There are various reasons for this developmentally normative transition, including aspects of hormonal physiology and brain development. Social cognitive abilities at age 5 years and risk-taking behaviours in adolescenceĪdolescence is a period of heightened social and emotional development, and there is a marked increase in often damaging and potentially traumatising risk-taking behaviours. The academic work that Alphablocks Nursery School helps carry out is currently focused on this relatively unexplored areas of research. But the long-term impact of these social cognitive skills and abilities, beyond childhood and into adolescence and young adulthood, have not been explored sufficiently. In psychological terms, they formulate an internal ‘theory’ of the existence of ‘other minds’.Ĭrucially, neurodiverse children present with certain deficits in ToM development and social cognition. They come to realise that other people have different thoughts from them, and that other people ‘see’ things (in their mind’s eye) in very different ways. In technical terms, we say that they have not yet acquired ‘false belief understanding’, namely, they don’t yet understand that other people have different beliefs (and thoughts, emotions, etc.) from their own and that, additionally, these independent beliefs may be false.īut, somehow, and quite remarkably so, around age 4 to 5 years, most children tend to understand that mum holds a false belief when she comes back into the room (a false expectation in relation to the whereabouts of her cup). They tend to think that she thinks her cup is in the drawer. In other words, most children under 3 will not know that mum still thinks her cup is on the desk. The principle is what matters, and the point is that many children below the age of 3 will not be able to work out that mum expects her cup to be on the desk (and not in the drawer). ![]() ![]() etc.) mean that this may not be the best test to try at home! But there are many other tests like this that have been done experimentally with thousands of children at various ages. Of course, the practicalities of doing this in a clear, experimentally unambiguous way (stopping the play, asking at the right time, without confusing your child, etc. When your child sees her come in, you ask a simple question – “ Where will mum look for the cup?“ Now, here is a sort of ‘test’ for ToM ability: Now imagine that you take the cup from the desk, and you hide it inside one of the drawers! That’s right, you intentionally hide the cup (and your child has seen you do this). Your child has been watching, and has seen mum place the cup on the desk before getting out of the room. Then she leaves her cup on a desk, and exits the room. Mum joins in your play for a few minutes. The child’s mum comes in holding a cup of tea. Imagine you are in a room with your child, playing together. Prompting an adult to play with a toy, or pointing at a toy on the floor for dad to see and pick up is so fundamental (starting to happen around 9 months) that Michael Tomasello has called it the “Nine-Month Revolution”. Social cognitive abilities begin to develop in infancy (in fact, social interaction begins in the womb) and continue to evolve throughout childhood and adolescence. They include skills like maintaining eye contact, following another’s gaze, recognising emotions on other people’s faces, or mimicking what someone else does (sticking the tongue out, like mum does, or smiling back at her). ![]() ![]() In this post, we briefly discuss the basic dimensions of social cognition in early childhood, and summarise some recent findings that have come out of our work at Alphablocks Research Lab in collaboration with leading academics. It includes a complex set of skills that are crucial for development and have long-lasting impact, well beyond childhood. However, an area of development that has been relatively overlooked is that of social cognition. These include aspects of development such as the physical, social, and emotional growth of a child, early literacy and numeracy abilities, or self-regulation skills. There are a few aspects of child development that teachers, parents and carers often talk about when it comes to nursery-age children.
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