psyc304 midterm 2
3 types of negative states
-instrumental problems related to goal directed behaviour -material desire (related to goals) -emotional distress
linking temperament to adult personality: negative emotionality predicts neuroticism
E.g., Abe & Izard (1999) Display of high intensity, full face negative emotions in the Strange Situation at age 18 months predicts later neuroticism Negative emotionality in preschool predicts negative emotionality later in childhood
new york longitudinal study: children with "withdrawn" problems
-Lower in activity level -Negative mood
emotional cues collide in real life (have to integrate across lots of different channels of interactions)
(1) Facial (2) Vocal (3) Body language (4) Semantic (5) Situational
executive functioning is comprised of these 3 separate skill:
(1) Inhibitory control (2) Working memory (3) Set shifting ->coordination of these skills
emotional regulation
"internal and external processes involved in initiating, maintaining, and modulating the occurrence, intensity, and expression of emotions" Internal: -Cognitive reappraisal (appraise to external sources e.g. did badly on the test because it was hard) -Suppression of behavior signals of emotion -Distraction -Self-soothing External: -Another person may help you regulate your emotions
Evidence for perspective taking in preschool children
(1) 4-year-olds speak differently to 2-year-olds than they do to adults (Shatz & Gelman, 1973): Speech to 2-year-olds is designed to show and tell, and to direct and focus attention; Speech to adults expresses the child's inner thoughts and seeks support and clarification (2) 1.5 to 3 year old children when asked to show a toy to an adult turned the front side to the adult (Lempers et al.) (3) Nearly all 2 and 3 year olds when asked to show an adult a photo showed them the front side (Lempers et al.)
psychopathology correlates of executive functioning
(1) Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (2) Conduct disorder (CD) and aggression (links not as strong as ADHD)
three components of emotion
(1) Behavior (2) Physiology (3) Subjective experience
VOCAL EMOTION RECOGNITION IN INFANCY Walker-Andrews and Lennon (1991)
(1) Can 5-month-olds detect a change in vocal expression? (2) Do they pair vocal expressions with facial expressions? Photos of a woman making a happy or angry facial expression, or a checkerboard pattern (control - matched to lower level visual properties of the experimental photos used) Audio recordings of same woman sounding happy, angry, or sad Habituated infants to a picture and a vocal expression combination some were Matched: E.g., Angry face - angry voice some were habituated in a Mismatched condition: E.g., Angry face - happy voice some were habituated with no facial expression: e.g. Checkerboard - angry voice Test: Picture did not change Some infants heard the same vocal expression Some infants heard a different vocal expression Results: (1) Infants who heard the same vocal expression did not look longer on test than habituation. (2) Infants who heard a different vocal expression did look longer on test. (suggests infants can discriminate - doesn't mean they understand what it means) (3) Infants who saw a checkerboard instead of a facial expression did not look longer when the voice changed. (had to have some kind of visual orientation to pick up the change in emotional voice) (4) Infants who went from matched-vocal expression to a mismatched facial and vocal expression did not look longer on post-test than did infants who went from a mismatch to another mismatch or to a match. (nothing extra special about matching - should be dishabituated more) *By 5 months of age, evidence that infants can discriminate between both facial and vocal expressions *had to have some facial information to pick up change in the voice. didn't matter if the voice matched the voice. doesn't look like there's a deep understanding of the match But, there several limitations to this literature: (1) Evidence is not consistent (are other studies which don't find this). Small methodological differences may matter (e.g., order effects might impact babies ability to discriminate) (2) Not clear whether they are using affective information or other perceptual information when discriminating facial expression (3) These studies have not used "real" emotional expressions. used static photos of people posing - no sense of what babies would do with real facial expressions *demonstrating Discrimination is not the same as recognition. doesn't mean the babies understand the emotional facial expressions
PEEK-A-BOO AS CONTEXT FOR STUDYING EXPRESSION RECOGNITION
(1) Provides an opportunity to present infants with exaggerated emotional expressions in a familiar context. (2) good for attracting infant attention (3) By 4-months, infants have expectations about it is played (4) Multimodal (5) Elicits behavioral response
In Mischel's original study, delay of gratification in preschool predicts:
(1) SAT scores, controlling for IQ (2) Education level (3) In adolescence: parent ratings of academic and social competence (4) In the 30s: body mass (BMI), drug use *many limitations to study: -selective sample (children attending preschool at Stanford University) -Did not control for other variables that might explain the association e.g. SES
contributions of the new york longitudinal study
(1) Systematic study of individual differences (2) Examined infants' actual behavior (3) Complex dynamic Interplay between children's temperament and environmental experiences (because children are different from each other, they evoke different things from the world around them e.g. from their parents, the friendship groups they end up in etc.) (4) Goodness-of-fit (interaction between temperament and your environment - are you in a good environment to match your temperament? e.g. many people think it's better to be extroverted over being neurotic. but if you're a university professor you may struggle to be a successful academic if you're extroverted but may thrive if you're more neurotic)
temperament
(1) Tendency towards particular behaviors and emotional responses in specific situations (2) Individual differences in affect, activity, attention, and self-regulation (Mary Rothbart) Emerge in infancy Linked to biological processes Shaped by genes (Heritable) Shaped by experience Stable over time measured in infants and younger children. Shift to personality in later childhood and adolescence. may be related to personality traits used to research why children are so different rather than their similarities
Across trials of computer programs for EF, we see the following patterns (Diamond and Lee, 2011)
(1) The difficulty of the tasks has to be increasing (2) We see gains on WM, but not inhibitory control (3) There may not be much transfer. Training WM transfers to other WM tasks, but not other types of EF.
what are the limits of induction?
(1) Types of categories: Subordinate (beagle); Basic (dog); Superordinate (animal) (2) Properties: Generalizable properties - likes to eat carrots, has a spleen inside; Non-generalizable properties - is dirty, is cold Glenman (1988): presented Preschoolers and second graders with a flower and told that it needs CO2 to grow and also that it was in someone's bedroom yesterday then shown objects are are more or less similar e.g. same type of flower but different colour (subordinate); different type of flower (basic); a pot plant (superordinate); a bowl (not related) Also had artifacts: Bike (10-speed bike, child's bike, car, tree) results: Both preschoolers and second graders very rarely generalized non-generalizable facts Both preschoolers and second graders were sensitive to categories when generalizing: most likely to generalize to the subordinate category Subordinate > basic > superordinate > not related Often invoked category when asked why they had generalized Second graders had different expectations about natural kind categories (e.g., flower) and artifacts (e.g., chair) They expected natural kinds to be more similar than artifacts (made more inductions within natural categories than they did in artefact categories) *inconsistent with what piaget would have argued
why are 3-year olds failing the sally-anne task?
(1) Verbal nature of the task may make it really hard: -"Where" (Children may misinterpret this to be "where is the object" rather than "where will he look") -Passing a theory of mind task requires you to track the perspective of an another person. Infants form expectations of people's behavior based on their actions. Verbal tasks tend to be more complex than the non-verbal tasks, and that makes it harder to keep track of what the actor knows (2) Curse of knowledge/reality bias (If you know where the object really is, it's very hard to override that e.g. in adults, if you know the solution to a problem, you overestimate how easy it will be for other people to solve it. Knowledge influences judgments of what other people know)
new york longitudinal study: children with "acting out" problems
-Higher activity level -Less adaptable -More persistent -With age, became more distractable and showed lower threshold for responsiveness
emotions
-Transient states (you do not feel an emotion all the time) -Correspond to distinct internal feelings (you know how it feels when you are scared, sad, mad, etc.) -Correspond to cognitive processes (there are thoughts which reliably go with distinct emotions) -Correspond to physiological processes (e.g. heart will speed up if you're feeling fear)
Goals/Intentions (one key type of mental state)
-fulfilled or unfulfilled -bring about changes in the world -world has to change to fit them: "world-to-mind" direction of fit Key developments: (1) Awareness of others perceptions, goals, desires (2) Understanding of false beliefs (do kids understand that other people can hold beliefs about the world that are wrong)
development of emotion regulation
-newborns are completely dependent on caregivers for emotion regulation -General approach and avoidance tendencies appear very early (Turning toward pleasant stimuli and away from negative stimuli) -By 3 months see Early self-soothing (Sucking, Repetitive motor movements) -3 to 6 months see Shift attention from a negative stimuli to a positive stimuli -By age 1, babies have more complex motor responses (Retreat, reach, self soothing; Explicitly social signalling - Recognize that others can help them and seek that out) -By age 2 babies can use different strategies to manage affective states; Can respond to caregiver directives to help them self soothe; Better language skills provide new opportunties (able to ask for what you want and express what they're feeling)
predictions of prosocial behaviour in development
-should see more prosocial behaviour when there's a problem right in front of them (produced in response to a negative state) -helping, sharing and comforting should emerge at different ages -helping, sharing and comforting do not necessarily correlate (one kid who is able to help may not be able to comfort) -helping, sharing and comforting behaviours should change across contexts
beliefs (one key type of mental state)
-true or false: what you think about the state of the world is either true or false (an objective truth) -caused by events in the world -changed to fit the world: "mind to world" direction of fit - adjust beliefs as you get more information about the world e.g you think coffee is in your cup but when you drink it there's tea inside so you need to adjust
think about emotions in terms of existing on two dimensions:
-valence: how negative to how positive is it? e.g. angry is a negative valence emotion and happy is a positive valence emotion -arousal involved: high arousal emotions include excited intense; low arousal emotions include calm
two key skills in the development of spatial relations
1. The development of interobject representations and the ability to use them to navigate (understanding where objects are in space relative to each other) 2. The development of intraobject representations and the ability to transform them (e.g., mental rotation)
producing prosocial behaviour
1. recognize a negative state 2. identify the cause of the negative state and understand the solution 3. be motivated to act
DO INFANTS MAKE FACIAL EXPRESSIONS IN EXPECTED SITUATIONS? Camras et al. 2007
11 month old babies from the US, China, and Japan Put babies in two situations: -Arm restraint (can't move -> Elicits anger) -Growling gorilla (Elicits fear) Examined behavior and facial expressions results: Behaviors differed across the two conditions suggesting the two scenarios are eliciting something different from the babies Arm restraint: Struggled and tried to withdraw from the person Gorilla: Breathed more quickly; Stay still Facial expressions did not differ between the two conditions
By the end of their first year, children understand that agents act with goals. Do they understand the desires of other people? Can they figure out what somebody else wants? TOMASELLO & HABERL, 2003
12 month olds and 18 month olds Children played with two female experimenters (E1 and E2) Played with two novel toys Experimental condition: E1 leaves the room E2 stays and gets out a third new toy that she and the child then play with E1 returns to room E2 places all three toys on a tray on the table E1 says "Wow! Look at that! Look at that! Give it to me please!" Control condition: E1 does not actually leave the room (goes to adjust camera and can see the child and E2 at all times) results: in the experimental condition, kids are performing above chance level. in control condition, kids are demonstrating random selection of toys *for 12 month olds, both experimental and control group are picking new toy, could be a recency effect in control condition? study 2: 12-month-olds Same as Study 1 except E1 left/walked away before presentation of first object and was present for object 2 and 3 control condition is the same *if it's a recency effect, in the control condition, you should still see that the kids are recommending the 3rd object. if it's a want effect, in the experimental condition, the kids should be recommending object number 1 because that is the one the experimenter missed results: kids who were in the experimental target first gave the toy to the experimenter that she didn't see. kids in the control (experimenter was still in the room and could see what was happening), kids went for toy 2 or 3. suggests that with no other information, 12 month olds are going for the more recent objects. but when the experimenter is out of the room they go after the novel object even if it's presented first *By 12-months-of-age children know what's new for another person (even when it is not new for them) *Know that people get excited about new things
what kinds of agents can create order? NEWMAN ET AL., 2010
12-month-old infants Watched a bowling ball or an agent (put a face on the ball) create order and disorder (place pins back up or knock pins down) 4 conditions: ball causing disorder; ball causing order; agent causing disorder; agent causing order *infants should dishabituate to the ball causing order results: infants who saw agents did not look significantly longer at either disordering or ordering. infants who saw the ball dishabituated when it made order *From a young age, infants understand that social agents are different from inanimate objects
Proximal goals in service of ultimate goals: Do infants recognize the ultimate goal of an actor's behavior? SOMMERVILLE & WOODWARD, 2005
12-month-olds Watched an actor getting a toy by acting on another object babies were habituated to: -toy on cloth condition (experimenter retrieved mr potato head by pulling on the cloth) -toy off cloth condition (same as previous condition but no causal action: experimenter pulled the cloth and then picked up mr potato head from another location) test: -same means condition: experimenter pulled the same cloth but now are retrieving a different toy (different outcome) -new location: experimenter pulls a different cloth to get mr potato head (same outcome) *if you have encoded that the actors higher level goal is to get the toy, then they should be more surprised when they pull the same cloth for a different toy (because the cloth is irrelevant - they're trying to get the toy) *should only see this in toy on cloth condition where the goal is to retrieve the toy - if the toy is not on the cloth, it doesn't matter which of the cloths i pull results: in the toy on cloth condition, infants dishabituate when the goal has changed (when actor is pulling on the same cloth but for a different toy). no difference in toy off cloth control condition (goal is to get the toy and cloth doesn't matter) *infants are sensitive to the fact that one of the events is necessary to the other - understanding of causality
following up on the reliable patters of behaviour seen in toddlers tantrums: Green, Whitney, & Potegal, 2011
13 2 and 3 year old children Wore a onesie with a high-quality microphone sewn into it Found that vocal behaviors during tantrums could be reliably coded by observers as scream, yell, whine, cry, and fuss Acoustic properties of scream and yell are different from whine and cry • Scream and yell: high pitched and acoustically similar to adult anger • Whine and cry: lower pitched and acoustically similar to adult sadness suggests that toddlers are expressing different negative emotions (some are anger and some are sadness)
goodness of fit Pluess and Belsky (2008): Do the associations between child care experiences and social outcomes vary as a function of children's temperament?
1300 children and infants, 1000 followed into adolescence Throughout early childhood, conducted detailed assessments of the type of non-maternal care children received: Child-care center, home-based care Hours of care: mean number of hours spent in non-maternal care Quality of care: assessed the quality of a child's primary care arrangement results: for kids low on negativity, no association between childcare quality and behaviour problems (weed metaphor) not true for kids who are high on negative emotionality (orchard metaphor)- clear association between childcare quality and behaviour problems (as child care quality increases, behavioural problems decreases (interactive effect - just looking at main effects masks these associations) stronger association for kids higher on negativity. not just vulnerable to bad things - if you put them in a positive environment, they may flourish.
do younger children understand false beliefs? ONISHI & BAILLARGEON, 2005
15-month-old infants modified sally and anne task manipulated location of the toy and whether the actor could see where the toy is One actor who is looking through a window facing the baby (baby facing the window) One toy Two boxes - yellow and green belief induction trial: Infant sees actor place toy in green box and then reaches for it in the green box twice Then, infant sees one of four things (random assignment): True belief - green: infant and actor see yellow box move toward green box and go back, toy doesn't move (toy is actually in the green box and the actor thinks it's in the green box) True belief - yellow: infant and actor see toy get moved from green box to yellow box (toy is actually in the yellow box and the actor thinks it's in the yellow box) False belief - green: infant sees toy get moved from green box to yellow box, but window is closed, so actor doesn't see False belief - yellow: infant and actor see toy get moved from green box to yellow box, and then the window closes, and it the toy is moved back test: Actor reaches for the yellow box OR Actor reaches for the green box what's going to be more surprising? If the actor reaches for the box where the toy actually is and she holds a false belief? or if the actor reaches for the box where the toy isn't? results: true belief green: babies looked longer when the actor reached for the yellow box over the green true belief yellow: babies looked longer when the actor reached for the green box over the yellow false belief green: babies looked longer when the actor reached for yellow which indicates that the babies expected she was going to go for green (toy is really in the yellow box but the actor should think it's in the green - suggests they have an understanding of false belief) false belief yellow: babies looked longer when the actor reached for green which indicates that the babies expected she was going to go for yellow (babies think the actor should be looking where the actor thinks it is) *babies are surprised when actors behaviour is inconsistent with her knowledge even when her knowledge is wrong
prosocial behaviours are more likely to occur in response to a negative state (Dunfield et al., 2011)
18 and 24 month old babies experimental conditions: -have an instrumental need: playing with my toy which falls under the table and i can't reach to pick it back up again (having a goal directed problem) - want child to help pick up the toy -have a material desire: 4 smarties in kids cup but none in the experimenters - want child to share their smarties -experiencing an emotional distress: hurt my knee and look very sad - want child to comfort the experimenter control conditions: -throw my toy on the ground -have enough smarties in my own bowl -sit down with a mutual expression on my face *all kids saw all these scenarios intermixed with other scenarios so that they looked like accidents results: 12 month olds: kids are producing prosocial behaviours when need is present (not in control conditions where need is absent). reliably helping in instrumental and material experimental conditions but not emotional conditions. 24 month olds: same results - kids are reliably helping and sharing but still not showing emotional support *demonstrated that early prosocial behaviours are a reaction to someone elses problem and also showing that this is emerging at different ages. helping and sharing are in place before we see any comforting
development of spatial relations: mental rotation study for younger children
3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children used shape matching puzzle shown a puzzle piece and the reverse of the puzzle piece then had to place one of the puzzle pieces into the place (had to choose the right puzzle piece which had right orientation by mentally rotating) results: 5 year olds are 100% accurate when ghosts are in upright position (no mental rotation); stayed better than the 4 year olds as the rotation increase up until 120 degrees where they conerge; 5 year olds are not better than chance at 180 degree rotation 3 year olds are not better than change. even when ghosts are lined up upright, still not above chance significant improvement with age (accuracy when disparity is larger improves and speed improves: 10% of 3-year-olds performed above chance 40% of 4-year-olds performed above chance 95% of 5-year-olds performed above chance (still not adult like)
If we give younger children experience with reaching, will that improve their recognition of goals in others actions? SOMMERVILLE ET AL., 2005
3-month old infants Two tasks: (1) Action (Sticky mittens) Allowed to play with a ball and a bear for 200 sec Experimenter would sometimes remove toys from mittens and put them back on the table so that babies got lots of chance to play (2) Watch -Habituate to hand reaching for a ball or a hand reaching for a teddy bear -Test: the hand reaches to the same object but the positions of the objects have switched (new location) or hand reaches to the same position where the other object is (new goal) Actor wore a white mitten that looked like the sticky mittens the other kids were wearing Half of the infants did "action" first and half did "watch" first *Took test without having done the action phase results: group that watched first do not show any difference in looking times between new location and new goal i.e. don't understand that hand has a goal group with sticky mittens that played first were more surprised when they saw the hand reach for the object they did not habituate to *having some experience playing and reaching for objects facilitates understanding when you're watching other people. Watching someone else engage in goal-directed action did not increase infants' goal-directed action
EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION IN INFANCY BARRERA & MAUER 1981
3-month-old infants Discrimination of different emotions Do you know that two different emotions are different? habituated babies to either smiling or frowning face test: then show pictures of the smiling or frowning face. if you can discriminate you should dis habituate to the novel facial expression do this when you use photos of a stranger or their mum *in this paradigm, the actor stays the same so babies could be simply dis-habituating to the change in the face rather than the emotional expression
younger children have a harder time overriding knowledge (does curse of knowledge decrease with age?) BIRCH AND BLOOM 2003
3-year-olds 4-year-olds 5-year-olds Presented them with two bags full of containers decorated with stickers (toys) that had toys inside "These toys are special, because they have something inside. See?" "This is my puppet, Percy" Told that all of the toys in one bag were Percy's, and that he had played with them all All the toys in the other bag are new, and Percy has never seen them before "Let's show Percy the toys" Old toy - "Hey, I've played with this toy before" New toy "Hey, I've never seen this toy before" Child knowledgeable - child shown what was in the toy before Percy came back Child ignorant - child not shown what was in the toy before Percy came back test questions: does percy know what's inside this toy? want to test whether the child is knowledgeable or not and whether this makes it harder to answer the question results: when percy is familiar, all kids are saying yes (he knows what's inside the toy) when percy does not know, 3 and 4 year olds are more liely to say yes (that percy knows when he does not know). 5 year olds do not fall prey to this *could be the reason why 3 year olds are failing false belief tasks. If you remove the object from the scene, it will be easier for 3 year olds *Controversial: Children younger than 3-years-old demonstrate evidence of false belief understanding
Do young children base who they help on the outcomes of their interactions with the person, or their intentions? VAISH ET AL., 2008
3-year-olds Recipient, actor, neutral person (recipient and actor are sitting across from each other on the table; neutral person is standing off to the side) Recipient is wearing a colourful beaded necklace and belt There is a second beaded necklace and belt in the tray There are papers and drawing pencils on the table There are two balls of clay Recipient introduces actor and neutral person as her friends Recipient then: (1) showed off a beaded necklace she was wearing (2) Showed off a beaded belt that she was wearing (3) Drew a picture and said how proud she was of it and how much she liked it (4) Made a bird out of clay, commenting on how much she liked it children were randomly assigned to a condition: -Harm condition: At end of each presentation, actor said "I'm going to take/tear/break this now" -Help condition: Recipient accidentally damaged her own property, and the actor helped her -Baseline condition (Neutral): Actor commented on belt and necklace in tray; Actor commented on remaining sheets of paper or the other ball of clay (trying to establish what chance level is) Test trial: Actor and neutral person each played an individual colour matching game: Put their three balls in the slots, and then simultaneously reached for the ball in the middle and held that pose Child is given the choice of which one of the two people to give the ball to If child did not give the ball in 15 s, recipient cued parents to tell child to give the ball, then to point to the person After they gave the ball, they were giving a second ball so that they could help the other person (for ethical reasons) In harm condition: actor apologized DV: who did the child help? results: in baseline condition, more kids are helping the actor in help condition, more kids are helping the actor (no difference to baseline condition in harm condition, kids were much more likely to choose the neutral person *kids are showing negativity bias: knowing that someone helped didn't move their behaviour that much. knowing that someone harmed had more of an impact on behaviour *kids still cued to a principle of fairness: when given another ball, most kids gave the ball to the other person to keep things equal *experiment confounded intentions and outcomes: if the actor intended to harm, they harmed and if they intended to help they helped Study 2 Same basic design as Study 1 Replaced harm and help conditions with: (1) Intended-but-failed to harm condition: The actor says "I'm going to break/tear this" but then can't do it (2) Accidental harm: Actor admired the clay bird but accidentally wrecked it giving it back to the experimenter results: in intended but failed harm condition, kids were more likely to help the neutral person than in baseline condition (no difference between harm condition in study 1) accidental harm condition doesn't differ from baseline *3-year-old children are sensitive to the intentions of behavior - Weight intentions over outcome when making decisions about whom to help
why are 3-year olds failing the sally-anne task? Duplo task paradigm RUBIO-FERNANDEZ & GUERTZ, 2013
3.5 year olds "Smarties" task Duplo task 23% of participants passed the "Smarties" task (below chance) 80% of participants passed the Duplo task (above chance) then started modifying to make the task more difficult: What if the girl disappears from the scene? 18% of participants pass the Duplo task (below chance) What if they ask the standard false-belief (Where will the girl look for the bananas?) 22% of participants pass the Duplo task (below chance)
EMOTIONAL RECOGNITION IN INFANCY: habituate babies to different people SERRANO ET AL. 1992
4 to 6 month old infants Habituated to 3 different models making the same facial expression Tested with two new models making the same expression and two different models making a different expression to discriminate, you have to pick up the change in the emotional expression ontop of the model all changing around (harder) results: when models change but the expression stayed the same, babies still habituate. when models have changed and the expression has changed, they dishabituate *suggests they can discriminate between emotional facial expressions *Other studies have shown that 5-7 month olds do not categorize angry and fearful facial expressions, but they can do happy *Some evidence that infants may be using perceptual information other than emotional facial expression (e.g., are the teeth visible)
VOCAL VERSUS SEMANTIC CUES Friend & Becker-Bryant
4, 7, and 10-year-olds Heard sentences spoken by adult (told to imagine they're in a toy store and can hear a mum talking to their child in the next isle - no visual cues, only content and how the person is saying it) Happy content- happy paralanguage (tone of voice, pitch, pacing, etc.) Happy content - angry paralanguage Angry content - angry paralanguage Angry content - happy paralanguage After each sentence, children asked to say whether the mom was feeling happy or mad when in conflict, what do the children think is a better indicator results: happy content-happy paralanguage, everyone says happy angry content-angry paralanguage, everyone says angry happy content-angyr paralanguage, 4 year olds are saying the mum is happy. 7 year olds are in the middle and 10 year olds are leaning more towards angry. easier to fake what you're saying than how you're saying it angry content - happy paralanguage - same type of results *Between ages of 4 and 10 years, children shown a semantic bias. Rely on what is said, rather than how it is being said
using peek-a-boo for studing expression recognition MONTAGUE & WALKER-ANDREWS, 2001
4-month-olds Experimenter sat facing child -Covered face with red cloth for three seconds -Removed cloth and made emotional facial expression for 7 seconds -Said "peek-a-boo!" in matching voice Trials: 1 - 3 trials where the expression was happy (typical peek-a-boo) at the 4th trial, kids were randomly assigned to a target emotion (sad, anger, fear, happy) trials 5-7 happy peek-a-boo again trial 8, babies saw target emotion again Dependent variables: Looking time (not the case they have habituated in happy peek-a-boo); Infant affective response results: Do infants discriminate emotions? -On trial 4 (moved from happy to another expression), looked longer at fearful and angry expressions than at happy and sad expressions -Looking time to fearful and angry did not differ -Looking time to happy and sad did not differ Do infants looking time patterns vary as a function of emotion? -does the changed expression continue to have an impact on looking time as we continue to play peek-a-boo even though the experimenter has changed back to their happy face? does this differ as a function of emotion? if it does, this suggests that emotion is signalling something different to the baby -kids who kept playing happy peek-a-boo do not show different looking times across trials -for babies who were playing fear peek-a-boo, look longer on trial 4 and continue to look longer all the way through to trial 8 -angry peek-a-boo baby players increased their looking time all the way through to trial 8 -sad peek-a-boo baby players decreased their looking time as the trials progressed *these data suggests that 4-month olds can discriminate facial expressions and can recognize facial expressions (understand that there's a meaningful difference between angry and fearful emotional expressions)
Do infants understand that others have goals/intentions? WOODWARD, 1998
5-month-olds and 9 month-olds experimental: habituate to either a hand reaching for a ball or a hand reaching for a teddy bear control: infants see rod reaching for the objects (an inanimate object and so shouldn't have goals) at test: the hand reaches to the same object but the positions of the objects have switched. babies will expect that the person will reach for the same object they had habituated to. babies will dishabituate when the hand reaches for the same place to retrieve the different object. babies in the rod condition should be less surprised if the inanimate object (rod) went back to the same location to pick up the different object results: For both 5- and 9-month-olds Babies who saw the hand reach for the teddy bear dishabituated more strongly when the hand reached for the ball in the same location (don't understand why the hand isn't reaching for its goal). Babies who saw the rod reach for the teddy bear dishabituated more strongly when the rod reached for the teddy bear in the new location (dishabituated when the rod acted like it had a goal) *5 and 9 month olds can differentiate between social agents and inanimate objects
at what age do kids function like grown ups in terms of recognition of emotional expressions? GAO & MAURER, 2010
5-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 10-year-olds, adults used Prototypical versus less intense expressions gave children the job of finding the right house for an individual. had boxes which had an expression and children had to match the facial expression to it. tested neutral and 3 facial expressions (1) Accuracy at 100% intensity: how good are people at recognizing happy at 100% happiness etc.? when mistakes are made, 2 types of mistakes are interesting: (2) Intensity needed to differentiate expression from neutral - do you mistake an expression for a neutral face? might miss emotional expressions at lower intensities (3) Misidentifications of one emotion for another - when emotional expressions are at higher intensities, you know there's an emotion but you could get this wrong results: (A) Happy: as intensity goes up, accuracy goes up. no age differences in recognition at peak intensity (100% intensity). by the age of 5, children were performing like adults no age differences in the threshold needed to discriminate happy from neutral (approx.25% is what people need to be able to differentiate happy from neutral) 5 year olds misidentified happiness for a different emotion at lower intensities more often than did adults, but 7-year olds were adult like (B) Sad (1) At 100%, 7-year-olds were less accurate than were adults (5-year-olds did not differ - could be due to measurement error) (2) 5- and 7-year-olds had a higher threshold to identify an emotion from neutral (42%) than did adults (31%) (3) 7-year-olds made more misidentification errors than did adults (C) Fear (1) No age differences in recognition at 100% intensity (2) 5-year-olds had a higher intensity to identify emotion (29.7%) than the other groups (adults = 20.7%) (3) No age differences in misidentification (D) Surprise (harder than other emotions) (1) 5-year-olds were less accurate than were adults at 100% intensity (2) 5-year-olds had higher thresholds to differentiate surprise from neutral (35.2%) than adults (20.2%) (3) 5- and 7-year-olds made more misidentifications than adults (E) Disgust (also difficult to identify (1) but, No age differences at 100% (overall accuracy is lower) (2) 7-year-olds have higher thresholds (31.1%) than do adults (23.9%) (3) 5-year-olds make more misidentifications than do adults (F) Anger (1) No difference between age groups at 100% intensity (2) All three groups of children had higher thresholds (24% - 28%) than did adults (21%) (3) No age group differences in misidentification *Some emotions are more difficult to recognize in the face than are others: Happiness and anger are easier; Surprise and disgust are harder *Recognition of facial expressions of emotions is adult like at 10 to 11 years of age. there is Variability across emotions: Happy is adult-like between 5- to 7-years; Surprise is adult-like between 7- and 10-years
development of executive functioning: demonstrations of EF skills in infancy
7 to 8 months: infants retrieve an object that has been hidden in one of two locations and obscured for 2 to 3 seconds 9 to 12 months: can remember the location for longer delays, but may perseverate (A not B error) *Finding a hidden object (you have to keep the location in mind and use that information to coordinate behavior) *planning a co-ordinated response to get a hidden object
How well do these strategies work for decreasing negative affect in adolescence? SILK ET AL. 2003
7th and 10th grade students One week, paged them at random times during the day Current affect: -How are you feeling right now? -Mad, sad, nervous (rated on 5-point scales) Peak affect: -What was your worst experience in the last hour? -How did you feel then? When an adolescent rated a peak negative mood state greater than 3, they then answered questions about how they regulated it coded strategies that adolescence gave in terms of: (a) Voluntary engagement (b) Involuntary engagement (e.g., rumination) (c) Disengagement (1) What strategies did adolescents use?: Reported using more voluntary engagement strategies than involuntary engagement and disengagement strategies (2) How were strategies associated with current negative affect? when adolescence reported that they used Disengagement and involuntary engagement, this predicated greater anger and sadness No strategy was associated with decreased negative affect • Possible that strategies work in some situations but not others (Problem solving may work in situations that are controllable, but no uncontrollable situations) • Also possible that these strategies prevent affect from getting worse, but do not make it better
are individuals performances in executive functioning stable over time (does EF early in life predict EF later in life)? (Watts et al., 2018)
918 Children took a variant of the marshmallow test when they were 54 months of age Shorter - 7 minute cap (compared to 15 to 20) 552 children whose mothers had not completed college (lower SES) 336 children whose mothers had completed college (higher SES) results: Delay on the marshmallow task at 54 months predicted academic achievement in Grade 1 and at age 15 years; Behavioral problems at age 15 years controlled for family (mother's education, mothers age at birth, mother's vocabulary) and home environment (learning materials, language stimulation, physical environment) Lower SES Sample 45% of children waited the full 7 minutes 23% waited less than 20 seconds Higher SES Sample 68% of children waited the full 7 minutes 10% waited less than 20 seconds controlling for SES erases this difference between the two groups *weak associations between delay of gratification and academic achievement once you account for other variables
litmus test for theory of mind
Ability to attribute a belief to another person that is different than your own
theory of mind
Ability to reason about the mental states of others -Desires, goals, beliefs are not the same as my own Required to make inferences about what people are doing and why they are doing it *critical for social interaction: -To communicate effectively, you have to know what other people believe -Understanding others goals is necessary for us to be able to help them basic premise: belief + desire = outcome
Means-end problem solving
Act on one object to obtain another Starting at 6-7 months of age, infants can be taught to do this Becomes increasingly spontaneous and complex over the next few months
scaffolding
Adults help children to reach goals they could not reach on their own Hughes and Ensor (2005) 125 2-year-old children Watched them in a structured 10 minute interaction with their moms Coded scaffolding Open-ended questions, praise, encouragement, elaborating Measured EF Maternal scaffolding at age 2 predicts EF at age 4 (controlling for earlier EF, family SES)
development of inhibitory control during preschool
Ages 4 to 6 Improved accuracy Reduced anticipatory responses Age-related changes in performance on a flanker task (attentional control) - scored on accuracy and speed, see big improvement between 3- and 5-years and continued improvement all the way up through age 15
6 Basic Emotions (Ekman)
Anger, Disgust, Fear Happy, Sad, Surprise reocgnised cross cultural infants show these emotions by 6 months of age
what is theory of mind associated with?
Autism Peer relationships For preschoolers, better ToM is associated with Greater acceptance More prosocial behavior (many factors between recognising someone is upset and going to help that person)
autism spectrum disorder
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by marked deficits in various domains of social cognition. Atypical development of understanding other's minds Less attention to social partners and less reinforcement from social interactions
physiological responses to emotions
Autonomic nervous system • Sweat • Heart rate Startle response • Tensing of back and neck muscles • Eye blink
MODELS OF TEMPERAMENT: ROTHBART
Biological differences in reactivity and self-regulation Reactivity: biological arousability Regulatory traits: moderate reactivity Child Behavior Questionnaire administered to parents Extraversion/Surgency: tendency towards high activity, expressions of positive emotion, pleasure and excitement in social interaction Negative emotionality: tendency towards sadness, fear, irritability and frustration Effortful control: ability to sustain attention and inhibit behavior, ability to persist in tasks, sensitivity to perceptual experiences
link between facial expression and emotional experience: When a specific emotion is induced, do people make the corresponding facial expression?
Can reliably induce emotions using movie clips Levenson and Gross had 100s of undergraduates watch movie clips and rate their emotions when they watched Based on this, identified clips that induced strong emotions Work with adults has suggested that facial behaviors are robustly linked to emotional valence (can tell if they're feeling positively or negatively), but it's difficult to get more specific than that just by looking at peoples faces) same is true for vocal cues (general correspondence, but not as tight as one might expect)
linking temperament to adult personality: positive emotionality (positive emotions, sociability, and approach) predicts extraversion
Caspi et al. (2003) 23 year longitudinal study Confidence and friendliness at age 3 predicts greater extraversion in adulthood Shyness and fearfulness at age predicts lower extraversion in adulthood
evidence that theory of mind skills can be improved in both typically developing children and children with autism
Children randomly assigned to hear stories about mental states do better on tests of ToM than do children assigned to hear stories about other things But, not clear that these gains in ToM translate into social gains
how children make inductive inferences (categories as the basis of induction)
Children younger than 7 can categorize based on non-observable features: -By age 4 children use the function of an artifact to categorize it e.g. understand that dogs are animals with dog insides, not just animals that have four legs and bark (understand there is something internal to a dog which makes it a dog) this facilitates induction (making inferences beyond the available evidence) Carey (1985) showed 4 year olds a mechanical monkey and showed it could move. none of the 4 year olds thought the monkey could have a baby mechanical monkey - just because it looked like a money, they knew the mechanical monkey was not alive
development of executive functioning during the school years
Continued improvement (1) Can focus attention in the face of complex distractors (2) Working memory capacity increases Tower of London Task (planning): board with 3 different heighted poles show child a picture of an arrangement of the poles and instruct them to change the balls from the starting position to how they are arranged in the picture rule: you can only move one ball at a time; you can only move the ball over one pole at a time; have to complete in a certain number of moves Improved accuracy and efficiency From age 7 to 13
inhibitory control
Control your thoughts, attention, and behavior Override internal and external forces Do not always just act out of habit or based on environmental input involves: -attentional control -self-control -delay of gratification
To what extent does culture affect the production of each of the three varieties prosocial behaviour in early development? (Keller, 2007)
Cultural model of autonomy: Western, urban, middle class with autonomy as developmental organizer (urban Montreal, WEIRD kids) Cultural model of relatedness: Traditional village context with relatedness as developmental organizer (rural Mexico) compare prosocial behaviour in 2 populations: -rural, homogeneous, Myan children -urban, heterogeneous, Canadian children measures • structured observation • naturalistic observation • parent report Participants • Mexico: N = 133, 71 females, Mage = 5 years (61.9 months) • Montreal: N = 148, 72 females, Mage = 4.5 years (53.36 months) Prosocial Tasks • Three experimental tasks where negative state is present • Three control tasks where negative state is absent • experimental and control condition weren't ever the same version of the negative state -instrumental need: dropped toy or blocked door -material desire: stickers or food emotional distress: broken teddy or hurt knee reuslts: overall seeing lots of helping, very little sharing and comforting breaking down into age groups, helping is pretty robust - start at age 3 and perform this consistently sharing occurs at a low rate but there is still an increase over time comforting is showing the increase you'd expect between 3 and 4 and then stabilising compared against montreal kids: material desire and emotional distress is much higher amongst montreal kids compared to kids from mexico see a main effect of culture where kids in mexico were underperforming compared to kids from montreal (could be due to number of siblings; socialisation/different level of activity; probably first researchers the kids have interacted with) *In both cultural contexts Prosocial behaviours were responsive to need; Varieties of prosocial behaviour were produced at similar relative frequencies (helping > comforting > sharing). However, children in Mexico produced fewer prosocial behaviours in general
class inclusion/classification (Piaget)
Difficulties with transitivity makes it difficult to sort objects into classes -classification (e.g. can't understand that daffodils are categorized with flowers) -Equivalence (Realizing that two things are the same in some critical respect even as they differ in others e.g. understanding that a jack Russel and a pug are the same even if they have different characteristics) -Children can form categories based on observed features but do not understand that non-observable features, or relationships between features may define a category e.g. function of an object
development of set shifting during preschool
Dimensional Change Card Sort Task: 4-year-olds easily shift when the rules change 3-year-olds get stuck Perseverate even though they are reminded that the rules of changed They can tell you the rule
linking temperament to adult personality: effortful control predicts conscientiousness
Effortful control and task persistence are stable over childhod Early IQ and ability to focus both predict subsequent effortful control Intense emotions in early childhood are negatively associated with later effortful control
what predicts theory of mind abilities during the preschool years?
Family interactions Family talk about mental states Feelings, perspectives Connected talk (Mom's responses to children that are related to child's speech and indicate awareness of theory of mind) *not just because of shared genes
looking at broader tasks of inhibitory control and how it predicts later outcomes in life (Moffitt et al., 2011)
Followed 1000 children born in the same city for 32 years Inhibitory control between ages 3 and 11 (better at waiting their turn, less easily distracted, more persistent, less impulsive) Controlling for IQ, gender, socioeconomic status Better inhibitory control predicted: Better physical health Better mental health Greater income Fewer arrests Happier Compare siblings One with better inhibitory control has better outcomes
why do we have emotions?
Functional approach Emotions help us to meet our goals (1) Mobilize and coordinate our response systems (2) Communicate our needs to others and shape interpersonal behaviors of others e.g. if i am angry, communicating you are angry helps other people to realise they need to change their behaviour (helps us to achieve our goals)
Piaget's concrete operational period
Gain the mental operators lacking in the preoperational stage Identity, compensation, reversibility Start to be able to solve classification problems But, children cannot yet think hypothetically (can't image things to be different to how they actually are): Counterfactuals Thinking about what could have been Alternatives to reality
RUBIO-FERNANDEZ & GUERTZ, 2013: DUPLO TASK
Girl figure, two "fridges" (boxes with a blue door or red door), banana Girl puts banana in one of the fridges Then experimenter tells child that girl wants to go for a walk Girl walks toward the child, with her back to the scene (doesn't drop from view) "Do you think she can see me? Surely she can't see me." Experimenter moves banana from one fridge to the other "She didn't see what I did, did she? No she didn't see." Test: Experimenter walks girl back to the scene, and she stands facing the two fridges. Encourages child to play with the figure "What happens next?" if you have an understanding of representational theory of mind, the child will say that the doll is going to look for her banana where she left them
new york longitudinal study: slow to warm up (15%)
High in withdrawal and slow to adapt, but has low intensity reactions (no strong negative reactions)
new york longitudinal study: difficult temperament (10%)
High withdrawal, biologically irregular, negative mood, not adaptable, high intensity reactions
Differential emotions theory (Izard)
Infants experience discrete emotions just like adults and are represented by different facial expressions developed MAX coding (Created by using the FACS coding and observing infant behaviors). Using this, people can be trained to reliably code babies facial expressions (joy, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise, fear) emotions we see if babies faces correspond to same basic emotions we see in adults faces
self-control
Inhibiting behavior - not eating cookies, not reading Facebook when you are supposed to be writing a paper, stay on task even when more desirable options present themselves
development of executive functioning: adolescence and beyond
Inhibitory control and working memory: Appear to reach adult-like levels of performance sometime during adolescence (Depending on task, performance may be adult like as early as age 12) Set shifting: Adolescents are as good at adults as adapting new rules, but they show greater switch costs (slower to respond than adults)
new york longitudinal study: easy temperament (40%)
Interested in new things, biologically regular, high in positive mood, adaptable, low intensity reactions
new york longitudinal study: average temperament (35%)
Intermediate on the dimensions
NEW YORK LONGITUDINAL STUDY (1956-1988) children's temperament
Interviews with mothers about children's activities and routine Focused on actual behaviors 3 month intervals until child was 3 years old 6 month intervals until child was 5 years old then Yearly testing Other measures: School observations, IQ tests, teacher interviews came up with 9 different dimensions along which children varied: (1) Activity level (Do you fidget or bounce your leg when you are sitting still?) (2) Rhythmicity (Do you get sleep, wake up, get hungry about the same time each day?) (3) Approach and withdrawal (Does the idea of traveling to a brand new city in a country you have never been to excite you?) (4) Adaptability (If you and a group of your friends were on your way to see a movie that you really wanted to see, and then your friends decided they wanted to go hiking, how easy would it be for you to go along with that decision?) (5) Intensity of reaction (Do you blow up when something irritates you?, Do you get really excited when something good happens to you?) (6) Threshold of responsiveness (When you are taking an exam, does it bother you if the person behind you starts tapping a pencil, or breathes loudly?) (7) Quality of mood (Would your friends and family describe you as a happy camper or as an Eeyore?) (8) Distractibility (Can you get so absorbed in a book that you lose track of time?) (9) Attention span/persistence (Can you stick to an activity for a long time? Do you keep doing your homework even when your friends come by to see if you want to go out?) based on childrens scores they identified 4 types of kids: easy, difficult, slow to warm up, average Some evidence that these dimensions were linked to behavior problems in children
morality
Judgments of right and wrong pertaining to others welfare, rights, and fairness how people should behave towards one another regulates social interactions
DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERSTANDING OF SOCIAL AND MORAL TRANSGRESSIONS (Children start to be aware of adult standards/rules during their second year)
Judy Dunn Observational studies of family interactions noticed that by 14 month olds reactions to transgressions by a sibling suggests that they understand that a rule is being broken *have a sense of rules and expectations and when they're being broken Parents react differently when young children commit conventional versus moral violations. when Conventional rules are broke: -Tell the child to stop with no explanation -Statements about disorder -Rule statements -Disgust, annoyance when a child had committed a Moral transgression: -Telling the child why the act was wrong -Asking the child to take the other child's perspective -emotion associated with this is Anger
behavioural measures of false beliefs in young children: implicit vs. explicit tasks Buttelman et al. (2009)
Looking time and eye gaze are implicit/indirect measures of false beliefs (Does not require the child to consciously act) 2.5 year olds E1 - female experimenter E2 - male experimenter 2 locked boxes which can be opened with a pin E1 opened and closed both boxes E2 Left the room to get a new toy E1 taught the child how to lock and unlock the boxes E2 comes back with new caterpillar toy Says he is going to put caterpillar away and puts caterpillar in one of the boxes (1) False belief condition E2 said he forgot his keys and left the room E1 says "We can play a trick on him!" E1 moved the toy to the other box and locked both the boxes (2) True belief E2 stayed in the room and watched Said "aha!" each time something happened Looked away when boxes were locked with pins (knows where the toy is but not that the boxes are locked) E2 approached the box he had put the toy in (now empty) Tried to open it but got stuck Child was allowed to go and help him All children opened a box for the experimenter - which box should the kids open? kids should open the box where the toy actually is in false belief condition. in true belief condition, children should help the experimenter open the box they are trying to get into (kids know the experimenter knows where the toy is and so assume that they have a new goal of trying to open the box) results: in false belief condition, higher percentage of children chose the box in the current location in true belief condition, higher percentage of children chose the box in the former location repeated results with 18 month olds *kids behaviour changes as the actors belief changes *18-month-olds are able to act deliberately in concert with another person's false beliefs
Set Shifting/Cognitive Flexibility
Mental flexibility If something isn't working, can you try something new? Can you adjust to new demands?
working memory
Mental sketch pad Holding information in mind and working with it (1) Verbal (2) Visual-spatial Need this to read, to write, to do math problems digit span tests this (forward, backwards, change order - have to remember numbers and manipulate them in your head) often works together with inhibitory control: (1) Working memory supports inhibitory control (Holding your goal in mind helps you inhibit a response) (2) Inhibitory control supports working memory (Selective attention helps keep your mental sketch pad uncluttered)
nature of prosocial development:
Natural Tendency View • innate inclination to act on behalf of others • socialization second Social-Interactional View • innate inclination to interact • socialization first *comes from a homogenous (WEIRD) sample of kids *research indicates more support for natural tendency view
SES associated with executive functioning
Noble et al. 2005 Recruited 30 middle-SES and 30 low-SES kindergarten students Battery of tests assessing different types of cognition: Visual cognition (e.g., shape detection) Spatial cognition (e.g, mental rotation) Memory (e.g., incidental picture learning) Language (e.g., receptive vocabulary) Executive functioning (e.g., spatial working memory, dimensional card sort) Low-SES children performed worse than middle-SES children on the language and executive functioning tasks Parental education level was more strongly associated with these outcomes
Understanding false beliefs: more direct evidence that babies expect the actor to look where she thinks the toy is? SOUTHGATE ET AL. 2007
Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005 False Belief Experiment: Looking time as a measure of false-belief understanding is controversial as there are other interpretations such as ignorance: When young children think an actor is ignorant, they expect him/her to get it wrong (the actor holding the false belief is ignorant). Are they surprised because she is not acting on her belief, or are they surprised because she is looking in the right place when she does not actually know that the toy is there? Stronger case could be made if we had direct evidence that babies expected the actor to look where she thought the toy was If you have babies wear an eye tracker, you can see which box they are anticipating where the actor will go (babies will look to the place that they are expecting the actor to go look for the toy) 25-month-olds An actor witnessed a toy being hidden, and then it was removed when the actor was not looking When the actor comes back, where will the babies expect that she will look? Actually removed the ball from the scene. did this for two reasons: -Ignorance: there is not a correct answer, so the anticipatory glance cannot be based on the expectation that the person is going to get it wrong (babies don't understand that you have a 50/50 chance of getting the location correct. they believe that the actor is ignorant and so should always get the location wrong) -Reality bias: if you know where the object is, it is really hard to override that. taking the ball out means that this is not confounded A chime would sound and the window would light up to signify that the actor was coming back Record first eye movement when the chime sounds results: Nearly all babies looked towards the box where the actor thought the ball was (understand that the actor has a false belief)
other types of programs that have been shown to be effective in training EF
Other types of programs that have been shown to be effective: (1) Currriculum that can be taught by teachers (2) Mindfulness (3) Exercise
centration/conservation (Piaget)
Overly focused on one dimension or characteristic and do not notice others children don't understand: -Compensation (a change in one dimension compensates for a change in another dimension e.g. squishing play dough down expands it) -Reversibility (a change can be reversed and the situation can be returned to the original state -Identity (not noting that values on a key dimension are the same e.g. conservation tasks)
TANTRUMS IN TODDLERS Potegal and Davidson, 2003
Parents of children aged 18 months to 5 years reported on their child's tantrums behaviour: hitting, clinging vocalizations: Crying, Yelling, Whining are discrete negative emotions actually being expressed? do we see reliably different patterns of vocalisations and behaviours which indicate anger versus sadness, for example. results: found that yelling often went with hitting and kicking (could this be mapped onto anger?) whining often went with comfort seeking behaviours like crying (could this be mapped onto sadness?) *seeing reliable patterns of behaviour and vocalisations from toddlers who are throwing tantrums suggesting that they may actually be expressing distinct emotional states (not just negative)
naturalistic interactions
Participants • Mexico: • N = 34 mixed gender groups of 4-6 individuals • Montreal: • N = 30 mixed gender groups of 4-6 individuals Naturalistic Observation • Ten minutes of unstructured play • 150 wooden blocks and instructions to "build a tall tower" results: problems in the environment: usually goal related not signalling a tone of material desire (not hogging blocks) very few instances of distress overall, kids were ignoring other kids distress were also doing alot of denials (kid knew there was a problem and knew there was a way to do something about the problem but didn't do anything about it) still seeing alot of prosocial behaviour (helping > sharing > comforting) In both cultural contexts: • Children displayed similar types and frequencies of need • Children were similarly responsive to need • Varieties of prosocial behaviour patterned similarly across the two contexts (helping > sharing > comforting) However, analyses are required to confirm
are children younger than 3 sensitive to intentions of behaviour? DUNFIELD & KUHLMEIER, 2010
Participants: 21 month olds Familiarization: Two actors that varied on a single dimension (intention or outcome) Test: child could help one person in first condition: had an unwilling actor (chose not to give the child the toy - negative outcome and negative intention) and an unable actor (negative outcome and positive intention) both actors failed to provide the child with the fun toy - outcome is the same but intentions of the two actors are different test: experimenter placed a new toy on the table, it rolled off and landed on the floor and both experimenters went for it who does the child choose to give the toy to? results: 16 of 21 infants helped. of those who helped, more helped the actress who was unable *intentions matter when the outcome is the same what happens if both people try, and only one succeeds? study 2 manipulated outcomes and kept intentions the same Unable actress: Negative outcome; Positive intention Successful: Positive outcome; Positive intention results: 16 of 21 infants helped; Helping was distributed equally across the two actresses (no preference for actor who succeeded) *Outcome didn't matter, intentions did study 3 tests positive vs. an ambiguous intention Successful: Positive intention; Positive outcome Ambiguous: Unclear intention; Positive outcome Ambiguous provider Picked up toy from behind table, looked at it, was interested, but did not make eye contact. Put toy on table, and it rolled down the table so that the infant got it (successful outcome but not clear that the actor is trying to do that) results: 16 of 20 infants helped; more infants shared with the successful actress (preferred someone with positie intentions vs. ambiguous) *Different from Vaish et al. where 3-year-olds did not preferentially help the helper, compared to neutral. may be due to Differences between the studies: (1) Task directed at the child in the current study (2) Neutral versus ambiguous intentions may have made a difference *Contrary to what Piaget argued, very young children are sensitive to intentions *With age, become better able to integrate different types of information
second-order mental states
People have beliefs about other people's mental states, and those beliefs can be wrong belief about someone else's belief that is wrong e.g. X believes that Y believes that P: Chandler and Monica have a belief about Rachel, Phoebe and Joey's beliefs about their relationship which is wrong children around 7 years of age have this skill
egocentrism/perspective taking (Piaget)
Perceive the world solely from one's own perspective (they are always the reference point and are not able to take someone else's perspective) -piaget's 3 mountains task
subjective experience to emotions
Person's report of how they are feeling commonly measure using the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Scale)
goodness of fit
Personality/temperament is not inherently good or bad Depends on fit to the context in which the person is operating Good fit between temperaments and environments result in positive outcomes Poor fits result in negative outcomes Aron et al. 2005 Sensory processing sensitivity People who are very sensitive may be more susceptible to the effects of their environments When confronted with negative experiences, may be more affected Hypothesis: Sensitivity will interact with negative experiences to predict negative affectivity and shyness University students Dependent Variables: Shyness; Negative affectivity Independent Variables: Sensory processing; Adverse parenting experiences (Was mental illness a problem in your family growing up?; Was alcoholism a problem in your family growing up?) results: association between shyness and adverse parental environment depends on how sensitive you are. more strong association for those who are highly sensitive same results looking at proneness to experiencing negative emotions In a follow up study: Randomly assigned participants to do a very easy test battery or a very hard test battery Reported negative affect before and after the manipulation results: no difference in negative affect between easy and difficult test condition for people who are not very sensitive for people who are sensitive = more negative reaction to the difficult task
evidence suggesting that EF is stable across childhood and adolescence
Polderman et al., 2007: Working memory at age 5 was correlated .37 with working memory at age 12 Selective attention at age 5 was correlated .37 with selective attention at age 12 -amount of time child waited in delay-of-gratification task predicted (1) Better inhibitory control at age 18 and at age 40; Better attention (as rated by parents) in adolescence
how child temperament maps onto adult personality
Positive emotionality -> extraversion Negative emotionality -> neuroticism Effortful control -> conscientiousness
can we improve executive functioning
Preschoolers (ages 4- and 5-years) Randomly assigned to: (1) computer training for working memory (2) computer training for inhibitory control (3) active control: commercially available video games (4) passive control: nothing Children who played computer games did so for 15 minutes each day they attended preschool for 5 weeks (25 training sessions) Working memory: Visuospatial task Inhibitory control: Included flanker task, go/no-go task, stop signal task In both: When child answered correctly, they earned points As child answered correctly, tasks got more difficult WM: more objects to remember IC: had to go faster Before and after computer training: Inhibitory control (not same task as training) Visuospatial working memory (not same task as training) Verbal working memory Auditory and visual attention Problem solving (block design) results: (1) Children trained on working memory tasks improved on all those tasks (2) Children trained on inhibitory control tasks improved on the flanker and the stop signal task (3) The working memory group did better than the control groups on the post-test measures of working memory (4) The inhibitory control did not do better than the control groups on the post-test measures of inhibitory control
SITUATION VERSUS VOCAL AND FACIAL CUES Hoffner & Badzinski, 1989
Preschoolers, 1st graders, 3rd graders, 4th and 5th graders Shown four types of drawings (1) Situation only (e.g, birthday party) (2) Facial expression only (e.g., smiling child) (3) Congruent facial expression and situation (e.g., smiling child at birthday party) (4) Incongruent facial expression and situation (e.g., frowning child at birthday party) Child looked at photos and said happy or sad, and then rated how much results: ages 3-5: -children are sensitive to situation information (know which situations makes kids happy and which make them feel sad) -when they have facial expression information, kids do not use that situational information age 6-7: -starting to use situational information: rating character as less happy when they're in a sad context compared to when they're in a happy context or when they have no other information ages 8-9 and 10-12 -influence of situation gets stronger *Younger children rely on facial cues *With age, are increasingly able to integrate situational cues
development of executive functioning: preschool
See rapid improvement in all three aspects of executive functioning in this period Working memory capacity increases from ages 1 to 5 (see rapid improvement in number of items children can hold in their head and manipulate - improvement on all tasks of WM from age 4 through to about age 12)
selective attention/attentional control
Selectively attend to some information, filter out extraneous information
do kids understand the difference between conventional and moral violations? Smetana et al. 2012
Present children with moral and conventional violations and ask them to evaluate them on a number of dimensions Moral: -Hitting another child -Teasing another child -Calling another child names Conventional: -Wearing a bathing suit to daycare -Taking out a toy during snack time -Standing up during story time (1) What if the teacher didn't see him/her do it? (Authority independence) (2) What if no one ever told him it was wrong? (Rule independence) (3) What if all the teachers got together and said that kids could hit other kids e.g. (Rule alterability) (4) Let's say that the child was at home or at another school. Would it be okay to stand up during story time e.g. (Generalizability) (5) Should the child get in trouble (Deserved punishment) results: Both 3- and 4-year-olds rated moral transgressions as: More generalizable (it's wrong no matter where you are) More independent of rules and authority (even if all the teachers said a moral wrong was okay, kids still knew it wasn't okay) Saw moral transgressions as Less alterable (can't change the rules) 4-year-olds rated moral transgressions as more deserving of punishment than conventional transgressions (moral transgressions are worse). 3-year-olds did not (more rule bound and struggled to differentiate the type of rule that had been broken) *children have a sense of right and wrong *differentiate between moral and social/conventional transgressions *use other's intentions to guide their behaviour *as they develop, children become better able to integrate multiple types of information
Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS)
Rate how often you have felt an emotion over a period of time on a scale from, from 1 (very slightly or not at all) to 5 (very)
transitive reasoning/seriation (Piaget)
Reasoning about known relationships to infer another relationship (using something you know to reason about something you don't know piaget believed children in the preoperational stage did not understand this -seriation task (given set of rods and asked to arrange them from shortest to longest)
why children fail Piaget's 3 mountains task
Replicated Piaget's design with a more age appropriate task 3- and 4-year-old children Sat in a room and saw a toy fire truck A second toy firetruck sat on a revolving table grover comes onto the scene in his toy car experimenter tells the child that grover likes to drive his car and stop to get out and that they should turn their car so that it is seeing the same thing grover is After practicing, participants were shown three displays (increasing in difficulty) Display 1 had a small lake with a sail boat, a miniature horse and cow, and a house results: Participants were highly accurate with the scenes with toys. They made far more mistakes with the task that looked like Piaget's (could do this with the toys but had much more trouble with the mountains). May have been more cues to discriminate the scenes in the scenes with toys. Turning the model may have helped. letting the children turn the model rather than asking them to show you in a photo wold have also helped (Children at this age have difficulty going from a 3D model to a picture)
executive functioning
Set of neurocognitive skills that promote adaptive functioning Allows for solving problems and achieving goals Conscious, goal-directed action use when you need to slow down and pay attention tasks that involve this: Taking turns in a game Getting dressed Solving math problems
why kids are failing piagets class inclusion/categorization tasks
Show preschoolers 7 frogs There are 4 boy frogs and 3 girls frogs Are there more boy frogs or more frogs? *cannot answer this correctly Are there more boy frogs or more frogs in the family of frogs? *can answer this correctly
further evidence for children thinking hypothetically
Showed 3 and 4 year olds a series of cards depicting a story (1) Girl goes to cookie jar (2) Girl looks inside (3) Girl finds cookies (4) Girl looks happy Also had other cards depicting other scenes that could change the story If the ending was changed, young children could change the story to match If (4) was girl looked sad, children changed (3) to be cookie jar is empty
evidence for children making inductive inferences
Showed 3- and 4-year-olds two objects and taught them a fact about each Then showed them a 3rd object and asked them which of the facts applied to a third object that looked like one object but belonged to the same category as the other e.g. shown a fish (breathes under water) and a dolphin (pops head out of the water to breathe) and then shown a shark (looks like a dolphin but breathes under water) children were able to figure out the category even if you do not use the same labels (e.g. rabbit and bunny) or if you use no labels at all
development of spatial relations: mental rotation
Showed 5- and 8-year-old children two pictures and asked them if they were the same or different Pictures were of bears Left arm raised and right arm down Right arm raised and left arm down given a practice session where their errors were corrected test session: the bear on the left appeared in one of 5 rotations: upright or rotated 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 120 degrees, 150 degrees Instructed to visually imagine the bear on the right into the orientation of the bear on the left to decide results: 5 year olds were incorrect 11% of the time; 8 year olds were incorrect 8% of the time; Proportion of errors increased as the angle of rotation increased; reaction time that children were answering was a function of rotation of the bear - the further the bear was rotated, the longer it took the children to answer *places alot of demand on children - can younger children do it?
diathesis-stess model
Some children are more vulnerable to the effects of a negative environment E.g., non-responsive parenting is associated with insecure attachment, but only for children with a particular genotype *doesn't account for the other end of the spectrum where the environment is really positive (differential susceptibility hypothesis)
tests of response inhibition
Stop-signal task: Respond to a stimulus by pressing a button On some trials, you hear a sound which indicates that you should not push the button Can you inhibit your response? Go/no go task: If you see one stimuli you respond, if you see the second, you do not respond
positive caregiving can be associated with poorer EF
Talwar, Carlson, & Lee (2011) Ghana Children from families of similar SES who were enrolled in one of two private schools in the same geographic region Punitive school: Authoritarian discipline Slapping, beating with a stick, pinching Done in public Children witnessed 40 acts of punitive punishment a day Non-punitive school: Time outs, reprimands, taken to the principal's office Children assessed in kindergarten and Grade 1: Executive Functioning Delay of gratification Dimensional card sort Assessed parents' views on harsh discipline Parents between the two schools did not differ in their use of harsh discipline results: no difference in average EF scores in kindy but by the time you get to first grade, the kids in the non-punitive are better *Punishment does not help internalize self-control May teach compliance in the short-term In kindergarten, children in the punitive school touched the reward less *Creates stress (which interferes with executive functioning) kids in punitive school were much more likely to lie
Is infants own production of means-end behavior linked to their perception of goals? SOMMERVILLE & WOODWARD, 2005
Tested 9-month-old infants (1) Action task Infants are playing with a toy duck Experimenter takes toy duck and places it on the far edge of a red cloth Repeat this 6 to 11 times (practice) coded for planful actions (using the cloth to get to the toy): -Infant focused on toy prior to reaching for cloth -Kept looking at toy while pulling the cloth -Grabbed the toy once it came in reach Unplanful actions: -Infant acted on the toy or the cloth but did not meet these criteria (2) Watching task Habituation and Test: -New goal event: Actor pulls the same cloth, to get a different toy -New means event: Actor pulls a different cloth to the get the same toy results: No difference in looking time to new means and new goals trials. No differences in looking times between infants who did the action task first and infants who did the habituation task first (9 month olds aren't getting it compared to 12 month olds) *Infants were not sensitive to the ultimate goal of the toy pulling task *Performing the action task was not sufficient to make infants sensitive to the goal for the 9 month olds *Infants varied in the number of planful strategies they used. maybe infants who are better at planning have a better understanding when watching an actor? -the more planful strategies the babies used, the more they dishabituated to the hand reaching for a different toy -compared to planful infants (top 25% of infants using more planful strategies) and non-planful infants (bottom 25%), planful infants are showing the same patterns as the 12 month olds. non-planful infants don't - what is salient to them is the cloth you're pulling, not the action
differential susceptibility hypothesis
The concept that some people's genetic makeup makes them more reactive than other people to both good and bad environmental influences. if you put them in a bad environment they will really suffer but if you put them in a good environment they will flourish (orchard metaphor)
representational theory of mind
The way we interact with the world is guided by our mental states, not how the world actually is *critical for social interaction: Understanding that others' actions are based on their beliefs about the world, not the actual state of the world, opens up the possibility of manipulating those mental states (Desires, Goals/Intentions & Beliefs) -intended actions are means to desired outcomes: belief + desire -> intention -> action -> outcome
social domain theory
Three distinct domains of social knowledge (1) Moral: Concerned with welfare and fairness; Obligatory; Universal; Impersonal; Determined by criteria other than agreement or consensus; Moral wrongness is an intrinsic feature of the act (it Causes harm which makes it wrong) (2) Social convention: shared norms that smooth social interactions; Change as a function of context; Agreed upon; Alterable (3) Personal: Control over body, privacy, choice of friends or activities; Autonomy; Children often justify decisions as personal based on the fact that the action only affects the person
facial expressions
a behavioural cue to emotion stimuli used to test peoples ability to recognised emotions in other people
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
a test of set shifting/cognitive flexibility shown 4 cards laid out you draw a card from the deck and are told to match the card with the one it goes with up the top with no other instruction given feedback as to whether you're right or wrong rule gets changed again once you've caught on but you're not told about it DV: how fast can you figure out that the rule has changed and adapt or do you get stuck?
Facial Action Coding System (FACS)
a widely used method for measuring all observable muscular movements that are possible in the human face -code movement of 44 facial muscles e.g. raising eyebrows, pursing lips -using this system, facial expressions can be reliably coded
tantrums
an expression of distress in toddlers and preschool-aged children can reliably code different components: -scream (typically shrill, loud, and with no verbal content. usually short and flat melody) -yell (typically short in duration, command-like and containing some verbal content. loud but not as loud as screaming) -cry relatively loud and effortful, typically with an up and down melody. breath may be interrupted) -whine (contains some verbal content with an up and down melody. may also include relatively shrill, monotonous nonverbal vocalization) -fuss (typically short, flat, or falling melody, relatively quiet and low pitched) *normative developmental process
prosocial behavior
any action one individual engages in the benefit another don't know alot about how it develops and how it changes over development so vague that it's hard to effectively study
5-7 months
at this age can understand that social agents can act on something without having direct contact, but inanimate objects cannot
COMPLEX EMOTIONS: PRIDE AND SHAME Lewis et al. (1992)
do 3-year-old-children show pride and shame in similar circumstances that adults would? Observed 3 year old doing problem-solving tasks Each task had an easy and a hard version e.g. Puzzle with 25 small pieces versus a puzzle with four large pieces Task was scored as a success or failure did the child show pride or shame (coded by behaviour - Three of five have to be present within 30 seconds of the task finishing): Shame: Body slouched, Eyes lowered, Withdrawal from task, Negative self-evaluation Pride: Erect posture, Smiles, Eyes directed at parents, Points at outcome or applauds, Positive self evaluation DV: when did kids show shame or pride? Showed as a function of difficulty (easy or hard) and did the child succeed or fail at the task? results: when the task was easy and succeeded, the kids showed pride but not as much as when the task was harder (task had to be difficult) no one showed shame when they succeeded in the situations which the kids failed, there was shame. more shame when you had difficulty with an easy task than when you had difficulty in a hard task *at age 3, pride and shame are expressed under the same conditions as adults *evaluation of the task is necessary to whether you experience pride or shame
WHAT EMOTIONS DO ADULTS PERCEIVE IN INFANTS' FACES? Oster et al. 1992
do people in babies lives pick up on their emotions and adjust their behaviour accordingly? Study 1 Showed untrained adults still photos of infants making one of 8 prototypical facial expressions( Joy, interest, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise, distress) For each photo, adults were given the 8 emotion labels and asked to pick which one the face was results: Were reasonably accurate for joy, interest, surprise. Were not accurate for fear, anger, disgust *can train people to reliably differentiate these, but the average untrained adult did not perform that well in differentiating emotions Study 2 Showed untrained adults still photos of infants making one of 8 prototypical facial expressions (Joy interest sadness fear anger disgust surprise distress) For each photo, adults were given the 8 emotion labels and asked to rate how strongly each emotion was shown in the face (trying to pick up where they are making the mistakes i.e. if they're not picking up anger in the babies faces, what are they seeing? results: when adults are looking at a joyful babies face, they are not seeing any negative emotions starting to rate some negative emotions when shown an "interest" face and same for "surprised" face when adults are looking at fearful, angry, distressed, sad and disgusted baby faces, the emotion they are rating as being most present is distress *not differentiating negative emotions - only seeing a distressed baby Camras et al. 1993: -Showed adults videos of infants displaying prototypical facial expressions for discomfort, anger, or sadness -Could see the baby's entire body in the video (more cues available) -Rated how much the baby was showing each of the following emotions: Happy, surprised, disgusted, afraid, angry, sad, distressed results: For discomfort and anger, highest rated emotion was distress. For sadness, emotion ratings were less intense *seeing a distressed baby when seeing any negative emotion
MODELS OF TEMPERAMENT: KAGAN
focused on one dimension: inhibition to the unfamiliar Inhibited children: withdraw and express vigilance and fear when confronted with novel, stressful situations; more likely to express negative emotions (e.g., fear) Uninhibited children: children who show minimal avoidance and vigilance in such situations; more likely to express positive emotions *unusual for a child who was inhibited to end up uninhibited and vice versa *what you see when a child is young predicts what you won't be more than it predicts what you will be
prosocial behaviours shouldn't correlate with each other (Dunfield et al., 2013)
gave 12 month and 24 month old children 2 opportunities to help, 2 opportunities to share, and 2 opportunities to comfort an experimenter gave 2 variants of the task for each: instrumental caring: kids watched as an object was dropped or watched as experimenter was trying to complete a puzzle but needed the last piece which was on the other side of the room (wanted to rule out that kids would only help if they saw the experimenter in the process of having the object and losing the object) material desire: stickers and food comforting: injury and a broken toy results: kids are consistent within tasks e.g. if you help on trial 1, you're very likely to help on trial 2 do not find correlations across tasks (no consistency across tasks)
predictors of executive functioning
genetics SES caregiving
DEVELOPMENT OF RECOGNITION OF VOCAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION
harder and takes longer to develop Chronaki et al. 2015: 10-11 year-olds were less accurate than adults at identifying sad, angry, and fearful vocal expressions at 100% intensity Morningstar et al. 2017: Improvement from 8- to 17-year-olds in recognition of vocal expressions of affect
varieties of prosocial behaviour
helping sharing comforting
DEVELOPMENT OF ABILITY TO INTEGRATE INFORMATION Komolova & Wainryb, 2011
how kids Navigate conflicts of interest with friends Personal preferences are weighty versus trivial e.g. Seeing a movie vs. End of year piano recital 5-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 17-year-olds low-low condition (not a one time opportunity) low-high condition (one person has a trivial concern and the other is important) high-high condition (both people have preferences that are important) (1) Forced-choice: Let's say Jenny could only do one thing. Which one should she do? (2) Evaluation of self-oriented choice: Let's say Jenny decided she wanted to go home and watch the movie. Is it okay or not okay for Jenny to do that? Why? results: 17-year-olds: In Low-High condition, 100% said character should do what the friend wanted In Low-Low and High-High conditions, 65% said character should do what he/she wanted (not what the friend wants) 5- and 10-year-olds: In Low-High condition, 100% of 10 year olds and 80% of 5-year-olds prioritized the friend. (looks like 17 year olds) Majority of 5- and 10-year-olds also prioritized the friend in the other conditions Justifications of choices: (1) Friendship: -Most common in L-H condition -"She's my friend, so I need to do this for her" References to friendship were more common among 10- and 17-year-olds than among 5-year-olds (2) Autonomy (being an individual) -Most common in L-L and H-H condition -"Friends don't always have to do everything together" (3) Moral concerns (less frequently brought up) -"She should do what her friend wants because otherwise her friend will be really hurt") -Rare, and more common among 10 year olds than 5-year-olds and 17 year olds *Late adolescents were better able to integrate the competing demands of the situation *Used information about "weight" of the personal preferences rather than just doing what you're friend wants to do *Older youth did not justify preferences on moral grounds (what makes something a moral concern vs. someone's preference?)
classic false beliefs tasks
location tasks e.g. sally and anne task contents task 4-year-olds pass 3-year-olds do not believed to be because this is a new qualitative skill (discontinuity in development) also places high task demands on children limited to children who can speak - it is possible that children pre-varbally can demonstrate this
complex emotions
occur after infancy (1.5 years) involved a blend of more than one basic emotion e.g. feeling shame (mix of anger, fear, sadness about a lost opportunity) involves evaluation of an external situations (e.g. don't feel pride in all situations. have to be able to evaluate your actions and the external situation e.g. when you succeed at a difficult task)
Do infants experience discrete emotions?
only have access to physiology in their behaviour (facial expressions) in infants How much agreement is there between the components of emotion components? i.e. When people look really sad, do they feel really sad?(have an idea based on studies done in adults)
evidence for young children thinking hypothetically
past and future counteractuals: I was late for work this morning because I missed the bus What would have happened if I had not hit the snooze button? What would have been if I had been on time? Children watched as a story was acted out in front of them: One day the floor is nice and clean. But guess what? Carol comes home, and she doesn't take her shoes off. She comes inside and makes the floor all dirty with her shoes. (1) Was the floor dirty before? (2) Is the floor dirty now? (3) (Test) What if Carol had taken her shoes off? Would the floor be dirty? results: Older children answered 85% of the test questions correctly Younger children answered 69% of the test questions correctly *inconsistent with Piaget's argument
development of navigational skills
perspective taking is considered one of these skills - 3- and 4-year olds are able to do this At age 5, children are able to use landmarks As children get older, they become better able to integrate different kinds of cues (Geometric cues and landmarks)
strategies adolescence use to manage decrease in positive affect and more intense negative affect (Compas et al.)
place strategies on 2 dimensions: (1) Voluntary versus involuntary Voluntary (Person is choosing this strategy): Involuntary (Not within the person's control) (2) Engagement versus disengagement: extent to which you are oriented towards or away from the stimuli (1) voluntary engagement: -Problem-solving: "I thought of different ways to solve the problem." -Emotional expression: "I talked to someone about how I was feeling." -Cognitive reappraisal: "I think about all the things I am learning from this situation" (2) involuntary disengagement: -Rumination: keep thinking about problem over and over but never get to active problem solving (3) Voluntary disengagement -Denial: "I tell myself that isn't happening" -Avoidance: "I stay away from the person who is making me feel badly" (4) Involuntary disengagement: -Escape: "I have to get out of there, I don't have a choice" -Cognitive interference: "My mind just goes blank."
piagets theory of morality
premoral development (up to 4 years): no awareness of rules heteronomous stage (4-10 years): understand that there are rules and that they are absolute autonomous stage (10-11 years and older): children understand that rules are human conventions; why rules exist; and in a more sophisticated way
delay of gratification
putting off getting something right now to get something better later On average, if preschoolers can see only the immediate reward, they will wait about 5 minutes. 2 out of 8 children waited the whole time If they can see both rewards, they wait about 1 minute Nobody made it the whole time waited the longest when they can see neither reward
variability in prosocial behaviours across populations (Dunfield et al., 2013)
studying children with autism: they have distinct cognitive abilities which show a different developmental trajectory; lots of difficulty recognising emotional states in others; not highly motivated by social stimuli -Compare typically developing kids to kids with autism 14 ASD diagnosis, 14 male, M = 46.36 months (using non-verbal IQ) 14 Typically developing, 11 male, M = 34.63 months Six prosocial tasks • 3 negative state present (Experimental) • 3 negative state absent (Control) results: not seeing alot of instrumental helping or sharing. seeing alot of comforting. when we compare with same age typically developing kids, kids with ASD are helping less, sharing less but comforting at around the same rate (ASD kids did not want to give up their resources or give back the cool toy. but, the experimenters distress did not seem to get them as distressed as typically developing children and so found it easier to calm them but did not use correct strategies)
why kids are failing Piaget's conservation tasks
task demands may be pulling the wrong answers from the kids when "naughty teddy bear is introduced into classic tests of conservation, performance improves -Complexity of task -Number of objects -Fewer is easier -Question asked: "Which has more?" versus "which is the winner?" Using modifications like this, preschoolers can succeed on these tasks *preschoolers are still not adult like, even with these modification (may be more focused on end states)
flanker tast
test of inhibitory control have to indicate which way the arrow in the middle of a row of arrows is facing incongruent trials (where the middle arrow is facing a different way to all the others) is a test of selective attention because you have to filter out the arrows around it to only focus on the middle one
symbolic representation
the major gain in the preoperational period (ages 2-6/7) The use of an object, word, or thought to stand for another (major achievement here is language) -Using a playing card as an iPhone -Using a stick as a gun
is adolescence associated with greater experience of negative affect? LARSON ET AL. 2002
used "experience sampling": contact participants at random intervals and ask them questions e.g. what are you doing? how are you feeling? Across adolescence, does overall experience of negative affect increase or decrease? Time 1: 5th to 8th graders Time 2: 9th to 12th graders (recruited same kids) For one week, participants carried pagers and booklets When they were paged, they filled out a page in the booklet Paged approximately 7 times a day Each time, rated how were the feeling (happy/unhappy; cheerful/irritable; friendly/angry) Created scores ranging from -3 (negative) to 3 (positive) results: across all grade levels the average affective state is positive. it is getting lower as grade gets higher but still positive (1) Did positive affect go down, did negative go up, or both? (both are true) Positive affect decreased from Time 1 to Time 2 -Time 1: 73.9% of episodes were positive affect -Time 2: 70.7% of episodes were positive affect Negative affect decreased from Time 1 to Time (larger jump) -Time 1: 12.7% of episodes were negative affect -Time 2: 19.6% of episodes were negative affect (2) Did a few people decrease a lot, or did everybody decrease a little? 63% of participants reported less average positive affect at Time 2 (alot were coming down a little bit) *adolescence marked by a decrease in positive affect and an increase in negative affect
behavioural cues to emotion
vocal cues (pitch, intensity (volume), speed) Freezing (indicates fear) Withdrawing (indicates fear or sadness) Laughing (indicates pleasure/happiness)
testing piaget's theory of moral development
wanted to understand whether children would use intentions or outcomes when they were making decisions about whether someone was right or wrong gave kids scenarios where someone either broke a rule and did damage in the process (broke 1 cup) or someone did not break a rule but accidentally made more damage (broke 15 cups) Who was naughtier? Children younger than 5-6 years focus on the outcome and say that the person who broke 15 cups was naughtier *before the age of 5-6 children value outcomes over intentions *due to task demands? (A lot of information; Present intentions at the end; Stress intentions; Language demands)
social cognitive development timeline
within first 2 years of life kids are reliably helping: requires recognition and response to someones needs (understanding goal directed behaviour) closer to 3 years sharing emerges: giving away a desirable resource. very fragile (if you ask them, kids are more likely to share; do far less sharing with strangers) closer to 4 years of age they recognise they can effectively comfort someone else: recognizing a problem and knowing what to do about it (engage in affecting perspective taking)
other ways to test younger children's moral judgements: selective helping
you don't want to help everyone Helping indiscriminately makes you vulnerable to "free riders" - people who accept help, but never reciprocate can you figure out which person is more likely to reciprocate and who is a "Free rider"? might think about past behaviour e.g. person who hurts you by accident vs. someone who tried to hurt you but failed vs. someone who helps you by accident vs. person who tried to help you and failed *intentions vs outcomes
