Thinking of Others

Children's Critical Thinking When Learning From Others.

A key component of critical thinking is the ability to evaluate the statements of other people. Because information that is obtained from others is not always accurate, it is important that children learn to reason about it critically. By as early as age 3, children understand that people sometimes communicate inaccurate information and that some individuals are more reliable sources than other...

Social cognition: thinking categorically about others.

In attempting to make sense of other people, perceivers regularly construct and use categorical representations to simplify and streamline the person perception process. Noting the importance of categorical thinking in everyday life, our emphasis in this chapter is on the cognitive dynamics of categorical social perception. In reviewing current research on this topic, three specific issues are ...

4 Thinking about Others: The Neural Substrates of Social Cognition

Humans are set apart from other animals by a number of behaviors and the cognitive faculties that give rise to them. For example, Homo sapiens is the only species that has harnassed arbitrary symbols into languages capable of expressing an infinite number of ideas; that routinely develops and improves upon tools for augmenting our natural abilities (including mathematics); and that can suppress...

Thinking about others: The neural substrates of social cognition

Children's thinking about their own and others' regret and relief.

In two experiments using a decision-making game, we investigated children's thinking about regret and relief. In Experiment 1 (N=43, 31 children [5 years 4 months to 8 years 2 months of age] and 12 adults), participants chose between two boxes containing different numbers of stickers. They rated their happiness before learning that the other box contained more (regret) or fewer (relief) sticker...