Week 7 Flashcards
(33 cards)
Theory of mind
Awareness of one’s own mental processes and the mental processes of others. Important to understand the beliefs of others.
-Developing concepts of mental activity. Implies organizing facts and predicting (development connected to executive function). Aids in cooperation, competition (since can access that others are better than you), social interactions (understand others thoughts may be different than yours)
2 prerequisite skills for theory of mind
1.Ability to view self and others’ behaviours as intentional; a being can cause actions, actional designed to achieve a goal.
2.Ability to take others perspectives (overcome egocentrism)
3 mental states of theory of mind: perceptions
by 18m-3y begin to understand 3 mental states:
-Perceptions: by age 2 recognize what is in front of their eyes rather than their own, by 3 know that looking leads to knowing what’s inside a container.
3 mental states of theory of mind: emotions
Emotions: Can distinguish between positive and negative emotions
3 mental states of theory of mind: desires
-Desires: begins to recognise someone’s desires may be different than their own. Children often recognize desires earlier and more frequently than thinking and knowing.
False beliefs develop by age 5.
-5-7 years deepening understanding of the mind itself rather than an understanding of mental states. Eg behaviours don’t necessarily reflex though or feelings.
Middle to late childhood- go from understanding false beliefs to realizing the same event can be open to multiple interpretations.
To test if a child has theory of mind: Content False-Belief Task (smarties task)
3 questions: what do you think is in the box? What will your friend think is in the box? (pass is say smarties, fail is say pencils), When you first saw the box, what did you think was inside? (fail if say pencils- since can’t hold all thoughts)
3 year olds tend to fail, 4 year olds pass
Location false belief task (sally-Anne task)
3 year olds tend to fail; 4 year olds pass
False belief task 4-5 year old’s
put pencils back in the box and ask what will your friend think is in the box now?- will respond to pencils (fail task) - understanding of others thinking is still shaky- third representation needed- can’t follow complex theory of mind.
Social contexts:
-location false-belief tasks:
children pass at younger age if given the contect of sally wants to trick anne- learning occurring in social plane first- vygstky
Autism Spectrum Disorder:
-Developmental disorder characterized by atypical social interactions
-Heritable, Abnormal brain functions
-Typically perform poorly on false-belief tasks: poor theory of mind? Poor executive functioning? Poor language? Overactivity of perceptual process-take mental capacity away from abstract reasoning needed for theory of mind?
Rovee-Collier: infant memory
-Ribbon attached to infants 2-3m, infants learn that kicking moves the mobiles. Days or weeks later, shown mobile again- forget. If mobile is moved- trigger memory- w/ help learn faster than originally- so memory capacity exists. Next day tie foot to mobile again- infant kicks right away
Implications: An event from the past is remembered. Over time, events can no longer be recalled, a cue can serve to dredge up forgotten memories. Do better is tested in same context cues (eg striped crib)
Memory development:
Memory storage: hippocampus; memory retrieval: frontal cortex
-linear increase in memory with age (in months) over the first 2 years- after 2 years improvements in executive functioning, use of strategies and knowledge base.
Fuzzy trace theory:
-words presented orally to children age 7-11 and adults- manipulation: highly associated critical words not given (sleep demo). Participants given lists of words: identify which words were previously heard. Adults: 88%; 11: 76?; 7: 71%
-60% adults, 40% 11yrs, 22% yrs incorrectly recognized the critical world: older children and adults remember the gist of experience which will falsely trigger recognition of higher related words.
-older child is more likely to be biased by the gist, younger child more likely to remember precisely last nights events * limitation must be a recent event.
Eyewitness testimony: facial recognition
-Children show poor face recognition accuracy particularly when: faces shown with novel expression, faces are shown from a new viewpoint. (even 8-10yrs is not good). 2-3 yrs old facial recognition also impaired by external paraphernalia
Ceci et al: false events
False events: more than 50% of 3-4 yrs old said false events happened. 40% of 5-6 yrs old said false events happen. Often provided details
Cognitive limitations: children poor in recalling details of events due to limitations in executive function, strategies, knowledge, metacognition, memory capacity.
Aspects of interview that might influence children;s response:
stereotype reinforcement (use of language- eg how fast was the car going when it crashed), authority figures, delayed recall, bribes/threats.
Matthew Effect:
for to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.
Reading: Good readers become better readers (enjoy reading and read more) and poor readers (struggle, and don’t read) are left behind more and more, so the gap widens
Phonemic Awareness
-Knowledge that words consist of separable sounds- an auditory, not visual skill
-sound of words and visual coding don’t match- need to learn how to break up words not the way they sound but how you think they should be.
-Phonemic awareness is number one predictor of reading ability
Phonemic Awareness : orthography
English has a deep orthography (the system for converting letters into sounds is irregular). eg . ghoti- fish. English has 40 phonemes; 1120 letter combinations vs Italian has 25 phonemes and 33 letter combinations (has a shallow orthography)
Dyslexia
-Reading disability; reading ability significantly worse than intellectual ability would predict
-Can do arithmetic, communicate orally- everything buy reading (????)
-only about 10% are due to visual problems- rather most have to do with grapheme-phoneme correspondence
-Phonological processing is best predictor (eg. can you read “kika”)
-neurological basis likely genetic
-manifestation depends on grapheme-phoneme correspondence- shallot orthography- less difficulty
Reading japanese:
Ma can be at the beginning, middle or end of the word- context tells you which ma is to be used. Japanese has a simple orthography
Sex differences: reading
-Girls tend to perform better on reading tests than boys. Consistent across studies countries- likely genetic difference. Although statistically signticanct- absolute different is minor (functionally irrelevant)
-difference likely because boys are more affected by interest (impacts formal testing scores)
-dyslexia more prevalent in boys
Heritability of cognitive abilities:
-Executive function is highly heritable; but greatly influenced by environment
-Hillman et al- physically fit children performed better at allocating attentional resources (likely genetic and environmental influences intertwined. (Sports-executive, genetic- physical active gene also better at executive function)
Heritability of intelligence:
-genetic influence is mostly indirect
-parents’ genes dictate how parents behave towards their children (passive effects). Children’s genes dictate evocative and active effects on the environment
