Lecture #8

Question 1

Selman’s stages

Answer 1

• Egocentric or undifferentiated- toddlers act as if they don’t understand other peoples mind, act in order to their own wishes
• Social-informational role taking- people start understanding that people have different roles and different jobs
• Self-reflective role taking- able to reflect in what you would do in that role, ex 10-year-old would think yea I probably would limit sugar intake
• Mutual role taking- individuals kind exchange positions, put yourself in my shoes and I put myself in your shoes
• Societal role taking- put yourself in the context or broader society

Question 2

Theory of mind

Answer 2

• Understanding that human action is motivated by underlying mental states

You do things because you have your own reason for doing things

- Intentions, beliefs, emotions, desires - Social development 
- Moral judgements, empathy, conduct disorder  - Cognitive development 
- Reasoning about representations

Question 3

False beliefs

Answer 3

• Dissociation in development
• Understanding of beliefs and photographs both develop between 3 – 4 years
  
  • Performance if not typically correlated
• Training on one does not affect performance on the other
  
  • Dissociation in autism
  • Good at false photographs but very poor at the false beliefs

Question 4

Bear/Dragon test

Answer 4

• Inhibition correlations
  
  • Chinese preschoolers
• Possible advanced emergence of frontal function / inhibition
• Ethnographic data
  
  • Parenting and discipline
  • Observations of schools

Question 5

Bear/Dragon test part 2

Answer 5

1. They are all rooted in our evolutionary heritage, make their appearance early in infancy, and have a rapid, automatic onset
2. They have distinct, universally-recognized facial patterns- cross culture, universally recognized
3. They are believed to be innate and hardwired into the subcortical motor areas of the brain- argument is that you can see it in children that are blind, believe that they are adaptive and have an important role to play

Question 6

Joy

Answer 6

• Perhaps best illustrated by the smile
• Endogenous smiles appear in newborns
• Typically during sleep, associated with low levels of brain activity
• Duchenne smiles are the first genuine social smiles, occur at one month
• Social smiling appears to be influenced by cognitive development
• Likely related to the cognitive processes that associated an object in the environment with a positive internal representation
• Smiles become increasingly selective with age
• Smiling is a very powerful emotional signal that may serve to initiate and maintain social interactions with adults
• Laughter plays a similar role and also becomes increasingly social and selective with age

Question 7

Surprise

Answer 7

• Is dependent on and helps to further develop cognitive development
• Not observable until infants begin to form cognitive expectations (5-7, 3 and fewer months)
• Accompanied by regular physiological responses:
  
  • Heightened sensory sensitivity
  • Orienting towards stimulus
  • Rapid inhibition of unrelated behaviours
  • General fight or flight response
• Prototype is the startle reflex – a rapid, defensive contraction / tensing of body

Question 8

Anger

Answer 8

• Initial emotion is distress / upset
• During early months, anger is secondary to pain / distress signals
• This changes with age, with anger becoming the dominant signal
• Appears to be due to a shift in self-reliance
• Appears to be directed more towards events that the infant can potentially control, in goal-oriented actions
• Can serve as an adaptive motivational tool for overcoming obstacles

Question 9

Sadness

Answer 9

• Also appears to be derived from distress / upset
• Emerges at around 3 months
• Infants display sadness and distress to the still face paradigm
• Often a response towards a particular social interaction
• Appears to both motivate a withdrawal from the situation and solicit care
• Self-soothing and crying are both observed in displays of sadness
• Sadness shuts down the fight or flight response, appears to reduce bodily activity

Question 10

Disgust

Answer 10

• Originally a food-oriented behaviour where the individual rejects an unpalatable item from the mouth
• Later (2-3 years of age), disgust is also associated with undesirable social behaviours

Question 11

Fear

Answer 11

• Like anger and sadness, originates from the general distress display
• Fear begins to emerge at around 3 months
• Can be triggered by: intense, novel, social, conditioned or evolutionary-relevant stimuli
• Provokes withdrawal response that is associated with fight or flight
• Been particularly well-studied in older infants

Question 12

The self-conscious emotions are:

Answer 12

1. Embarrassment- is an obvious signal that you have broken a social norm
2. Envy- of others
3. Empathy- being able to appreciate someone else’s feelings
4. Pride- opposite side of the same coin, showing off your strengths and hiding your weaknesses
5. Shame- try to minimize yourself and hide your flaws
6. Guilt- when you damage a relationship and your motivated to repair it

Question 13

Thomas and Chess

Answer 13

• Initiated the New York Longitudinal Study where 141 children were studied in a longitudinal experiment that started at birth and continued through to adulthood
• Goal was to determine if there were basic, stable underlying behavioural and emotional patterns amongst individuals

Question 14

Temperament

Answer 14

• Temperament may be defined as: “constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity and self-regulation.
• Temperamental characteristics are seen to demonstrate consistency across situations, as well as relative stability over time.”Rothbart & Bates, 1998
• Distribution in Thomas and Chess’ longitudinal study
• Rothbart and Bates dimensions
• Fearful distress
• Irritable distress
• Positive affect
• Activity level
• Attention span / persistence
• Rhythmicity

Question 15

Temperament types

Answer 15

• Easy: generally positive mood, quick to adapt, regular routines
• Difficult: reacts more negatively, irregular routines, slow to adapt
• Slow to warm up: reacts mildly negative, low activity level, slow to adapt
• None classified: blends of the above

Question 16

Assessment issues

Answer 16

• Temperament is difficult to assess for several reasons:
• Different markers exist at different ages (e.g.,crying in infancy vs. teen yelling)
• Markers often rely on reports from non-trained, potentially-biased observers (e.g., parents)-
• Different scales use different measures(including physiological)
• Still a lot of challenge measuring temperament in young children

Question 17

HEXACO

• Big five is common personality model
• Lexical studies of personality structure in diverse languages reveal a common set of six dimensions

Answer 17

H = Honesty – Humility 
E = Emotionally 
X = eXtraversion 
A = Agreeableness 
C = Conscientiousness 
O = Openness to Experience

Question 18

H and reciprocal altruism

Answer 18

• Honesty – humility: cooperate despite opportunity to exploit
• Benefits: gains from cooperation
• Costs: missed gains from exploiting others

Question 19

A and reciprocal altruism

Answer 19

• Agreeableness: cooperate despite being exploited
• Benefits: gains from cooperation
• Costs: losses from being exploited by others

Question 20

E and kin altruism

Answer 20

• Emotionally as kin investment:
• Direct link: sentimentally (feelings of empathy, attachment promote kin altruism)
• Indirect link: fearfulness / dependence (protection of self and kin)
• Benefits: better survival chances for self and kin
• Costs: missed gains from risky opportunities
  
  • Sex difference (w > m) matches differences in biological cost of reproduction and certainty of parenthood

Question 21

X as a social endeavour

Answer 21

• Extraversion as engagement in social endeavour (leading, entertaining)
• Benefits: social gains (mates, friends)
• Costs: time, energy, social risks

Question 22

C as task-related endeavour

Answer 22

• Conscientiousness as engagement in task related endeavour (working, planning)
• Benefits: material gains, safety
• Costs: time, energy

Question 23

O as idea-related endeavour

Answer 23

• Openness to experience as engagement in idea-related endeavour (learning, imagining)
• Benefits: material and social gains
• Costs: time, energy, risks (social, natural)

Question 24

Heritability of traits

Answer 24

• Identical twins who were reared apart having heritability scores of around 0/5 and higher for the big five traits but 4/6 factors
• HEXACO loads cleanly onto 6 separate genetic clusters
• Two genes have been isolated that alter the level of serotonin manufactured in the brain, influencing emotionally

Question 25

Traits as biological adaptations

Answer 25

- Given that traits are influenced by genes, why are there different degrees of traits? - Having diverse / unique traits may allow individuals to cope with diverse environmental contexts and situations - Fish alter their personalities to suit their environmental conditions – children probably do something similar