CHYS 2P10 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Dopamine Receptor D4, Frontal Lobe, Executive Functions
15 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Understanding that human action is motivated by underlying mental states. Cognitive development: reasoning about representations, false beliefs. Understanding of beliefs and photographs both develop between 3- and 4-years, but Training on one does not affect performance on the other. Dissociation in autism, bad in false belief, ok in false photographs. Inanimate objects representing theory of mind in tasks. Strong hypothesis from autism, can be impaired in autistic individuals. Can be impaired by injury or abnormal development. Ethnographic data: parenting and discipline, observations of schools. Clinical and population genetics: ad/hd, frontal functioning, & drd4 7-repeat allele, Chinese children are better at inhibiting themselves than american children. Chinese children should show earlier theory of mind. Participants: chinese, 109 children (ages 3;2 to 4;11 -- m = 4;0) North american: 107 children (ages 3;2 to 4;11 -- m = 4;0) Summary: chinese outperform u. s. preschoolers on executive functioning, no cross-cultural differences in theory-of-mind, executive functioning and theory-of-mind relation is robust across cultures.
