Variability and Individual Differences in Early Social Perception and Social Cognition

Variability and Individual Differences in Early Social Perception and Social Cognition
Author :
Publisher : Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages : 175
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9782889198481
ISBN-13 : 2889198480
Rating : 4/5 (81 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Variability and Individual Differences in Early Social Perception and Social Cognition by : Jessica Sommerville

Download or read book Variability and Individual Differences in Early Social Perception and Social Cognition written by Jessica Sommerville and published by Frontiers Media SA. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past three decades mounting evidence has suggested that infants’ social perceptual and social cognitive abilities are considerably richer than was once thought. By the end of the second year of life, infants discriminate faces along various social dimensions, attend to and understand others’ goals and intentions, use the emotions of others to guide their learning and behavior, attribute dispositional characteristics to other agents, and make basic social evaluations. What has also become clear is that there is a great deal of variability in infants’ social perception and cognition. A critical, outstanding question concerns the nature and meaning of such variability. The proposed Research Topic welcomes papers addressing cutting-edge questions regarding variability and individual differences in early social perception and social cognition. The goal of these papers is to investigate overarching questions in this domain, which are necessary to move the field forward. Variability in early social perception and social cognition (among other domains) in infancy and early childhood is often attributed to noise, or overlooked in favor of focusing on age-related changes. Yet, recent work suggests that variability in social perceptual and social cognitive tasks reliably inter-relates, and predicts real-world social behaviors. For example, infants’ everyday experience with different face categories predicts individual differences in face processing, infants’ production of goal-directed actions predicts their simultaneous understanding of these actions, and variability in social attention during the second year of life is related to theory of mind during the preschool years. These findings suggest that variability in performance on social perception and social cognition tasks is not merely a nuisance variable, but, rather, may provide the key to addressing significant questions regarding the nature of infants’ social perception and social cognition, and the processes that underlie developmental change. Acknowledging and closely examining and investigating variability in early social perceptual and social cognitive abilities may represent a powerful approach for understanding development in (at least) two ways. First, variability can signal transitional points in the developmental onset of a given ability. Thus, such variability, and the extent to which variability relates to experience and/or other abilities, can be used to test hypotheses regarding mechanisms that underlie developmental changes. Second, variability can represent more enduring individual differences between infants. In this case, critical questions arise regarding the source of individual differences (that is, what factors shape the emergence of individual differences?) and whether such early individual differences contribute to the development of more advanced and sophisticated forms of social cognition and behavior. The goal of this Research Topic will be to encourage researchers to take variability in early social perception and cognition seriously. Papers that give variability center stage, and are aimed at addressing the value of variability for identifying developmental mechanisms, as well as investigating the existence, source, and antecedents of early individual differences in social perception and social cognition are welcomed. Taken together, the contributed papers will provide integral new information to the study of social perception and social cognition over the first three years of life.


Variability and Individual Differences in Early Social Perception and Social Cognition Related Books

Variability and Individual Differences in Early Social Perception and Social Cognition
Language: en
Pages: 175
Authors: Jessica Sommerville
Categories: Cognition in infants
Type: BOOK - Published: 2016-06-10 - Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Over the past three decades mounting evidence has suggested that infants’ social perceptual and social cognitive abilities are considerably richer than was on
The Science of Social Vision: The Science of Social Vision
Language: en
Pages: 502
Authors: Reginald B. Adams
Categories: Psychology
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The human visual system is particularly attuned to and remarkably efficient at processing social cues. This text examines the functional and neuroanatomical mec
Sources of Variation in First Language Acquisition
Language: en
Pages: 456
Authors: Maya Hickmann
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-02-22 - Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Developmental research has long focused on regularities in language acquisition, minimizing factors that might be responsible for variation. Although researcher
Social Psychology
Language: en
Pages: 697
Authors: Daniel W. Barrett
Categories: Psychology
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-12-19 - Publisher: SAGE Publications

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Employing a lively and accessible writing style, author Daniel W. Barrett integrates up-to-date coverage of social psychology’s core theories, concepts, and r
Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development
Language: en
Pages: 1919
Authors:
Categories: Psychology
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-03-13 - Publisher: Elsevier

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development, Second Edition, provides a comprehensive entry point into the existing literature on child development i