Development lecture 6

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What are the three kinds of mental state?
Emotions, Desires/intentions and beliefs
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What is the theory of mind?
A complex set of skills and knowledge including the understanding of: We all have MS (mental states) and the ability to reflect on them, MS drive human behaviour, Someone else's MS are separate from your own and so can be different from them
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What is perspective taking in the theory of mind?
The understanding that someone else's mental states are separate from your own and so can be different from them
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What is the thing to do with essentialist and theory of mind and mental states?
The understanding that mental states drive human behaviour - 'the unseen guides the seen'
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What is central to the theory of mind?
The ability to understand others mental states
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What did Wellman say about mental states and the theory of mind?
That they are 'acquired' in the fixed order: emotions, desires/intentions, and beliefs
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When does understanding others emotions begin?
In infancy
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Are all emotions visible?
No, only some emotions are visible, when your mental state is visible
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Can emotions be complex?
Yes, we can be ambivalent which is when we have two emotions about one event
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What are desires?
What you want/ preferences, personal, impenetrable and can conflict
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What are intentions?
What you will do, products of your will, you choose your intentions
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Can desires and intentions be false?
No, not as long as you are honest!
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Are desires/intentions representational?
No, they make a claim about you, not the world so they are non-representational
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What are your beliefs?
All the things that you think are true about 'this world and the next'. They can be about big stuff (god), small stuff (day of the week) and obvious stuff (object permanence)
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Can beliefs be false?
Yes they can be as they are representations, representations make a claim about the world so they can be wrong.
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Why might beliefs being representational mean that children struggle to learn them?
Because they have the property of (potential 'wrongness') due to being representations
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What is a false belief?
A belief which s false
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What sort of representations can adults form?
Complex representations
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When is there evidence of us learning intentions?
During the sensorimotor learning stage (Piaget), we do trial and error learning, we make some muscle contractions and observe how they move your limbs, then you know which muscles to contract and have intent to make that limb movement.
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What is sensorimotor learning with intent?
When you control your own movements by learning links between sense and motion
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How does sensorimotor learning help with imitation?
You observe another person move a limb, so you then know which muscles to contract to imitate that movement yourself.
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How does making a sense-action link helps infants?
It allows them to imitate others as learning control your own movement helps you to imitate others (it is parsimonious??
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What do infants learn when they watch adults and copy their behaviour?
They learn actions
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Do intentions or desires have moral value?
Intentions have moral value but desires do not
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Are intentions and desires non-representational mental states?
Yes
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Do we care about peoples intentions?
Yes
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Does choosing your intentions make you moral?
Yes
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What do no intentions mean?
That you have no morality
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How do we infer if someones actions are intentional or accidental?
By using social cues
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What do adults do after they see an action?
infer an intention
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What is the aim of Meltzoff to see if children understand intent?
To see when children children are observing a failing action if they imitate the failing action or a successful action
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What is the failing condition of Meltzoff's study on intent?
Where a successful action is implied but not made.
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What is the successful contion of Meltzoff's study on intent?
They do a successful action
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What is the control condition of Meltzoff's study on intent?
They see no action
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What are the results of of Meltzoff's study on intent?
In the successful condition 80% made a successful action, in the failing condition 80% make successful actions, in the control condition only 20% make successful actions
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What is the conclusion of of Meltzoff's study on intent?
That children are copying intentions and not actions
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What does Metlzoff say about intentions?
We encode intentions and not actions
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What does Piaget say about intentions?
We encode actions (the precise movements made by the actor)
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What is Horner and Whiten's study intentions?
Children watch experimenters perform two actions, first pointless and the second needed to achieve the experimenters intention
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What were the results of Horner and Whiten study?
Children copy both actions even though the pointless action is irrelevant to the experimenters intention
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What is the conclusion of the Horner and Whiten study?
It is often difficult to infer an intention, meaning maybe children copy intentional actions whether or not they know what the intention is
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What is the false belief task?
Teddy puts marble in box, goes away, puppy moves marble from box to basket, teddy is still going to think the marble is in the box. Children are asked a false belief question and a control question
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Why did Wimmer and Perner to use the false belief task?
To assess the ability to infer a false belief
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What is the false belief question in the false belief task?
Where does teddy think the marble is
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What is the control question in the false belief task?
Where was the marble put first
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Why are the children asked a false belief question and a control question in the false belief task?
A control question to see if the children remember where the marble was and a false belief question to test their understanding
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What is a metarepresentation?
Having a representation of someone elses representation
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When do children pass the false belief question?
20% pass 3-1/2 yrs old. 60% pass 31/2-4 years old. 90% pass 4-41/2
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Does failing the false belief task mean children don't understand false beliefs?
Not exactly, for example we can understand multiplication but doesn't mean we can do 176x193, they might have the knowledge but can't work out the answer. Children could know beliefs can be false but fail to work out the answer in the false belief ta
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What did Onishi and Baillargeon do to test if children understand the false belief task?
A non-verbal task to see if infants can understand false beliefs. Do infants expect that people act in accordance with their beliefs even if those beliefs are false?
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What is onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
Tested 15 month olds on a task that induces a belief in an action, there are three parts, familiarisation, belief induction and belief test
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What is the familiarisation condition of onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
When you familiarise an infant with an actors behaviour
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What is the belief induction conditon of onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
The situation that leads an actor to have either a true belief or a false belief
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What is the belief test of onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
When the actors behaviour is either compatible or incompatible with the actors behaviour
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What happens in the violation-of-expectancy task if the expectation is violated/supported?
The infant has an expectation - > the expectation is violated -> infant looks for a long time. OR infant has an expectation -> expectation is supported -> infant looks for a short time
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What happens in the true belief condition of onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
Participants who understand beliefs should expect the actor with a true belief to search in the yellow box. But if they search in the green box children are surprised which suggests they understand true beliefs
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How is a child's surprise measured in onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
With their looking time
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What happens in the false belief condition of onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
Participants who understand beliefs should expect actor with false beliefs to search in the green box. But if they search in the yellow box children are surprised which suggests they also understand false beliefs.
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How are the actors made to have a false belief or a true belief in the belief test of What happens in the true belief condition of onishi's and baillargeon's violation of expectancy task?
With the true belief the actor sees the object moved from the green to the yellow box. With the false belief they do not see it moved
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What is the issue with the false belief task and the violation of expectancy task?
If both of them claim to measure false belief understanding then one of them must be wrong
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What is the support for the violation of expectancy task to measure false beliefs?
Scott and Baillaregon suggest that it does measure false belief knowledge because infants fb metarepresentation drives their looking behaviour and reflect their understanding of false beliefs.
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What do Scott and Baillaregon say about the false belief task and it's ability to measure false beliefs?
That it doesn't measure false beliefs knowledge, 3 year olds fail the false belief tasks because they can not inhibit their own belief of where they think it is
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What is the argument that the violation of expectancy task doesn't measure false beliefs?
The infant may form misrepresentations but do not understand that beliefs can be false. Having a metarepresentation isn't the same under-standing what it means (beliefs can be false)
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What is the argument that the false belief task does measure false belief understanding?
3-year-olds fail the false belief tasks because they do not understand that beliefs can be false, so have no reason to discount their own true belief.
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