Theory Of Mind & Learning Flashcards
(19 cards)
Theory of mind
Supposition that others have mental states that drive their actions
We understand others’ behaviour in terms of:
- intentions
- desires
- beliefs
Development
Young infants= intensely interested in other ppl
During 1st year, begin to understand other ppl in psychological terms
Development: intention understanding
By 6 months: understand that others’ behaviour = goal-directed
By 11 months: can predict goal of a hand (but not claw)
12-month olds: differentiate between unwilling + unable action
Development: Belief understanding
Most important Theory of Mind concept— belief are mental representations of world
By 3 yrs: some understanding of belief
- basic understanding that beliefs drive actions
- basic understanding that perceptions produces beliefs about it
Development: desire understanding
Infants attribute behaviours to objects that behave like humans»_space; 12-month-olds expect a ball to behave rationally
12-14 months: understand connection between positive desires + actions > don’t yet understand connection between negative desires am actions
By 18-months: more solid understanding of other’s desires > Broccoli + crackers study
Goal understanding linked to own goal-directed actions
- sticky mittens can help 3-month-olds understand other’s goals
Development: belief understanding
Considered most important Theory of Minf concept as beliefs= mental representations of the world
By 3 yrs: some understanding of beliefs
- basic understanding that beliefs drive actions
- basic understating that perception produces belief about it
True test= understanding that someone can have fake belief
- requires recognising that others’ actions are driven by beliefs rather than reality
- required representational theory of mind
- Dennett (1978) proposed test of false belief understanding , where person belief leads him to search in incorrect location
False location test: Sally-Anne test
- dolls sally and Anne laying with block
- sally put block in box then leaves
- Anne moves block to basket
- child asked where sally will think block is
- 3 yrs old fail (say she’ll think its in basket)
- 4 yrs olds succeed ( say shell think its where she left it- in box)
False contest test:
- smarties and pens
- put pens in smarties box and show child
- then ask child if they can remember wat is in smarties box and what they OG thought was in box
- say another person will think there’s penicillin in smarties box- not the case
- 3 yrs old fail
- 4 yrs old pass
False belief understanding on standardised tasks emerges around 4 yrs old
3 yr olds show false belief understanding under some circumstances:
- if child is involved in deception
- if experimenter watches child + does not narrate
Development: belief understanding (classic, explicit false belief tests )
Classic, explicit false belief tests:
- all tsksa passed around 4-5 yrs old
- test= incapable of detecting degrees of preformance
- younger children= capable of same processing as older children, but make errors
- Competence: conceptual understanding required to solve task
Task demands that influences successful prefomance on false-bee if tasks :
- reality bias: lack on inhibitory control, so kids find hard to put their knowledge aside
- pragmatic interpretation: the ‘where’ question
Development: belief understanding (implicit false belief tasks)
Eye tracking
Anticipatory looking tasks:
- infants’ looks predict what will happen next eg, where something will reach
Violation of expectation task:
- infants look longer at events that violate their expectations
- if infants understand others’ beliefs, they should look over when a protagonist acts in way that’s consistent with those beliefs
Development: belief understanding (cross-cultural research)
children in 3 traditional, non western communities:
-China
-Ecuador
-Fiji
3 spontaneous response tasks:
- verbal preferential looking task
- non-verbal violation of expectation task
- verbal anticipatory looking task
Little variation across cultures in Theory of Mind development
Theory of Mind= ikely to be consistent and universal or more neurotypically-developing kids
Development: belief understanding (factors that influence ToM develoment)
Siblings:
- 3 yr olds with siblings = more likely yo pass than children with no siblings
- but only older siblings matter
- large families with many kids tend to be extended rather than nuclear- oppotuyinity interacting with Oder siblings= increased
Adults:
- children who have parents who give explanations of behaviour with reference to psychological states
Characteristics of child:
- autism
Importance of theory of mind
Tom competence ca affect social functioning
Related to quality of peer relationships
Predicts communicative competence
Prosociality
Evaluating infant findings: challenges
Looking more a an event or object is not functional
Problematic to rely on perceptual paradigm to mae inferences about cognition
We can ony say they discriminate, not why
Learning processes: habituation
- respond with less attention (boredom) to stimuli that one has experiences repeatedly
- adaptive: infant can ignore familiar, predictable info; attend to new important info
Speech with which infant habituates reflects how efficiently infant processes info
- related to general cognitive ability later on
- infants who habituate quick + strongly prefer novelty novelty have higher IQs
Learning processes: Perceptual learning
Finding order and regularity in objects and events that infants perceive
Eleanor Gibson
Differentiation:
- environment provides abundance of info
- environment = constantly changing
- percieved must learn to respond to distinctive features of environment
- affordances= possibilities for action offered by objects and situations
- depends on properties of an object + capacities of user
Learning proceses: statistical learning
Detecting statistically predictable patterns in environment
Avaible to infants early on across a range of stimuli
- speech, music, action
- vital in language learning
Learning processes: conditioning (classical)
Paring of neutral stimulus with stimulus that leads to reflexive repsonce
Pavlov’s research with dogs:
- food = salivation
- whistle = no salivation
- whistle and food = salivation
- whistle then = salivation
Classical conditioning- newborns: (Bass, 1984)
- breastmilk = sucking reflex
- forehead stroking + milk = sucking reflex
- just forehead stroke = sucking reflex
Learning proceeses: classical conditioning (operant)
Learning relation between one’s own behaviour and consequences (rewards, punishment) it produces
Infant acts on environment
Consequences of action (positive/ negative) increase/ decrease probability of action being repeated
Enables infant to learn about relation between self and world, and their impact on world
Rovee-Collier (1997): contingency learning
Learning processes: Observational learning
Reproduction of witnessed behaviour
Prev thought that newborns can imitate facial expression eg. Mouth opening (neonatal imitation)
Eg Meltzoff & Moore (1997) - father sticks tonge out at baby, baby does same back
New research doesn’t NOT support neonatal imitation
- infants 1-9 weeks, did not imitate any gesture more than comparison gestures
- over 1st few months, infants learn to imitate others
Scope of imitation expands over development
Imitation becomes more flexible and rational- considers actors intentions
Over-imitation:
- imitation of unnessary actions in relation to goal of action
- predisposed to learn social norms
- enables us to learn culturally opaque knowledge
- enables demonstration of social affiliation
- universal human trait
