Studied by 12 peopleTags & Description
Theory of Mind
The human capacity to understand minds, a capacity that is made up of a collection of concepts (e.g., agent, intentionality) and processes (e.g., goal detection, imitation, empathy, perspective taking).
AKA mentalizing or mindreading
Interprets human behaviour as agents who can act intentionally with desires and beliefs
The Role of Theory of Mind in Social Life
Social perceivers without a theory of mind would be utterly lost in simple interactions
Allows us to understand human behaviour as it can be perceived that other people function similarly to us.
humans need to understand minds in order to engage in the kinds of complex interactions that social communities (small and large) require.
these complex social interactions have given rise, in human cultural evolution, to houses, cities, and nations; to books, money, and computers; to education, law, and science.
Social interactions that rely deeply on ToM
Teaching another person new actions or rules
Learning the words of a language
Figuring out our own social status and how we're perceived by others
Sharing experiences
Collaborating on a task
Autism and Theory of Mind
Some individuals with autism report that they perceive others "in a more analytical way."
This analytical mode of processing, however, is very tiresome and slow
Tools of theory of mind
bottom is simple and develops early, top is most complex
Identifying agents
Allows humans to identify those moving objects in the world that can act on their own
Recognizing goals
Builds on agent category, because agents are characteristically directed toward goal objects, which means they seek out, track, and often physically contact said objects to see the systematic and predictable relationship between a particular agent pursuing a particular object across various circumstances.
Intentional
An agent’s mental state of committing to perform an action that the agent believes will bring about a desired outcome.
For an agent to perform a behavior intentionally, she must have a desire for an outcome (goal), beliefs about how a particular action leads to the outcome, and intention to perform that action with awareness and skill
Intentionality
The quality of an agent's performing a behaviour intentionally—that is, with skill and awareness and executing an intention
To act intentionally you need, aside from a goal, the right kinds of beliefs about how to achieve the goal.
An agent must have the skill to perform the intentional action in question
Imitation
The human tendency to carefully observe others' behaviours and do as they do—even if it is the first time the perceiver has seen this behaviour.
Mimicry
Subtle, automatic form of imitation of copying others’ behavior, usually without awareness.
when people mutually mimic one another they can reach a state of synchrony
Synchrony
Two people displaying the same behaviours or having the same internal states (typically because of mutual mimicry).
Synchrony can happen even at very low levels, such as negative physiological arousal
Mirror neurons
Neurons identified in monkey brains that fire both when the monkey performs a certain action and when it perceives another agent performing that action.
In humans, however, things are a bit more complex - people perceive uncountable behaviours and fortunately don't copy all of them
Automatic empathy
A social perceiver unwittingly taking on the internal state of another person, usually because of mimicking the person's expressive behaviour and thereby feeling the expressed emotion.
Builds on imitation and synchrony
Joint Attention
Two people attending to the same object and being aware that they both are attending to it.
critical for children to learn the meaning of objects—both their value (is it safe and rewarding to approach?) and the words that refer to them (what do you call this?)
Visual perspective taking
Can refer to visual perspective taking (perceiving something from another person's spatial vantage point) or more generally to effortful mental state inference (trying to infer the other person's thoughts, desires, emotions).
Simulation
Using one's own mental states as a model for others' mental states
Projection
A social perceiver's assumption that the other person wants, knows, or feels the same as the perceiver wants, knows, or feels.
This can be an effective strategy if we share with the other person the same environment, background, knowledge, and goals, but it gets us into trouble when this presumed common ground is in reality lacking
People use their own current state—of knowledge, concern, or perception—to grasp other people's mental states, they often do so correctly, but they also get things wrong at times.
We tend to overestimate things about ourselves that in reality few people will notice
AKA "like-me" assumption
Explicit Mental State Inference
The ability to truly take another person's perspective requires that we separate what we want, feel, and know from what the other person is likely to want, feel, and know.
humans use general knowledge (applies to everybody) and agent-specific knowledge (what is known about the person)
False-belief test
An experimental procedure that assesses whether a perceiver recognizes that another person has a false belief—a belief that contradicts reality.
Determines if a child has developed explicit mental state inference
Folk Explanations of Behaviour
To explain why the agent performed the action, humans try to infer what desire and beliefs the agent had that led her to so act, and these inferred desires and beliefs are the reasons for which she acted
Common ground
A set of knowledge that the speaker and listener share when engaging in a conversation and they think, assume, or otherwise take for granted that they share
helps people coordinate their language use
Adjacency pair
pair of utterances between people
Audience design
Constructing utterances to suit the audience's knowledge. We are likely to align the way we talk with the person we are talking to.
If their audiences are seen to be knowledgeable about an object, they tend to use a brief label of the object (e.g. someone's name).
For a less knowledgeable audience, they use more descriptive words (e.g., "a friend of mine") to help the audience understand their utterances
Conversational maxims
rules that speakers follow by trying to be informative (maxim of quantity), truthful (maxim of quality), relevant (maxim of relation) and clear/unambiguous (maxim of manner)
Lexicon
Words and expressions
Syntax
Rules by which words are strung together to form sentences (i.e. grammar)
Situation models
A mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description.
Priming
The activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon
occurs when your thinking about one concept (e.g., "ring") reminds you about other related concepts (e.g., "marriage", "wedding ceremony")
What Do We Talk About?
Mostly gossip by a wide margin
By gossiping, humans can communicate and share their representations about their social world—who their friends and enemies are, what the right thing to do is under what circumstances, and so on.
In so doing, they can regulate their social world—making more friends and enlarging one's own group (often called the ingroup, the group to which one belongs) against other groups (outgroups) that are more likely to be one's enemies
Has been argued that it is these social effects that have given humans an evolutionary advantage and larger brains, which, in turn, help humans to think more complex and abstract thoughts and, more important, maintain larger ingroups
Social brain hypothesis
The hypothesis that the human brain has evolved so that humans can maintain larger ingroups.
Language, brain, and human group living have co-evolved—language and human sociality are inseparable.
Language use can have implications for how we construe our social world
Human brain can support a group size of about 150
Linguistic intergroup bias
People tend to describe positive actions of their ingroup members using adjectives (e.g., he is generous) rather than verbs (e.g., he gave a blind man some change), and negative actions of outgroup members using adjectives (e.g., he is cruel) rather than verbs (e.g., he kicked a dog)
Social Networks
Networks of social relationships among individuals through which information can travel.
When stories travel through communication chains, they tend to become conventionalized
Conventionalizes
Stereotypes are part of the common ground shared by a community so stereotypes are more likely to be retained in retellings of stories and retelling produces conventional content
Emotive stories
stories that evoke strong emotions and tend to spread farther through social networks
Psychological Consequences of Language Use
Thoughts and feelings are profoundly shaped by the linguistic representation that they have produced rather than the original experience per se
Linguistically labeling one's own emotional experience appears to alter the speaker's neural processes
Linguistic reconstructions of negative life events can potentially have some therapeutic effects on those who suffer from the traumatic experiences
Writing and talking about negative past life events improved people's psychological well-being, but just thinking about them worsened it.
People living in countries where pronoun drop languages are spoken tend to have more collectivistic values (e.g., employees having greater loyalty toward their employers) than those who use non-pronoun drop languages such as English
explicit reference to "you" and "I" may remind speakers the distinction between the self and other, and the differentiation between individuals, acting as a reminder of the cultural value, which, in turn, may encourage people to perform the linguistic practice.
Sapir-whorf hypothesis
If a certain type of language use (linguistic practice) is repeated by a large number of people in a community, it can potentially have a significant effect on their thoughts and actions
Autism Spectrum Conditions
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition that usually emerges in the first three years and persists throughout the individual's life.
No single genetic cause will apply in the majority of people with ASD. There is currently no biological test for ASD.
ASD is defined by the presence of difficulties in social interactions and communication combined with the presence of repetitive or restricted interests, cognitions and behaviors.
ASD diagnosis
The diagnostic process involves a combination of parental report and clinical observation.
Children with significant impairments across the social/communication domain who also exhibit repetitive behaviours can qualify for the ASD diagnosis.
ASD symptoms
wide variability in the precise symptom profile an individual may exhibit
impairments in social functioning are present in varying degrees for simple behaviours.
eye contact
complex behaviours like navigating the give and take of a group conversation for individuals of all functioning levels (i.e. high or low IQ).
Difficulties with social information processing occur in both visual and auditory
Social brain
A set of interconnected neuroanatomical structures that process social information, enabling the recognition of other individuals and the evaluation of their mental states.
consists of the amygdala, the orbital frontal cortex (OFC), fusiform gyrus (FG), and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) region, among other structures
Amygdala recognizes emotional states of others and regulate our own emotions
OFC supports reward feeling around other people
FG detects faces and supports face recognition
STS recognizes biological motion (eye, hand, and body movement) to interpret/predict actions and intentions of others. This ability emerges in the first days of life and helps orient vulnerable children to sources and is separate from the visual experience of biological motion
social neuroscience
study of the parts of the brain that support social interactions or the “social brain.”
Phenotypic heterogeneity
every person exhibits symptom in domains in different ways and with varying degree, resulting from variability in genes that cause autism
Social perception
the initial stages in the processing of information that results in the accurate analysis of the dispositions and intentions of other individuals
Event-related potentials (ERP)
Measures the firing of groups of neurons in the cortex. As a person views or listens to specific types of information, neuronal activity creates small electrical currents that can be recorded from non-invasive sensors placed on the scalp. ERP provides excellent information about the timing of processing, clarifying brain activity at the millisecond pace at which it unfolds.
ERP offers outstanding temporal resolution.
fMRI
Use of powerful magnets to measure the levels of oxygen within the brain that vary with changes in neural activity. As the neurons in specific brain regions “work harder” when performing a specific task, they require more oxygen. By having people listen to or view social percepts in an MRI scanner, fMRI specifies the brain regions that evidence a relative increase in blood flow.
fMRI provides excellent spatial information, pinpointing with millimeter accuracy, the brain regions most critical for different social processes.
ASD Studies
Most thoroughly investigated areas of the social brain in ASD are the superior temporal sulcus (STS), which underlies the perception and interpretation of biological motion, and the fusiform gyrus (FG), which supports face perception.
Diversity in ASD
Due to limited diagnostic practices, it is possible that the group of children currently referred to as having ASD may actually represent different syndromes with distinct causes.
Examination of the social brain may well reveal diagnostically meaningful subgroups of Autistic children. These profiles, in turn, may help to inform treatment of ASD by helping us to match specific treatments to specific profiles.
The integration of imaging methods is critical for this endeavour
Distinct findings from neuroimaging, or biomarkers, can help guide genetic research
subgroup approach
Different subgroups of autistic children have difficulties at different processing stages that can be shown in scans which represent different cognitive processes, once the stage is determined, treatment can be better tailored
Endophenotypes
A characteristic that reflects a genetic liability for disease and a more basic component of a complex clinical presentation. Endophenotypes are less developmentally malleable than overt behavior.
Biomarkers
distinct findings from neuroimaging
Sensitive indicators: identifying subtle cases
Specific indicators: able to distinguish autism from other disorders
Cognitive development
The development of thinking across the lifespan. Cognitive development is about change, involving inherent and learned factors.
Thinking
involves higher mental processes (problem solving, reasoning, creating, conceptualizing, categorizing, remembering, planning) and basic mental processes (perceiving objects, acting skillfully, understanding/producing language)
Piaget's stage theory
Focus on whether children progress through qualitatively different stages of development.
Stages
discrete periods during which children reasoned similarly about many superficially different problems
Sociocultural theories
Theories such as that of Lev Vygotsky, emphasize how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture, influence children's development.
Information processing theories
Theories such as that of David Klahr, examine the mental processes that produce thinking at any one time and the transition processes that lead to growth in that thinking.
Nature
Refers to our biological endowment, the genes we receive from our parents.
Nurture
Refers to the environments, social as well as physical, that influence our development, everything from the womb in which we develop before birth to the homes in which we grow up, the schools we attend, and the many people with whom we interact.
Quantitative changes
Gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree's girth
Qualitative changes
Large, fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such as Piaget's posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages.
Continuous
Ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps.
Discontinuous
Development that does not occur in a gradual incremental manner
The four stages that Piaget hypothesized
The sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years) Thinking is largely realized through their perceptions of the world and their physical interactions with it. Piaget claimed that infants less than 9 months do not understand that objects continue to exist even when out of sight
The preoperational reasoning stage (2 to 6 or 7 years) Children understand object permanence and show a wide variety of other symbolic-representation capabilities, such as those involved in drawing and using language. Tend to focus on a single dimension, even when solving problems would require them to consider multiple dimensions
The concrete operational reasoning stage (6 or 7 to 11 or 12 years) Overcome this tendency to focus on a single dimension and think logically in most situations they still cannot think in systematic scientific ways, even when such thinking would be useful
The formal operational reasoning stage (11 or 12 years and throughout the rest of life) Children attain the reasoning power of mature adults. Tends not to occur without exposure to formal education in scientific reasoning, and appears to be largely or completely absent from some societies that do not provide this type of education
Object permanence task
The Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act as if they do not know that it continues to exist.
Conservation problems
Problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about.
Phonemic awareness
Awareness of the component sounds within word
Is a crucial skill in learning to read,
more important than IQ or social class background
Basic-level category
most preferred category an object falls into, intermediate level of specificity
More differentiation in basic level categories (members are similar to each other but different from other categories)
Category
A set of objects that can be treated as equivalent in some way, sharing many properties.
The psychology of categories concerns how people learn, remember, and use informative categories
Concepts
The mental representation of a category.
Allow you to extend what you have learned about a limited number of objects to a potentially infinite set of entities
Nature of Categories
Categories are well-defined First, it provides the necessary features for category membership Second, those features must be jointly sufficient for membership
necessary features
features the object must have in order to be in the category
Jointly sufficient
if an object has said features, then it is in the category
Fuzzy Categories
Researchers often say that categories are fuzzy, that is, they have unclear boundaries that can shift over time.
Borderline Items
Borderline members that are not clearly in or clearly out of the category
Typicality
The difference in "goodness" of category members, ranging from the most typical (the prototype) to borderline members.
Even among items that clearly are in a category, some seem to be "better" members than others
Typicality is perhaps the most important variable in predicting how people interact with categories
Changes in typicality ultimately lead to borderline members - as an objects grows more atypical, you may doubt its validity to be in the category
Prototype
most typical category member
Influences of Typicality on Cognition
Typical items are judged category members more often
Speed of categorization is faster for typical items
Typical members are learned before atypical ones
Learning a category is easier if typical examples are provided
In language comprehension, references to typical members are understood more easily
In language production, people tend to say typical items before atypical ones ("apples and lemons" rather than "lemons and apples")
Family resemblance theory
Items are likely to be typical if they (a) have the features that are frequent in the category and (b) do not have features frequent in other categories
Category Hierarchies
Many important categories fall into hierarchies, in which more concrete categories are nested inside larger, abstract categories
Any given object typically does not fall into just one category
Subordinate: more specific than the basic name
Superordinate: more general than the basic name
Prototype theory
Suggests that people have a summary representation of the category, a mental description that is meant to apply to the category as a whole. Includes features that are weighted by their frequency in the category.
Typical category members have more, higher-weighted features. Therefore, it is easier to match them to your conceptual representation. Less typical items have fewer or lower-weighted features (and they may have features of other concepts). Therefore, they don't match your representation as well.
Exemplar theory
This theory denies that there is a summary representation.
Instead, the theory claims that your concept of vegetables per se is remembered examples of vegetables you have seen
Evidence; experiments show people learn concepts by seeing examples over and over again
Evidence; people are taught a rule and are shown an example, when later given an object that breaks rule but is similar to the example they tend to put it in the category anyways
Exemplar
An example in memory that is labeled as being in a particular category.
Concepts that make sense and have features that seem connected are learned better than features that don't seem related
Knowledge approach to concepts
Emphasizes that concepts are meant to tell us about real things in the world, and so our knowledge of the world is used in learning and thinking about concepts.
Psychological Essentialism
The belief that members of a category have an unseen property that causes them to be in the category and to have the properties associated with it. Most categories don't actually have essences, but this is sometimes a firmly held belief. Artifacts don't have an essence.
Signs of essentialism include:
objects are believed to be either in or out of the category, with no in-between
resistance to change of category membership or of properties connected to the essence;
for living things, the essence is passed on to progeny.
Probably helpful in dealing with much of the natural world, but it may be less helpful when it is applied to humans
Strange Situation & noted behaviours
Secure: Most children (about 60%) become upset when the parent leaves the room, but, when he or she returns, they actively seek the parent and are easily comforted by him or her.
Anxious-resistant: Other children (about 20% or less) are ill at ease initially and, upon separation, become extremely distressed. Importantly, when reunited with their parents, these children have a difficult time being soothed and often exhibit conflicting behaviors that suggest they want to be comforted, but that they also want to "punish" the parent for leaving.
Anxious-avoidant: Avoidant children (about 20%) do not consistently behave as if they are stressed by the separation but, upon reunion, actively avoid seeking contact with their parent, sometimes turning their attention to play objects on the laboratory floor.
Disorganized was added later
Ainsworth's Importance
Provided one of the first empirical demonstrations of how attachment behavior is organized in unfamiliar contexts
Provided the first empirical taxonomy of individual differences in infant attachment patterns and individual differences in how securely (vs. insecurely) people think, feel, and behave in attachment relationships.
Demonstrated that these individual differences were correlated with infant-parent interactions in the home during the first year of life
Antecedents of Attachment Patterns
The ability of the caregiver to provide support to the child is critical for his or her psychological development.
Assumed that such supportive interactions help child learn to regulate emotions, give confidence to explore the environment, and provides a safe haven during stressful circumstances
Attachment Patterns and Child Outcomes
Secure children in the strange situation are more likely to have high functioning relationships with peers, to be evaluated favourably by teachers, and to persist with more diligence in challenging tasks.
In contrast, insecure-avoidant children are more likely to be construed as "bullies" or to have a difficult time building and maintaining friendships
Attachment in Adulthood
The emotional bond that develops between adult romantic partners is partly a function of the same motivational system that gives rise to the emotional bond between infants and their caregivers
Similarities:
people feel safe and secure when the other person is present
people turn to the other person during times of sickness, distress, or fear
people use the other person as a "secure base" from which to explore the world
people speak to one another in a unique language, often called "motherese" or "baby talk."
Who Ends Up with Whom?
Secure people more likely to end up with secure partners—and, vice versa, insecure people are more likely to end up with insecure partners.
An explanation is "like attracts like"
Evidence that people's attachment styles mutually shape one another in close relationships
Individuals who are relatively secure are more likely than insecure individuals to have high functioning relationships
Emotions
rapid information-processing systems that help us act with minimal thinking
Emotion is a combination of the initiation of systems subjective experience, expressive behaviors, physiological reactions, action tendencies, and cognition
Emotion prepares the body for action but does not produce action
Intrapersonal function of emotions
Refers to what occurs within oneself, effects of emotion to individuals that occur physically inside their bodies and psychologically inside their minds.
help humans adapt to problems rapidly and act without thinking (ex; whether to attack, defend, flee, care for others, reject food, or approach something useful)
Prepare us for behaviour by activating certain systems and deactivating others
Memories are impacted by the emotions felt at the time
Emotions impact thinking; intense emotions cause difficulty thinking critically and clearly
Emotions motivate future behaviour, we strive to feel joy and avoid negative feelings
Interpersonal function of emotions
Refers to the relationship or interaction between two or more individuals in a group, the effects of one's emotion on others, or to the relationship between oneself and others.
Emotions can be expressed through words, facial expressions, voices, gestures, body postures, and movements, allowing others to judge our emotional expression
They evoke responses from others, signal the nature of interpersonal relationships, and provide incentives for desired social behavior
People observing fearful faces likely use approach-related behaviours, people observing angry faces likely use avoidance-related behaviors
Emotional displays evoke complementary emotional responses (anger-fear, distress-sympathy)
Social and Cultural functions of emotions
Society refers to a system of relationships between individuals and groups of individuals; culture refers to the meaning and information afforded to that system that is transmitted across generations.
The social and cultural functions of emotion refer to the effects that emotions have on the functioning and maintenance of societies and cultures.
Cultural display rules
Rules learned early in life that specify the management and modification of emotional expressions according to social circumstances.
Can work in a number of different ways;
can require individuals to express emotions “as is” (i.e., as they feel them),
to exaggerate their expressions to show more than what is actually felt
to tone down their expressions to show less than what is actually felt
to conceal their feelings by expressing something else
to show nothing at all
Emotions Influence Thoughts
Memories are not just facts that are encoded in our brains; they are coloured with the emotions felt at those times the facts occurred. Emotions are the neural glue connecting disparate facts in our minds.
It is difficult to think critically and clearly when we feel intense emotions, but easier when we are not overwhelmed with emotion
Emotions Motivate Future Behaviours
Many of us strive to experience the feelings of satisfaction, joy, pride, or triumph in our accomplishments and achievements but also avoid strong negative feelings
Emotions, influence immediate actions and serve as an important motivational basis for future behaviours
Social and Cultural Functions of Emotion
Culture allows individuals and groups to negotiate the social complexity of human social life, maintain social order and prevent social chaos
Culture provides a meaning and information system to its members, which is shared by a group and transmitted across generations.
This transmission can occurs through the development of worldviews (including attitudes, values, beliefs, and norms) related to emotions
Cultures also inform us about what to do with our emotions when we experience them.
Emotion helps us establish norms, motives and social order
Social and personality development
The continuous interaction between these social, biological, and representational aspects of psychological development.
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