Parents scaffold flexible imitation during early childhood

If I told you everyone picked that (non-affordant) tool, would you? Children attend to conventional language when imitating and transmitting tool use

This study explored how conventional versus instrumental language influenced children's imitation and transmission of non-affordant tool use. Rather than examining children's imitation of unnecessary actions that do not impede goal completion, we examined children's conformity with a modeled behavior that may result in sacrificing goal completion. Children (N = 96 4- to 6-year-olds) were presented with either a conventional or instrumental description of a model's actions before watching the model choose a non-affordant tool. Children who heard conventional language imitated and transmitted the model's non-affordant tool choice at significantly higher rates than when they heard instrumental language. The results have implications for children, parents, and teachers regarding the extent to which children will conform with what "we" are "supposed" to do.

The Development of Cumulative Cultural Learning

Human culture is unique among animals in its complexity, variability, and cumulative quality. This article describes the development and diversity of cumulative cultural learning. Children inhabit cultural ecologies that consist of group-specific knowledge, practices, and technologies that are inherited and modified over generations. The learning processes that enable cultural acquisition and transmission are universal but are sufficiently flexible to accommodate the highly diverse cultural repertoires of human populations. Children learn culture in several complementary ways, including through exploration, observation, participation, imitation, and instruction. These methods of learning vary in frequency and kind within and between populations due to variation in socialization values and practices associated with specific educational institutions, skill sets, and knowledge systems. The processes by which children acquire and transmit the cumulative culture of their communities provide unique insight into the evolution and ontogeny of human cognition and culture.

Smart Conformists: Children and Adolescents Associate Conformity With Intelligence Across Cultures

The current study used a novel methodology based on multivocal ethnography to assess the relations between conformity and evaluations of intelligence and good behavior among Western (U.S.) and non-Western (Ni-Vanuatu) children (6- to 11-year-olds) and adolescents (13- to 17-year-olds; N = 256). Previous research has shown that U.S. adults were less likely to endorse high-conformity children as intelligent than Ni-Vanuatu adults. The current data demonstrate that in contrast to prior studies documenting cultural differences between adults' evaluations of conformity, children and adolescents in the United States and Vanuatu have a conformity bias when evaluating peers' intelligence and behavior. Conformity bias for good behavior increases with age. The results have implications for understanding the interplay of conformity bias and trait psychology across cultures and development.

An experimental examination of object-directed ritualized action in children across two cultures

Ritualized actions are common in daily life, and prevalent across cultures. Adults have been shown, under experimental conditions, to treat objects subjected to ritualized action as special and different relative to objects subjected to non-ritualized action. Similarly, children as young as 4, are sensitive to ritualized actions–frequently reproducing such actions at high fidelity. The current cross-cultural experiment attempts to extend existing findings among two culturally distinct groups of children with regard to object-directed rituals. We predicted that children’s preference for a reward would be influenced by ritualized action (but not non-ritualized action). Over two trials we presented children in Australia (N = 93; mean age = 6.03 years, SD = 2.07 years) and Vanuatu (N = 109; mean age = 6.13 years, SD = 1.96 years) with two identical rewards, which was either subjected to ritualized action or non-ritualized action. Contrary to previous findings among adults, ritualized action did not influence children’s preference for a reward. We frame the current results in the context of socially relevant group rituals, and discuss the implications for both wider theory and methods. We conclude with a call for pre-registered replications.

The early social significance of shared ritual actions

Many rituals are socially stipulated such that engaging in a group's rituals can fundamentally signal membership in that group. Here, we asked whether infants infer information about people's social affiliation based on whether those people perform the same ritualistic action versus different actions. We presented 16-month-old infants with two people who used the same object to achieve the same goal: turning on a light. In a first study, the actions that the actors used to turn on the light had key properties of ritual: they were not causally necessary to reach the overall goal, and there were no features of the situation that required doing the particular actions. We varied whether the two actors performed the same action or performed different actions to turn on the light. Infants expected people who used the same ritualistic action to be more likely to affiliate than people who used different actions. A second study indicated that these results were not due to perceptual similarity: when the differences in the actors' actions were not marked by properties of ritual, but were instead due to situational constraints, infants expected the actors to affiliate. Thus, infants understand the social significance of people engaging in common, potentially ritualistic actions, and expect these actions to provide information about third-party social relationships.

Causal learning is collaborative: Examining explanation and exploration in social contexts

Causal learning in childhood is a dynamic and collaborative process of explanation and exploration within complex physical and social environments. Understanding how children learn causal knowledge requires examining how they update beliefs about the world given novel information and studying the processes by which children learn in collaboration with caregivers, educators, and peers. The objective of this article is to review evidence for how children learn causal knowledge by explaining and exploring in collaboration with others. We review three examples of causal learning in social contexts, which elucidate how interaction with others influences causal learning. First, we consider children's explanation-seeking behaviors in the form of "why" questions. Second, we examine parents' elaboration of meaning about causal relations. Finally, we consider parents' interactive styles with children during free play, which constrains how children explore. We propose that the best way to understand children's causal learning in social context is to combine results from laboratory and natural interactive informal learning environments.

Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity

The complexity and variability of human culture is unmatched by any other species. Humans live in culturally constructed niches filled with artifacts, skills, beliefs, and practices that have been inherited, accumulated, and modified over generations. A causal account of the complexity of human culture must explain its distinguishing characteristics: It is cumulative and highly variable within and across populations. I propose that the psychological adaptations supporting cumulative cultural transmission are universal but are sufficiently flexible to support the acquisition of highly variable behavioral repertoires. This paper describes variation in the transmission practices (teaching) and acquisition strategies (imitation) that support cumulative cultural learning in childhood. Examining flexibility and variation in caregiver socialization and children's learning extends our understanding of evolution in living systems by providing insight into the psychological foundations of cumulative cultural transmission-the cornerstone of human cultural diversity.