Lecture 5 (Sem 2) - Social-emotional Development

What is a baby’s vision like initially, and how does it develop overtime?

• Inititally 20cm fixed vision

  • Closer vision to detect figures like parents

• As vision develops, it becomes better

  • By 8 to 9 months it is adult-like vision

What does a newborn have a preference for in their vision?

• Newborn preferences for

  • Mother’s face

  • Face-like stimuli

How can we test for a newborn’s visual preferences?

• Preferential looking procedure

What is the Preferential looking procedure?

• Two images are up on a screen, and swap postitions often - one random object stimuli and a face-like stimuli

• When the position is swapped, the baby focuses upon the face-like stimuli more than the random object stimuli

• This shows that they prefer and are tuned to look for faces more than other stimuli

What is emotional contagion?

• Sensitivity and response to others emotional cues at 2 to 3 months

  • e.g. a baby is more likely to cry if another one already is

What is the still face paradigm?

• An experiment where a caregiver goes from interacting normally with an infant to a sudden still face, being emotionless and unresponsive.

• Infants try to gain the attention of the caregiver by smiling or pointing but after no avail show distress

• This demonstrates infant’s early sensitivity to social interaction and shows that they active social partners, not passive responders.

What are babies able to do between the months of 3 to 7 months?

• Between 3 to 7 months infants have the increased ability to discriminate primary emotions based on facial expressions

  • e.g. Happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgust, surprise

What are babies able to do between the months of 7 to 10 months?

• Between 7 to 10 months infants can categorise emotions by valence (if they are positive or negative emotions)

What is social referencing?

• Using other people’s emotions and facial expressions to frame their own responses in a situation

• Begins between 10 to 12 months age

What is a good paradigm example showing social referening?

• Visual cliff paradigm

  • Infants are placed on a table with two sides - one is a flat platform, the other side has a transparent and clear drop off

  • Based on the parents emotion and facial expressions shown, they respond differently

  • If the caregiver shows happy and positive emotions, the baby crosses onto the transparent side, even if they think they will fall

  • If the caregiver shows fearful and negative emotions, they won’t cross

  • This shows infants use others’ emotional reactions to guide their own behaviour - social referencing.

What is the violation of expectation paradigm?

• Explains that babies look longer at events that violates their expectations of the world

  • e.g. Giving someone a toy with a happy face vs angry face

• Shows they have a foundation for understanding social situations and can detect emotional incongruence

What are mental state talks and when do they occur?

• Talking about what’s on your mind

• Babies typically think about desires in their mental state first

  • e.g. I want toy!

• Occurs around 18 months of age

What is sense of self and when does it emerge in infants?

• Awareness of individual self with own thoughts, feelings, and actions

  • Occurs around 18 months of age

How can we test for sense of self?

• Mirror self-recognition test - Development of self-awareness

  • Put sticker on babies head without them knowing

  • If they have developed their sense of self, they should recognise themself and thus take off the sticker on their head

  • If no sense of self, they will attempt to communicate with their reflection or look for them like another person

What is self in relation to others and when does it emerge?

• When children begin to develop secondary emotions due to others or societal expectations

  • e.g. empathy, embarassment, guilt, pride etc.

• Emerges at 18 months

What is Theory of Mind (ToM)?

• Understanding of others’ mental states and how they impact behaviour

What is the 5 step developmental scale of ToM?

• 1. Diverse desires at 2 years old

• 2. Diverse beliefs at 4 years old

• 3. Knowledge access at 5 years old

• 4. False beliefs at 7 years

• 5. Hidden emotions at 9 years old

What is the Sally Ann test and when does it test in Theory of Mind?

• Tests false belief in theory of mind

• A child watches two dolls, Sally and Anne

• Sally puts a ball into a basket and leaves

• Anne moves the ball while Sally is away into a box

• The child is then asked where Sally will look for the ball first

• Correctly saying Sally will check the basket first shows the child understands that others can hold false beliefs that are different from reality

What is the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test?

• A test where participants only see the eye region of faces and must choose which emotion corresponds with the mental state the eyes convey

• This tests for advanced theory of mind and the ability to infer others thoughts and feelings from subtle social cues

What is the Director task?

• A task where participants must follow instructions to move objects around a standing grid, but from the perspective of another person (director) who cannot see all objects

• Success in this task requires moving the correct objects from the perspective of the director

• Tests for advanced theory of mind in the awareness of perspective from other people

When does ToM performance begin to deterioate in adults?

• Performance on ToM tests begins to detoriate from 60 year olds onwards