Lecture 3

Question 1

Describe DeLoache’s scale model experiment.

Answer 1

• 2.5 and 3 year olds, real room and model of real room, hide a big snoopy and little snoopy, 3 year olds can find it and 2.5 year ols cannot.
• Why? Not a memory problem, but possibly one of dual representation (they have a hard time seeing the model in 2 different ways)
  -• If you increase physical salience of model, 3 year olds do worse
  • If you eliminate need for symbolic understanding by pretending the big room was ‘shrunk’ into the little one, 2.5 year olds can do better.

Question 2

What is pretend play? How does it develop?

Answer 2

• symbolic representation, acting “as if”, like if a kid pretends to make a phonemail with a banana, or even with a regular phone. but even young children understand what is pretend and what is not.
• develop spontaneously at 18 months, becomes more sophisticated and social over time, sociodramatic play emerges a year later, involving role play and negotiation. elementary school years show development of more complex and social games with rules, like sports.

Question 3

What is a Theory of Mind?

Answer 3

A mentalistic understanding of behavior, the ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions) to others, helps predict and explain behavior

Question 4

How does Theory of Mind develop in young children over time?

Answer 4

Infants and young toddlers understand “easier” mental states like desires, subjective connections. In first year, infants understand that if someone expresses liking a certain toy, they can expect them to pick it up, and not a different one. 2.5 and 3 year olds start using desire terms in conversations. Beliefs, and especially false beliefs, take longer - as shown by how 3 year olds fail the false belief test. By 4 or 5, children succeed in the false belief test (unexpected contents and sally Anne test). Experiences (mental state talk from adults, scaffolding) support the development of ToM

Question 5

Kids with ASD often experience a cascade of social learning impairments. What are some of the initial differences and how do they magnify?

Answer 5

Without preferential attention to faces or human speech, kids will experience more and more impairments to typical development down the line, like mapping errors when adults are labeling words (because hild does not orient to what adult is referencing, and is unable to read emotional cues to help identify what the word refers to)
kids also experience lack of joint attention, social referencing (using emotional information provided by people to guide action in ambiguous situations), proto-declarative pointing, use of mental state language ( I think/know), failure on false belief task past the age of 5

Question 6

How do kid’s attempts at drawing and writing change over time/

Answer 6

before 3 years, they draw for drawings sake. at 3 or 4 years, they try to represent things - exposure to representational symbols affects the age at which children begin to produce them. even early scribbles are different between drawing and writing, by 4 years old kids know that writing symbioses specific words while drawing can connote many

Question 7

What is naive psychology?

Answer 7

a commonsense level of understanding of people and oneself… basic understanding of desires, beliefs and actions. nativists think children are born with this understanding, empiricists think people and general info-processing capacities are key sources of early understanding of other people. There is evidence to support both.