Development of social cognition Flashcards
What is social cognition?
Describes the mental processes we use when engaged in social interaction.
What is social perspective-taking?
Our ability to appreciate a social situation from the point of view of other people. This underlies much of our normal social interaction.
Understanding what someone else is feeling / thinking i.e. social cognition.
What is an example of social perspective taking?
Piaget’s three mountains task – physically understanding what someone else can see.
What did Piaget believe?
Piaget believed in domain-general cognitive development, believed physical and social perspective-taking would occur hand-in hand.
What did Selman propose?
Selman proposed that development of social perspective-taking is a separate process. This is a domain-specific approach to explaining cognitive development.
What did Selman (1971) do and find?
30 boys and 30 girls took part in the study, 20 aged four, 20 aged five and 20 aged six years. 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 who then comes across her friend whose kitten is 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.
A number of distinct levels of role-taking were identified (see below). Selman found that the level of role-taking correlated with age, suggesting a clear developmental sequence.
What’s a key feature of Selman’s stages?
Key feature of the stages is progression from being egocentric and unaware of perspective to considering a number of perspectives and drawing conclusions in line with social norms. NB stages are approx.
What did Selman do?
Propose 5 stages of social cognitive development which were based on children’s responses to perspective-taking scenarios at different ages.
What did Selman believe?
Believed that development through these stages is based on maturity and experience.
What are the 5 stages of development?
Stage 0 (3-6 years) – Egocentric
Stage 1 (6-8 years) – Social informational
Stage 2 (8-10 years) – Self-reflective
Stage 3 (10-12 years) – Mutual
Stage 4 (12 years+) – Social and conventional system
What’s Stage 0 (3-6 years) – Egocentric?
Child in this stage cannot reliably tell difference between own emotions and those of others.
They can identify emotional states in others but do not understand what social behaviour might of caused them.
What’s Stage 1 (6-8 years) – Social informational?
A child can now tell the difference between their own point of view and that of others.
Usually focus on only one of these perspectives.
Assume that the different point of view is because others have different information.
What’s Stage 2 (8-10 years) – Self-reflective?
A child can put themselves in the position of another person and fully appreciate the other’s perspective.
Can recognise that others do the same
Can only take on one point of view at a time
What’s Stage 3 (10-12 years) – Mutual?
Children are now able to look at a situation from their own and another’s point of view at the same time
What’s Stage 4 (12 years+) – Social and conventional system?
Personal decisions are now made with reference to social conventions.
i.e. young people are able to see that sometimes understanding others viewpoints isn’t enough to reach an agreement, which is why social convention is needed.
What are the later developments to Selman’s theory?
Interpersonal understanding - this is what Selman measured in his earlier perspective-taking research. If we can take different roles then we can understand social situations.
Interpersonal negotiation strategies - as well as understanding what others think in social situations we also have to develop skills in how to respond to them. We therefore develop social skills such as asserting our position and managing conflict.
Awareness of personal meaning of relationships - as well as understanding social situations and how to manage them, social development also requires the ability to reflect on social behaviour in the context of different relationships. Thus a violent gang-member may have an advanced social understanding and good social skills, but chooses a simple approach to conflict (violence) because of their role in the gang.
What is a strength of Selman’s theory?
What are the limitations of Selman’s theory?
What is theory of mind?
Our personal understanding (a theory of) what other people are thinking and feeling.
It’s often referred to as “mind reading”.
Each of us has a theory of mind, when we have a belief about what someone else might be thinking.
How is theory of mind studied?
Different methods will be used to study ToM at different ages.
Simple ToM can be seen in toddlers (via intentional reasoning)
As children reach the age of 4, more sophisticated methods can be used (via false beliefs tasks).
For even older children/adults they can assess it further (via the Eyes task).
What’s intentional reasoning?
Studies have shown that from about 18 months of age, children have an understanding of an adults intentions when carrying out simple tasks.
18-month-olds observed an adult placing beads into a jar.
In 1 condition, the adult appeared to struggle with this task and some beads missed the jar.
In the 2nd condition, the adult successfully placed all the beads in the jar.
The child was then able to do the same task.
They found that even though the child was able to place the beads in the jar, the child missed more often if they had been in the 1st condition.
This suggested that the child was imitating what the adult intended to do, rather that what they could actually do, showing ToM.
What are false belief tasks?
Developed to test whether children can understand that people can believe something that’s not true.
Told 3–4-year-olds a story in which Maxi left his chocolate in a BLUE cupboard in the kitchen and then went to the playground. Later, his mother used some of the chocolate in her cooking and placed what was left in the GREEN cupboard.
The children were asked were Maxi would look for his chocolate when he comes back from the playground.
Most 3 yr. olds- incorrect stating he would look in green cupboard. (assume that Maxi would know what they knew).
Most 4 yr. olds- correctly stated the blue cupboard suggesting that ToM develops further by 4.
What’s the Sally-Anne study?
Baron-Cohen et al (1985) used a similar false belief task (the Sally Anne study).
Children were told a story involving two dolls; Sally & Anne.
Sally places a marble in her basket but when she’s not looking Anne moves the marble to her box.
Understanding that Sally doesn’t know that Anne has moved her marble requires an understanding of Sally’s false belief about where it is.
What is autism?
It is a broad term for a wide range of features e.g. spectrum. Those with autism may experience challenges surrounding
-Social interaction
-Communication
-Repetitive/restrictive behaviours.
Due to autism being on a spectrum it can affect people in different ways.
