Social development

The lecture Monday of week nine, discussing social cognitions, was really interesting to me. Social skills are vitally important to functioning well, so naturally it is something that likely develops early, and is something that is important to study, at these young ages. Social skills are vital for success, popularity, networking, communication, even survival. Not to mention, it arguably complements any other skill one might have as well. One can be extremely smart, but with out the ability to be socially aware they will not progress as far as they could. Obviously the key to success in social skills is the ability to gage and understand other experience, outside of your own experience. In other words to be able to understand what they know from their vantage point, and based on what they have and have not been present for. This is seen in 12-18 month olds in the barrio study. In addition to being adorable to watch, this is a very important skill to have. In the study babies saw an experimenter looking and talking about a spot on the wall. Some times the spot is visible to them and sometimes it isn’t, in both cases the baby is directed to that spot, through the actions of the experimenter. The ability to ascertain that, when another person has a different vantage point they are able to see different things, seems really basic, but if you think about it this is an important skill. We are very limited in what we can see, and lean on others to help us. This is especially true for babies. They are often less Mobil, meaning that taking cues as to were to go could be very advantageous. Also, if you look at child cognitive development through the Paigetian perspective children learn like little scientists, so the ability to take information of what to explore by reading cues from other people can also be very advantageous. The importance of these findings is also congruent with the sociocultural perspective, in that babies can learn more by using other people’s guidance. If they were left alone they might not be know what to look for. This might also give them clues about what is dangerous as well as interesting. The other study that we talked about, that gave insight into the social abilities of 18month olds is the what’s new study, where 18 month old babies were able to determine which toy an experimenter would want to play with based on what they had been present for, or attentive to. This social skill has important implications to social interacting. It is important to be aware of what others around you are aware of in order to successfully communicate with them. If you assume that others have the same information that you do, it would be impossible to communicate with them. This is just a beginning stage in understanding that other people don’t have the same information you do, and they might also have information you do not. We saw that with the little boy touching the chocolate cake and blaming it on his brother, whom his mother knew was at school, but he didn’t know was at school. It is interesting to see that primitive versions of important social skills develop so early in infants. Because they are so important it is really interesting and important to see how they develop. An understanding of this development can give us insight into how to better facilitate socialization, as well gauge the capabilities of babies.