Learning about the Social World Flashcards
Understanding others’ intentions
What’s in a mind?
Desires, knowledge, intentions
* All of these have to be inferred, cannot be observed
* Children come to understand each of these at different ages
Understanding action intentions
Understanding Action Intentions
* 6 months: Emergence of understanding others’ intentions
* Study: Violation of expectation paradigm
* 6 month olds were habituated to a hand reaching for a ball that was beside a doll
* Test:
* Some infants shown a hand reaching for the ball
Other infants shown a hand reaching for the doll
* Which display do infants look at longer?
* Results: Infants who saw the hand reach for the doll looked longer at
the display than infants who saw the hand reach for the ball
- Suggests that infants understand the intentions behind actions
Switched
* Results: Even when the position of the ball and the doll were reversed,
infants who saw the hand reach for the doll still looked longer at the display
than infants who saw the hand reach for the ball
* Shows that the infants understood that the original action was directed at a
specific object, not at a specific location
Understanding Intentions vs. Accidents* 9 month olds can distinguish between intentional and accidental actions
* More frustrated when adult purposely doesn’t give them a toy vs. when
an adult tries to give a toy, but accidentally drops it
Importance of Understanding Intentions* Step towards understanding the minds of others
* But cannot yet understand the psychological motivations behind
intentions
* Enables joint attention
Joint Attention
* The shared attention of 2 people on the same object or event AND
awareness that they are paying attention to the same thing
* Emerges between 9-12 months old
* Difficulty with joint attention is an early
indicator autism spectrum disorders
Joint Attention and Learning
* Joint attention is critical for learning from others
* Teaching can only happen if children are paying attention to the same
thing as their caregiver
Importance of Understanding Intentions
* Step towards understanding the minds of others
* Enables joint attention
* Enables imitation
Imitation
- Voluntarily matching another person’s behaviour
- Emerges between 9-12 months old
Innate Basis of Imitation?
* Nativists argue that newborns’ matching of sticking tongue out is
evidence that imitation is innate
* BUT…
- Newborns don’t match any other behaviour, except sticking tongue out
- Sticking tongue out is a common newborn response to stimuli they find generally interesting/arousing
- Suggests that newborns’ matching of adult’s sticking tongue out is coincidental and simply an indication of interest
Imitation and Learning
* Imitation is critical for observational learning
- One of the most fundamental ways that children learn most things
* Not passively imitating, but actively interpreting actions to figure out
what to imitate
Imitating Intentional Actions
* Study: 12 month olds observed an adult turn on a light
with her head
- Hands occupied: forced to use head
- Hands free: freely choosing to use her head
* What does the infant imitate?
* Results:
- Hands occupied: turned on light using hand
- Hands free: turned on light using head
* Shows that children imitate the goals of actions, not actions themselves
* More generally, implies that children are actively thinking about what they are observing
* Not passive!
Summary so far
Summary
* Understanding others begins at 6 months with the ability to
understand the intentions of others’ actions
* Understanding intentions enables the emergence of joint attention
and imitation at 9-12 months
* Joint attention and imitation open new possibilities for learning from
others
Theory of Mind: Understanding Other’s Desires
Theory of Mind
* Ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, and to
understand that other people can have desires, knowledge, and
beliefs that differ from one’s own
Understanding Others’ Desires
* Understanding that desires lead to actions emerges around 1 year of
age
* Study: Violation of expectation paradigm
-12 month olds saw an experimenter look at one of 2 stuffed kittens with
vocal and facial expressions of joy
- Screen descended and when raised, the experimenter was holding one
of the kittens
(see image)
* Does the child understand which kitten the experimenter wants to
hold?
- Which scenario did the child look at longer?
* Results:
* 12 month olds look longer when the
experimenter was holding the other kitten
vs. the one they were originally looking at
* Suggests that 12 month olds understand
that desires are linked with actions
* 8 month olds look at the 2 displays for
similar amounts of time
- Suggests that they don’t understand that
desires are linked with actions
Distinguishing the Self from Others
* Fully understanding others’ desires requires the appreciation that
other people are separate from the self
* Born with implicit sense of self as separate from others:
- Rooting reflex: if someone brushes their cheek, infant will turn in
direction of touch and open their mouth
- If infant touches their own cheek, will not turn in that direction
* More explicit sense of self develops later:
- 18-24 month olds pass “rouge test”
- Recognize themselves in a mirror
Understanding Others’ Desires
* Being able to distinguish self from others enables better
understanding of others’ unique desires
* 2 year olds can predict a character’s actions based on the character’s
desires, rather than based on their own desires
* Younger children use own desires to predict a character’s actions
Theory of mind: Understanding Others’ Knowledge
- 3 year olds understand what people know and what they don’t know
- Study: Watched 2 adults name familiar objects
- One adult named objects correctly and the other adult named the
objects incorrectly - Then, child learned names for new objects
- Results: more likely to learn a new word from adult who previously
named familiar objects correctly - Shows that 3 year olds make judgments about others’ reliability
Understanding Expertise
* 3-4 year olds understand that specific people may have specific
knowledge in certain areas
* Study: Observed 2 strangers interacting with tools and broken toys
- Adult 1: Knew the names of tool but not how to fix the toys
- Adult 2: Knew how to fix the toys but not the names of the tools
* Children turned to different adults depending on what they wanted to
achieve
- Went to Adult 1 if wanted to know the names of new things
- Went to Adult 2 if wanted to fix a broken object
Implications for Learning
* Children are selective in who they choose to learn from
- Learn from reliable others
- Learn specific knowledge from people that they perceive to be experts in
that topic
Understanding Knowledge Leads to Action
* 3 years olds: Emergence of rudimentary understanding that beliefs’
lead to actions
* When asked why a person is behaving in a certain way, will answer by
making reference to beliefs
- E.g. Q: “Why is Matt looking for his dog?”; A: “He thinks the dog ran away”
* But understanding of others’ beliefs is limited in important ways
False-Belief Problems
* Tasks that test a child’s understanding that other people will behave
consistent with their knowledge/beliefs even if a child knows this
knowledge/beliefs are false
* Most 3 year olds fail
* Most 5 year olds pass
- Correct responses indicate a developed theory of mind
* 3 year olds fail: Incorrectly think that other children will know that there are
pencils inside the box + say that they always knew there were pencils in the box
* 5 year olds pass: Correctly say that others will think there are Smarties inside the
box
Social Cognition Development Timeline
- 6 months: understanding others’ action intentions
- 9-12 months: joint attention and imitation
- 1 year old: basic understanding others’ desires
- 1.5 - 2 years old: explicit sense of self indicated by passing Rouge test
- 2 years old: greater understanding that others’ desires can be different
from one’s own - 3 years old: sensitive to whether someone is knowledgeable in a topic or
not + basic understanding that beliefs lead to action but fail at false-belief
tests - 5 years old: more fully developed theory of mind and pass false-belief tests
Stability of Social Cognition Skills
- Children that are better able to understand goal-directed action at 6
months also show better performance on false belief tasks at 4 years - Suggests that individual differences in social cognitive skills are stable
Explaining Developments
in Theory of Mind: Nativist Theory
- Nativist Theory
* Theory of mind module: Innate brain mechanism devoted to
understanding other people that matures over the first 5 years of life
* Evidence:
- Newborns have an inherent interest in faces
- Culturally universal developmental trajectory of theory of mind
- Temporoparietal junction and autism spectrum disorder
False-Belief Tasks Around the World
* Across countries, most 3 year olds fail (14% pass rate) and most 5 year
olds pass (85%) false belief tasks
Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ)
* Brain area consistently active across different theory of mind tasks
- Different brains areas are involved in other complex cognitive processes
TPJ and Autism Spectrum Disorders
* Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle with theory of mind
- Find false-belief tasks very difficult even as teenagers
* Children with ASD have atypical sizes and activity in TPJ
Explaining Developments
in Theory of Mind: Improvements in Executive Functioning
- Executive functioning: Set of cognitive processes that enable cognitive control of behaviour, such as planning, focused attention, and juggling multiple tasks
- False belief tasks require executive functioning skills
- Evidence that as executive functioning improves, so does theory of
mind - r = 0.4
Implications - Individual differences in executive functioning are responsible for
individual differences in theory of mind
Explaining Developments
in Theory of Mind: Contribution of Social Interactions
- Interactions with other people are critical for the development of
theory of mind - Evidence:
- Caregivers’ use of mental state talk is correlated with preschooler’s
theory of mind ability - Mental state talk: Statements and questions that refer to other people’s
“minds” using words such as “think”, “know”, and “want” - Preschoolers that have siblings (vs. no siblings) are better at theory of
mind tasks - Especially if sibling is of a different gender
Implications
* Caregivers can foster children’s social cognition by:
- Using mental state talk
- Providing opportunities for interactions with different people
- Encouraging joint attention
How does theory of mind develop?
All these explanations likely play a role
* Maturation of brain regions involved in understanding others
* Improved executive functioning ability
* Interactions with other people
How do children learn?
- Trial and error
- From birth
- Statistical learning
- From birth
- Observation and imitation
- 9-12 months old
- Being taught by others
- 3 year olds are more likely to learn from adults they see as reliable and
expert in a domain
Summary
- The ability to understand others’ minds develops gradually, starting
with understanding others’ intentions - Basic theory of mind is developed by age 5
- Development of theory of mind is due to maturation of brain regions
involved in social cognition, improved executive functioning, and
social interactions - Improvements in social cognition enable learning from others
through social learning through joint attention and imitation
