Mechanisms of Learning and Acculturation:

1. Mechanisms of Learning and Acculturation: Mental Representation in Social Development

2. Social Development • Cognitive and language development: When and how do children master skills? • Social development: Many possible outcomes. What are the routes to these outcomes? • Why do children (even with seemingly similar experience) turn out to be different?

3. Traditional Social Development • Seeks to understand the impact of experience on children’s outcomes • Without examining mental representations or cognitive mechanisms

4. Example of Typical Social Developmental Approach Trajectories of Physical Aggression From Toddlerhood to Middle Childhood NICHD Early Child Care Research Network

5. Trajectories, cont’d • 1,195 children • Followed from birth to 3rd grade • Measures of maternal, child, and family characteristics • Measures of child-care quality • DV: Emergence of aggression over time

8. 23 more tables…

9. Conclusions • Linear relationship between sociodemographic and and family risk variables and children’s aggression trajectories. Those with lower family incomes, lower maternal education, more maternal depression, etc. had high aggression trajectories. • Boys were more likely than girls to be on higher-aggression trajectories. • So what?

10. Authors’ Own Lament • Results reported in an earlier paper from the same study using different data analyses: More hours in child care, more aggression

11. Authors’ Own Lament • Results reported in an earlier paper from the same study using different data analyses: More hours in child care, more aggression • In these new analyses, did not find a relation between # of hours in child care and aggressive behavior. *Children in the highest aggression trajectory were not in more child care than others *In some analyses, more hours in care--> loweraggr. • My view: This is not OK.

12. Traditional Social Development • Seeks to understand the impact of antecedents on child outcomes • Without examining mental representations or cognitive mechanisms • Limitations?

13. Traditional Social Development Limitations Little attention to mechanism-> • Obvious or erroneous conclusions • Leads people to question imp. of experience (e.g., Judith Harris) • Links to other areas (cog dev, soc psych)

14. Social-Cognitive Development Brings togetherinterest in: • Environment-outcome relations • Cognitive mechanisms, representations By doing so, gives unique insight into: • More on-line processes • Socialization and interventions

15. Attributions • Explanations, Interpretations of Events Attributions for others’ behavior Attributions for own events or outcomes

16. Dodge & Frame, 1982Attributions in Aggressive Children • Rejected, aggressive boys (K-5th) identified a) Sociometric nominations (like most/least) b) Name students who fit aggr. descrip. c) T rating of aggressiveness Ps: Low liking + Hi aggression • Scenarios of ambiguous provocation • Hostile attributional bias Study 2: naturalistic setting

17. Dodge, Pettit, Bates, & Valente (1995)Physical Abuse and Conduct Problems • 584 kindergarten children followed through grade 4 • 12% classified as abused • Measures of “processing variables” for children 24 filmed vignettes

18. Dodge, Pettit, Bates, & Valente (1995)Physical Abuse and Conduct Problems Processing Variables • Interpretations/Attributions: Do they encode intention? Biased or accurate? • Accessing of responses: What reactions are considered? • Evaluation of responses: Is aggr. seen as positive? D.V.: Teachers ratings of conduct problems

19. Dodge, et al., cont.Results • Abused group scored substantially higher in conduct problems: 28% had clinically deviant conduct problems vs. 6% of controls--even when controlling for SES, family stressors, difficult temperament, preschool conduct, etc. • Abuse predicted later processing patterns. • Did processing variables mediate aggression? Yes, partially. Reduced the direct effect of abuse on conduct problems by 33%.

20. Hudley & Graham, 1993Changing the Representation Aggressive, rejected boys identified: peer ratings, teacher ratings Dodge & Frame measure of hostile attributions Three groups: • Attribution retraining (AR) • Training on non-social problem-solving skills • No treatment

21. Hudley & Graham, cont. • Treatment groups met twice a week for 6 weeks • Groups contained 4 aggr. & 2 non-aggr children • Experimental group learned: 1) How to detect intention 2) To attribute non-hostile intention when ambiguous

22. Hudley & Graham, Results • Measure 1: Response to hypothetical peer provocation • Attribution of intent • Anger • Behavioral response • Result: AR group similar to non-aggressive children

23. Hudley & Graham, Results • Measure 2: Analog task 1 month later Child and peer communicate instructions to each other • Result: When peer (inevitably) gave poor instructions, children in AR group a) less likely to attribute hostile intent b) trend toward less anger c) less criticism and fewer insults

24. Hudley & Graham, Results • Measure 3: Teacher ratings of aggression • Result: AR group rated less aggressive than the two control groups

25. Self-Attributions and Self-BlameHow Children Interpret Self-Related Events • Internal, stable attributions (i.e., not smart, bad person) lead to helpless responses • Unstable (e.g., effort) attributions or external (e.g., luck) attributions can lead to more mastery-oriented responses • Is the impact of negative events mediated by self-attributions? • Negative life events--> depression • Parental violence--> depression • Sexual abuse--> depression, self-esteem

26. Nolen-Hoeksema, Girgus, & Seligman, 1992Life Events, Attributions, & Depression • 508 3rd graders assessed every 6 mos. for 5 years • Life events questionnaire • Children’s attributional style questionnaire • Children’s depression inventory • Teacher ratings of academic and social helplessness

27. Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 1992 • Life events: Your parents got divorced, a grandparent died, parents fighting, you and your parents fought more, parent lost a job, other children have been less friendly • Attributional Style: You get a poor grade on a test: internal vs. external; stable vs. unstable • Helplessness Behaviors (teacher rated): when child encounters an obstacle, gives up and stops trying; withdraws and sulks when shunned by classmates.

28. Nolen-Hoeksema, et al. Results • Early on (3rd & 4th grade) Only life events predicted subsequent depression and helplessness ( although attributions correl. with contemporaneous depression/helplessness) • However, in later years: Attributions (or attributions + life events) predicted depression and helplessness. Life events alone fell out of the picture.

29. Feiring, Taska, & Lewis (2002)Attributions & Adjustment Following Sexual Abuse • Past literature: CSA is associated with later behavior problems, but Victims vary widely in their adjustment Weak relation between severity and adjustment • Can attributions help explain variations in outcome? • After CSA discovery and one year later, measured Attributional style: Internal, stable attribution for abuse Depression Self-Esteem

30. Feiring, Taska, & Lewis, cont. Results • Predicting from T1 measures to T2 depression and self-esteem: • In contrast to abuse severity, attributional style accounted for significant variation in adjustment at T2 (controlling for Time 1) 2. Improvement in attributional style was related to improvement in depression and self-esteem

31. Dweck, 1975Changing the Representation • Helpless children identified • Two groups: Attribution Retraining and Success Only • 25 sessions of training • Assessments at mid-training and post-training: Helpless responses to failure Teacher assessments

32. Dweck, cont.Results • Attribution Retraining group showed: • Improvement at mid-training • Marked improvement by post-training • Teacher reports of initiative and persistence Whereas..

33. Dweck, cont.Results • Attribution Retraining group showed: • Improvement at mid-training • Marked improvement by post-training • Teacher reports of initiative and persistence • Success Only had no positive effect on reactions to failure or teacher assessments

34. Conclusions • Experiences leave their residue in mental representations • Effects of experience, to a great degree, depend on how they are represented and carried forward to new situations • Unique implications for socialization and intervention

35. Social-Cognitive Development • (1) Identify and measure a mental representation or cognitive process and observe its relation to outcomes of interest • (2) Manipulate the mental representation and observe its impact on outcomes of interest • (3) Investigate the relationship between the mental representation of interest and antecedents of that variable • (4) Compare how the mental representation operates in the laboratory and in the real world.

36. Next Time • Read carefully: Tomasello, Meltzoff • Foundations of early social knowledge, learning • Appreciation and critique of each • Can you use Meltzoff’s “Like Me” hypothesis to account for Tomasello’s findings?