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14.1: Social Cognition

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    People can talk about their and others’ feelings etc. But even young infants without language show by their behavior that they have some knowledge of others’ mental states. Right from the start infants have an interest in and preference for social interaction – human faces and voices are most interesting to them. By 2-3 months infants engage with others’ emotions, expressions etc. By 6-12 months they engage in play and activities with toys along with others. By the second year they develop a sense of self and understanding that others might see and feel differently from themselves. There is the start of empathy and prosocial behavior. Why abilities develop when they do is less understood. Yet parents and teachers can capitalize on infants’ need for regular and reliable social interaction for increasing social competence.[1]

    The idea of social cognition (particularly in early childhood) started with Piaget’s “egocentrism” – that children are not able to separate their own ideas from those of others. Piaget might have underestimated children’s abilities. Then there is also the idea of perspective taking which might be considered part of metacognition – what children understand about memory, attention and problem solving. These develop mostly in grade school and continue into adulthood.

    Theory of mind is a more overarching concept. It includes the full understanding of mental states, their causes and results. Theory of mind research is interested in what abilities children have at different ages, why, and how those affect their interactions.

    The most famous experiments are false belief tasks but then there are other studies looking at how emotions are affected by desire satisfaction and also age changes in things like recursive thinking. Like in Piaget’s studies, 4 year olds have difficulty with false beliefs, differentiating between appearance and reality, and tracking the connection between experience and beliefs. But by end of 4 or 5 years (unlike Piagetian findings), children seem to show a lot of progress, and there is also definite connection between social cognition abilities and interaction skills quality. Social behavior and social acceptance can therefore be influenced by changing parenting in order to increase theory of mind and social cognitive skills as well as self perception.[2]

    References:

    [1] Social cognition in Infancy by Moore, C. and Corbit, J., 2019 from Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development (https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/pdf/expert/social-cognition/according-experts/social-cognition-infancy)

    [2] Social cognitive development in early childhood by Scott Miller, 2019 from Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development (https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/pdf/expert/social-cognition/according-experts/social-cognitive-development-early-childhood)

    Attributions:

    Child Growth and Development by Jennifer Paris, Antoinette Ricardo, and Dawn Rymond, 2019, is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (adapted by Bhadha, 2023)


    14.1: Social Cognition is shared under a CC BY license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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