Tools and
Mindreading:
Week 2 of Developing
Individual in Society
Methodological
Approaches:
Psychology is a complex subject; especially when it involves the study of children.
What common methods and tools can we use to investigate theories and, even
more so, how can these be adapted to work with children?
First, what issues would we encounter with studying a child?
Preverbal children= unable to understand instructions, verbally answer
questions
Attention span- Is the child old enough to hold concentration?
Can the child perform enough motor skills to do any physical task?
Ethics- is the child able to withdraw from the study if they want to?
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience:
Psychology has developed and understood that parts of our journey to
understanding the mind can be linked to the structure of the brain. Using various
imaging techniques, we are now able to observe cognitive approaches within
architectures of the brain.
MRI Scans are the most well-known tool used by psychologists to observe this
phenomenon. It can produce high-res images of the brain. This technique can
display how activity can change in the brain over time by detecting concentrations
of blood it can prove which structures are responsible for which mental activities.
, These ‘high concentrations’ of blood will light up as the individual processes'
information. For example, when the participant is speaking, you would see high
activity in the motor cortex, frontal lobe (Broca’s area) and Wernicke’s area.
EEG imaging is most famously remembered for the participant wearing a hat made
of hundreds of tiny electrodes on their head. These electrodes sense
electromagnetic activity generated by the occurring electro-chemical processes
located in the surface of the cortex in the brain. EEG is not as precise as MRI scans
in locating the exact location of activity in the brain. On the other hand, it is better
at detecting how neural activity changes over short time periods. This tool provides
useful information on the attention level of the cortex, specifically, the speeds in
shifts of attention. Using EEG, you can often recognise a child with autism as their
cortex is more adapted to the processing of non-social information. Interestingly,
when a child is presented with a person’s face, cortical response from a typical child
would be relatively fast. Whereas, a child with autism will display a relatively slow
cortical response to this information. On the other hand, a typical child presented
with a physical object will display a slower response than children with autism who
tend to present a quicker response.
So how does understanding how cognitive functions are represented in the brains
aid our studies?
How can we compare brains between evolutionary species?
Knowing about the specific part of the brain and its responsibilities can help
us test theories. For example, the ability to imagine being in the situation of
another person. (Empathy) and contagious behaviours (yawning) shows that
the same area that is lit up in the participant yawning is then lit up in anyone
who has observed this behaviour. Imaging shows how neurons in one brain
can, in fact, resonate with those in another brain. (Mirror Neuron
Hypothesis). This explains that we understand the mind of others via
imagination and projection.
Limitations in Cognitive Neuroscience
Knowing where a cognitive process is located in the brain, itself, is not
helpful.
Recent studies have revealed that most cognitive processes are not located
in simply one place.
Practical difficulties when using these tools with children include that the
combination of the small, claustrophobic space and loud noise of an MRI
machine can be highly distressing for a child- making it highly unlikely that
the observed neural activity is representative of behaviour exhibited when
the child is not frightened or distressed.
EEG testing involves the participant to be situated in a Faraday cage which,
again, is not representative of real-world environments.
