The Way in Which Cognitive and Social Factors Contribute to the Development of the Theory of Mind - Essay Example

351 PY Advanced Developmental Psychology Discuss, with reference to psychological theory and research the way in which cognitive and social factors contribute to the development of development of the theory of mind. Lecturers: Laura Taylor and Andrew Holliman Hand in date: 19the April 201 Discuss, with reference to psychological theory and research the way in which cognitive and social factors contribute to the development of development of the theory of mind. One of the greatest achievements of human evolution is the ability to represent, conceptualise and reason on mental states. The working of the mind is taken as a qualification for natural language acquisition, social interaction, moral development and knee-jerk thought. Theory of mind is the capability to reason about mental states. Theory of mind hypothesises unobservable, forecasts them from observables and uses them to make clear other observables. This refers to the ability to attribute mental states to others such as beliefs and doubts, and use these hypothetical and unobservable entities to anticipate others’ behaviour. Mental states are not directly observable, but they may be used to make predictions on observable behaviour of others. Social development psychology focuses on antecedents such as parental practices and cultural contexts of child outcomes like academic and social wellbeing. Researchers in social development undertake enormous correlation studies occurring in field settings and natural variations in social input, in a bid to establish how these components affect children’s wellbeing. They explore numerous outcomes like social relations, identity, emotion, parental and cultural influences and self regulation on developmental outcomes (Smith and Hart 2002: 89). Cognitive development focuses on how cognition operates in infants and children, as well as when cognitive competencies arise. Researchers in cognitive development focus on young children’s basic skills on; how children comprehend and represent numbers, objects, events and other people. Theory of mind development is a field of cognitive development research, which explores the nature and development of human understanding of the mental world. The mental/inner world is inhabited by beliefs, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, desires, intents and other mental states (Taylor 2005: 6). The 20th century was characterised by numerous evolutions on the theory of mind development. These theories are categorized into environmental learning, biological learning, cultural context and constructivists. Behavioural theorists like Skinner (Keenan & Evans, 2009) assert that learning is typified as the procedure by which a living being is moulded by experience. Environmental learning theorists hold that the external environment has the greatest impact on the theory of mind development. Biological theorists like Freud Sigmund (Kessenich &Morrison, 2013) posit that biologically and hereditarily set patterns of change have a superior impact than the environmental influences. Cultural perspective psychologists like Vygotsky (Mcleod, 2013) posited that, whereas experiential and biological components exert, significant influences on development. Biological and Experiential components are sieved through a person’s cultural and social context. This implies that a person’s behaviour is shaped by the wider social values. For instance, dressing code varies across cultures, and a child adopts the dressing codes that are acceptable to his/ her social context. (Kessenich and Morrison 2013, Olson and Dweek 2008: 194). Vygotsky notes that activities and customs of certain social groups are formed by the collective cultural and social experiences of their ancestors. Through influences on parenting, customs and practices and the environment, culture shapes the language, cognitive and social development in children. This was demonstrated by the academic performance, where Asian migrant children outperformed their white peers in the United States (Centre for migration studies et al, 2007, p 158). Vygotsky held that infants are born with fundamental abilities for intellectual development, which are attention, perception, sensation and memory. Ultimately, through interaction within their socio-cultural environment, memory, perception sensation and attention are advanced into more complex and effective mental process, which he calls higher mental functions. For instance, memory in young children is constrained by biological elements (Astington and Edward 2010). Nonetheless, culture determines the kind of memory people develop. For illustration, in literate cultures, people learn to take notes to assist memory, but in pre-literate societies; other tactics have to be developed such as carrying pebbles (Mcleod 2013). Vygotsky asserts that intellectual adaptations allow children to utilise their integral mental functions, which are culturally established in order to function more effectively. These are such as the use of mind maps. A mind map is a graphical manner of representing thoughts and ideas. It is a visual tool for thinking, which aids in structuring information to enable a person to better analyze, grasp, synthesise, remember and produce fresh ideas (Flavell 2004: 280). Vygotsky holds that children are curious and vigorously engaged in their own learning, discovery and development of new schema (Mcleod 2013). Significant learning by the child arises through social interaction with a competent instructor. The instructor can model behaviours and offer verbal instructions through cooperative dialogue. The child seeks to comprehend the actions given by the instructor; usually a parent, and then internalizes the information as a guide to their own performance (Goswami 2002, Campbell and Muncer 1998: 28). For instance, a girl poorly performs poorly alone in trying to solve the jigsaw puzzle. Then her father sits with her, explaining some tactics for solving the puzzle and offering encouragement. As she gains competence, the father permits her to work autonomously. Therefore, this kind of social interaction through dialogue fosters cognitive development (Mcleod, 2013). The constructivist approach highlights on the balanced interaction of nurture and nature in forming the basis for development change. In such a framework, both the environment and genetics play a significant role and it is from the vibrant links between inner and outer influences that eventually shape growth. Piaget’s hypothesis of cognitive growth holds that children construct their knowledge depending on the combination of inputs obtained from maturational and environmental sources. In his stage theory, Piaget holds that children grow through a sequence of qualitative transformations, developing from simple to more complex levels of thoughts. According to Piaget, a child’s perception and comprehension of the world are innately programmed changes and therefore these transformations are universal. The main stages of cognitive development according to stage theory are sensormotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. Children in preoperational stage represent reality by using symbols like mental images and language. In concrete operational stage, children transform from simple mental representation of objects to logical integration and shift these objects into actions. Piaget’s observation of children playing games by the rules, children conflicting over rules and children was the basis of his hypothesis on children’s moral understandings. Children playing marble game constantly changed and conflicted over playing rules, whist some cheated during play. For illustration, Piaget posed the dilemma of whether a child who accidentally broke 15 cups was naughtier than a child who willingly broke one cup. He found that children in different stages respond differently. Children in their early years said that children who broke 15 cups were naughtier as more cups were broken by that child. Older children made their decisions based on intentions of the actors. Thus, older children held that intentionally breaking one cup is naughtier than accidentally breaking fifteen cups (Pressley & McCormick, 2007, p74). He proposed two stages of moral development in the early primary years, which he termed as the stage of heteronomous morality. The other stage is the autonomous morality stage reflecting the thinking of older children (Schneider, Hengsteler and Sodian 2006: 121). Other scholars have accepted the stage theory of development such as psychosexual development by Freud and moral reasoning by Kohlberg (Kessenich & Morrison, 2013), whereas other psychologists such as, Fischer Kurt and Case Robbie dispute Piaget’s theory of stage development. Neo-Pigetian theorists stress on particular strategies and concepts in opposition to Piaget’s generalization of complex mental operations. Case theory speculates that there are eight domains of knowledge, and each has a central cognitive structure ( Keenan, Evans, 2007, p 182). These are number, spatial associations, social connections, logical analysis, musical ability, motor ability, language and intrapersonal comprehension. Throughout development, these domains undergo main makeovers as well as increase in capacity, which in turn influence other areas of development (Pressley and McCormick 2007: p 73). Therefore, cognitive development is perceived as an increment in mental space or other schemas that a child can use at once. Young children have very particular and focused schemas like how to colour with a crayon. As a child practices these abilities, he/she becomes more proficient, making available some mental space to utilise for fresh information or more testing problems (Ferrari,  Vuletiâc & Case,2010, p 180). Neurologic maturation also creates mental space, implying that schemas coordinate with one another to create high-order cognitive structures capable of more sophisticated activities (Sutton and Knight 2004: 48). Diverse processing aptitudes and dexterity may be required to solve alternate forms of the same logic problem. This explains why a child may have changing performance levels on logically similar tasks at a given point in the development (Shaffer 2009: 178). Case ( Keenan, Evans, 2007, p 184) offered four stages of cognitive development that happen in an invariant sequence. The sequencing is constant as every stage reflects differentiation, harmonization and consolidation of schemas present in the immediately preceding stage. Schemas that were once separate merge to form larger and stronger schemas. These larger schemas are increasingly coordinated with one another, and stronger schemas coordinated with each other permit more developed performance. For illustration, a four year old may draw a human figure with numerous global features of human beings while a slightly older child may draw a more differentiated figure in relation to a larger scene. Case (2010) explains that drawings of the older child signify differentiation that is not presenting in younger children. He explains that drawing ability improves since only schemas that are highly practiced may be differentiated into new schemas. This practice has to happen until the child can routinely perform the behaviours that once took considerable attention and effort (Carruthers and Smith, 1996: 184). Case’ (Ferrari,  Vuletiâc &  Case,2010, p 188) theory advances several elements to explain the developmental increases in the short term memory. One is that practicing a process makes it more automatic. For illustration, the children drawing example makes drawing automatic. The reason is that the available capacity is utilised more efficiently, allowing more processes to be harmonised concurrently and incorporated in consciousness. Secondly, children enhance their competence to change their attention rapidly with the development. Development also helps in getting better at moving diverse sources of information and centring concentration on task relevant information and ignoring task irrelevant input. Finally, as permanent memory grows and is better organised, information masses are larger. The actual working memory increases as a function of neurological maturation (Malle: 12; Hughes 2004: 593). Fischer’s (Pressley and McCormick 2007: p 73) Theory of cognitive development acknowledges that children achieve numerous tasks using a variety of skills. Fischer’s theory centres on particular skills rather than schemas to show how children solve cognitive problem tasks (Doherty 2008: 175). Children’s capacity within an aptitude is subjective to the extent to which their central nervous system has matured, as well as, the exposure the children have had to multiple kinds of the learning environment and situations (Sutton & Knight, 2004, p 56). Acquisition of skills is hence largely a function of a child’s support from interactions with other people and the environment. This approach builds on Piaget’s hypothesis of the child as an active learner and recognises the significance of both physical maturation and experience. Fischer’s (2004) theory also highlights the qualitative changes that arise in a child’s thinking. For instance, preschoolers can solve simple addition problems using various strategies like counting quietly or using fingers. It is complex to explain numerous skills in terms of stages or to associate them to stages. According to Fischer (Novak & Pelaez, 2004, p 238), a child’s skills highly depend on the child’s experience in the realm of competence like arithmetic. Diverse aptitudes are used in various realms. Skills are learned in the context, with the distinct skills children acquire largely by the contexts of experience. With increasing experience, distinct skills are generalised beyond the original situations in which they are learned and assimilated with similar skills. Every stage of maturity depends on brain development, which has a series of brain growth spurts that are related to, and might cause cognitive and behavioural changes (Novak & Pelaez, 2004, p 242). Fischer (Pressley and McCormick 2007: P 74) theory posits that development is not continuous with the last growth spurt happening at around 25 years of age. The stages of growth have intense implications for functioning so that behavioural, cognitive and emotional changes arise in parallel (Benson and Jodie et al 2005: 4 and Haith 2010: 504). Conclusion Recent research shows that infants exhibit behaviours which are essential beginnings for theory of mind development. By the time children are two years, they clearly show awareness and consciousness of the differentiation linking thoughts in the mind and things in the world. For instance, in pretend play where a block is represented as a car, children exhibit that they can clearly distinguish between an object and thoughts concerning the object that is, taking the block as a car. Children also appreciate that people will experience happiness if they obtain what they want and feel cheerless when they do not. Children are also conscious of the distinction involving what they want and what another individual wants. Language development is observable at 2-3 years where children talk about what other people want and feel. At four years of age, fundamental development occurs when children acknowledge the thoughts in the mind might not be true. Some elements of the social environment influence the rate of symbolic growth of theory of mind. For illustration, children exhibit earlier consciousness of mental states and conditions if their mothers talk about feelings, thoughts and wants, and offer explanations whenever correcting misconduct. It has also been established that children who have brothers and/ or sisters become sentient of mental conditions faster than an only child (Astington & Edward, 2010). Children’s participation in pretend play, experiences of a story book reading and conversing with others with regard to past encounters also influence the rate of development. Executive functions; language competencies and cognitive abilities that standardize behaviour are the internal factors that influence theory of mind development rate. Development of theory of mind has also been shown to have consequences on social functioning and school success for children. For instance, children with more advanced theory of mind are better communicators and are competent resolving disagreements with their peers. Nevertheless, a more developed theory of mind may be used in unconstructive ways such as bullying and teasing. References Astington, J. W and Edward, M. 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(2005) Introducing Cognitive Development. Hove: Psychology Press. Read More