Development of Social Cognition

A Sense of Self Develops During Childhood:

• Having a sense of self includes things like:

  • Being able to distinguish between self and others and referring to each with appropriate language

  • Having knowledge of our experiences, abilities, motivations, etc.

  • Having ideas about body image

Important stages during development include:

1. The existential self - from about three months old, we learn to distinguish self from non-self and find out that we exist separately from other things—the development of object permanence.

2. Categorical self - from about two years old, we start to use language to describe ourselves, using culturally defined categories, e.g. age, male/female, tall/short, etc. We are also described by other people in this way, which can influence our idea of ourselves. For example, describing a child as 'clever' or 'naughty' could influence their self-esteem.

3. Identity crisis - Erikson (1968) claimed that during adolescence, when going through body changes and starting to make plans for the future, we may try out different roles until we find our true identity.

• Having a sense of self also involves being able to see yourself as others see you.

• This requires some understanding of the minds of others and being able to see things from their perspective.

Theory of Mind (ToM) is About Understanding Other People's Minds

• Humans have a unique ability to cooperate and carry out complex interactions. It's thought this is possible because we have a theory of mind. This involves understanding that we and others have minds with knowledge, feelings, beliefs, motivations, intentions, etc. We can explain and predict other people's behaviour by making inferences about their mental states. This includes the knowledge that others may have false beliefs about the world.

• Problems with ToM have been linked to the social and communication difficulties associated with autism.

• According to evidence, most children develop ToM at around four years old. However, the kind of questions asked in Baron-Cohen et al's false belief task may be difficult for younger children to understand. It seems that three-year-old children can pass some versions of the test, so ToM may actually develop earlier.

• There's also disagreement about the development of ToM. It may have an innate basis, but nurture and experience are also likely to be important in its development.

Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)- The Sally-Anne study:

Method:

• Three groups were studied - children with autism with an average age of 12 years, children with Down's Syndrome with an average age of 11 years, and typically-developing children with an average age of 4 years. The experiment used two dolls - Sally had a basket, Anne a box. Children were asked to name the dolls (the naming question). Then Sally was seen to hide a marble in her basket and leave the room. Anne took the marble and put it in her box. Sally returned and the child was asked, 'Where will Sally look for her marble?' (belief question). The correct response is to point to the basket, where Sally believes the marble to be. They were also asked, 'Where is the marble really?' (reality question) and 'Where was the marble in the beginning?' (memory question). Each child was tested again with the marble in a different place.

Results:

• All of the children got the naming, reality and memory questions correct. In the belief question, the children with Down's Syndrome scored 86%, the typically-developing children 85%, but the children with autism scored 20%.

Conclusion:

• The findings suggest that children with autism have an under-developed theory of mind, sometimes called mind-blindness. They seem unable to predict or understand the beliefs of others.

Evaluation:

• Dolls were used in the study so it lacked ecological validity. Also, children with autism may in fact have a more highly developed theory of mind and understand that dolls don't have beliefs. Repeating the study by acting out the scenes with humans might show an increase in ability on the tasks. However, Leslie and Frith (1988) did a similar study with real people and not dolls and found the same pattern of results.

Selman’s work on perspective taking:

• Social cognition - describes the mental processes we use when engaged in social interaction

  • For example, we make decisions on how to behave based on our understanding of a social situation

  • Both understanding and decision-making are cognitive processes

• Perspective taking - Our ability to appreciate a social situation from the perspective (point of View) of other people

  • This cognitive ability underlies much of our normal social interaction

Piaget’s Egocentrism:

• Piaget's idea of Egocentrism and the 3 mountains task is an example of physical perspective taking

  • Physically understanding what someone else can see

• However, there is also the Social Perspective taking

  • which is more about understanding what someone else is feeling or thinking

• Piaget believed in domain general cognitive development, so he believed that physical and social perspective taking would occur hand in hand

• Selman, however, proposed that the development of social perspective-taking is a separate process

  • This is a domain-specific approach to explaining cognitive development

Selman’s Stage Theory:

• Selman constructed a five-stage model of the development of perspective-taking using the children's answers to his dilemmas

• A key feature of this stage theory is the progression from being egocentric and unaware of any perspective but their own to being quite mature and considering a number of perspectives, and drawing conclusions in line with social norms

Perspective-taking research:

• Selman 1971 looked at changes that occurred with age in children's responses to scenarios in which they were asked to take the role of other people in a social situation

• Procedure - 30 boys and 30 girls took part: 20 aged four, 20 aged five, and 20 aged six

  • All were individually given a task designed to measure role-taking ability

  • This involved asking them how each person felt in various scenarios

• One scenario

  • Featured a child called Holly who has promised her father she will no longer climb trees. But she then came across her friend whose kitten was stuck up a tree

  • The task was to describe and explain how each person would feel if Holly did or did not climb the tree to rescue the kitten

• Findings

  • A number of distinct levels of role-taking were identified (table next slide)

  • Selman found that the level of role-taking correlated with age, suggesting a clear developmental sequence

Stages of development:

• Egocentric:

  • Egocentric viewpoint level

  • 3-5 years

  • They have some understanding of the fact that others have different thoughts and feelings from them but don't distinguish between their thoughts and feelings and others.

• Social informational perspective taking:

  • Social informational role-taking stage

  • 6-8 years

  • They understand that other people can have access to different information, causing a different perspective, but they don't tend to coordinate these perspectives; they just focus on one

• Self-reflective perspective taking:

  • Self-reflecting role-taking stage

  • 8-10 years

  • In this stage, they are able to 'step into another person's shoes'. They can see their thoughts, feelings and behaviours from another person's perspective. They realise that by putting yourself in someone else's shoes, you can effectively work out what their intentions and actions are likely to be.

• Mutual perspective taking:

  • Mutual role taking

  • 10-12 years

  • They now realise that they and the other person can mutually and simultaneously adopt each other's roles, and they can move outside the two-person situation and see it from a third-person perspective.

• Social and conventional system perspective taking:

  • Social and conventional system role-taking

  • 12-15 years

  • These people understand that mutual perspective-taking is not guaranteed to give you a full understanding of other's perspective. They also regard social agreements (social norms) as important as everyone understands these agreements, and so they help to increase everyone else's understanding.

Support:

• Selman's original research in 1971 involved a cross-section sample of 225

  participants of various ages ranging from 4 to 32

• In the first analysis conducted two years later 48 boys were re-interviewed.

• It was found that 40 of the boys had made gains in their level of perspective-taking, and none had regressed, supporting the notion that the stages identified by Selman are progressive age-related developmental and sequential

  • A further analysis conducted three years later involved 41 boys. This again confirmed the stages are progressive age-related developmental and sequential

• Keating and Clark 1980 suggested the reason for this sequence may be due to the fact that these stages are closely related to Piaget's stages of development

The role of experience:

• Even if the stages of development are biologically driven, there is much evidence that supports the role of experience in the development of such skills

  • For example, FitzGerald and White (2003) looked at the development of perspective-taking skills in relation to parental style

• They found that children showed more growth when parents encouraged them to take the perspective of the victim during instances when the child may have caused harm (psychological or physical) to someone else

  • This shows one of the ways experience leads to changes in these skills and also shows that the development isn't purely cognitive but also related to social experience

Importance of perspective-taking skills:

• FitzGerald and White also found that the maturity of perspective-taking skills was negatively related to aggression and positively related to prosocial behaviour

• Selman found that children who were poor in perspective-taking skills had more difficulty in forming and maintaining social relationships and were less popular

• Such research suggests that perspective-taking skills lead to important social development or can be used to explain the lack of social development

A03:

• Correlation, not cause and effect

• Much of the research is correlational.

• Correlation does not mean that perspective-taking skills cause higher levels of social competence. In fact, it might be the other way round

• For example, more popular children interact with more people, and this may be the reason for more advanced skills

• If this is the case, then perspective-taking skills are simply a marker of how socially developed a child is

Application:

• Selman (2003) argues that the development of perspective-taking skills can be fostered by experience, and this has a number of important implications for schools, therapy and treatment of criminals

• He argues that the facilitation of these skills is one of the fundamental missions of primary schools today, and that it should be woven into many of the daily activities. One way to do this with younger children is through play

• Social skills training (SST) is used in therapeutic settings with people with mental disorders or emotional problems

• One explanation for anti-social, criminal behaviour is that some criminals lack empathy and perspective-taking skills - therefore SST programmes have been developed where prisoners are taught perspective-taking skills to increase their empathic concern for others and their pro-social behaviour on release from prison