352 notes PDF

Preview

Summary

notes...

Description

5.1: Self  The many facets of self  Facets o The ecological self  Our perceptual and motor sense of self  It utilizes what our senses perceive, responding to where we are relative to objects in the external world.  It is automatic, immediate, and nonverbal o The interpersonal self  Our sense of being an interactive partner to other, international agents  Still face paradigm- person is interacting with baby and baby is interacting back. Suddenly person stops interacting with baby and the baby does everything in its power to regain the person’s attention  This effect is present as early as 1.5 months of age  Infants seem to share the expectation that social overtures will be reciprocated o The extended self  Our sense of ourselves as progressing along an autobiographical timeline  We think of ourselves as linked to the past through memories  We extend ourselves into the future every time we think about what will likely happen next o The private self  Recognition that we have certain privileged experiences, including dreams, perspective, background, and unique body sensations  Felt understanding o The conceptual self  Our self-descriptions including our understanding of our roles and identities  This is often called our “categorical self”  This is the sense of self most influenced by other people and the surrounding culture  The earliest self  When does a baby understand that they exist separately from the rest of the world? o There is compelling evidence that infants have a rudimentary sense of self in the first few months of life o There is mostly just circumstantial evidence: o Looming objects  Even newborn infants flinch and blink at looming objects when they appear to be on a collision course with them  They do not flinch or blink when the object appears to be on a course that will just pass them o Moving a mobile  By 2 to 4 months of age, infants have a sense of their ability to control objects outside of themselves o Moving images  Infants look longer at images that show themselves as others see them o Moving v static  At 5 months, the behave differently to photos or movies of themselves  They prefer movies of themselves

o o

o

o

o

Following adult gaze and pointing  Implies that infants recognize that other people are separate entities Studies of visual self regard  Put a red dot on the child's forehead and see if they reach to wipe it off their head or not and if they reach to wipe it off the mirror. This will show if they understand that the image in the mirror is themselves  During the 1st year, babies will smile and vocalize at the image in the mirror  But before 28 months, they will not show self recognition in the Rouge test The power of the third year  This fits with other evidence that something important happens around two years of age  After this age, many children recognize themselves in photos  Constructing the self in the third year  Children’s self awareness becomes quite clear  2 year olds experience embarrassment and shame which our emotions that require a sense of self  This is also the period of self assertion which leads to the nickname “the terrible twos”  2 year olds are entering the stage of autonomy (independent and have some control of what happens to you) Perspective taking  Starts to develop in toddlers in the third year of life and it is linked to the onset of child’s use of I and you in speech  Linked with culture  Children growing up in collectivist cultures, which value connection more than individualism, generally have greater perspective taking than others from individualistic cultures, whose focus is more on the self The extended self is our sense of ourselves as progressing along a timeline  Forgetting and remembering ourselves  Our extended self has boundaries. Infantile amnesia is that most of us can’t remember anything prior to 2.5 years old  Infantile amnesia possible reasons  Formatting  The basic memory code or format may have changed with age in ways that make early memories no longer accessible later  There are important changes in thought as children develop. One of the most important is a shift from purely sensorimotor thought to mental representation and civil use  A not B task relates to this  Language is the most powerful symbol system we have and after we develop memories formatted with language and symbols, preverbal memories are extremely hard to access  Brain changes

  

 





 

Immature brain regions may be unable to preserve memories The hippocampus plays a role in transferring information from short term memory to long term memory as well as retrieving memories The neural change hypothesis suggest that brain structures involved in memory, including the hippocampus and certain frontal lobe regions, must mature before they can set up and maintain prominent mental stores In the first year of life, some hippocampal regions are known to be quite immature and perhaps they are unable to help form stable memories of conscious experiences

Cueing  Early memories may actually be present and potentially accessible later in life but they may not be easily retrieved unless the right kind of cues are made  This theory emphasizes how the ability to cue or trigger memories changes with age in ways that may make very early memories inaccessible  The best memory cues often take the same form as the memory itself  Kids go to a lab and play with toys. A year later, they come back and seem to play with the toys they have seen before more. They implicitly know they have been there before but they do not remember it explicitly  In general, nonverbal cues are easier for triggering memories in children There is evidence for all three models of infantile amnesia. The memory format change hypothesis and the cueing hypothesis both depend very directly on the emergence of children’s language skills as crucial for the development of accessibility to long term memories Autobiographical memories o Explicit memories of events that took place at specific times and places in the individuals past o They are long lasting memories of one’s journey through life o These include information about one’s goals, intentions, emotions, and reactions relative to these events o They incorporate not just the details of events but also the meaning of events to the individual o These get strung together into a narrative of one’s life o Autobiographical memories are supported by cognitive development and social experiences Explicit rehearsal of past events o Kids tell stories of what they did and this helps them with memories Development of narrative skills o Use orienting information to provide context o Include more referential details

Include evaluative information that conveys one’s own response to the event Social sharing of memories o Talking about past events with people makes those events easier to recall o Parents often add detail to a child’s story which helps the child have more to recall in the future and makes it easier for them to remember it o Children’s mothers who use a more elaborative style remember more than children whose mothers rarely elaborate Development of a sense of self o The child’s emerging sense of self may provide important support for the development of long term autobiographical memories o A sense of self takes considerable time to develop Self in childhood o At age 3 and 4, children understand themselves in terms of concrete observable characteristics related to physical attributes and abilities. They give less emphasis to their social relationships and their psychological traits. It emphasizes an optimism and unrealistic positivity o Children begin to refine their conceptions of self in elementary school because they increasingly engage in social comparisons. They increasingly pay attention to discrepancies between their own and other’s performance on a task o Middle to late elementary school children’s conceptions of themselves begin to become integrated and more broadly encompassing Optimism bias o Young children have a tendency to see themselves and their accomplishments as singularly outstanding with a lack of any modesty o Will you always be the way you are? The optimism bias in young children is remarkable o Children’s optimism may help protect them from being discouraged by the inevitable failures that come with being unskilled in so many areas The conceptual self at middle childhood o The developmental changes in older adolescents conception of self reflect cognitive advances in their ability to use higher order concepts that integrate more specific behavioral features of the self o Older children can coordinate opposing self representations o Older children can construct more global views of themselves and can evaluate themselves as a person overall o











Self descriptions reflect the fact that school children’s self assessments are increasingly based on the evaluations of others, especially their peers  Adolescence o The ability to use abstract thinking allows adolescents to conceive of themselves in terms of abstract characteristics that encompass a variety of concrete characteristics and behaviors o Cognitive distortions of the self in adolescence Personal fable  An adolescent’s fascination with one’s own thoughts and belief that his or her thoughts, experiences, and ideas are unique and cannot be well understood by others  “I am highly special and unlike anyone else”  This is the belief behind “but you don’t know how it feels! My parents don’t understand me”  Can cause a teen to believe that nothing bad could possibly happen to someone so exceptional  Has been connected to common adolescent risk taking behaviors such as promiscuous or unprotected sex, use of alcohol or illicit drugs, and physically dangerous acts, like driving without a license or driving recklessly or while intoxicated Imaginary audience  A cognitive distortion in which adolescents believe that they are the focus of everyone else’s attention and concern These are both types of egocentrism that are normal o Contradictions Adolescents often begin to agonize over contradictions in their behavior and characteristics They tend to become introspective and concerned with questions of “Who am I?” Most still don’t have the cognitive skills needed to integrate their recognition of these contradictions into a coherent sense of self Thus, adolescents often feel confused and concerned about who they really are  Growing through adolescence o An individual’s conception of self becomes more integrated and less determined by what others think o Their self conceptions often reflect internalized personal values and beliefs and standards o More likely to have the cognitive capacity to integrate contradictions in the self that occurs in different contexts or at different times  Self esteem: what we think about what we think we know about ourselves o It is our overall evaluation of the self and our feelings that appear as a result of this evaluation o It relates to how satisfied people are with their lives and with their own overall outlook  Why it matters o



     







o Low self esteem in adolescence Aggression, depression, substance abuse, social withdrawal, and suicide ideation o Low self esteem in adults later Mental health problems, substance abuse, criminal behavior, weak economic prospects, and low levels of satisfaction with life and relationships o It is not clear whether low self esteem causes such problems or if both are due to some third factor  Sources of self esteem o Genetic inheritance o Appearance and competence o School and neighborhood o Various cultural factors  The self as social o One of the most important influences on children’s self esteem is the approval and support they receive from others o The “looking glass self” Cooley (1902)  Self regard reflected in social regard  We develop our sense of self esteem by internalizing the views of others have of us o Parents who tend to be accepting and involved with their child and who use supportive yet firm child rearing practices tend to have children with high self esteem o Parents who regularly react to their children’s unacceptable behavior with belittlement or rejection are likely to instill in a child a sense of worthlessness and of being loved only to the extent that they meet parental standards  Peer and the self o Children’s self esteem is increasingly affected by peer acceptance o A child’s self esteem also affects how peers respond to them  Increasing autonomy o Adolescents increasingly use internalized standards to evaluate themselves and their self esteem becomes less tied to the approval of others o Adolescent girls’ self esteem is increasingly linked to their feelings that they have relationship authenticity (they can be themselves in terms of thoughts and feelings in their social interactions) o Adolescents who continue to base their self evaluations on others’ standards and approval are at risk for psychological problems

5.2: Mental Representations and Symbols

 













Mental representation is the defining characteristic of all thought after Piaget’s sensorimotor period Mental representation o The representation of objects, ideas, images, actions, events, concepts and so on in the head o And the act of manipulation of these mental images by organizing, categorizing, sequencing, juxtapositioning, linking, operation on, reverse engineering, and so on o To solve problems, amuse, create, recall, reconstruct, anticipate, communicate, and so on o Frees you from having to act overtly o It is fast, flexible, and less error prone o Provides mobility of thought Symbols o Using things (icons, pictures, numbers, letters, symbols) to stand for, signify, communicate other things (ideas, images, concepts, events, relations, etc) o The Voynich Manuscript has long been considered the most mysterious manuscript in the world because we don’t understand its symbols o Despite nearly 800 years of studying, no one has come close to deciphering it because we don’t understand its symbols Symbol Use o Facilitates communication o Make it possible to use scale models, maps, drawings, picture books, toys o Novel and creative use of objects including fantasy play Language is the clearest illustration of symbol use o Language is both generative and universal o Generative means that it can be used in an almost infinite variety of ways and regularly is. Most people have never heard the things they say exactly said that way before Word learning o The process of fast-mapping of words to meaning can add 500 words per month to a toddler’s lexicon o Fast mapping- the hypothesized mental process whereby a new concept is learned (or a new hypothesis formed) based only on minimal exposure to a given unit of information (ex. On exposure to a word in an informative context where its referent is present) o Lexicon  the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge  The complete set of meaningful units in a language Semantics and word meaning o The “riddle of reference”  It’s impossible to know what a reference implies to  Does it mean the whole object, its parts, its activities, its color, its shape  Is it something about the speaker’s feelings  He talks about us getting dropped into a native land and a native pointing at an animal and saying a word that we don’t know Constraints of word meaning o If a child entertained all these possible meanings every time he heard a new word, he would never be able to begin building a vocabulary

If most possible meanings are ruled out from the start, word learning becomes feasible o Constraints on word learning reduce the number of possible meanings. Even very young children use these constraints Perceptual constraints o How our perception parses the world o Biases towards certain interpretations of words that arise from the way our perceptual system naturally carves up the world into distinct objects and events o Mostly focused on vision but can include all the senses o Shape bias  Objects of roughly the same shape are assumed to have the same name and objects with different shapes are assumed to have different names o Connected surface bias  Infants have a bias towards seeing thing as one object not two when they have shared connected edges  Things that appeared fused are the same object Conceptual constraints o What we know about concepts o Use concepts knowledge to attach meanings to words o Make some kinds of categories or relationships seem more natural o Whole-object bias  Describes our preference for labeling whole bounded objects rather than object parts or the relationships to others  Infants assume that the novel word refers to the whole object as opposed to its properties such as its color or texture Pragmatic constraints o What we know about the goals and beliefs of speakers o They realize that speakers will not ask for objects they are already holding for example o If there are two objects and they already know the name of one, they assume the new name must refer to the new object (principle of mutual exclusivity) o Speakers’ emotions and gaze o They understand when you refer to one duck you mean an “instance/name” but if you refer to multiple ducks as duck you must mean a “category” Categorizing objects o One of the challenges children face as the begin to use symbols is figuring out how to link features with the symbols especially their verbal labels Characteristic features o Are the properties most typically associated with members of a category Defining features o Properties that pertain to what the word really means and how adults would tell whether it applies in a particular case Researchers presented kids with stories displaying either defining or characteristic features to figure out when kids we able to decipher between the two The youngest children bases their judgement on the characteristic features but older children used defining features mostly Nonverbal symbolic representation o Drawings, maps, and models o Using maps and models o







  

  

Almost all cultures use these to illustrate things in the world These symbols are structured so that they directly correspond to the spatial relations in the real world  Require dual representation o Dual representation  Viewing a symbolic object as both an object in its own right and a symbol  Scale models, maps, drawings, picture books, toys Experiment: put a small toy in a small replica of the room and ask the kid to go into the big room and find the actual toy o 3 yr olds were able to use the model to figure out where the real toy was o 2.5 yr olds were not able to and failed to recognize the symbolic representation between the model and the room it stands for Experiment: reasoning between the model and the larger space wasn’t necessary. An experimenter showed each child a shrinking machine and explained that the machine could make things get little. Even two yr olds knew exactly where to look now. This works because the children believe the model is the room so they don’t need to use symbolic relation between the two spaces and no need for dual representation Investigators often use anatomically detailed dolls to interview young children in cases of suspected sexual abuse, assuming that the relation between the doll and themselves would be obvious. However, children younger than 5 often failed to make this connection so the use of the doll does not improve their memory and can even make them less reliable Maps allow people to see and to think about multiple relations among locations as well as spaces that are much larger than can be directly perceived Understanding maps of large-scale space o Maps depict spatial information and thus allow a person to think about many more geographic scale locations o Maps allow us to plan and think about travel regardless of immediate goals o In on...