20. origins 2013 ind diffs concl. and social cognition 1 (4)

8/13/2019 20. Origins 2013 Ind Diffs Concl. and Social Cognition 1 (4)

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Individual Differences

Two ways to study individual differences:

1. Relate earlier-developing psychological attributes (cognitiveabilities, temperament) to later-developing attributes.

Do individual differences in geometrical form analysis

predict performance at reading maps?

Do individual differences in numerical discriminationpredict performance on symbolic math problems?

2. Relate performance on tests administered earlier in devt. to

real-world outcomes.

Do people with higher SAT scores (or IQ scores) end upwith more degrees? higher income?

Two updates on the first enterprise

The second enterprise


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Predicting later cognitive abilities from earlier ones:

Two Updates

Non-symbolic numerical discrimination and symbolic number."suppose someone found that numerical discrimination in

infancy predicted later symbolic math performance. Would that

mean we are innately predistined to success or failure in academic

math?"

1. SRCD (Brannon lab):

numerical discrimination tested at 6 months (Xu displays).

children retested at regular intervals, from 1-3.5 years.

num. acuity at 6 mos predicted acuity at all later ages tested.

num. acuity at 6 mos also predicted mastery of numberwords and counting.

2. SRCD (Gilmore lab): a real counter-example to the conclusion

about predestination.


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Why do some children do better at discriminating

numbers of dots than others?

To test number, must control for continuous variables like dot size.So some dot problems look like this....


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To test number, must control for continuous variables like dot size.So some dot problems look like this....

....and others look like this.

But for these problems, you have to inhibit responses to size

differences as you focus on number.


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Some dot discrimination problems demand inhibitory control.

Inhibitory control requires executive function (Lindsey's lecture).

Individual differences in EF predict math achievement.

Gilmore (SRCD), two experiments.

Exp. 1: Replicates Halberda et al's finding that numerical acuity

correlates with school achievement. Divides trials into two types:

number positively vs. negatively correlated with item size.

pos. correlation, low EF demands neg. correlation, high EF demands


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Exp. 1 findings:Numerical discrimination predicted school achievement on the high

EF trials, not on the low EF trials.

Suggestion: individual differences in EF underlie this correlation.

pos. correlation, low EF demands neg. correlation, high EF demands


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Exp. 1 findings:Numerical discrimination predicted school achievement on the high

EF trials, not on the low EF trials.

Suggestion: individual differences in EF underlie this correlation.

Exp. 2:

Replicated Halberda et al again, this time with a separate test battery

measuring executive function (like the tests Lindsey described).

Findings: controlling for EF, numerical discrimination no longer

predicted school math achievement. controlling for numericaldiscrimination, EF strongly predicted school math achievement.

(further experiments by Gilmore: non-symbolic addition tests do

predict school math achievement....)


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Summary

Both core numerical abilities and executive function predict schoolmath performance.

Both of these abilities are highly malleable and trainable.

Individual differences do not imply that fixed differences in cognitive

ability.


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Predicting Real World Outcomes

Much research in individual differences seeks to predict who will

perform well at some future activity:

ex: intuitive personality theories predict success at careers

SAT-Q tests predict success in math & engineering professions

IQ tests predict future earnings potential

Does this predictive power have normative implications: e.g., are

people who score higher on SAT tests all-around smarter than those

who score lower?

Three cases that cast doubt on this conclusion.


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Case 1: personality traits and careers

E.G. Boring

(chair, Harvard Psych,

1930s)

Example: Jewish personality traits and academic potential

In the 30s, no Jewish faculty at Harvard.Many Jewish students in Boring's lab.

None got good academic jobs on leaving

his lab.

The defects of his race (Winston, 1998).

A study of his letters of recommendation:

talkative

aggressive

characteristic Jewish eagerness

gesticulates excitedly

Boring's error: confusing what was typicalof professors in his field

with what was necessary for success in that field.

But NB: these traits werepredictive of failure, because Jews weren't

hired.


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A common claim: women have lower spatial ability.

The evidence: women perform less well at mental rotation tasks.

Case 2: Spatial ability and gender

My puzzlement: we had been studying spatial abilities a lot,

and we didn't see evidence either for a unitary dimension of

"spatial ability" or for gender differences on any core spatial

tasks.


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Overall Performance

(Grace, Shutts, Izard, Dehaene & Spelke, 2006; Izard & Spelke, 2009; replicated by Dillon et al., in review)

High Performance

Are boys more sensitive to geometry in visual forms?

Average Performance High Performance

No sex difference favoring boys.


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(Grace, Shutts, Izard, Dehaene & Spelke, 2006; c.f. Izard & Spelke, 2009)

girls>boys

* **

(*pgirls

Are boys more sensitive to any aspect of geometry?

male superiority at mental

rotation may trace back to

infancy

(Quinn & Liben, 2008; Moore & Johnson, 2008)


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(Grace, Shutts, Izard, Dehaene & Spelke, 2006; Izard & Spelke, 2009)

Boys and girls show highly similar performance profiles

Highly convergent performance by boys and girls.

r=.888, p


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So why the belief in sex differences, and the focus on

mental rotation on standardized tests?

The goal of the tests is to predict who will succeed.For social reasons, male students are more likely to pursue &

succeed at academic careers than females:

discrimination, overt and covert

a tendency of both genders to go into fields where theirown gender is represented (e.g., few male nurses or midwives...)

Therefore, mental rotation is a better predictor of academic

success than are the other measures.

But this doesNOT mean that it is a better indicator of cognitive

ability. Voice depth or hair length also will predict academic

success....


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Case 3: IQ tests and earnings potential

Herrnstein, Murray: IQ in the meritocracy

Children with higher IQs tend to become adults with more education

and money

So is IQ a good measure of ability?

Tests of ability: anagrams, reading prose passages

not free-style rapping

Why? High-income adults are likely to do cross-word puzzles andread novels. They aren't likely to be freestyle rappers.

My guess: from the standpoint of cognitive psychology, effective

rapping requires at least as much vocabulary, verbal fluency, etc etc.


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Summary

Attempts to measure intelligence or specific aspects of cognitive

aptitude are not worthless or stupid. But it's hard to get them right.

The best hope for better understanding individual differences in

cognition comes not from research linking individual cognitive

variables to successful real-world outcomes (like going to college,

earning lots of money, or becoming a Harvard professor).

Instead, it comes from research linking individual differences in core

cognition to individual differences in constructed cognitive abilities:

research like the studies discussed in the first half of this topic.

To date, these studies show no gender or social class differences in

children's performance. These findings should encourage us to look

critically at the measures that do, like IQ and SATs.


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Social Cognition


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Humans are a highly social species

We live in communities (throughout human evolution).

--Community members cooperate to accomplish tasks that no

single person could perform alone.--Community members share information: most of what we

know has been learned from others.

These activities surely account for much of our success as a species.

Community members share a culture, distinct from other cultures

(language, food production & preparation, tools & technology, music

& dance, dress, games, rituals, belief systems). Some of these

distinctions make obvious sense (food availability & spoilage issues).

Others are more puzzling:

Why different languages?

Why rituals? religions?

A hope: insights from studies of children.


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Learning about the social world

To navigate the social world, the child must come to:

1. recognize other specific individuals.

2. learn about the social behavior of each individual toward the

child and toward one another (friends or foes? selfish or

cooperative?)

3. learn the overall structure of the social landscape (what groups

are there? how are they organized? what are the dimensions of

status?). NB: this too varies across cultures.

4. learn culture-specific beliefs and rituals.


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Three topics:

1. finding good social partners and cooperating with them: today

2. discovering social groups and learning their norms: Lindsey,

Thursday

3. social group preferences and biases: last class

Learning about the social world


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People as social partners

Newborns: attend to people from birth (faces, voices).

2 month olds: smile, engage socially, turn-taking.

By 7-9 months: attachments, seeking proximity to known

others.

First question: How do infants come to distinguish people fromeach other so that they can form social relationships?

recognizing faces

detecting states of social engagement


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Face Recognition in Adults

A special system for identifying faces.

evidence: inversion


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Identifying People: Adults


evidence: orientation specificity


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evidence: species-specificity

This is Mary

Which is Mary?


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This is Fred

Which is Fred?


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Identifying People: AdultsA special system for identifying faces.


Human adults: good with human faces, bad with monkey faces.

Adult monkeys good with monkey faces, bad with human faces.

High abilities to recognize individuals of ones own species by their

faces.

Familiarize:

Test:

Pascalis


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Identifying People: Adult BrainsTask: passive viewing of faces, artifact objects, scenes, ....

Method: subtraction from scrambled (recall Epstein reading)

Primate brains devote lots of territory to processing information about

the faces of specific individuals. Kanwisher, Tsao

Humans Monkeys


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How does this high sensitivity develop?Studies of infants

Pascalis

familiarize

test

At 9 months, longer looking at the novel face.


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test

Pascalis

familiarization

How does this high sensitivity develop?

Studies of infants

At 9 months, equal looking at the two faces (like adults under most

testing conditions).


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How does this species-specificity develop?

Pascalis

Obvious hypothesis: infants learn to distinguish human faces.

Alternative hypothesis: infants learn notto distinguish monkey

faces.


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How does this species-specificity develop?

Pascalis

9 months

Success

Failure

6 months

Success

Success

Between 6 & 9 months, a narrowing of the face processing domain.By the time they start learning language, children treat (most)

animals as members of kinds (dog, monkey) but treat (most) people

as individuals (Tom, Mary).


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Limits to face perception

Not all creatures with faces, even human faces, are social partners for

the infantsome are strangers: need further cues to determine who

is socially related to them.

Possible cues come from a person's behavior.

Chicks use both behavior and visual appearance to


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Chicks use both behavior and visual appearance to

recognize mom

(M. Johnson & Horn)

2 hours

24 hours

Chicks prefer objects that look like hens:

innate template in chicks.Critical features: head and eyes.

But, in the absence of these features, chicks will imprint to other

objects if they show animate behavior (movement)

Do human infants also identify social partners based on their actions?

Same

species

Diff.

species

Measure = proximity

Eye contact


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Eye contact

(Farroni et al., 2002)

you are engaged

with me.

(Mendelson, 1982)

newborn infants look longer at

the face with direct gaze

so do infant monkeys


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Adult model Infant subject

CameraCoding

monitor

for infant

response

Coding monitor for

adult model

(Meltzoff and Moore, 1977)

Like me? Imitation in newborn infants

imitation


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imitation

(Meltzoff & Moore, 1977)(Ferrari et al., 2006)


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Why imitation?

A reflex? Meltzoff argues no, a meaningful social behavior

--motions are slow and deliberate--motions can happen after a delay (minutes in most studies, days in

one study)

--motions happen only in the presence of the person who initially

performed the action.--motions happen only when the person first looked directly at the

infant.

When one person imitates another, she signals to the other that she is

attending to him and tracking his behavior: a universal social code.

For infants (and adults), imitation may have social meaning for this

reason.

imitation


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imitation

(Meltzoff & Moore, 1977)

I am engaged

with you.

(Ferrari et al., 2006)

more on imitation


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more on imitation

(Meltzoff & Moore, 1977)(Ferrari et al., 2006)

Infants and monkeys prefer social others who imitate them, just

as they prefer others who look at them: a sign of social

engagement.


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Summary

Infants are equipped with multiple ways to identify social others,

recognize them over time (by their faces and actions), share states of

attention with them, and reproduce their actions.

What do we do with these abilities?

--we learn from others (recall section on agency)

--we cooperate with others


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Cooperation

Many human evolutionary biologists, anthopologists and

psychologists argue that the key to our success as a species stems

from our ability to cooperate:

we help one another

we pursue common goals

we share information

by cooperating, we achieve more than any person couldaccomplish alone (hunting big animals, building

shelters, etc etc.)

by sharing information, we learn more than any person could

learn alone.

Key question: What causes this tendency?

An approach: When and do we develop a propensity to collaborate

and help others, and under what conditions do we express it?


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Cooperation

An old idea: Children are selfish; they have to learn to be

cooperative through education and/or slow "socialization".

Thomas Hobbes

(1588-1679) Jean Piaget,

egocentrism

Felix Warneken,

Harvard psych.

New findings: Not so:


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Cooperation

Warneken & Tomasello: Children are naturally predisposed bothto

competition and to cooperation. With no rewards, instruction,or even clear requests, they are motivated to

collaborate and cooperate.

Felix Warneken

Experiment 1: child (18 months) andexperimenter play a collaborative game.

Question 1: are young children engaged by

this?

Question 2: if the experimenter stopscollaborating, will the children attempt

to get him to continue?

Acts to restore a mutual game


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Acts to restore a mutual game


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Collaboration

18 month old children collaborate with others.

Collaboration is actively maintained: when the experimenter

breaks off, child actively works to get him back in the game.

These kinds of actions appear in the middle of the second year.


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Helping

In a collaboration, the child and adult have a common goal.

What happens when the adult has a goal that doesnt even

involve the child?

Next experiments: adult attempts to accomplish something andis thwarted. Child (14 or 18 months) watches.

NB: the child isn't involved in the adult's activity.

the adult doesn't ask for help.the adult doesn't reward the child for helping.

Six situations: 3 retrieving out of reach objects; 3 others.


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Case 1: Experimenter drops a clothespin, child = 14 mos.


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Case 2: Exp. fails at stacking books, child = 18 mos.


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How much are they helping?

18 months

14 months

14 mos: retrieving

out of reach objects.

18 mos: almost all

situations tested.


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Cooperation: Summary and Question

By 18 months, children help unrelated adults quite extensively,

without being asked and without rewards.At 14 months, helping is less extensive but does occur.

At younger ages, no such actions have been observed.

Why this development?

Warneken and Tomasello: children are naturally motivated to help

others. They begin helping as they are capable of it.

An alternative: from birth, children observe others being helpful to

them. They learn to do the same by observation and imitation.

To distinguish, need studies of younger infants. But younger infants

don't have the needed behavioral capacities.

A solution: allow young infants to observe acts of helping & test

their evaluations of the helper. (Hamlin, Bloom & Wynn, 2007)


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Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers


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Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers

test: at 6 months, a different experimenter, blind to condition,

presents the two objects within the infant's reach

test: at 3 months, the two objects appear side by side and looking

is measured.

Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers: 6 mos.


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p

control condition: same directions of motion but no animacy

neutral condition: bystander who neither helps nor hinders.

At 6 months, more reaching to helpers than hinderers.


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Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers: 3 mos.

At 3 months, longer looking at helpers or bystanders than hinderers.

Do infants understand helping? Are they naturally


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Do infants understand helping? Are they naturally

helpful?

these questions are open: much more work to do.

for 3 month old infants, the study of cooperation is about at the

point of the study of depth perception in Fantz's day.

But as in Fantz's day, psychologists have the tools to find out.

Wow, effortful !

Wow, 3D!

helping and hindering!

moving in same or

opposite directions, or...

20. origins 2013 ind diffs concl. and social cognition 1 (4)

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