Social interaction and the development of cognitive operations

This paper presents two experiments to support the general hypothesis that the coordination of actions between individuals promotes the acquisition of cognitive coordinations. The first experiment shows that two children, working together, can successfully perform a task involving spatial coordinations; children of the same age, working alone, are not capable of performing the task. The second experiment shows that subjects who did not possess certain cognitive operations involved in Piaget's conservation of liquids task acquire these operations after having actualized them in a social coordination task.     

Social interaction and cognitive growth: An examination through the role‐taking skills of deaf and hearing children

Recent research using theory‐of‐mind tasks has rekindled interest in the possibility that social interaction makes a significant contribution to cognitive development. It is proposed here that this contribution may be most pronounced with phenomena that, like belief or affective states, are internal and abstract. A more modest contribution is envisaged with phenomena that are overt and perceptible. The proposal is explored via comparison of deaf and hearing children's ability to engage in affective and perceptual role‐taking, since the aspects of social interaction that have been implicated in cognitive development are known to be problematic for deaf children. Therefore, the proposal of more marked consequences for internal and abstract phenomena leads to the hypothesis that deaf children should lag behind hearing children on affective role‐taking, while showing little or no difference on perceptual role‐taking. The hypothesis was tested in two studies, one involving 10 deaf children and 10 hearing children aged 6.94– 8.93 years and the other involving 25 deaf children and 20 hearing children aged 5.08– 11.58 years. In both studies, affective role‐taking was examined using a task developed from Chandler (1973), while perceptual role‐taking was examined via an extension of Hughes and Donaldson's (1979) hiding task. The results provide consistent support for the hypothesis, and patterns of correlation between age, affective performance and perceptual performance give clues to the relevant developmental mechanisms.     

Neural correlates and causal mechanisms

What Joseph Neisser calls for is exactly right: more philosophy of science will help us better understand and refine the idea of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). But (i) the key bit of philosophy of science Neisser appeals to is itself in need of clarification; (ii) the orthodox NCC definition is more resourceful than Neisser allows, and (iii) it is possible to resist the phenomenological conception of conscious experience that fuels some of Neisser's argument.     

Modelling mechanisms with causal cycles

Mechanistic philosophy of science views a large part of scientific activity as engaged in modelling mechanisms. While science textbooks tend to offer qualitative models of mechanisms, there is increasing demand for models from which one can draw quantitative predictions and explanations. Casini et al. (Theoria 26(1):5–33, 2011) put forward the Recursive Bayesian Networks (RBN) formalism as well suited to this end. The RBN formalism is an extension of the standard Bayesian net formalism, an extension that allows for modelling the hierarchical nature of mechanisms. Like the standard Bayesian net formalism, it models causal relationships using directed acyclic graphs. Given this appeal to acyclicity, causal cycles pose a prima facie problem for the RBN approach. This paper argues that the problem is a significant one given the ubiquity of causal cycles in mechanisms, but that the problem can be solved by combining two sorts of solution strategy in a judicious way.     

Social interaction,social observation,and cognitive development in young children

Eighty first-grade childen were pretested on a variety of conservation tasks. Subjects who were either nonconservers or intermediate conservers were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: social interaction, social observation, and individual control. Subjects in the social interaction condition worked collaboratively on conservation tasks with a same sex partner. Subjects in the social observation condition individually observed pairs of subjects working together and control subjects worked individually on conservation tasks. The purpose of the social observation condition was to control for the effects of task relevant information that was expressed during dyadic interactions. All subjects were individually post-tested on conservation tasks that were the same form but different content than the pretest items. Subjects in the social interaction condition had significantly greater cogntive change scores (post-test less pretest) than subjects in the social observation and control conditions. There were no significant differences between change scores of subjects in the latter two conditions. Also, subjects in the social interaction condition gave significantly more novel explanations for conservation judgments than subjects in the social observation condition. These findings supported a socio-cognitive conflict model of cognitive development in young children.     

Knowing who dunnit: Infants identify the causal agent in an unseen causal interaction

Preverbal infants can represent the causal structure of events, including distinguishing the agentive and receptive roles and categorizing entities according to stable causal dispositions. This study investigated how infants combine these 2 kinds of causal inference. In Experiments 1 and 2, 9.5-month-olds used the position of a human hand or a novel puppet (causal agents), but not a toy train (an inert object), to predict the subsequent motion of a beanbag. Conversely, in Experiment 3, 10- and 7-month-olds used the motion of the beanbag to infer the position of a hand but not of a toy block. These data suggest that preverbal infants expect a causal agent as the source of motion of an inert object.     

How pills undermine skills: Moralization of cognitive enhancement and causal selection

Despite the promise to boost human potential and wellbeing, enhancement drugs face recurring ethical scrutiny. The present studies examined attitudes toward cognitive enhancement in order to learn more about these ethical concerns, who has them, and the circumstances in which they arise. Fairness-based concerns underlay opposition to competitive use—even though enhancement drugs were described as legal, accessible and affordable. Moral values also influenced how subsequent rewards were causally explained: Opposition to competitive use reduced the causal contribution of the enhanced winner’s skill, particularly among fairness-minded individuals. In a follow-up study, we asked: Would the normalization of enhancement practices alleviate concerns about their unfairness? Indeed, proliferation of competitive cognitive enhancement eradicated fairness-based concerns, and boosted the perceived causal role of the winner’s skill. In contrast, purity-based concerns emerged in both recreational and competitive contexts, and were not assuaged by normalization.     

体型知觉的准确性及其认知机制

体型知觉的准确性既和一般人群的心理健康水平有关,又对进食障碍的理解、预防和治疗具有重要意义。首先,进食障碍患者可能高估自己的身体,其体型知觉准确度可能受其BMI和症状的影响,并与患者预后相关。其次,通过和对他人体型估计的结果进行对比发现,对自己的体型的高估可能受到对自己身体态度因素的影响。第三,一般人群对自己的体型估计的结果往往不一致,这可能是体型知觉的不同量化方式所致。最后,体型知觉准确性的相关认知机制主要有收缩偏差、视觉适应和序列依赖效应。     

Adjusting for the correspondence bias: Effects of causal uncertainty, cognitive busyness, and causal strength of situational information

This research examined the conditions under which people who have more chronic doubt about their ability to make sense of social behavior (i.e., are causally uncertain; [Weary and Edwards, 1994] and [Weary and Edwards, 1996]) are more likely to adjust their dispositional inferences for a target’s behaviors. Using a cognitive busyness manipulation within the attitude attribution paradigm, we found in Study 1 that higher causal uncertainty predicted increased correction of dispositional inferences, but only when participants had sufficient attentional resources to devote to the task. In Study 2, we found that higher-causal uncertainty predicted greater inferential correction, but only when the additional information provided a more compelling alternative explanation for the observed behavior. Results of this research are discussed in terms of their relevance to the Causal Uncertainty (Weary & Edwards, 1994) and dispositional inference models.     

From Social Withdrawal to Social Confidence: Evidence for Possible Pathways

Children born with a possible predisposition toward shyness face many social challenges. Researchers over the past four decades have begun to identify specific factors that influence shy children’s social skill development and their level of peer acceptance. The purpose of this article is to review factors across each developmental stage that have been found to either promote or hinder the development of social competence and peer acceptance in shy children. These factors include physiological differences, caregiver influences, emotion socialization, friendships, general peer support, coping skills, organized social activities, and socioeconomic status.     

Cue interaction and judgments of causality: Contributions of causal and associative processes

In four experiments, the predictions made by causal model theory and the Rescorla-Wagner model were tested by using a cue interaction paradigm that measures the relative response to a given event based on the influence or salience of an alternative event. Experiments 1 and 2 uncorrelated two variables that have typically been confounded in the literature (causal order and the number of cues and outcomes) and demonstrated that overall contingency judgments are influenced by the causal structure of the events. Experiment 3 showed that trial-by-trial prediction responses, a second measure of causal assessment, were not influenced by the causal structure of the described events. Experiment 4 revealed that participants became less sensitive to the influence of the causal structure in both their ratings and their predictions as trials progressed. Thus, two experiments provided evidence for high-level (causal reasoning) processes, and two experiments provided evidence for low-level (associative) processes. We argue that both factors influence causal assessment, depending on what is being asked about the events and participants' experience with those events.     

From Social Withdrawal to Social Confidence: Evidence for Possible Pathways

Children born with a possible predisposition toward shyness face many social challenges. Researchers over the past four decades have begun to identify specific factors that influence shy children’s social skill development and their level of peer acceptance. The purpose of this article is to review factors across each developmental stage that have been found to either promote or hinder the development of social competence and peer acceptance in shy children. These factors include physiological differences, caregiver influences, emotion socialization, friendships, general peer support, coping skills, organized social activities, and socioeconomic status.     

社会互动加工的认知特性及脑机制——第三人称的视角

在日常生活中, 从“第三人称”的视角识别并理解他人的社会互动至关重要。这种社会互动加工具有两种认知特性：构形整体性和动作关联性; 体现为一个由众多脑区共同参与的层级加工过程, 主要包括个体知觉网络、动作观察网络和心智化网络。其中, 后颞上沟等脑区在表征社会互动关系中起着关键作用。未来的研究需要结合多种技术手段进一步揭示社会互动加工的遗传特性和神经机制, 并关注它在实际生活中的应用。     

Social support and verbal interaction are differentially associated with cognitive function in midlife and older age

Social engagement is associated with healthy aging and preserved cognition. Two dimensions of engagement, verbal interactions and perceived support, likely impact cognition via distinct mechanistic pathways. We explored the cognitive benefit of each construct among enrollees (N = 1,052, mean age = 60.2 years) in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention study, who provide neuropsychological and sociobehavioral data at two-year intervals. Outcomes included six cognitive factor scores representing key domains of executive function and memory. Key predictors included self-reported perceived social support and weekly verbal interaction. Results indicated that after adjusting for lifestyle covariates, social support was positively associated with Speed and Flexibility and that verbal interactions were associated with Verbal Learning and Memory. These findings suggest that support, which may buffer stress, and verbal interaction, an accessible, aging-friendly form of environmental enrichment, are uniquely beneficial. Both are integral in the design of clinical and community interventions and programs that promote successful aging.     

The causal role of theories of relationships: consequences for satisfaction and cognitive strategies

Two studies demonstrated the causal role of relationship theories in influencing relationship satisfaction and the processes affecting satisfaction. In both studies, participants were induced to hold either the soulmate or work-it-out theory. Feelings that one's partner was ideal (or not) were associated with relationship satisfaction more strongly for people induced to hold the soulmate theory than the work-it-out theory (Study 1). In Study 2, participants' beliefs about their relationships were threatened, and strategies for responding to this threat were assessed. Inducing people to hold the soulmate theory resulted in more relationship-enhancing cognitions if participants believed they were with the right person but more relationship-detracting cognitions if participants did not believe they were with the right person. These polarizing tendencies were enhanced under threat. In contrast, inducing people to hold a work-it-out theory produced almost no biased processing, leading people to process information similarly, regardless of their feelings about their partner.     

Social regulation and individual cognitive function: Effects of individuation on cognitive performance

Numerous experiments have illustrated the intervention of social regulations in individual cognitive functioning, applying such concepts as social co-ordination, socio-cognitive conflict and social marking. Two experiments, involving secondary school pupils are presented within this general framework. The first tests the hypothesis that individual cognitive functioning, highlighted in a task requiring mobilization of knowledge learned to that end, can under certain conditions be regulated by experimentally induced social resources. The second experiment uses the same paradigm to compare the information processing, under anonymous versus individuated conditions, of pupils respectively with successful and unsuccessful academic histories. The results of both experiments indicate that cognitive functioning is strongly influenced by the social situations created within the experimental settings. These results are discussed in terms of the social meta systems which may intervene in cognitive processes.