Social Cognition

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Social Cognition

• Focus has been on non-social abilities
• Today How do children come to understand their
  multifaceted social world?
• How do they interpret social situations, what
  information do they use?
• How can their social interactions affect their
  cognitions?

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Properties of social cognition

• Develops from concrete to abstract
• Social cognition becomes better organized
• Children revise causes of persons behaviours
• Move to a metacognitive level of understanding

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2 main theories of social development

• Social cognitive theory
• Bandura
• Social information processing theory
• Dodge

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Social Cognitive Theory

• Learn through modeling
• Become more selective in modeling with age
• concern for TV violence
• Believes in reciprocal determinism
• Childrens behaviour will affect how others treat
  him or her, and this in turn will affect their
  future behaviour

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Reciprocal DeterminismVicious Cycle
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5 capabilities that must be in place to learn
about social world

• Symbolization
• Forethought
• Self-regulation
• Self-reflection
• Vicarious learning
• VL in turn governed by 4 sub-processes

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4 sub-processes of VL

• (Also called Observational learning)
• Attentional processes
• Retention
• Production
• Motivation

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Social Cognitive theory, cond

• Must be able to imitate
• Children believe simple observation is
  sufficient, but social transmission needed
• Must have strong sense of self-efficacy
• Relates to how we interpret our effect on
  environment
• Physical or not
• Parents can affect our self-efficacy
• Can be beneficial to think were better than we
  are

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Achievement Motivation

• Tendency to persist in challenging tasks
• Children can be mastery-oriented or
  learned-helpless
• Differ in
• attributions they make about performance
• How they see ability

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Types of achievement motivation
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Influences on Attributions

• Adult Communication
• Childs gender
• Cultural values

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Attribution Retraining

• Attempts to modify attributions of learned
  helpless children
• Use adult feedback see value in effort
• Begin with hard task, encourage effort
• Every effort is rewarded with a positive comment
• Focus away from academics and more towards
  learning for sake of learning

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Social Information Processing Theory

• Dodges model of social interaction
• How children act in a given situation and how
  this will affect future interactions
• All mental states occurring accounted for

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Dodges model
5. Evaluate likely effectiveness, and select a
response
4. Generate problem-solving strategy
3. Formulate social goals
Childrens mental state past social experience
Social expectancies Knowledge of social rules and
emotion regulation skills
6. Enact a response
2. Interpret social cues
Peer evaluations and response
1. Encode Social Cues
Will affect how child will
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Development of Self-Concept

• Set of attributes, abilities, attitudes, and
  values that an individual believes defines who he
  or she isWho am I?
• Age-related changes
• 3 years observable characteristics
• 5 years more internal characteristics
• 11 years can talk about self for a while, in
  terms of competencies
• 16 years describe self in terms of psychological
  traits

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William James (1890)

• I-Self (private self)
• Sense of self as agent who is separate from
  others, but acts on and attends to objects and
  other people.
• Me-Self (public self)
• Composed of characteristics that make the self
  unique, reflective observer who treats self as
  object of knowledge

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Beginnings of I-self

• Self-awareness dawns in second year of life
• Securely attached toddlers know how their actions
  affect environment
• The earlier they know this, the earlier they
  engage in imaginary play
• Earlier differentiation of self and others

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Beginnings of Me-self

• Starts during second year
• Become more consciously aware of physical
  features
• 15 months, self recognition in mirror
• At 2, start to see self as a separate being
• Using personal pronouns, recognize self in
  pictures
• Fostered by good care giving

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Consequences of sense of self

• Self-recognition precedes a lot of behaviours,
  e.g mutual imitation
• Allows for self-conscious emotions, like shyness,
  shame
• Stronger self-definition more assertion of what
  is mine
• Can start to develop empathy, cooperation, sharing

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Language and the Self

• Language allows for verbal classification
  according to characteristics
• 2 kinds of self
• Categorical self develops at 18-30 months where
  people are classified in terms of salient
  features (age, sex, size)
• Remembered self

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Remembered Self

• Develops around 2 years
• Building of life-story narrative, more coherent
  and enduring
• Like autobiographical memory
• Communicated from parents
• Major source through which me-self is imbued with
  cultural values

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Development of Perspective-taking

• Need this to understand
• others emotions
• referential communication
• inferring intentions
• Gradually develops, but there in young children
• Theory of Mind can be a form of perspective taking

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Selmans stages of Perspective-Taking development

• 0. Undifferentiated perspective taking (3-6)
• 1. Social-Informational processing (6-8)
• 2. Self-reflective perspective taking (8-10)
• 3. Third-party perspective taking (10-12)
• 4. Societal perspective taking (12 )

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Recursive thought

• Thinking about what another person is thinking
  about
• Affects our social behaviour
• we can predict how people will act
• Arent able to do higher level recursive thinking
  until about 15

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Cultural Learning

• Passed through social transmission
• Requires different forms of perspective taking
• Tomasello Unique to humans
• 3 phases
• Imitative internalizing models behaviours
• Instructed less knowledgeable learns from more
  knowledgeable
• Collaborative Same knowledge bases learn from
  each other
• Imitative ? Instructional ?
  Collaborative

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Culture in Primate ancestors?

• Russon Cultural learning NOT unique to humans!!
• Much longer spread of any kind of cultural
  phenomenon
• Potato washing in chimps
• Ways of sieving through water to get seeds
• Nut cracking sites
• Social strata differences

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Gender Definitions

• Gender Characterization of differences between
  males and females in which judgments are made
  about biological and environmental influences
• Gender Stereotypes Widely held beliefs about
  characteristics deemed male or female
• Gender Roles The reflection of gender
  stereotypes in everyday behaviour

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Gender, Definitions

• Gender identity The perception of oneself as
  relatively masculine or feminine in
  characteristics
• Gender typing The process of developing
  gender-linked beliefs
• Gender-role standard Value or motive more
  accepted for one gender over the other

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Typical Gender Role Standards

• Girls assume expressive role where we should be
  cooperative, kind, nurturing, and sensitive to
  the needs of others

• Boys assume instrumental role where they are to
  be dominant, independent, assertive, competitive,
  and goal-oriented

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Sex differences in the socialization of 5
attributes in 110 societies
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Gender Identity

• 3 stages
• Identity ? stability ? consistency
• At 2 ½ - 3, can label themselves as boy or girl
• Before 5 and even up to 7, see gender as unstable
• By 7 have true gender concept
• Gender constancy allows child to focus on proper
  models

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Gender roles

• By 2 and 3, classifying boy and girl activities,
  and will avoid those for the opposite sex, very
  rigid
• Between 3 and 7, they are little chauvinists

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Why do you think people tell George not to play
with dolls (6 years)

• Well, he should only play with things that boys
  play with. The things he is playing with now is
  girls stuff
• Can George play with a doll if he wants to?
• No sir!!
• What should George do?
• He should stop playing with girls dolls and
  start playing with G.I. Joe
• Why can a boy play with a G.I. Joe and not a
  Barbie doll?
• Because if a boy plays with a barbie doll, then
  people will tease himand if he plays more to get
  girls to like him, then the girls wont like him
  anymore

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Why do you think people tell George not to play
with dolls (9 years)

• What do you think his parents should do?
• They should get him trucks and stuff and see if
  he will play with those
• What if he kept on playing with dolls, should he
  be punished?
• No
• How come?
• Because if he broke a window they should, because
  you cant do that, but you can play with dolls
• Whats the difference?
• Well, breaking windows youre not supposed to do.
  And if you play with dolls, you can, but boys
  usually dont

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Gender

• Children must learn definition of gender
• Exaggerate them to make them cognitively clear
• By 8, views of gender become more flexible
• Rigidity appears again in adolescence gender
  intensification

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Differences in gender-typed behaviour

• Boys develop stereotypes earlier
• By 2, boys prefer boy toys and avoid girl toys
• Boys prefer to play with tomboyish girls than
  sissy boys
• Will say they dislike girl toys
• Girls remain interested in cross-gender toys
  until later

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Gender specific toys
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of boys and girls who request masculine and
feminine toys from Santa
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Gender-typed behaviours

• More acceptable for girls to cross gender lines
• Eventually prefer girl activities
• Biological reasons Puberty hits, want to be more
  feminine
• Cognitive reasons Formal operations hits, know
  their role and that they should play it
• Social reasons More inclined to conform to
  social prescriptions of their roles to fit in

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Theories of Gender-typing

• Money Ehrhardts biosocial theory
• Children show an essentialist bias
• If a girl went to live on an island with all men
  and no women, she would still be a woman and show
  all the same gender stereotypes

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Biosocial Theory

• A few critical episodes that determine preference
  for masculine or feminine roles
• Inheritance of x or y chromosome
• Secretion of hormones
• Inhibition of testosterone
• Social factors that come into play immediately
  after birth

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Role of biology in gender-role

• 2 lines of evidence
• Genetics
• You are born with a gender, but timing of puberty
  can result in more masculine role
• Hormonal
• Evidence from androgenized females and CAH
• Girls with CAH identify with more male- typed
  behaviours

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Biosocial theory

• Social labeling also affects development of
  gender identity
• Need to be labeled and/or reassigned before 18
  months, as after this child will experience great
  difficulty in change
• Nature and Nurture both account for gender typing

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Social Cognitive Theory and gender-typing

• Bandura social influences key to gender typing
• Direct tuition
• Observational Learning
• Media Support

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Martin Halversons Gender-schema theory

• Information-processing theory
• Kids attuned to gender-specific info
• Beliefs organize how child perceives all incoming
  info, guides what info child attends to,
  elaborates on, and remembers
• Top-down!!
• Starts very early on

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Gender-Schema Theory

• Acquiring in-group VS out-group schemas
• Develop own-sex schemas
• Gender scripts

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Gender-typing and Intelligence

• Theories moving towards a biological/social/inform
  ation-processing type of approach
• Correlations exist between IQ and gender
  knowledge
• Children earlier aware of their gender are
  brighter
• More advanced in cognitive developmental stages

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ASD and Social Cognition

• Social deficits are defining characteristic of
  ASD
• Social information processing theory states that
  they do not begin to process social information
  in the same way as normal children
• Are generally unaware of people around them, less
  eye contact, act odd

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Van der Geest, Kemner, Camfferman, Verbaten,
van Engeland (2002)

• At what level does social deficit begin at?
• Previous research shows odd looking patterns in
  children with ASD
• less attention to human forms in pictures
• Questions
• Do they have abnormal gaze patterns?
• Do they not show normal preference for social
  stimuli?

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Van der Geest et al.

• Participants
• 16 high-functioning children with ASD
• 14 normal children, all around age 10
• Materials
• 25 pictures of cartoon scenes, each with a human
  form
• Method
• Infrared laser measured childs looking pattern
  at picture while sitting in a dentists chair

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Results
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Results

• No group difference in overall gaze patterns at
  pictures
• No difference on amount of attention paid to
  social figures
• Both groups of children spent the most time on
  the human forms in the pictures

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Interpretation

• Children with ASD process pictorial information
  in same way as normal children
• Time to look at human form same in both groups,
  indicating general preference for social stimuli
• General information processing deficit in ASD can
  be excluded
• Deficit is not across all social stimuli
• Future research should look at live models

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Take Home Messages

• Social cognition works much like other domains
  (IP theory, Cognition based theories)
• Social models important in childs life
• Development of self-concept in line with
  development of memory and language
• Gender roles are assigned from early on
• Both biologically and socially based