When we’re born, we’re born as a blank slate. Although we may be born inherently knowing how to do something, e.g. breathing. But, we have to learn some things from our experiences or environment. The development of social cognition allows us to understand the social world.
- We will start by discussing social cognition and look at an example of social cognition.
- Moving on, we will explore Selman’s levels of perspective-taking.
- Following this, we will delve into the role of the mirror neuron system in social cognition.
- Finally, we will delve into the theory of mind whilst focusing on what the Sally-Anne test shows about this.
Social Cognition
We can understand the development of social cognition if we first break down and comprehend what the term social cognition means.
Our daily lives include processing information from external and internal means to predict situations and behaviours. Social interaction is one of the most important elements we depend on as humans, where we respond after interpreting others’ behaviours.
Social cognition refers to putting ourselves in the place of others, processing information from our environment and memory to predict our actions and of others.
Example of Social Cognition
Here are some examples of social cognition.
- Emphasising and expressing condolences to someone who may have lost a pet after observing others do the same.
- Noticing that when people drink, they often do embarrassing things, and so you would expect the same for yourself if you drank too much.
Selman’s Levels of Perspective-Taking
According to Selman (1976, 1980), looking at things from other people’s perspectives is crucial for most social activities, such as teamwork, convincing others, etc.
Selman (1976, 1980) designed an experiment to analyse this ability in children by doing the following:
- Preparing different social scenarios.
- Each scenario had several people (characters).
- These social scenarios allowed the children to look at the situation from the point of view of several people.
- After narrating the scenarios, the children had to answer a few open-ended questions to evaluate their responses from others’ point-of-view.
Let’s take a look at an example scenario:
Emily was riding a bike in the park one day. While crossing a narrow bridge, she accidentally bumped into a mother with a pushchair. Emily’s mother told her not to cross the narrow bridge again as it might be harmful.
The next day, Emily and James played on their bikes. Some children came, bullied James and snatched James’ bike while running across the narrow bridge. Emily could still catch those kids riding on her bike; however, she remembered her mother’s advice.
Open-ended questions for children
- Should Emily go after the children that bullied her friend?
- In your opinion, will Emily’s mother tell her off?
- Will Emily think her mother will punish her if she chases the children?
The scenario includes the point-of-view of different people like Emily, James (her friend), Emily’s mother, the lady with the pushchair and the children who took away James’s bike.
Selman collected the children’s responses and classified the responses’ into five different stages. Children gradually move from the first stage (egocentric) to the last stage (societal perspective-taking).
Stage | 0. Egocentric perspective-taking |
Age | 3–6 |
Characteristics | Children realise others have different thoughts than them. However, they may get confused between both. |
Example response | In your opinion, will Emily’s mother tell her off? No, she will express happiness about James receiving his bike back. |
Stage | 1. Social, informational perspective-taking |
Age | 5-9 |
Characteristics | Kids realise that people can have different opinions. People base their opinion on the amount of information they have about the situation. |
Example response | In your opinion, will Emily’s mother tell her off? Yes, as Emily’s mother doesn’t know what made Emily go on the footbridge. |
Stage | 2. Self-reflexive Perspective-taking |
Age | 7-12 |
Characteristics | The children can see the situation from the perspective of another person. They recognise that others can do the same. |
Example response | Will Emily think her mother will punish her if she chases the children? No, Emily would think she would understand if she told her mother why she went through the footbridge. |
Stage | 3. Third-party perspective-taking |
Age | 10-15 |
Characteristics | They can now understand the point-of-view of two different people in a situation from a third-person perspective. |
Example response | Will Emily think her mother will punish her if she chases the children? No, Emily was supposed to help her friend. Her mother would punish Emily if she thought she had gone to the footbridge to play. |
Stage | 4. Societal perspective-taking |
Age | 14+ |
Characteristics | Adults understand society influences our opinions, such as religious and social values. |
Example response | Will Emily think her mother will punish her if she chases the children? No, we are responsible for supporting someone who needs it (most notably younger people). |
Selman’s Levels of Perspective-Taking: Evaluation
Let us now explore the strengths and weaknesses of Selman’s perspective-taking.
The perspective-taking method by Selman is flexible and reliable, and many researchers used it for further research. Researchers can tailor this method according to the age of the children (e.g., using different scenarios or an interview).
Fitzgerald and White (2003) conducted a study with 93 school-age children and found a significant correlation between parenting style (victim-centred discipline) and Selman’s perspective-taking.
However, Kurdek (1977) criticises the study because perspective-taking is a complex phenomenon that can be understood better through longitudinal studies. It is a complicated cognitive skill that cannot be limited to certain stages and needs longitudinal observations to understand fully.
The Role of the Mirror Neuron System in Social Cognition
Neurons are nerve cells communicating information to and from the brain and body through electrical impulses. Mirror neurons are the nerve cells activated when someone performs an action or observes someone else performing the same action.
Social Cognition: Neuron Research by Rizzolatti et al. (1996)
Rizzolatti et al. (1996) researched monkeys which involved infusing thin electrodes in their brains to monitor the activity of individual neurons. The researchers analysed that a neuron called F5 would become activated when a monkey reached for a peanut to eat.
F5 was also activated when the monkey (physically inactive) observed another monkey reach for a peanut to eat or heard another monkey cracking or munching peanuts. Researchers observed the following key factors while making the monkeys perform different tasks:
- F5 (mirror neuron) was activated when there was a movement between the monkey’s hand and mouth for a target object (peanuts, in this case).
- Casual hand and mouth movements didn’t activate the mirror neurons without any target object within sight.
- Mirror neurons also activated when the monkey heard another monkey hold and crack a peanut to eat.
- Several mirror neurons are activated during the movements of the hands and mouth.
Social Cognition: Neuron Research by Di Pellegrino et al. (1992)
The researchers found that specific neurons fire when monkeys perform goal-directed hand movements such as grasping, holding and tearing.
The same neurons also fired when the monkeys watched the experimenters perform the same actions. For instance, when grabbing a piece of food from a table and taking food from another experimenter’s hand.
But what can we understand from the research?
When we see someone else perform an action, such as reaching out for cookies, it activates the same neurons (mirror neurons) as if we performed that task (picking up cookies). This helps us understand our own goals and intentions if we perform that task.
‘I would be craving something sweet if I picked up those cookies.’ Similarly, ‘Ella picked up those cookies because she was craving something sweet too.’
Similarly, mirror neurons activated when we are in pain also get activated when observing someone else in pain, as per brain scanning studies such as Rizzolatti and Craighero (2006). This process is called empathy, to feel the pain of others and understand others’ situations.
People with low empathy scores may have less activity in the brain areas with mirror neurons (Gazzola et al., 2006), which may translate to why people with autism struggle with understanding others’ emotions and social impairment.
Research indicates people with autism have less cortical matter in the brain area responsible for mirror neurons, according to Hadjikhani et al. (2006).
An effectively functioning mirror neuron system can help us easily imitate any movement observed and can explain how we develop skills, such as social cognition.
The issue is that it is difficult to extrapolate findings from animal research. Thus, the results may not be generalisable to humans.
Furthermore, the mirror neuron explanation is reductionist because it narrows down the explanation of social cognition and complex human behaviours, such as imitation, to just the functioning of mirror neurons. There can be overlapping explanations for social cognitions, such as parenting styles, family cultures etc.
The Sally-Anne Test
In 1985, Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith designed a study to assess the theory of mind ability (the ability to understand others by attributing mental states to them) among autistic children called the Sally-Anne test. The theory of mind is crucial for developing social cognition as it allows us to understand others’ perspectives, which is what we need to comprehend to predict our own and others’ actions, i.e. social cognition.
The Sally-Anne test makes use of verbal instructions and enacted scenarios.
It can only be used when the participants have well-formed language skills to attempt the test and fully understand the instructions. The test involves a scenario with Sally and Anne dolls.
The Sally-Anne Test
The researchers compared three groups of children (autistic children, children with Down syndrome, and neurotypical children) for the theory of mind ability.
All children varied in age but had a similar verbal age (matched for the same level of language understanding and development):
20 autistic children with verbal age of five and a half years and actual age between 6–16
14 Down syndrome children with verbal age of 3 years and actual age between 6–16
27 children with no psychological impairment with verbal and actual age at four and a half years
After the researchers acted out the scenario, every child had to answer one ‘reality’ question, one ‘memory’ question and one ‘belief’ question as follows:
Reality: Actually, where is the ball?
Memory: Where was the ball initially?
Belief: Where will Sally search for her ball?
Children must answer the ‘belief’ question correctly to pass the test. The answer to the belief question was correct if the children responded that Sally would look for a ball in the basket.
As this shows, the children were thinking from Sally’s perspective, who was absent while Anne moved the ball to her box.
The results were as follows:
| Experimental group | % answered belief questions correct |
| Autism | 20% |
| Down Syndrome | 86% |
| Neurotypical | 85% |
It is difficult to establish that a lack of theory of mind ability universally causes autism. Considering the Baron-Cohen et al. study, 20% of autistic children could still answer the belief question correctly, which wouldn’t have been possible if autism was precisely a result of a faulty theory of mind ability.
Chevallier (2012) elaborated that other psychological diseases than just autism also show a lack of ability of the theory of mind, such as depression and schizophrenia. This finding showed that lack of theory of mind ability is not just only related to autism but also other psychological diseases.
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