A-LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY NOTES AND REVISION

ROLE OF THE MIRROR NERVOUS SYSTEM (SOCIAL COGNITION): The mirror nervous system consists of special brain cells, called ‘mirror neurons’, that are distributed in several areas of the brain. They are unique because they fire both in response to personal action and in response to actions of others: they mirror motor activity in other individuals. These are thought to be involved in social cognition, allowing us to interpret intention and emotion in others. These mirror neurons allow an observer, and the person being observed, to have direct experiential understanding of each other, thus explaining how people emphasise with each other. Mirror neurons may also play a role in TOM and perspective-taking: if mirror neurons fire in response to other’s actions and intentions this may give us a neural mechanism for experiencing and understanding other people’s perspectives and emotional states. This neural mechanism may allow us to interpret what others are thinking and feeling. It

THEORY OF MIND (SOCIAL COGNITION) Theory of Mind (TOM) is our personal understanding of what other people are thinking or feeling. It is our ‘theory’ of what is going on in the mind of another person (empathy). Sally-Anne studies are a technique for assessing TOM. Sally places a marble in her basket, but Anne moves the marble to her box when Sally’s not looking. To understand the story and demonstrate TOM, children have to identify that Sally will look for the marble in the wrong place (her basket) because she doesn’t know it’s been moved. A lack of TOM has been used as an explanation for Autism. Autism is characterised by difficulty in communicating, forming relationships with other people and using language/abstract concepts. It results from a very specific form of cognitive functioning or ‘mind-blindness’. Baron-Cahen et al (1985) explored links between TOM deficits and autistic-spectrum-disorder (ASD) using false belief tasks (eg. Sally-Anne study). They used 20 hi

SELMAN’S LEVELS OF PERSPECTIVE TAKING (DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL COGNITION) Social Cognition refers to the mental processes we use when engaged in social interaction. Perspective-taking is our ability to appreciate a situation from another person’s point of view. In a social context, this means understanding what others are thinking and feeling. Selman (1971) looked at changes (that occur with age) in the response of children when they take the role of a different person in a social situation.  30 boys and 30 girls (aged 4,5 and 6) took part and it involved them being ask how each person felt in various scenarios. Several distinct levels of perspective-taking were identified, that correlated with age- which suggests that perspective-talking develops in a clear developmental sequence. This lead to the development of 5-stages of social cognitive development. Stage 0 (3-6 years) Socially egocentric The child cannot reliably distinguish between their emotions