Social Cognition: Theory of Mind

• The understanding that others have beliefs, desires, plans, hopes, information, and intentions that may differ from our own.

  • Understanding and grasping another’s perspective

  • Typically- developing children attain theory of mind at roughly 3– 4 yo through a progression of stages starting at around 18 months

    • The awareness that their own mental states are distinct from those of others

• Factors contributing to preschoolers’ theory of mind:

  • Language and verbal reasoning

  • Executive function

  • Make-believe play

  • Social interaction

• Limitations of child’s theory of mind:

  • Poor at inferring what people know or are thinking about

  • Holding 2 pieces of information on false belief task – what is expected ; and what others might believe

• Autism

  • Varies in severity along a continuum, called autism spectrum disorder

  • Associated with impairment in theory of mind—showing deficits in understanding of social-emotional processes and behavior

Social-Emotional Development and The Self

• In the early childhood years, children develop in many ways that enhance their self-understanding.

• Convinced more that they are their own person, though they still identify intensely with their parents

• As children continue to move through early childhood, the self becomes tied to what the child can do. Erikson describes the central issue of the next stage as initiative versus guilt.

Erikson’s Initiative vs Guilt

• Preschoolers have surplus of energy, approach new things with increased sense of purpose and direction. Make up games, activities, run around, play tag, seek others, form friendships

  • Do they increase their initiatives or leave with feelings of guilt?

• Preschoolers try to initiate activity; that is, they want to do things, to create, and to make things happen (initiative).

  • However, young children may fail at these attempts to do things by themselves, and that can lead to guilty feelings that they have done something wrong (guilt). own.

Development of Self and Self Concept

• Preschoolers’ self-concepts often self-defined by observable characteristics, concrete skills or likes

• At this age, they can talk about what makes us the “same” and “different”

• In Preschool Years it’s common to do activities such as “All About me” , “I am special”, to help children develop and foster positive self concept

• Preschoolers’ self-concepts initially largely consist of more observable characteristics(hair color, tall)

• By age 4, children also describe themselves in terms of more common, basic emotions and attitudes; by age 5, they have more of a sense of their own personality traits.

• Many self-descriptions are overly, unrealistically positive – which is appropriate and normal for this age!

  • Young preschoolers are not yet able to compare themselves to others because cognitively they cannot keep two things—their own behavior and the behavior of another person—in mind at the same time.

• Without being able to compare their own performance to the performance of another person, almost everything they do can be the “best” in their eyes

• Comparison based on age over ability

  • Preschoolers tend to measure competence based on their own accomplishments as opposed to others – what they can do at age 2 vs. 5;