PSYC1030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Autism Spectrum, Gordon Allport, Litmus
Lecture 7 – 4th September
Part A
Social Development
First 6 months: Building Blocks of Social Cognition
• Newborn preferences
o Face-like stimuli
o Human speech
o Maternal language sounds
• Sensitivity to emotional cues
o Emotion recognition
o Appropriate espodig to othes eotios
6 to 18 months: Increasing Social Engagement
• Infants begin to actively seek information about the world through:
o Joint attention
o Social referencing
• Mothes saffold ifats udestadig of etal states ia oesatios about:
o Metal states of desie
o Ifats o etal state
• Emergence of prosocial behaviour
o “tats ith helpig
18 to 36 oths: “ese of “elf
• Eegee of a sese of self at aoud 18 oths of age
o Mirror self-recognition test
o Talk about own mental state of desire
18 to 36 months: Self vs. Other Distinction
• Buddig sese that the self is diffeet fo othe people
o Basi udestadig of othe peoples desies
• Scaffolded by mother-talk about:
o Thoughts and beliefs
o Othe peoples etal states
• Development in prosocial behaviour
o Sharing around 18+ months –
o Comforting around 24+ months
Pre-school Years: Development of Theory of Mind (ToM)
• Aility to udestad othe peoples etal states ad pedit suseuet ehaiou
o aka. id eadig, etalisig
ToM in Young Children
• Udestadig seeig
o Visual perspective taking
o 3-year-olds fail, 4-year-olds pass
• Understanding knowledge
o Appearance-reality task
• Understanding belief
o False belief test
o Litus test fo theoy of id
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o 3-year-olds fail, 5-year-olds pass (across cultures)
Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Characterised by deficits in social abilities
o Life without theory of mind?
Part B
Attitudes
GORDON ALLPORT ON ATTITUDES
The attitude is the ost distitie ad idispesale concept in contemporary American social
psyhology.
INTRODUCTION
• As human beings, we are able to represent a wide variety of cognitive constructs
• Our cognitive constructs can be relatively direct representations of things in the world, or
they can be representations of our predispositions to things in the world
• These predispositions can be:
o epeseted as pat of a su-osious tai of thought, o at ay leel of the
recursive hierarchy
o understood and manipulated relative to one another
o related to and/or attributed to the self
ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, VALUES, INTENTIONS, AND BEHAVIOUR
• These 'predispositional' cognitive constructs are typically studied in terms of their
relationship to behaviour what is the relationship between thought and action?
• Psychologists have proposed a number of related predispositional constructs, which are
both related and overlapping:
o attitudes
o beliefs
o values
o intentions
ATTITUDES
• Attitudes: beliefs about a social object or issue, with an evaluative dimension or judgment
• Attitudes deal ith a pesos alee judgets aout a soial ojet, ho they feel aout
it
• Example:
o Neymar is a great football player
o Sheep are the best animals in the world
o Climate change is the most terrible thing human beings have ever faced
BELIEFS
• Beliefs: the things that people know, or think they know, about social objects or issues
• Beliefs deal with the perceived truth of the world, without evaluation
• Beliefs need not be accurate or inaccurate
• Examples:
o Malcolm Turnbull is the prime minister of Australia
o Sheep are fluffy, docile creatures
o Climate change is real/not real
VALUES
• Values: abstract standards or moral beliefs by which people judge social objects or issues
• Values are thought to be more enduring, stable, and cross-contextually relevant than either
beliefs or attitudes
• Values, like attitudes, have an evaluative component
• Examples:
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
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