The development of social cognition (Cog dev)

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  • Created by: J_W
  • Created on: 18-05-17 09:56

The development of Social Cognition

Social cognition - relates to mental processes by which individuals process + understand information relating to themselves + others + by which behaviour is conducted.

It's therefore involved in explaining how individuals develop the ability to make sense of their social world.

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Selman's levels of perspective taking

Perspective taking - Is when Individuals gradually gain the ability to understand something from another person's viewpoint.

Selmen created the:

Role-taking theory - Explains the development of perspective taking, which involves adopting the role of others which allows an individual to comprehend their feelings, thoughts + intentions.

Theory was developed using interpersonal dillemas - Tree climber Holly

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Selmen's levels of perspective taking - stage 0-2

Stage 0: Egocentric Viewpoint (3 - 6 years):

Children understand people have different thoughts + feelings from their own, but often will confuse the two. Can't see a cause and effect relationship between reasons + social actions.

Example - Holly rescues kitten as she doesn't want it hurt + believes Holly's father will feel the same as she does about climbing the tree.

Stage 1: Social Information role-taking (6 - 10 years):

Aware others have access to different information. Possess perspectives based on their own reasoning. Tend to focus on one perspective rather than combining different viewpoints.

Stage 2: Self-Reflective role-taking (8 - 10 years):

Children can perceive each others perspectives + understand that this awareness influences their own + others view of each other. Can form co-ordinated chain of perspectives, but cannot simultaneously see each others perspective.

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Selman's levels of perspective taking - stage 3 +

Stage 3: Mutual role-taking (10 - 12 years):

Realise that both self + others can view each other mutually + simultaneously. Children can step outside a two person situation + imagine how they + another would be viewed from the perspective of a 3rd unbiased person.

Stage 4: Social and conventional system role-taking (12 - 15 years + older)

Realise that 3rd party perspective taking can be influenced by mutual, simultaneous perspective-taking. As well as by larger societal values, which are understood by all members of a cultural group regardless of their position, role or experience.

Example - Holly shouldn't be punished, as the ethical requirement to treat animals humanely justifies Holly breaking her promise + Holly's father will understand this + not punish her.

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Research support + Against - Selman + Epley

SELMAN for -

40 children aged 4 - 6 years predict child's behaviour after given information about a situation that was not available to the child.

Younger participants tended to make predictions based on the information given, suggesting they are egocentric. In line with Selman's theory, as the children were unable to see the situation from the child's perspective.

EPLEY ET AL. against -

Used children aged 4 - 12 years + adults as participants to assess egocentric bias.

Finding that adults made fewer egocentric errors than children and that egocentric errors was correlated with age, younger children more errors.

BUT CRUCIALLY Epley suggests egocentrism is not outgrown, but that experience teaches people they can see something from another person's perspective only by learning to disregard their own. Implies there is no change with age in how humans process information disputing Selmans theory.

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Evaluation - Selman - Strengths

Application to physical education - used to determine ages at which children can understand other's viewpoints and roles within competitive team sports. There is little point in trying to teach a child team sports before they are less egocentric and can accept other viewpoints.

Interpersonal dillemas - Offer an objective means of assessing social competence, so much so that is has become a paradigm method of studying development of perspective taking.

Developmental claims of Selman's model are supported by research evidence - individuals progress gradually to higher stages overtime, with little evidence of any regression to lower stages.

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Evaluation - Selman - Limitations

Culturally biased - Research is carried out on children from Western cultural backgrounds and therefore findings may not be applicable to other cultures.

Quintana et al. criticised Selman's work as disregarding the development of perspective taking in ethnic sub-cultural groupings.

Focuses too much on the effect of cognitive development - on perspective-taking and social cognition, whilst downplaying the role of non-cognitive factors.                                                  Example - Social factors, such as arguments between friends have seen to promote perspective-taking skills and meditation from others in settling disagreements play a similar role.

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Theory of mind (ToM)

Another factor, affecting the ability to make sense of the social world is ToM.                                  It involves the ability to comprehend that others have a mind too, which may differ from our own and is key to understanding the thoughts and emotions of others.

ToM is similar to Piaget's theory of egocentrism.

The development of ToM leads to the ability to manipulate + deceive others by hiding one's emotions + intentions.

Understanding emotions:

Children's ability to understand emotions develop rapidely. By 3 or 4 they can understand others emotions, desires and beliefs.

To do this relies on the children being:

  • 18 months - Self aware (Can verbalise how they feel)
  • Age 2 - Able to pretend (Teddy is hungry + needs food)
  • Age 3 - 4: Can seperate reality from pretence (I will be mummy + you can play daddy)
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Harris (1989) Understanding emotions

Harris (1989) - tested whether children understood that other people's emotions are founded on desires and wants.

Reports that around age 4, children become aware of their emotions and use them to pretend to be someone else, permitting them to be aware of others' thinking. Suggests that this is a pivotal age in realising that others think differently.

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A child's sense of self: Lewis + Brooks-Gunn

Before we develop an understanding of others, it is generally agreed that we develop a sense of ourselves.

A child's sense of self: Lewis + Brooks-Gunn:

  • 9 - 12 months: smiled & looked longer at photos of themselves than other babies.
  • 15 - 18 months: said their own name when they saw a photo of themselves, where as other babies were labelled babies.

Mirror test:

96 infants, aged 24 months and below. Sat on mums lap in front of mirror + observed for 90 seconds. Red dot dabbed on baby's nose + sat in front of mirror for 90 seconds. Number of times baby smiled + touched nose was recorded. FINDINGS - Touching of nose in red dot condition increased with age.

Increased touching of nose - indicates self-recognition (well developed by age 2)

Evaluation - Ethical issues of dealing with babies (informed consent etc.) Research was kept simple + realistic = findings have ecological validity.

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False belief tasks: ToM

False belief tasks: Investigating ToM in children. Involves witnessing a scene and being asked to interpret it from the viewpoint of one of the characters in the scene.  

Wimmer + Perner (Maxi task):

Used models to act out a story to 4, 6 + 8 year olds about a boy called Maxi who put some chocolate in a blue cupboard. While Maxi was absent, the children saw the mother transfer the chocolate to a green cupboard.

The children were then asked where Maxi would look for the chocolate. Most 6 + 8 year olds  gave the correct blue cupboard answer, while most 4 year olds said they would look in the green cupboard.

They thought he would act on the basis of his false belief, implying that they had not developed ToM.

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False belief cont.

'Smarties task' Perner et al.

Children are shown a smarties box and asked what they think is inside. The children will answer that sweets are inside, but in fact the experimenter reveals there is a pencil inside.

Here the false belief question is "if Sarah saw the box, what would she think was inside?"

The same results were found here as with the William + Perner experiment (4 years old - would act on basis of false belief - no ToM).

The children display a lack of ToM development in that they cannot entertain the notion that someone may not be aware of the same things that they themselves are aware of.

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Evaluation - ToM

  • Appears in childhood, though there is some disagreement as to whether it occurs suddenely at the age of 4 or more gradually from 2 years of age onwards.
  • A lack of ToM is similar to Piaget's idea of egocentrism, coinciding at similar ages, and suggesting the 2 concepts are linked.
  • Children may fail to understand some false belief tasks, not because they don't have ToM, but because the language of the questions may have been too complicated. Results due to poor methodology.
  • Some suggest ToM is an innate, biological process, which matures in set stages at set times and is not affected by learning. Studies on ToM, find the ability appears at around the same age in children of different cultures, supporting the idea of a biological mechanism at work.

Bloom + German argued that passing a false belief task requires having more than just ToM. The tasks in many studies are complex + such requirements may be beyond young children even if they do have TOM.

Argue that there is more to having ToM than passing false belief tasks. Children below 2 y/o, who tend to fail false belief tasks, can initiate pretend play + understand the pretending of others, suggests an ability to understand the mental state of others - possibly some form of ToM.

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ToM - Explanation for Autism

Autism - Developmental disability characterised by problems in communicating and building relationships with others and in using language and abstract concepts.

Autistic children often seem self-absorbed + engrossed in their 'own world' often having problems relating to others and only seeing things from their point of view.   For these reasons ToM has been suggested as a possible explanation for the disorder.

Frith (1989) was the 1st to suggest children with autism may not be able to understand that other people and indeed themselves, have a 'mind'. Argued autism was associated with mind-blindness, an inability to understand what other people are thinking + feeling.

Baron-Cohen later used the idea of ToM to explain such mind-blindness, as ToM seemed to offer a plausible reason as to why autistic children have problems seeing things from another's perspective and yet are unaffected in other areas of cognitive functioning.

Leslie proposed the idea of Theory of Mind Mechanism (ToMM). Sees ToM as an innate ability that biologically matures in most children by around 2 years of age, but that physiological damage, either shortly before or after birth = hindered development of the mechanism so that cognitive impairments, such as those found in autistic children occur.

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Sally Anne Study - Procedure

Natural experiment - naturally occuring IV of 3 different types of children: Autistic, Down's syndrome + normally developed.

DV - % of children correctly completing the false belief task.

Participants were:

  • 20 autistic, average age 12, average verbal age 5.5
  • 14 Down's syndrome, average age 11, average verbal age 3
  • 27 normally developed children, average age 4.5, mental age 4.5 

Normal + Down's served as control groups, autistic = experimental group.

Children witnessed a scenairo: Sally places marble in basket + leaves. Anne transfers the marble + hides it in her box. Sally then returns + children are then asked the following false belief question: Where will sally look for the marble?

The correct answer relies on the child attributing a false belief to Sally (she will look in the wrong place).

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Sally anne - findings, conclusions + evaluation

Findings - % passing false belief Q

  • 20% of Autistic children
  • 85% of Normal children
  • 86% of Down's syndrome children

Conclusions:

  • Autistic children don't have ToM + therefore cannot attribute beliefs to others - disadvantages them when trying to predict behaviour.
  • An inability to develop ToM is a plausible explanation for autism.

Evaluation:

  • Study can be argued to lack ecological validity, scenairo involves dolls which lacks relevance to real life.
  • It's possible autistic children don't attribute beliefs to dolls as they realise they realise they don't have thoughts or feelings. However Leslie + Frith, used real life actors - similar results = generalisable to real life settings.
  • Cannot be a general effect of mental retardation, since Down's performed better than normally functioning children - must be a specific deficit to Autistic children.
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Further research - ToM + Autism

Review was conducted of false belief tasks and it was found that in all studies there were examples of children with autism who passed the tasks, casting doubts as to whether ToM is a complete explanation for Autism.

Happe et al. Used PET scans to find that the specific brain area associated with understanding one's own and other's minds was not functioning correctly in people who have autism.

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Evaluation - ToM + Autism

  • A lack of ToM provides plausible reasons for many symptoms of autism. Example - not being able to understand other people's thoughts could be linked to their difficulties communicating via language.
  • A lack of ToM can also explain the low levels of pretend play exhibited by autistic children, as they are unable to reflect on their own thoughts.
  • A problem with using ToM as an explanation for autism is that it's expected the apparent problems autistic people have in reflecting on their own thoughts, would affect their ability to perform complex cognitive actions, such as soliving mathematical problems. However some autistic children have advanced mathematical skills.

If ToM was the main explanation for autism, 3 predictions would be met:

1. Autistics fail tests of ToM (many autistics pass ToM tests, while normal children with language impairments fail them, so ToM is not universal nor specific to autism)

2. ToM is innate (Tutoring in mind-reading + grammar improves performance on ToM tests - not innate)

3. ToM relates to a specific brain region (Brain scanning studies have failed to isolate a specific brain region)

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Role of mirror neurons in social cognition

Mirror neurons - Nerves in the brain that are active when specific actions are performed or observed in others, allows the observer to experience the action as if it were their own.

These neurons are found in the brain areas involved in social cognition and are a biological explanation of social cognition, it can therefore explain how individuals develop the ability to make sense of the world.

The action of mirror neurons is such that when an individual experiences an emotion such as, disgust, or views an expression of disgust on someone else's face, the same mirror neurons are activated. This allows direct understanding of each other, thus explaining how people emphasis with each other.

Mirror neurons may allow individuals to stimulate other people's behaviour + the motivation + feeling behind that behaviour.

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Dapretto et al - Aim, procedure + findings

Dapretto et al - understanding emotion in others (2006)

Aimed to examine mirror neuron ability in autistic + normal children using fMRI scanning.

  • Participants: 10 normally functioning children + 10 high-functioning autistic children, aged 10-14
  • Participants + parents gave informed consent
  • 80 facial expressions representing 5 different emotions - anger, fear, happiness, neutrality + sadness = presented for 2 seconds in random sequence.
  • fMRI scans were used as participants either observed or imitated the faces presented.

Conclusion:

  • There is a difference in neural pathways used by normal and autistic children. Developing children rely on the right hemisphere mirror neuron mechanism, whereby the meaning of an observed emotion is directly understood. In autistic children this mirroring mechanism is not engaged, thus the emotional significance of observed emotions is not understood. 
  • Most significantly, his research found that mirror neurons underlie the ability to read others' emotional state from facial expressions. 
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Dapretto et al - Evaluation

Evaluation:

  • The lack of mirror neuron activity during the observation + imitation of emotional expressions in autistic children provides support for the idea that early dysfunction in the mirror neuron system is a key factor of the social deficits seen in autism.
  • Research suggests a biological foundation to the development of social cognition in humans and also to the development of autism. 
  • However, it was a small sample - makes it hard to generalise results as sample is not representative of target population because it isn't large enough. 
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Further research - Mirror neuron

Rizzolatti et al. placed electrodes on the brains of monkeys to find that neurons in the frontal and parietal lobe brain areas behave in the same manner when observing other monkeys picking up food as when the monkey did it itself. Suggests these neurons function to allow the monkeys to experience the other monkeys movement as if it was their own.

Stuss et al. reported individuals with damage to their frontal lobes were often unable to emphasise with and read other people's intentions, as well as being easy to deceive. Suggests damage to the mirror neuron system + emphasises it's importance to human social cognition.

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Evaluation - Mirror neurons

  • It's argued that studies on monkeys cannot be generalised to humans. However studies using fMRI scans have found evidence of mirror neuron systems in humans and in the same area as the monkeys.
  • Social cognition seems to exist only in species of animals with complex social groupings, with indications of mirror neuron systems being found in primates, elephants and dogs. Suggesting a biological basis to social cognition that has evolved due to it's adaptive survival value.
  • Research into mirror neurons has indicated a possible biological explanation for autism, and greater understanding may pave the way for developing methods of counteracting the social deficits associated with the disorder. HOWEVER, it is not proven that mirror neurons directly allow understanding of the meaning of actions and so linking autism and defective motor neuron systems currently remains inconclusive.
  • For practical reasons, there is a methodological problem in studying mirror neurons in humans, as it is not possible to study the actions of a single neuron.
  • Kosonogov raises the point that if individuals can understand the motivation behind other people's actions by mirror neurons firing off when observing goal-directed action or a pantomine of a goal-directed action (someone acting in a film), then how is it possible to know when an action is real and not a phantomine of an action?
  • Heyes argues that even if mirror neurons exist, it has not been established whether they actually have evolved so one can understand anothers actions through the process of natural selection, or whether they were just biological by-product of social interaction between individuals.
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