Week 6 - Developmental - Social Development in Early Childhood

Social Cognition

= the processing of info about other people’s intentions, dispositions, behaviours

• eg, friend is unusually quiet. You notice their behaviour, remember that they have an exam tomorrow, and infer that they might be stressed

Social Cognition 5 Stages

• selection = choosing which social info to focus on

• encoding = interpreting that info

• storage = keeping it in memory

• retrieval = recalling it later

• processing = using it to understand behaviour

Theory of Mind (ToM)

= the ability to attribute mental states to other people, such as beliefs, knowledge, intentions, emotions, to explain and predict their behaviour

• understanding that your knowledge is different from theirs

Two Processes in ToM

• prediction = using mental states to anticipate future behaviour

• retrodiction = inferring what happened previously from someone’s reaction

Pillai, Sheppard & Mitchell (2012)

Aim = Can people work out what happened to someone by watching their reactions?

Procedure = 35 ppts - watched short videos of people reacting to situations including hearing a joke, waiting, receiving a compliment, hearing a story

Findings = ppts successfully identified which situations had caused the reactions

Conclusion = people can use social info to infer previous events, demonstrating retrodiction

Sally-Anne false-belief test

Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith (1985)

1. Sally places a ball inside a basket

2. Sally leaves room

3. Anne moves the ball into a box

4. Sally returns

5. The child is asked “where will Sally look for the ball?”

= measures children’s ability to attribute a false belief to another person, even when they know the truth situation

Two types of perspective-taking

• epistemic

• conceptual

Episemtic Perspective-taking

= understanding that somebody can have a belief that differs from reality, based on what they have experienced

• eg, Sally believes the ball is still in the basket

Conceptual perspective-taking

= understanding that an object’s appearance can differ from its true identity

• eg, a sponge looks like a rock but is actually a sponge

Development of false-belief understanding - 3 studies

• Wimmer & Perner (1983)

• Perner, Leekham & Wimmer (1987) - Smarties task

• Flavell, Flavell & Green (1983)

Wimmer & Perner (1983)

Aim = investigate when children can attribute false beliefs to others

• children were presented with stories similar to Sally-Anne task

Results = 3 years - 0% correct, 4 years 50%, 6-9 years 75%

Conclusion = performance improves substantially with age

Perner, Leekham & Wimmer (1987) - Smarties task

Procedure:

• children see a familiar sweets tube and predict it contains sweets

• experimenter opens it and reveals a pencil

• children are asked what they originally thought was inside

Findings:

• 3 year olds often incorrectly answer “pencil”

• 4-5 year olds perform much better

Flavell, Flavell & Green (1983)

Aim = investigate children’s understanding of appearance vs reality

• children are shown an object that looks like a rock but is actually a sponge

• they are asked what it really is and what it looks like

Findings = 3 yr olds often give same answer to both questions, 4-5 yr olds do better

Conclusion = the ability to distinguish appearance from reality improves during early childhood

Theory Theory

= we use learned rules and mental models to explain + predict other’s behaviour

Simulation Theory

= we imagine ourselves in someone else’s situation ro predict what they might think or feel

Theory of Mind in adults : Keysar, Barr, Balin & Brauner (2000)

Procedure:

• ppts followed instructions from another person, called a confederate, while looking at objects in a grid

• some objects were visible only to the ppt

• eg, when confederate asked them to move the small candle, the ppt needed to consider which candles the confederate could actually see

Finding = ppts sometimes looked towards or reached for objects hidden from the confederate

Conclusion = adults don’t always immediately consider another person’s perspective

Theory of Mind in adults : Keysar, Lin & Barr (2003)

• follow up experiment used objects hidden inside paper bags, which the confederate did not know about

• 71% attempted to move the hidden object at least once in experimental trials

• 46% attempted to move the bag twice or more

Conclusion = even adults can fail to account for what another person knows

What did Keysar’s studies demonstrate?

= egocentric bias - our own knowledge can interfere with our ability to understand somebody who knows less than us

Apperly & Butterfill (2009)

• ToM is NOT automatic

• cognitively demanding

• dependent on limited cognitive resources

Why might ToM performance be worse than competence?

• task demands - including working memory, language, executive functions- can interfere with performance

Problems with traditional false-belief tests

• binary responses = children are classified as right or wrong, without showing partial understanding

• instruction comprehension = a child may misunderstand what the experimenter is asking

• linguistic ability = younger children may understand something but struggle to communicate it verbally

Onishi & Baillargeon (2005) - ToM in Infants

Ppts - 15 month old infants

Procedure:

1. an actor places an object inside box A

2. object is moved to box B

3. in one condition, actor sees the movement

4. in another condition, the actor does not see the movement

5. researchers measure infants’ looking times when the actor searches

Findings = infants looked longer when the actor searched somewhere inconsistent with the actor’s belief

Conclusion = findings suggest that infants as young as 15 months may be sensitive to other people’s false beliefs

Buttelmann, Carpenter & Tomaselo (2009)

Pts - 18 month old infants

Procedure:

• experimenter places toy in one box

• another experimenter moves it to a different box

• first experimenter either sees or does not see the move

• the first experimenter attempts to open the original box and asks the infant for help

Findings = false belief condition = opens the box continuing the toy’s new location. True belief condition = opens the original box

Conclusion = infants’ helping behaviour may demonstrate early false-belief understanding

Implicit Theory of Mind

= understanding demonstrated indirectly through behaviour

• eg, an infant looking longer at an unexpected action

Explicit Theory Of Mind

= understanding demonstrated through a direct judgement or response

• eg, a child correctly answering the Sally-Anne question

Factors Influencing Theory of Mind Development

• culture

• siblings

• older siblings

• family structure

• parental mental-state talk

• child characteristics

Culture - Valances, Sheppard & Mitchell (2017)

• researchers compared British + Mediterranean adults’ ability to infer mental states from behaviour

Findings - mediterranean ppts performed better, and the difference was accounted for by collectivism

Conclusion - cultural orientation may influence social perspective-taking

Siblings - Perner, Ruffman & Leekman (1994)

• 3 year olds with siblings were more likely to pass false-belief tests than children without siblings

• children with several siblings performed better than those with one or two

• siblings expose children to different perspectives, beliefs and intentions

Older Siblings - Jenkins & Astington (1996)

• the sibling advantage was found particularly among children with older siblings

• children with no siblings performed no better than those without siblings

Family Structure - Lewis et al. (1996)

• researchers found that the number of available adults was the strongest predictor of false-belief success in their study

• suggests that interactions with adults can support children’s understanding of mental states

Parental mental-state talk - Dunn et al. (1991)

• researchers observed mother interacting with toddlers aged 33 months

• some mothers frequently explained behaviour using thoughts, feelings, motives

• 6 months later - children whose mothers used more psychological explanations were more likely to pass false-belief tests

Child Characteristics

• children’s temperaments can influence how adults interact with them, which may affect opportunities to learn about mental states