4.3.4 - The development of social cognition

What social cognition means

Social cognition is about how people understand the social world. In this lesson, the social world means other people's feelings, beliefs, intentions, viewpoints and actions. A child who can work out that a friend is upset, that a teacher has not seen the missing phone, or that a joke might be hurtful is using social cognition.

This topic has three linked approaches to social cognition:

These routes ask different questions. Understanding that a friend has not heard some news concerns their information; understanding that the friend holds a mistaken belief goes further by representing what they actually think. Mirroring a reach may help interpret an action, but does not automatically explain a complex false belief. Keep the processes distinct when comparing their evidence.

Selman's levels of perspective-taking

Robert Selman proposed that children's social perspective-taking develops through a series of levels. The levels are about how children reason about viewpoints in social situations, not simply whether they can see an object from another physical angle.

Selman used interviews about social dilemmas in which characters had different feelings, promises or interests. The important evidence was the child's justification and coordination of viewpoints, not whether the researcher agreed with the child's moral choice. A common teaching example is the Holly dilemma: Holly has promised her father not to climb trees, but a kitten is stuck in a tree and Holly is the only person who can rescue it. The child is asked what Holly will do, what her father will think, and how each character would understand the situation.

Selman proposed an ordered progression in the sophistication of social reasoning. The ages are approximate and overlap; identify the structure of the reasoning, rather than assigning a level from age or assuming one answer represents the child in every setting.

AO1 evidence

Selman and Byrne (1974) interviewed children about interpersonal dilemmas and found that perspective-taking became more advanced with age. Younger children tended to give egocentric or one-viewpoint answers, while older children were more likely to coordinate the perspectives of different people. The association with age is consistent with increasingly coordinated reasoning. A comparison of age groups cannot show that age or maturation alone caused it: schooling, language and social experience also differ. It also does not establish that an individual child must move through every level on the same schedule.

AO3 evaluation

One strength of Selman's theory is that it gives a clear account of development. It helps explain why a young child may seem insensitive in a conflict: they may not yet be able to coordinate another person's feelings and beliefs with their own.

A limitation is that stage theories can look too rigid. Children's perspective-taking may vary with the task, their language ability, their relationship with the people involved and their experience of family or peer conflict. A child might reason well about a familiar friendship problem but struggle with an unfamiliar moral dilemma. This means Selman's levels are useful signposts, not fixed labels.

For a worked distinction, compare two answers about Holly. “Dad would understand if he knew about the kitten” relies mainly on different information, characteristic of Level 1. “Holly can imagine how Dad sees her as careless, and Dad can imagine why she thought rescue mattered” includes reciprocal reflection, characteristic of Level 2. Coordinating these viewpoints from an observer's position supports Level 3. All three children could decide that Holly should climb; the reasoning, not the decision, separates the levels.

Another limitation is the gap between reasoning and behaviour. A child might explain each side of a friendship conflict well in an interview but ignore those views when angry. Sophisticated perspective-taking is a capacity, not proof of kindness or empathy in every situation.

There is also a culture and social-experience issue. The highest level refers to social conventions and values, but these are not identical across cultures. An answer that sounds mature in one cultural setting may not be the only mature answer in another.

Theory of mind and false belief

Theory of mind and perspective-taking overlap. Theory of mind focuses specifically on understanding that behaviour is guided by mental states. These mental states can be hidden, can differ between people, and can be wrong.

The classic logic is simple:

1. A character puts an object in one place.
2. The character leaves and does not see the object being moved.
3. The child knows where the object really is.
4. The child is asked where the character will look.

To pass, the child must say the character will look where the character falsely believes the object is. That answer shows the child can separate reality from another person's belief about reality.

Wimmer and Perner's 1983 "Maxi and the chocolate" task is an early false-belief task. Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith later adapted this logic into the simpler Sally-Anne task. For AQA, Sally-Anne is the named study, but Wimmer and Perner help explain where the task logic comes from.

AO1: development of false-belief understanding

False-belief tasks are often passed by many typically developing children around 4 to 5 years old, though performance depends on the exact task. Wellman, Cross and Watson's 2001 meta-analysis found that false-belief performance varied systematically with factors such as age, country of origin and task design. Importantly, a developmental pattern remained across countries and task variations: the results did not support explaining away all age-related change as confusing wording. Both conceptual development and performance demands therefore need consideration.

AO3: why task demands matter

False-belief tasks require more than theory of mind. The child has to remember the story, understand the language of the question, inhibit their own knowledge of reality and point or speak clearly. Milligan, Astington and Dack's 2007 meta-analysis found a relationship between language ability and false-belief understanding in children under 7. This matters because a failure might partly reflect language or executive demands rather than a pure absence of theory of mind.

Predicting from a belief

Suppose Priya sees that her little brother thinks the biscuits are still in the cupboard, even though Priya watched their parent move them to a tin. Work out whose knowledge controls the answer. The biscuits are really in the tin; Priya knows that. Her brother last saw them in the cupboard and has not learnt about the move, so his belief still points to the cupboard. Predicting his first search means using the cupboard belief, not answering where Priya herself would look. If he had watched the move, searching the tin would be the appropriate prediction: the task concerns access to information, not a rule that the old location is always correct.