential communication game: Several objects were put between the participant and the confederate in a grid The confederate gave instructions to move things around in the grid. Most objects were mutually visible but some were only visible to the participant. When the confederate asked participants to, for example, move the candle the participants would consider the candle that was hidden from the confederate by reaching for it or gazing at it. As a first pass the participants did not seem to consider the confederates perspective. Participants again sat opposite a confederate, with an object-containing grid between them. Out of view of the confederate, they received an object (e.g. a roll of tape) and a paper bag. –They were told to put the object in the bag, and put it in one of the occluded slots in the grid The confederate would then instruct the participant to move things around CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 7  In the experimental condition the grid contained another object that has the same label as the object in the bag In the baseline condition the bag contained an object that did not share a label with another object in the grid 71% of participants attempted to move the object in the bag at least once (control condition: 0%) 46% of participants attempted to move the bag twice or more Egocentric Bias: a tendency to be biased by one’s own knowledge when attempting to appreciate a more naïve or uninformed perspective. Overcoming this bias is cognitively demanding. Is theory of Mind Automatic? How adults perform in different belief-reasoning problems is affected by: general processing speed and executive function; simultaneously performing a task the interferes with working memory; language processing; brain injury affecting working memory or other aspects of executive function Apperly and Butterfill (2009) argue that Theory of Mind abilities are highly flexible but not automatic, cognitively demanding or depend on a limited quantity of cognitive resources. Difference between performance and competence Individuals that were tested were competent in theory of mind so they have developed those skills but they couldn't successfully use them in a specific situation. Theory of mind in Childhood Possible problems Binary response- the child either succeeds or fails there is no degree of performance. Instruction Comprehension (temporal dimension) Overall linguistic ability CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 8  Violation of expectations paradigm Used to look at innate understanding that infants may have about the world around them. Originally used to test the understanding infants may have about the laws of the physical world. Children were shown objects moving, then the same thing happening but with an object in the way. If children show a different reaction to an event that is impossible like the moving object passing through the object that was in its way then it would show that the children have an understanding of the laws of the physical world. This suggests that these are innate. Nativism viewpoint. Onishi and Baillargeon (2005) A violation of expectation experiment with 15 month-olds Infants watched as: an actor put an object in one of two boxes; the object as moved to the other box wither with the actor seeing or not seeing; the actor then looked for the object in one of the boxes. The infants looked longer when the actor searched in the box that was inconsistent with their belief (either true- when they had seen- or false). Buttelmann, Carpenter, Tomasello, (2009) 18 month-olds: they were shown two 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. CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 9  In both conditions the first experimenter attempted to open the box the toys were originally in, fail to open the box, ask for the infant to help then the infant chose a box, removed to pin and opened the lid. The box the infants opened was different in the two conditions in the false belief condition the child assumed that the adult wanted to retrieve the toy, so the infant opened the other box, where the toy was now located. In the true belief condition the infant opened the box where the toy was originally. Because the experimenter had seen the location they assumer the latter wanted to open that box for some other reason. Implicit False Belief Most studies on early false belief report implicit behaviour: while understanding false belief might be possible at a very young age, these infants often cannot explicitly reveal knowledge. This has led to the suggestion that children have ‘implicit theory of mid’ before they have an explicit theory of mind (one that enables them to make explicit judgements). Social and Personal factors that can shape Theory of Mind Culture A collectivistic culture stresses conformity, reliability and the importance of the collective; an individualistic culture stresses the importance of individuality and uniqueness. Family Family size: Having many siblings might lead to the exposure to other points of view and other minds. It is confirmed that having siblings conferred advantage 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. Parents CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 10  A false belief test was done on 40 month olds. 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. Characteristics of the Child Child characteristics could also influence Theory of Mind ability acquisition in interaction with the social environment. 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. One child characteristic that stands above all others, and constrains the ability to understand other people’s minds: Autism CL: Social Development in Early Childhood 11