Lecture 16 Flashcards
Discuss human social cognition
Humans have extremely complex social cognitive abilities and are especially good at inferring other people’s mental states. We can do this as we have good visual perception, knowledge, beliefs and desires.
Discuss the human development of theory of mind
At 6 months, infants show signs of gaze following. At 1 year, they can understand others’ visual access and then at 2 years, they can understand others’ past visual access. Finally, at 4 years, they can understand others’ false beliefs. This is when ToM is considered fully fledged.
According to Flavell, what are the 2 levels of perspective taking?
Level 1 is when children can judge what a person can or cannot see from their viewpoint and understand when their line of sight is blocked.
Level 2 is when a child understands that an object may be seen or presented differently from another person’s perspective.
How can researchers test whether someone has ToM?
The Sally-Anne test. This also has strong demands on executive functioning and verbal skills, which can be an issue. This means that due to translation problems, other cultures fail the test. For example, teenagers in Tainae in Papa New Guinea. This can be passed at 3 1/2 years old but children on the autistic spectrum fail to pass it.
Do non-human primates have complex social cognitive skills?
Yes they do. They have social intelligence such as reciprocal altruism and they have machiavellian intelligence which is the idea that large brains and cognitive abilities have evolved from social competition as more sophisticated strategies were required. Thus, ToM could be present in non-human primates.
Discuss Premack and Woodruff’s study regarding ToM in chimps
They showed a chimp videos of a human struggling with various things. For example, in one video, the human couldn’t reach a banana and in another, they were locked in a cage. The chimp then had to pick a picture that would solve the situation, like a stick or a key. The chimp successfully did this and thus, the researchers argued that this showed that the chimp understood the human’s mental state and situation. However, it can be argued the chimp learnt the correct responses through association. Plus, there was only one participant so it is not a reliable source of evidence.
Discuss gaze following in non-humans
Many species of animal have been found to follow one’s gaze. It has been found in chimps, gorillas, orangutans, macaques, baboons, goats, dogs, dolphins, crows and tortoises. This suggests that it has a distinct evolutionary function. This is also the basis of Theory of Mind.
On top of this, many species can also attention read. For example, non-human primates show significantly more behaviour when the researcher was facing and looking at them. Great apes alter their gestures depending on the attentional state of the researcher and other animals such as dolphins and dogs can differentiate between an attentive and non-attentive person.
Discuss perspective taking in non-human primates
When a subordinate is able to see a food object that the dominant cannot see and a food object that the dominant can see, then they will head towards the one the dominant cannot see. This is because the subordinate understands that the dominant cannot see this food item and therefore will not try and get it, so the subordinate would be successful in getting it, unlike the visible food item. This test is quite an anthropomorphic setup as it did not involve competition. These results follow the evil eye hypothesis which states that the subordinate sees the food piece as contaminated as the dominant has seen it. However, it could be argued that the chimps were reading behaviour rather than mental states and they have been conditioned to not go for the food that the dominant wants. Thus, one should always be careful of anthropomorphism and interpreting an animal’s “intentions” as they may not have intentions. Therefore, the study was adapted to contain competition, thus making it less anthropomorphic. They set up a test where they hid food under cups and carried out a false belief scenario. The participant who knew that there was food under two cups but saw that the competitor only saw food under one cup, went for the one the competitor knew about and then went for the unknown one. This shows that they understood that the unknown one was safe and wouldn’t be found. Thus, allowing them to obtain both pieces of food if they went for the known one first. Chimps and crows can pass this test. This shows that some animals do have ToM but not a human-like ToM, a more basic version. They understand what the other participant has seen in the past and they understand the intention that they will thus have. However, it can be argued that this is not an understanding of false belief and they may not have understood intentionality as they might have picked that cup as they saw the food there first for example.
Discuss Maticorena’s study
They found that macaques can represent the knowledge of others but they cannot understand their beliefs. This was shown through looking time. The macaques had a longer looking time when the experimenter fails to look in the correct location when the experimenter had accurate knowledge of where the object was. However, they were unable to show any evidence for the macaques making predictions about how the experimenter will act when they have a false belief. Thus, the researchers suggesting that understand beliefs is a unique extension to primate cognition.
Discuss Amici’s study
They found evidence of gaze following in spider and capuchin monkeys but there was no evidence for looking back; when there is nothing interesting where the person is looking, you look at them. In the first experiment, the person looked at a target within the room and in the second, the person looked behind a barrier at a target outside the room. In the first experiment, both species spontaneously followed the person’s gaze and in the second they followed the gaze behind the barrier. However, there was no looking back in either of the tests, suggesting that they did not have expectancies about why the experimenter was looking at the target, they just automatically follow gaze.
Discuss Meunier’s study
They explored whether baboons can attention read. The baboons were taught to use pointing to request for food out of reach. It was found that they only used this pointing when the person was looking at them, otherwise, they would communicate vocally. Although this lacks ecological validity, it can be seen that baboons are capable of attention reading, and thus understand that other people are having different experiences.
Discuss Wood’s study
They arguably found evidence for tamarins, macaques and chimps to be able to intention read. In the study, the experimenter either accidentally or intentionally looked inside a container and it was found that the primates looked in the container that was intentionally looked in significantly more. Thus, suggesting that they could differentiate between the two. However, this may have been found because there might have been more attention gaze towards the container in the intention stage and thus, the primates wanted to explore it more.
