PSY2001 Lecture 7 - Social Learning and Development

Learning in a social context - Vygotsky

Learning is the result of the interaction between a child and a more knowledgeable individual

Culture - Vygotsky

• “Cognition”, “memory”, “attention” not only individual characteristics

• Cognitive processes directly influenced by type of culture

  • Ex: access to formal education

• “A human being is not at all a skin sack filled with reflexes, and the brain is not a hotel for a series of conditioned reflexes accidentally stopping in”

Zone of Proximal Development - Vygotsky

Difference between actual performance and potential performance

• How the child learns with help of others

• At level beyond existing skill (but not too far)

Language and Thought - Vygotsky

Important for a child to develop as learner AND thinker

• Importance of the external monologue

  • Transition from language as tool for communication to a tool for thought

  • Help organize and plan behaviour

  • Internalized to become inner speech ~ 7 years

• Contrast to Piaget:

  • Saw monologue as evidence of egocentrism

Scaffolding - Bruner

How knowledge is passed from expert adult to novice child

• Recruitment: engage interest of child

• Reduction of degrees of freedom: reduce number of acts required, simplify

• Direction maintenance: keep motivation up

• Marking critical features: highlight relevant features

• Demonstration: modelling solutions

Social learning is uniquely human

Many of the behaviours that distinguish us are supported by it:

• Cultures (e.g. music, language, art, fashion, history)

• Tools and technology (e.g. computers,internet, cars)

Social learning is not uniquely human

Many animals socially learn, some even exhibit cultures or traditions, however:

• Cultures not as complex

• No evidence for cumulative culture

Copying in animals vs humans

Primates:

• Emulation → learning from the results of someone elses actions

Humans:

• Imitation → replicating someones actions

Unique to humans - Cultural intelligence hypothesis

Humans have evolved special social-cognitive skills

• (ex: theory of mind, social learning, communication, cooperation, imitation, teaching)

Unique to humans - Relying on input from demonstrator and observer

Role of skilled “demonstrator”:

• Scaffolding, teaching, “natural pedagogy”

Unique to humans - Intentional sharing and social affiliation

Natural tendency to want to share information or combine efforts toward common goals

Role of the observer: child

• “Primed” to attend to demonstrator’s cues (Csibra & Gergely, 2009)

• Copying to higher level of fidelity

  • Imitation versus Emulation (and other forms)

  • Overimitation: copy relevant AND irrelevant features (Lyons et al. 2011)

• Able to learn even “opaque” technologies and arbitrary cultural customs

Self-Recognition study

Mirror Test - Lewis & Brooks-Gunn (1979)

• 16 infants each in 6 age groups (9, 12, 15, 18, 21 & 24 months)

• Compared “No-rouge” & “Rouge” conditions

  • Touching own nose = recognising red spot

• Evident at 21-24 months old

Evidence for temporal sense of self

Povinelli et al (1996) - placed sticker on head of 2-4 year olds

• Videos and photos taken with sticker

• Showed them videos/photos after delay

• Older 3 & 4 yrs: reached for sticker

• Younger children did not, but:

  • Could label photo or video correctly

  • DID remove or touch sticker when presented with mirror

Full temporal sense of self develops after 3 yrs

Definition of person permanence

• Internal representation of a social being

• Develops at around 18 months

Person permanence study

Lewis & Brooks-Gun’s (1979) social dimensions

Familiarity

• Different behaviour to familiar vs strange adults (7-9 months)

• Familiar vs. strange peers (10-12 months)

Age

• Discriminate children and adults by 6-12 months

• Use verbal age labels by 18-24 months

Gender

• Discriminate between women and men strangers (9-12 months)

• Use verbal gender labels around 19 months

In the first year of life children learn to differentiate people based on familiarity, age and gender.

Emotional Development - Production

• After birth: Positive and negative affect

• A few months: basic “primary emotions” (joy, interest, anger, sadness)

• 7 months: fear responses, anger vs. pain

  • Izard et al (1987) 2- 8 months

• 2-3 years “secondary emotions” (embarrassment, pride, shame)

  • Ex: Fear + Anger = Hate, envy

Recognizing Emotion

Discriminate emotions early on

• 10wks - Haviland & Lelwica (1987)

Social referencing: gauge response from care-giver before reacting

• Wary reactions to strangers (and toys):

  • More positive when mother reacts positively

• Visual cliff

Emotional Intelligence

Learn to regulate emotion

• Switch from external to internal management

Emotion regulation and social competence

• Accuracy in recognizing emotions = better acceptance by peers

• Links to developmental outcomes later in life

Late developing

• Into late childhood and adolescence

• Linked to maturation in the pre-frontal cortex

Understanding another’s mind - Harris (1989)

Precursors to this understanding:

• Self-awareness (18-20 months)

  • Verbally express emotional states (2yrs)

• Capacity for pretence (2-3yrs)

  • Pretend something in the world is something else

• Distinguishing reality from pretence (3-4yrs)

Combine these to start understanding other peoples’ emotions, desires, beliefs.

Theory of Mind

Other people have a mental representation of the world that is different from our own (beliefs, feelings, etc)

• “theory”: Cannot see or touch the mind, have to infer

• Crucial to success in social world

• Develops with age

False belief task - Wimmer & Perner (1983)

Where will Maxi look for the chocolate?

• Only answered correctly over 4yrs (5-8yrs)

Possible story is too complicated or too long…

False Belief Tasks - Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)

Sally-Ann Task

• 4-yr-olds solve

• 3-yr-olds do not

False Belief Tasks - Perner, Leekam, and Wimmer (1987)

Smarties task

• 4 & older solve

ToM - Distinguishing mental states in language

• 2yrs + use words about internal states (want)

• 3yrs + use cognitive terms (know, remember)

ToM - Understanding the relationship between seeing and knowing

By 3-4yrs understand that seeing something means knowing about

• Masangkay et al (1974) – same vs different views of card

ToM - Appearance reality distinction

3 yrs have difficulty understanding 2 representations of an object at the same time

• Flavell et al (1986): what it looks like and what it is can be different (e.g. rock/sponge and realism errors)

ToM - Predicting behaviour

• 2yrs understand that people have desires (e.g. Sam and his rabbit)

• 3yrs understand that people have beliefs (e.g. Amy and the books)

• But do not yet understand that others can act on inaccurate beliefs (?)

When is ToM achieved? - Wellman et al (2001)

Review of 180 false belief studies

• Very few 2yr olds

• Minority 3yr olds

• 4+ yrs usually passed

When is ToM achieved? - Role of implicit knowledge

• 2-3 yr olds might look at correct place, but identify incorrect (Southgate et al., 2007)

• VoE experiments: In some conditions, 15 month olds could correctly predict behaviour on false belief task (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005)

Criticism of Southgate (2007)

Kulke et al. (2018)

• Findings could not be replicated.

• Non-verbal transfer tasks could not be robustly replicated independently.

Southgate & Vernetti (2014)

Measured activation in motor cortex of adults (activated when the actor has false belief that ball is in the box)

• 6-month-old infants showed the same brain activity

• Authors conclude: infants make action prediction based on the agent’s beliefs

Birch and Bloom (2007)

Knowledge of reality overrides knowledge of beliefs

Varied the amount knowledge given to the observer

• Ignorance: “moves the violin to another container”

• Knowledge-plausible: “moves the violin to the red container”

• Knowledge-implausible: “moves the violin to the purple container”

High correctness and confidence for ignorant condition

Language impacting ToM development

• Children who perform better on false belief tasks tend to have better language abilities

• Children with caregivers who use more mental state terms earlier perform better on FB tasks

Interaction with peers/family impacting ToM development

Those with older siblings do better (Ruffman et al., 1998)

Larger families, more interaction with adults and siblings also do better (Lewis et al., 1996)

Understanding surprise

Hadwin & Perner (1991)

5yrs (not 4) chose the correct “surprise” face over neutral face

Understanding deception

Peskin (1992)

Lie to puppet about preferred sticker to avoid losing it

• 5 yrs could lie from beginning

• 4 yrs got better over trials

• 3 yrs never learned to lie

Levels of Intentionality

1st order beliefs = False-belief task

• Ex: Sally-Anne

2nd order beliefs = False belief tasks about someone else’s beliefs

• Ability from 5-6 years (Miller, 2009)

Ambiguous drawing task

Carpendale & Chandler (1996)

5-8 yr olds - All succeeded on false belief task

• Make sure child can see both interpretations

  • “What will Ann see?”

• 5 yo: could not give a good answer

• 8 yo: some had trouble

Advanced Theory of Mind (AToM)

Osterhaus & Bosacki (2022)

Review of tests/results used from middle childhood onwards

• Found very diverse definitions

• But, most studies relying on same 4-5 tests

• Individual diffs in AToM related to inhibition and language skills NOT EMPATHY

Criticism of Osterhaus & Bosacki (2022)

• Tests may not be effective at measuring social cognition (Quesque & Rosetti, 2020)

• Don’t consider diversity of social backgrounds and experiences

Theories of how ToM develops - between 3-5 years

Conceptual change

• Develop concept of (meta) representations

• Mental states aren’t direct reflections of reality, but can be inaccurate

• Evidence: differences between 3- & 4-yr-olds on traditional false-belief tasks

Theories of how ToM develops - gradually

Understanding

• “Realist” tendency overrides understanding of beliefs

• Other cognitive abilities mask understanding

• Evidence: tasks reduce complexity/cognitive demands show success at younger ages; on going development and perhaps some decline on certain measures with older age