Lecture 18 Flashcards
Why should one be wary of 2 group comparisons?
A lot of people believe that comparing a group of humans and chimps answers questions about species differences. However, it only answers questions about group differences. This is an issue as researchers believe that social cognition differs between humans and apes significantly, when it might not because of these types of studies. Furthermore, the behaviours that the study found could change over time and there might be proximate explanations for the results. In order to make species comparisons, one needs to ensure that the group is representative of the species and that the characteristic is universal in the whole species. Thus, one needs evidence from multiple different groups. Furthermore, one should not conclude species differences if there are confounding variables. For example, comparing chimps who have been deprived to humans who have not, is not an accurate evaluation.
Define joint attention and how it is researched
Joint attention is coordinated engagement with someone about the same thing.
Researchers look for attention to a social partner coordinated with attention to an object. The coordination needs to be indicated by a behavioural marker such as pointing or showing. This is important to explore as triadic engagement is required for referential learning, meaning it is needed for one to learn language for example, as people can make an audio-visual association. Furthermore, joint attention is essential for social referencing (learning what actions are appropriate in certain contexts), intentional communication and imitation.
Are chimps capable of joint attention?
It is believed that they are as they are able to use symbol systems, for example, Kanzi.
They can also socially reference. It has been found that chimps look for emotional information from their caregivers, and use the information to regulate their behaviour. For example, when a happy message is given, the chimp will look longer at the object and when a fear message is given, they withdraw from the object.
Chimps also intentionally communicate. They point to things or language trained chimps ask on behalf of the group to go outside.
Finally, chimps imitate, which allows them to learn tool use.
This issue with all of this though, is that the studies do not directly test for joint attention, they just assume it occurs because it is required for human learning. Thus, non-human primates are capable of joint attention but they might not use it to develop all of these skills.
How does joint attention develop in humans?
At 3 months, infants begin engaging with a social partner and at 5 months, they begin to manipulate objects. These 2 skills are combined at 9 months, when they attend to a social partner and object. All of these skills have also been found in chimps and joint attention develops within a socio-emotional context for them.
Discuss Baron-Cohen’s model of mindreading
He explains joint attention in relation to theory of mind. It begins with intentionality detecting and eye-direction detecting, which both infants and primates can do. These combine at an older age to form shared attention, which Baron says is uniquely human. Then after a few years, this skill develops into ToM. It has been found that some non-human primates have ToM though. Thus, it is hard to clarify when joint attention evolved as it is still unknown whether non-human primates are capable of it or how capable they are.
Discuss Bard’s study on joint attention in non-human primates in a laboratory
Nursery chimps were tested every month and compared to human infants’ test scores. In order for the chimps to pass having joint attention in their first year of age, they had to have 31 items, such as following the examiners demonstrations or imitating the examiner’s actions with an object. There were 2 groups of chimps; standard care where the primary bond was their peers and responsive care where the primary bond was both the peers and the caregiver. In the latter, the examiners also nurtured species typical communication. Responsive care involved significantly more human contact, similar to that of wild populations with mothers. The human infants were matched on age, and their environmental rearing conditions were accounted for. The results found that joint attention is not unique to humans but humans excel in it by 1 year of age. Furthermore, the responsive environment improved the chimps abilities in joint attention. Additionally, cooperation was explored and was found that this was also not human-unique and humans did not excel in this compared to the chimps. Responsive care also improved cooperation. It was also found that emotional engagement varies depending on early experiences and both of these explain one’s social cognition. Thus, showing that social cognition has a developmental history based on emotion and early experiences. This study still has issues though because it was all done in a laboratory with a human examiner. Joint attention was assessed with objects and only chimps raised in nurseries were used, this is an issue as the study itself found that the environment impacts one’s ability in joint attention. Thus, rearing difference is an important factor. Studies have also found that neglect in early development, changes brain structures and so does institutionalised rearing. Therefore, joint attention may be different in wild populations.
Discuss the impacts that institutionalised rearing can have in early development
It can increase the chance of ASD developing
It can cause disorganised attachment and poor emotional engagement but this is significantly reduced with responsive care.
It changes brain structure, brain size, brain function, IQ and so on, which all impact social cognition. Thus, it can be concluded that the environment significantly impacts social cognition.
Discuss Bard’s study of joint attention in non-human primates outside of the laboratory
Firstly, they took naturalistic observations of 1 year olds in their everyday setting. There were 3 groups, UK urban families, hunter/gatherers in the African Republic and a farming community in Cameroon. These were then compared to wild chimps in Tanzania and captive chimps living in group at Chester Zoo and in a research institute in Japan. Both of which were also compared to cross-fostered chimps. In 65% of the time intervals, both chimp and human infants were engaged with someone about some something (joint attention) in everyday interactions. This was not dependent on species or ecology/background as there were no significant differences between the groups. When there is an non-food object focus rather than an event or activity focus, the UK sample performed significantly better at joint attention than the other human samples. The cross-fostered chimps performed the best when there was a non-food object focus but all the other groups were significantly worse than the human groups with joint attention here. Furthermore, UK performed worse than all of the groups when it was on exclusively social topics, perhaps because our culture focuses on objects unlike rural cultures. Joint attention is usually about social events in rural settings. When exploring how often the infants initiated joint attention, no significant differences were found between any of the groups, showing that humans are not more motivated to engage in joint attention than chimps. The UK sample was also most affected by positivity from the partner in their likelihood to joint attend and most unlikely to attend when there is no emotional tone.
Carpenter claimed that joint attention only exists if it is about objects with positive emotion, infant initiated and dyadic. Thus, when applying this to Bard’s findings, it can be seen that although minimal, true joint attention does occur in all of the human infant populations and in most of the chimp groups. The cross fostering group performed best out of the chimps here. Thus, it can be concluded that prototypic joint attention occurs at low levels in mostly urban settings but joint attention does occur in chimps.
Is joint attention foundational for theories of primate social cognition?
Yes because social cognition requires shared intentionality. Humans and chimps are especially good at joint attention because we have an innate motivation to cooperate.
True or false
The developmental process that results in the flexibility of social cognition outcomes are shared by chimps and humans
True. Both groups’ social cognition is affected by developmental processes.
