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

Children's distinct drive to reproduce costly rituals

Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety-three 4-6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non-ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non-ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition.

The role of conventionality and design in children's function judgments about malfunctioning artifacts

This study investigated the individual influences of conventionality and designer's intent on function judgments of possibly malfunctioning artifacts. Children aged 4 and 5 years and 6 to 8 years were presented with stories about an artifact with two equally plausible functions, one labeled as either conventional or designed. Subsequently, a character attempted to use the artifact for the cued function, which resulted in either malfunction or successful use. The children's task was to identify the real function of the artifact. When the use attempt succeeded, 4- and 5-year-olds preferred conventional functions to the alternative (but did not show a clear preference between design functions and the alternative), and 6- to 8-year-olds preferred conventional and designed functions to the alternative. In case of malfunction, children's choices were at chance, where the effect of either conventional or design cues was less salient. This contrasts with a baseline condition where children avoided the malfunctioning alternatives. Presenting additional cues about an artifact's function can affect function judgments in cases of malfunction.