Contingent interaction vs. Egocentric Communication

The topic of social cognition is very interesting to me and has made me become more aware and thankful of all the intricate yet simple knowledge that we develop. I have a better understanding of beliefs, thinking, knowing and pretending that makes me realize how lucky we are to have the cognitive/social abilities to reason about each topic. One particular concept that stood out to me was “contingent interaction” which starts at about 2 months of age. Contingent interaction is when a child starts to display reciprocal actions and reactions with other people. This means that children start to understand beyond their own wants and needs and also takes others into consideration. It just amazes me how infants can do this at a very young age. This idea challenges Piagetian Model, which claims that children in the Preoperational Period (2-7 Years) are still in the stage of egocentric communication. Egocentric communication is when a child communicates with another individual but doesn’t take the others perspective into consideration (its like having a one sided conversation). Piaget’s views claim that children aren’t able to take another individuals perspectives into account when conversing until they reach the Concrete operational stage (7-12 years). Some studies shown in class this Wednesday support the idea that children as young as 18 months old are able to recognize others desires. An example would be the test whether children handed broccoli or goldfish to an experimenter that expressed interest in the same item as they did (goldfish) or something that was different (broccoli). Younger children (14 months) would give the experimenter the goldfish because they assumed that because they themselves like the goldfish that the experimenter would too, and the older children (18 months) gave the experimenter what they wanted. This particular experiment also contradicts Piaget’s view of egocentric communication because it shows that children show contingent interaction way before Piaget’s Concrete Operational Period (7-12 years).
These findings show that children know the importance of paying attention to their social environment for better communication with others. Even before children can actually compose full sentences, evidence in class shows that they have an understanding of how to listen and better communicate with others. One example would be a child pretending to talk on the phone and having short breaks between babbling because they are imitating what a conversation sounds like. I was never blessed with younger siblings and find myself having a hard time interacting with infants and toddlers because I never know what they understand and don’t understand when it comes to conversing with them. I find myself in awkward situations when it comes to talking with toddlers and end up with them giving me funny looks because I tend to talk to them as if they were five years younger than they actually are. This class and the studies presented in them have taught me a lot about children’s social cognition and gives me a better understanding of what children of different ages comprehend.

Imaginary Companions in pretend play

Sarah Ennis
Blog #4

One of my most favorite topics of this course is the phenomenon of pretend play. Pretend play provides researchers with information about a child’s ability to perform abstract mental representations and learn social skills. Because most children engage in pretend play one could deduce that it must serve an important purpose in a child’s social and cognitive development. Otherwise, some children would engage in pretend play and others would not. Alison discussed different forms of role play. Two of the types of role-play, object or no objects as vehicle, often take the form of an imaginary or invisible companion. Not all children report having imaginary friends or companions. Alison Shawber discussed a study from her lab which found that 65% of children had Imaginary Friend(s) (Taylor, et al., 2004). My question is what determines whether a child will have an imaginary or invisible companion? One place to begin searching for the answer to this question is by considering that which separates children with IC’s versus children who do not (a child who may only pretend play with other children and not create or play with an IC)? She discussed certain characteristics that children with IC’s often possess including enhanced verbal ability, sociability, creativity, and others. Based on these enhanced abilities of children with IC’s and the fact that most children engage in some form of pretend play lead me to reason that the existence of an IC could be a child’s unconscious desire for additional social interaction perhaps to gain or sharpen certain social or mental skills. Children may not always have access to other children to play with, which may force create an imaginary friend or companion in order to fulfill this desire. Furthermore, a child may create an IC in the absence of actual children because they prefer ceratin characteristics of an IC versus an actual child. For instance, with an IC a child can control what elements of pretend play they explore as well as the behaviors or actions of the IC. This allows more flexibility, exposure to more creative play and possible more fun for the child. Interestingly, what type of play a child engages in is individual to each child. Although the answers to why pretend play exists may not be so explicit, implicitly it may serve an extremely important role in social and cognitive development.

Elizabeth Loftus

We talked briefly on Wednesday November, 7th about the work of Elizabeth Loftus concerning the suggestibility of memory. Loftus has created quite a name for herself in this area of study, and a lot of controversy as well. I know that one study that Loftus conducted involves showing participants a photo that includes a stop sign, and then asking about the yield sign, which often prompts people to remember that there was a yield sign, in the picture, rather than a stop sign. One problem with this is they are not given the opportunity to say that there was not a yield sign, so this implantation might not really be there. Some other studies have suggested that, that image of a stop sign remains in memory. She has also done work by prompting memories through the description of an event, such as showing participants a video of a car crash, than asking half of them how fast they thought the car was going when the cars “smashed” into each other and the other half are asked how fast the cars were going when they “bumped” into each other. Later participants are asked if there was glass at the scene of the accident, and more of the people from the “smashed” group report remembering glass. At the very end of class a person brought up controversy surrounding Loftus’ work, specifically commenting on the fact that Loftus has some conflicting ideas with one of the professors here at UofO. I assume she was referring to Jennifer Freyd, who does a lot of research on betrayal trauma theory, a theory Loftus has takes issue. I have not ever met Jennifer, but I work with one of her grad students in her lab and I am conducting experiments on betrayal trauma theory in that lab. Where Loftus and Freyd disagree is on recovered memories, and their validity. Loftus argues that because of this suggestibility that recovered memories are not valid memories. That people might believe that they are real, but they were lead to this through their memories suggestibility. There is a lot of compelling arguments that indicate that memory if fallible, I am not taking issue with that. In fact, I have seen the documentary we are watching next Wednesday and that is a really good example of just that. That these kids were coached by authorities with preconceived ideas about what had happened to them, and that may have created these memories in the minds of the computer students. Though there is also some very compelling evidence that, at least the father was an open pedophile. The best part of the film, in my opinion, is that is doesn’t seek an answer necessarily, rather it just tells the freedman’s story. I am not sure her stance, but I doubt that Freyd would argue that memory can’t be tainted and is suggestible, she would argue, however, that recovered memories, especially of traumatic events, are a reality and it is detrimental to trauma victims when people, like Loftus, try to discredit their real memories. Freyd’s theory suggests that there is a spectrum of trauma; reaching from fear (car crashes, natural disasters) to betrayal (sexual molestation perpetrated by a family member) and that people who experience betrayal trauma are more likely to dissociate and forget the event, as a survival technique. Because, if your parent abuses you as a defenseless child, you still need them to provide you with other things, thus it is advantageous to forget the trauma. So, while it is a common argument that more emotionally charged situations tend to be remembered in greater detail, because of the emotional state of encoding, this hypothesis proposes an adaptive reason for forgetting, and than later recovering memories, memories that are real. This is a gross oversimplification, but I think a really important debate that is heated in the psychology world, and on our campus. To me a lot of what Loftus is doing is really dangerous. One study that supports Freyd’s position involved researchers finding medical records of children who were brought into the hospital for sexual abuse, they than went out and found these children as adults, and asked them questions about their history, and about abuse, a large percentage of them had no memory of their abuse, and I believe some also reported at least some period of not remembering their abuse. A lot more can be said about this debate, I just think it is important to note that Loftus is a potentially dangerous figure is psychology and that, while she has some interesting and important results concerning suggestibility, we need to be very careful and sensitive when we look at memories of trauma, because it would be terrible to further traumatize victims through disbelief. But admittedly convicting innocent people of sexual abuse is also very traumatic.

Pretend Identities

Imagination begins at a very young age. Children learn the concept of "real" or "pretend" play and become able to distinguish the difference around the age of one year. Pretend play can take on three different forms; self as a vehicle, toy as vehicle, and nothing as a vehicle. The self as a vehicle is a type of play where the child takes on a pretend identity such as acting like superwoman, batman, or even a business man. Toy as a vehilce can be where the child gives personality to a toy such as a talking stuft animal, or it can be where the child uses objects in a way that is beyond there normal function. An example of this would be a block used to represent an airplane that flies around the room. The last type of pretend play covered in lecture was nothing as a vehicle. Such situations usually involve the child having an imaginary firend they play with and develop an entire persona for.
The type of pretend play that I was most intrigued by was the self as a vehicle. Starting from the age of one for about a year, I believed I was a cat. I refused to speak to anyone and would simply meow and run around in a Halloween costume that consisted of a black tail sowed to the black sweatshirt and cat ears. This is a typical pretend identity where the child imagines that she takes on characteristics of another being while wearing a speical costume, etc. My younger brother on the other hand, had a different form of pretend identity and decided at the age of four that he wanted to grow up to be a "big, huge, bald, black man." Such an identity formed from his love of basketball and he would sit in the driveway for hours pretending to dunk on his mini hoop set. His identity has a different spin that most pretend identities because he was awaiting the day when he could grow up and become his identity. His image displays a barrier to learning we discussed earlier in class in that he had not yet realized that race does not change as we grow up. One cannot decide to alter one's race as you could pick a new career.
My brother's alternate idea of identity causes me to wonder if pretend identities are something we engage in throughout our lives. As a young child, I had a strong love of animals and my pretending to be one may have been my desire to actually become one. My brother had a better concpet of reality but still a naive one. He knew that when you grow up you get to "be" something different than you are now and he assumed that encompassed everything. Adults still engage in this practice. If you were to ask college students what they are going to do when they graduate, each would have some sort of image in their head whether that image is to go to law school or to go back to living with their parents. It would be hard for many people to pursue a degree without having some image of what life may be like in the future. Our imagination gives us direction in life and helps us to plan out our path.
I think it would be very informative to run an imagination lab that tracked children's motivations for forming pretend indetities. It could possibly ask them why they chose such an identity and if they believe they can become that identity when they grow up. Does children's ability to engage in pretend play coincide or even for-tell the formation of a concept of the future? Do time and imagination go hand in hand?

Suggestibility

It is interesting to think back to my earliest memory. It was the month of May 1988 and my mom had gone into labor and was about to deliver my first sibling. My mom didn’t want to know the sex of the baby so it was a mystery about whether I was going to have a new baby brother or sister. The only solid memory that I have about this day was sitting in the lobby of the hospital when my dad informed me that I now had a new baby brother. I was furious. I remember having a profound sense of disappointment to learn that my new sibling wasn’t a girl. This event occurred when I was three years old, the time in which most people form their first memories.
After learning about infantile amnesia and the development of memory, I am beginning to question whether or not I actually do remember this event and many other events that occurred in my life when I was a small child. For instance, for a while I had the idea that the earliest memory I had was as an infant. I have this image ingrained in my head of lying on my back in a stroller and looking up at the trees as my mom pushed me down the sidewalk. I also have a memory of being led out of a store by a strange man who I, since I did not look at him, thought was my dad. Although these memories are not of great significance, thinking about them and the possibility that I made them up, led me to think about the power of suggestion and how it can even lead to the formation of false memories.
It seems to be quite common for parents to repeatedly tell their children stories about something they did during their childhood. This repetition sometimes causes the child to “remember” a particular event and, therefore, create a memory of that event. In other words, memories are sometimes constructed based entirely on the suggestions of other people such as parents. For example, it may be true that as a little girl, my mom told me time and time again about how she used to push me in my stroller down a sidewalk lined with huge trees. She may have told me this so many times that I eventually started to “remember” and ultimately formed a “memory” of the event. In the case of the stranger, I might have imagined at the time that the strange man was trying to kidnap me, although he probably wasn’t, and because of this thought, I might have formed a false memory that I was almost kidnapped.
Although these things might have happened, it is likely that I actually do not have actual memories of these events. My false memories did not have any serious implications, but the tendency of children to be more suggestible than adults can have legal implications. It is possible that in the case of the stranger, I could have been talked into believing that he was actually trying to kidnap me and I could have gotten him into serious trouble. In any case, it is extremely important to understand that children are highly suggestible and that this tendency can be dangerous.

Protecting the Innocent

Studies we looked at in class show that children are highly suggestible when influenced through leading questions, repeated interviews, etc. Other studies show adults can also be very suggestible; subjects who watched a video of a car accident "remembered" details that didn't exist significantly more often when asked leading questions. This effect is much more pronounced in children, however, and this can lead to many challenges in legal situations where children are witness to or victim of a crime.

I learned a bit more about this topic over the summer while taking the course "Psychology and the Legal System." While there are all kinds of pitfalls in crime investigation, one of the most sensitive subjects deals with children in sexual abuse cases. With such grave accusations, it is important to get accurate information from children. As discussed in class, this requires a patient interviewer asking open-ended questions as early as possible in the investigation. Fortunately, there is an amazing organization in Eugene called the Child Advocacy Center, where they lessen the trauma, time, and shuffling around involved in such investigations. They also do interviews with children which can later be entered as evidence in a trial. In class, we had the opportunity to watch a video of such an interview; the child's identity was protected through blurring. The interviewer first took great care to introduce himself and explain everything that was going to happen, establishing a sense of openness to gain the child's trust. He then proceeded to ask questions of the child about what had happened in very general terms, he often didn't even use specific words until the child said them first, in order to structure the interview around her vocabulary instead of his. He let her describe the house she lived in, only talking about locations after she mentioned them. In this case, the child very clearly described situations in which her father had abused her, but the interviewer continued to speak in a friendly and professional manner, preventing the situation from being scary or shameful. The interviewer, who was our guest speaker for the day, said that his job is not always that straight-forward, though. On one occasion, he had a mother who brought her son in, positive he was being abused by another family member, but an interview with the child gave strong evidence that he was not being abused. One wonders, though, are there some children who are convinced by a suspicious parent that they have been abused? It sounds like the video next Thursday may shed light on this question.

This all comes back to the very important responsibility we have as adults to give children a voice, free of someone else's bias, if we would hear what they have to say. Fortunately there are resources like the Child Advocacy Center that understand how to best listen to and help children in those situations.

Early Language Acquisition and Cognition-General

This class is about “Developmental Cognition.” How does this relate to other classes offered at the University of Oregon? In a similar field of study, “Cognition” taught by Dr. Ulrich Meyer, a structural diagram of cognition-general was given (figure 1). General cognition was presented as the process by which (a) incoming stimulus is, (b) slightly analyzed and is then (c) passed on to the short-term or working memory. The short-term/working memory is where general cognition takes place. Herein lays the foundation for (d) conscious cognition and thought and the focus or maintenance loop. From here the mind has access to (e) the long-term memory and the subconscious/semantics.

Figure 1
Cognition-General

Incoming Stimulus
i
Some
Early Analysis
i
Short Term Memory

Conscious CognitionThought
(Maintenance Loop/ Focus)
o
(Access)
o
Long Term Memory
(subconscious-semantics)

How does this relate to our class as related to developmental cognition? In the instance of, or domain of, “Early Language Acquisition,” eight month old learners experience independent mechanisms, like the segmentation of words from fluent speech. This is represented in this cognitive structural diagram (figure 2).

Figure 2
Experience Independent Mechanisms

Environmental Stimulus
Bunches of Words/Sounds
i
early analysis/interpretation
i
Short Term Memory

Conscious Cognition
Ego trying to Define and Speak
(Induction Dilemma)
Segmentation of Words from
Fluent Speech
(Maintenance Loop/Focus)
o
(Access)
o
Long Term Memory
Subconscious:
-semantics
-definitions

This is a representation of powerful mechanisms for the computation of statistical properties of language input.