Class email list: soc-cog@lists.students.wisc.edu

This course will explore children's developing understanding of the social world. There are many aspects to thinking about social content, we'll focus on three main topics: explaining people's behavior, understanding rules and social institutions, and conceptions of human groups and types. These topics will be discussed within the overall framework of children's developing theories of mind. We will consider the origins of social cognition in infancy and explore how this cognition changes into adulthood. Within this developmental approach, we will focus on the preschool years as the time when most of the crucial elements of social cognition appear.

Seminar Papers: Each student will be responsible for writing a seminar paper once during the semester. There will be 1-2 papers for each class period and students will sign-up for particular topics. The seminar paper is a short (about 2 pages single-spaced) discussion of some issue we will be discussing in class. The paper should present the author's reactions to (some of) the readings for the week. This paper will form part of the basis for our in-class discussion of the question and will be distributed to all the participants. Since the seminar paper is part of the required reading for the class period it must be available no later than 5:00 pm of the Wednesday before class. The paper will be distributed using the class email-list. Authors will make brief presentations of their papers to the class.

Weekly Questions: Participants who are not presenting a project or seminar paper will contribute two questions or comments each week. These may consist of reactions to readings, suggestions for discussion, or even requests for clarification. The purpose is to ensure that everyone does the reading and to provide me with some feedback.

3-Credit Presentation: Students taking the class for three credits will have the additional responsibility of an in-class presentation. Students should work in groups of 2-3. This assignment involves picking a topic related to the content of this class, choosing readings, and distributing a seminar paper outlining the issues involved.. These presentations will be scheduled for the final classes of the semester. Plan on about 10-15 minutes of presentation and 20-30 minutes of discussion.

Final paper: (due the last day of class). This paper should take the form of a brief discussion relating some aspect of the class (broadly defined) to your own research interests/program of study (also broadly defined). In this paper I am looking for evidence that you have gotten something useful out of the class. How might you approach your research differently in light of this class. Have the readings generated any new questions or answered any old ones for you? You might choose to write this paper in the form of a proposal for a research project. For 2-credit students this paper may be fairly brief (5-7 pages double-spaced). For 3-credit students I would like a more substantial paper (10-15 pages double-spaced). Ideally this final paper would include material from your presentation.

Last, but most importantly: All students are expected to be active participants in in-class discussions. Class participation is the primary requirement for the class. See me if you have any questions or concerns about your grade or your ability to participate in class discussions.

Seminar papers should be sent to me via email (cwkalish@facstaff.wisc.edu). Ideally you would send the paper as an attached file in html format (most word processing programs can save documents this way). MS Word or plain text formats are acceptable. Questions may also be sent via email.

The required text for this class is:

The book should be available at the Underground Textbook Exchange. All other readings are on reserve at the IMC. IMC reserves are accessible both as hardcopy at the IMC and over the web (http://cimc.education.wisc.edu/e_reserves/edpsych/920spr01/). These documents are in Adobe Acrobat format and take a fair amount of time to download and a lot of processing power to read and print. Experiment.

What is our commonsense understanding of the mind like?

Is it a theory?

What do infants know about the behavior of animate (social?) and inanimate (physical?) objects

Why are false-beliefs so interesting, and what's a "copy theory of mind?"

What do preschoolers still have to learn about the mind?

What's a trait? How does this concept fit into TOM?

How might beliefs about social categories relate to stereotyping?

Is TOM all there is to understanding people?

What cognition underpins rules and morals?

What makes a rule the right thing?

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