Individual Differences

Two ways to study individual differences: 1. Relate earlier-developing psychological attributes (cognitive abilities, temperament) to later-developing attributes. Do individual differences in geometrical form analysis predict performance at reading maps? Do individual differences in numerical discrimination predict performance on symbolic math problems? 2. Relate performance on tests administered earlier in devt. to real-world outcomes. Do people with higher SAT scores (or IQ scores) end up with more degrees? higher income? Two updates on the first enterprise The second enterprise

Predicting later cognitive abilities from earlier ones: Two Updates

Non-symbolic numerical discrimination and symbolic number. "suppose someone found that numerical discrimination in infancy predicted later symbolic math performance. Would that mean we are innately predistined to success or failure in academic math?" 1. SRCD (Brannon lab): numerical discrimination tested at 6 months (Xu displays). children retested at regular intervals, from 1-3.5 years. num. acuity at 6 mos predicted acuity at all later ages tested. num. acuity at 6 mos also predicted mastery of number words and counting.

2. SRCD (Gilmore lab): a real counter-example to the conclusion about predestination.

Why do some children do better at discriminating numbers of dots than others?

To test number, must control for continuous variables like dot size. So some dot problems look like this....

Why do some children do better at discriminating numbers of dots than others?

To test number, must control for continuous variables like dot size. So some dot problems look like this.... ....and others look like this.

But for these problems, you have to inhibit responses to size differences as you focus on number.

Why do some children do better at discriminating numbers of dots than others?

Some dot discrimination problems demand inhibitory control. Inhibitory control requires executive function (Lindsey's lecture). Individual differences in EF predict math achievement. Gilmore (SRCD), two experiments.

Exp. 1: Replicates Halberda et al's finding that numerical acuity correlates with school achievement. Divides trials into two types: number positively vs. negatively correlated with item size.

pos. correlation, low EF demands

neg. correlation, high EF demands

Why do some children do better at discriminating numbers of dots than others?

Exp. 1 findings: Numerical discrimination predicted school achievement on the high EF trials, not on the low EF trials. Suggestion: individual differences in EF underlie this correlation.

pos. correlation, low EF demands

neg. correlation, high EF demands

Why do some children do better at discriminating numbers of dots than others?

Exp. 1 findings: Numerical discrimination predicted school achievement on the high EF trials, not on the low EF trials. Suggestion: individual differences in EF underlie this correlation. Exp. 2: Replicated Halberda et al again, this time with a separate test battery measuring executive function (like the tests Lindsey described). Findings: controlling for EF, numerical discrimination no longer predicted school math achievement. controlling for numerical discrimination, EF strongly predicted school math achievement.

(further experiments by Gilmore: non-symbolic addition tests do predict school math achievement....)

Summary
Both core numerical abilities and executive function predict school math performance. Both of these abilities are highly malleable and trainable. Individual differences do not imply that fixed differences in cognitive ability.

Predicting Real World Outcomes

Much research in individual differences seeks to predict who will perform well at some future activity:

ex: intuitive personality theories predict success at careers SAT-Q tests predict success in math & engineering professions IQ tests predict future earnings potential Does this predictive power have normative implications: e.g., are people who score higher on SAT tests all-around smarter than those who score lower?
Three cases that cast doubt on this conclusion.

Case 1: personality traits and careers

Example: Jewish personality traits and academic potential In the 30s, no Jewish faculty at Harvard. Many Jewish students in Boring's lab. None got good academic jobs on leaving his lab. A study of his letters of recommendation: E.G. Boring (chair, Harvard Psych, 1930s) talkative aggressive characteristic Jewish eagerness gesticulates excitedly

Boring's error: confusing what was typical of professors in his field with what was necessary for success in that field. But NB: these traits were predictive of failure, because Jews weren't hired. The defects of his race (Winston, 1998).

Case 2: Spatial ability and gender

A common claim: women have lower spatial ability. The evidence: women perform less well at mental rotation tasks.

My puzzlement: we had been studying spatial abilities a lot, and we didn't see evidence either for a unitary dimension of "spatial ability" or for gender differences on any core spatial tasks.

Are boys more sensitive to geometry in visual forms?

Overall Performance

High Performance Average Performance High Performance

No sex difference favoring boys.

(Grace, Shutts, Izard, Dehaene & Spelke, 2006; Izard & Spelke, 2009; replicated by Dillon et al., in review)

Are boys more sensitive to any aspect of geometry?

boys>girls girls>boys

* *

male superiority at mental rotation may trace back to infancy

(*p<.05, uncorrected)

(Grace, Shutts, Izard, Dehaene & Spelke, 2006; c.f. Izard & Spelke, 2009) (Quinn & Liben, 2008; Moore & Johnson, 2008)

Boys and girls show highly similar performance profiles

Overall Performance

High Performance

r=.888, p<<.001

Highly convergent performance by boys and girls.

(Grace, Shutts, Izard, Dehaene & Spelke, 2006; Izard & Spelke, 2009)

So why the belief in sex differences, and the focus on mental rotation on standardized tests?
The goal of the tests is to predict who will succeed. For social reasons, male students are more likely to pursue & succeed at academic careers than females: discrimination, overt and covert a tendency of both genders to go into fields where their own gender is represented (e.g., few male nurses or midwives...) Therefore, mental rotation is a better predictor of academic success than are the other measures. But this does NOT mean that it is a better indicator of cognitive ability. Voice depth or hair length also will predict academic success....

Case 3: IQ tests and earnings potential

Herrnstein, Murray: IQ in the meritocracy Children with higher IQs tend to become adults with more education and money So is IQ a good measure of ability? Tests of ability: anagrams, reading prose passages not free-style rapping Why? High-income adults are likely to do cross-word puzzles and read novels. They aren't likely to be freestyle rappers. My guess: from the standpoint of cognitive psychology, effective rapping requires at least as much vocabulary, verbal fluency, etc etc.

Summary
Attempts to measure intelligence or specific aspects of cognitive aptitude are not worthless or stupid. But it's hard to get them right.

The best hope for better understanding individual differences in cognition comes not from research linking individual cognitive variables to successful real-world outcomes (like going to college, earning lots of money, or becoming a Harvard professor).
Instead, it comes from research linking individual differences in core cognition to individual differences in constructed cognitive abilities: research like the studies discussed in the first half of this topic. To date, these studies show no gender or social class differences in children's performance. These findings should encourage us to look critically at the measures that do, like IQ and SATs.

Social Cognition

Humans are a highly social species

We live in communities (throughout human evolution). --Community members cooperate to accomplish tasks that no single person could perform alone. --Community members share information: most of what we know has been learned from others. These activities surely account for much of our success as a species. Community members share a culture, distinct from other cultures (language, food production & preparation, tools & technology, music & dance, dress, games, rituals, belief systems). Some of these distinctions make obvious sense (food availability & spoilage issues). Others are more puzzling: Why different languages? Why rituals? religions? A hope: insights from studies of children.

Learning about the social world

To navigate the social world, the child must come to: 1. recognize other specific individuals. 2. learn about the social behavior of each individual toward the child and toward one another (friends or foes? selfish or cooperative?) 3. learn the overall structure of the social landscape (what groups are there? how are they organized? what are the dimensions of status?). NB: this too varies across cultures. 4. learn culture-specific beliefs and rituals.

Learning about the social world

Three topics:

1. finding good social partners and cooperating with them: today

2. discovering social groups and learning their norms: Lindsey, Thursday 3. social group preferences and biases: last class

People as social partners

Newborns: attend to people from birth (faces, voices). 2 month olds: smile, engage socially, turn-taking.

By 7-9 months: attachments, seeking proximity to known others. First question: How do infants come to distinguish people from each other so that they can form social relationships? recognizing faces detecting states of social engagement

Face Recognition in Adults

A special system for identifying faces. evidence: inversion

Identifying People: Adults

A special system for identifying faces. evidence: orientation specificity

Identifying People: Adults

A special system for identifying faces. evidence: species-specificity

This is Mary

Which is Mary?

Identifying People: Adults

A special system for identifying faces. evidence: species-specificity

This is Fred

Which is Fred?

Identifying People: Adults

A special system for identifying faces. evidence: species-specificity
Familiarize: Test:

Human adults: good with human faces, bad with monkey faces.
Adult monkeys good with monkey faces, bad with human faces. High abilities to recognize individuals of ones own species by their Pascalis faces.

Identifying People: Adult Brains

Task: passive viewing of faces, artifact objects, scenes, .... Method: subtraction from scrambled (recall Epstein reading)

Humans

Monkeys

Primate brains devote lots of territory to processing information about the faces of specific individuals.

Kanwisher, Tsao

How does this high sensitivity develop? Studies of infants

familiarize

test

At 9 months, longer looking at the novel face.

Pascalis

How does this high sensitivity develop? Studies of infants

familiarization

test

At 9 months, equal looking at the two faces (like adults under most testing conditions). Pascalis

How does this species-specificity develop?

Obvious hypothesis: infants learn to distinguish human faces. Alternative hypothesis: infants learn not to distinguish monkey faces.
Pascalis

How does this species-specificity develop?

9 months 6 months

Success

Success

Failure

Success

Between 6 & 9 months, a narrowing of the face processing domain. By the time they start learning language, children treat (most) animals as members of kinds (dog, monkey) but treat (most) people as individuals (Tom, Mary). Pascalis

Limits to face perception

Not all creatures with faces, even human faces, are social partners for the infantsome are strangers: need further cues to determine who is socially related to them. Possible cues come from a person's behavior.

Chicks use both behavior and visual appearance to recognize mom

Same species

Diff. species

Measure = proximity
2 hours Chicks prefer objects that look like hens: 24 hours innate template in chicks. Critical features: head and eyes. But, in the absence of these features, chicks will imprint to other objects if they show animate behavior (movement) Do human infants also identify social partners based on their actions? (M. Johnson & Horn)

Eye contact
newborn infants look longer at the face with direct gaze so do infant monkeys

you are engaged with me.

(Farroni et al., 2002) (Mendelson, 1982)

Like me? Imitation in newborn infants

Coding monitor for adult model

Camera

Coding monitor for infant response

Adult model

Infant subject

(Meltzoff and Moore, 1977)

imitation

(Meltzoff & Moore, 1977)(Ferrari et al., 2006)

Why imitation?
A reflex? Meltzoff argues no, a meaningful social behavior --motions are slow and deliberate --motions can happen after a delay (minutes in most studies, days in one study) --motions happen only in the presence of the person who initially performed the action. --motions happen only when the person first looked directly at the infant. When one person imitates another, she signals to the other that she is attending to him and tracking his behavior: a universal social code. For infants (and adults), imitation may have social meaning for this reason.

imitation

I am engaged with you.

(Meltzoff & Moore, 1977)(Ferrari et al., 2006)

more on imitation

Infants and monkeys prefer social others who imitate them, just as they prefer others who look at them: a sign of social engagement.

(Meltzoff & Moore, 1977)(Ferrari et al., 2006)

Summary
Infants are equipped with multiple ways to identify social others, recognize them over time (by their faces and actions), share states of attention with them, and reproduce their actions. What do we do with these abilities? --we learn from others (recall section on agency) --we cooperate with others

Cooperation
Many human evolutionary biologists, anthopologists and psychologists argue that the key to our success as a species stems from our ability to cooperate: we help one another we pursue common goals we share information by cooperating, we achieve more than any person could accomplish alone (hunting big animals, building shelters, etc etc.) by sharing information, we learn more than any person could learn alone. Key question: What causes this tendency? An approach: When and do we develop a propensity to collaborate and help others, and under what conditions do we express it?

Cooperation
An old idea: Children are selfish; they have to learn to be cooperative through education and/or slow "socialization". New findings: Not so:

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Jean Piaget, egocentrism

Felix Warneken, Harvard psych.

Cooperation
Warneken & Tomasello: Children are naturally predisposed both to competition and to cooperation. With no rewards, instruction, or even clear requests, they are motivated to collaborate and cooperate. Experiment 1: child (18 months) and experimenter play a collaborative game. Question 1: are young children engaged by this? Question 2: if the experimenter stops collaborating, will the children attempt to get him to continue?

Felix Warneken

Acts to restore a mutual game

Collaboration
18 month old children collaborate with others.

Collaboration is actively maintained: when the experimenter breaks off, child actively works to get him back in the game.
These kinds of actions appear in the middle of the second year.

Helping
In a collaboration, the child and adult have a common goal.

What happens when the adult has a goal that doesnt even involve the child?
Next experiments: adult attempts to accomplish something and is thwarted. Child (14 or 18 months) watches. NB: the child isn't involved in the adult's activity. the adult doesn't ask for help. the adult doesn't reward the child for helping.

Six situations: 3 retrieving out of reach objects; 3 others.

Case 1: Experimenter drops a clothespin, child = 14 mos.

Case 2: Exp. fails at stacking books, child = 18 mos.

How much are they helping?

18 months

14 months

18 mos: almost all situations tested. 14 mos: retrieving out of reach objects.

Cooperation: Summary and Question

By 18 months, children help unrelated adults quite extensively, without being asked and without rewards. At 14 months, helping is less extensive but does occur. At younger ages, no such actions have been observed. Why this development? Warneken and Tomasello: children are naturally motivated to help others. They begin helping as they are capable of it. An alternative: from birth, children observe others being helpful to them. They learn to do the same by observation and imitation. To distinguish, need studies of younger infants. But younger infants don't have the needed behavioral capacities. A solution: allow young infants to observe acts of helping & test their evaluations of the helper. (Hamlin, Bloom & Wynn, 2007)

Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers

Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers

test: at 6 months, a different experimenter, blind to condition, presents the two objects within the infant's reach

test: at 3 months, the two objects appear side by side and looking is measured.

Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers: 6 mos.

At 6 months, more reaching to helpers than hinderers. control condition: same directions of motion but no animacy neutral condition: bystander who neither helps nor hinders.

Infants' evaluations of helpers and hinderers: 3 mos.

At 3 months, longer looking at helpers or bystanders than hinderers.

Do infants understand helping? Are they naturally helpful?

these questions are open: much more work to do.

for 3 month old infants, the study of cooperation is about at the point of the study of depth perception in Fantz's day.
Wow, effortful ! helping and hindering!

Wow, 3D!

moving in same or opposite directions, or...

But as in Fantz's day, psychologists have the tools to find out. Next class: a beginning....