Social-cognitive Knowledge Research Articles

Five paths to personality coherence: Integrative implications of the Knowledge-and-Appraisal Personality Architecture

The study of personality coherence can be grounded in an analysis of personality architecture, that is, the overall structure and dynamics of intra-individual personality systems. A personality architecture can identify, and organize the study of, interrelated phenomena that each are instances of personality coherence. It thereby can provide an integrative framework for understanding relations among distinct lines of research. This thesis is advanced by drawing on the Knowledge-and-Appraisal Personality Architecture, or KAPA model. KAPA model principles distinguish among three classes of social-cognitive knowledge structures: beliefs, goals, and evaluative standards. These distinctions, in turn, provide a foundation for understanding five aspects of personality coherence: 1) Belief-Based Coherence, 2) Goal-Based Coherence, 3) Evaluative Standards-Based Coherence, 4) Intra-Psychic Coherence (that is, coherent functional interrelations among personality systems), and 5) Phenomenological Coherence. Research documenting each of these five paths to personality coherence is reviewed. The paper also reviews the strengths and limitations of 20th-century social-cognitive formulations that provide key foundations for the KAPA model.

Children with ASD use joint attention and linguistic skill in pronoun development

ABSTRACT Producing pronouns involves linguistic and social-cognitive knowledge because children must learn words and understand pronouns’ changing referents. This study examined pronoun production longitudinally in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 15), whose social-cognition might impair pronoun use, and in typically developing (TD; n = 18) children. Modeling the effect of joint attention (JA; a social-cognitive factor) and a name bias (NB; a linguistic factor) revealed a positive relation between NB and second- and third-person pronouns for all children and a positive relation between JA and those pronouns in just the ASD group. Social-cognitive and linguistic processes affected the ability of children with ASD to use pronouns; TD children’s pronouns were related to linguistic skill and unaffected by JA.

Dynamic interactive theory as a domain-general account of social perception.

The perception of social categories, emotions, and personality traits from others' faces each have been studied extensively but in relative isolation. We synthesize emerging findings suggesting that, in each of these domains of social perception, both a variety of bottom-up facial features and top-down social cognitive processes play a part in driving initial perceptions. Among such top-down processes, social-conceptual knowledge in particular can have a fundamental structuring role in how we perceive others' faces. Extending the Dynamic Interactive framework (Freeman & Ambady, 2011), we outline a perspective whereby the perception of social categories, emotions, and traits from faces can all be conceived as emerging from an integrated system relying on domain-general cognitive properties. Such an account of social perception would envision perceptions to be a rapid, but gradual, process of negotiation between the variety of visual cues inherent to a person and the social cognitive knowledge an individual perceiver brings to the perceptual process. We describe growing evidence in support of this perspective as well as its theoretical implications for social psychology.

Preschoolers’ Theory-of-Mind Knowledge Influences Whom They Trust About Others’ Theories of Mind

Two experiments examined whether particular aspects of social-cognitive knowledge predicted how preschoolers would treat informants who displayed a more or less developed understanding of that knowledge. In Experiment 1, children's own success on false-belief measures correlated with the extent to which they endorsed information generated by a confederate with a more developed sense of false belief over a confederate with a less developed sense of false belief. In Experiment 2, preschoolers were assessed for whether they possessed a more action-based or mental state-based understanding of pretense. They were then presented with informants who displayed each kind of knowledge. Children's own knowledge again correlated with which informant they believed was a reliable source of knowledge about novel pretend actions. These results not only extend findings in the “trust in testimony” literature beyond word learning, but also potentially reveal another mechanism by which children learn from others—they might trust others’ information about a specific piece of knowledge based on examination of their own knowledge of that domain.

Reviewing factors influencing social isolation among PNU students in Gilan-E-Gharb city in 2013

Surveying social isolation subject at least at the last century shows that this concept is more related to some sociological dimensions such as Marx’s view, Marx’ alienation concept, the school of mutual interaction and Chicago school. Some writers stress on subjective elements and some others on objective elements. Persons who are socially isolated and have not interaction with others, suffer often from lack of social ability, so they may have not social-cognitive knowledge and do not know how to understand the others’ intentions. Social isolation is a state in which person or persons, under surroundings circumstances, are influenced by different social and individual motives and continue living as a group. Desire for self-expression in all the young can be seen as a need but rather to assert and join the rippers, they will choose isolation and may sit in silence and enjoy dreaming. To review the extent and condition of social isolation among Payam-e-Noor students in Gilan-e-Gharb city in 2013, the survey method as methodological method and questionnaire was used. Due to vast numbers of statistical population and easiness in research, 100 subjects were randomly selected. To analyze data, SPSS software was used. According to the obtained results, the extent of social isolation among the students is 3.24 and is nearly close to the code 3. 0.50 of the respondents are male and 0.50 is female who their average mean was 23 years old and 0.87 is single and the rest is married. 83/2 in humanity science fields, 27.8 in basic sciences fields are studying. 0.17 are from the low class of the society, 0.73 of the middle class and the rest from high class of the society. In the inferential statistics part, the dependent variable is social isolation and became significant with the variables of gender, the difference of education level with the friend and age.

Social cognition and language in children with specific language impairment (SLI)

This investigation examined the relationship between social pragmatics, social self-esteem, and language in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and in their age-matched peers (7–10 years). The children with SLI indicated significantly poorer social cognitive knowledge than their typically developing peers. They showed low social, but not academic self-esteem. They often used inappropriate negotiation and conflict resolution strategies. Their errors reflect some qualitative differences from those of the typically developing children (e.g., children with SLI use more nonverbal strategies, demonstrate passive/withdrawn behavior, etc.). Our data show that these children’s social pragmatic deficit is not causally related to their language impairment; the two problems are co-occurring. Further, the parents and teachers of the children with SLI indicated different views regarding these children’s social relations. Although the parents expressed major concerns about their children’s social competence, the teachers did not notice this problem. Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to summarize, critically analyze, and interpret the findings from existing research on social cognition and its relationship with language abilities in children with specific language impairment. Further, the reader will gain an understanding of the importance of applying intervention procedures that facilitate the use of language in different social situations, and the necessity of increasing parent–teacher communication in schools.

The ontogeny of gaze following in chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, and rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta

Primates follow the gaze direction of conspecifics to outside objects. We followed the ontogeny of this social-cognitive skill for two species: rhesus macaques and chimpanzees. In the first two experiments, using both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal design, we exposed individuals of different ages to a human looking in a specified direction. Rhesus infants first began reliably to follow the direction of this gaze at the end of the early infancy period, at about 5.5 months of age. Chimpanzees did not reliably follow human gaze until 3–4 years; this corresponds to the latter part of the late infancy period for this species. In the third experiment we exposed individuals of the same two species to a human repeatedly looking to the same location (with no special object at that location) to see if subjects would learn to ignore the looks. Only adults of the two species diminished their gaze-following behaviour over trials. This suggests that in the period between infancy and adulthood individuals of both species come to integrate their gaze-following skills with their more general social-cognitive knowledge about other animate beings and their behaviour, and so become able to deploy their gaze-following skills in a more flexible manner.

Social cognitive correlates of preschool children's sibling caregiving behavior.

This study examined the relation between sibling caregiving and social cognitive knowledge. Fifty-five child-sibling dyads (age 50.6 and 17.7 months) were observed in a 4-min modified Strange Situation procedure. For each sibling dyad, the frequency of preschoolers' caregiving acts was recorded, as well as the number of secons the younder siblings were distressed. In a separate assessment, the preschooler's cognitive and emotional role-taking skills, emotional situation knowledge, and knowledge of caregiving scripts were assessed

Social Competence among Low-Income Preschoolers: Emotion Socialization Practices and Social Cognitive Correlates

Two studies were designed to investigate the relation between emotion socialization variables, social cognitive knowledge, and children's social competence. In Study 1, the expression and situation knowledge of 46 low-income preschoolers were assessed. Peer competence within the preschool setting was also evaluated. Mothers completed questionnaires designed to assess negative emotion socialization practices. Results showed that maternal reports of their emotion socialization practices were related to sad and angry situation knowledge. The aggregate measure of situation knowledge predicted peer competence. In Study 2, 41 low-income preschoolers were observed in a caregiving situation with their younger siblings. The preschoolers' rate of caregiving behavior was recorded and measures of their situation knowledge, emotional role taking, and caregiving script knowledge were obtained. Mothers completed emotion socialization questionnaires. Situation knowledge was the social cognitive variable that predicted sibling caregiving behavior. However, only the maternal emotion socialization variables were directly related to sibling caregiving behavior. These findings highlight the importance of situation knowledge and emotion socialization practices for low-income children's social competence with peers and siblings and provide much needed information on the social development of low-income children.

The Interplay Between Linguistic and Social-Cognitive Knowledge in Perspective-Taking By Autistic Children

The primary purpose of this study was to explore dimensions of social-cognitive knowledge in school-aged autistic children. Specifically, the presuppositional skills of verbal autistic children were examined in two communicative contexts. The children selected for this study were autistic children whose ML Us were beyond 3.0 morphemes and who exhibited non-verbal cognitive scores within borderline to normal ranges. The results of this study revealed that all the subjects demonstrated some social-cognitive knowledge of others as reflected in modifications in language relative to naive and knowledgeable listener contexts.

Evaluative Understanding and Role-taking Ability: A Comparison of Deaf and Hearing Children

The purposes of this study were (1) to evaluate the growth of social-cognitive knowledge in deaf and hearing children during the early and middle school years and (2) to assess the relative importance of language in 2 domains of social cognition. This study separately examined the child's ability to (1) evaluate the concepts of good and bad and (2) take another person's perspective. Subjects consisted of 30 deaf and 30 hearing children divided into 3 developmental levels (52 months, 74 months, and 119 months old). For the good/bad evaluation test, each child was shown 12 sets of multiple-choice pictures. Each set had 4 alternatives, which included 1 good, 1 bad, or all neutral activities. Role-taking ability was evaluated through the child's choice of strategy in a binary-choice hiding/guessing game. The results showed that deaf children evidence a developmental delay in the understanding of the concepts of good and bad. With regard to role-taking ability, there appears to be a developmental delay with young deaf children, which is no longer apparent by the age of 6. The assumption of egocentrism in school-age deaf children frequently found in the literature thus appears to be misleading. It is not that these deaf children are unable to take another person's perspective, but rather that they are delayed in evaluative understanding. The results suggest that language is of varying importance in differing domains of social and personality development.