Teaching Through Collaboration: Flexibility and Diversity in Caregiver-Child Interaction Across Cultures

The cultural evolution of teaching

Teaching is an important process of cultural transmission. Some have argued that human teaching is a cognitive instinct - a form of 'natural cognition' centred on mindreading, shaped by genetic evolution for the education of juveniles, and with a normative developmental trajectory driven by the unfolding of a genetically inherited predisposition to teach. Here, we argue instead that human teaching is a culturally evolved trait that exhibits characteristics of a cognitive gadget. Children learn to teach by participating in teaching interactions with socialising agents, which shape their own teaching practices. This process hijacks psychological mechanisms involved in prosociality and a range of domain-general cognitive abilities, such as reinforcement learning and executive function, but not a suite of cognitive adaptations specifically for teaching. Four lines of evidence converge on this hypothesis. The first, based on psychological experiments in industrialised societies, indicates that domain-general cognitive processes are important for teaching. The second and third lines, based on naturalistic and experimental research in small-scale societies, indicate marked cross-cultural variation in mature teaching practice and in the ontogeny of teaching among children. The fourth line indicates that teaching has been subject to cumulative cultural evolution, i.e. the gradual accumulation of functional changes across generations.

Teaching strategies are shaped by experience with formal education: Experimental evidence from caregiver-child dyads in two Tannese communities

Humans are extraordinary in the extent to which we rely on cumulative culture to act upon and make sense of our environment. Teaching is one social learning process thought to be fundamental to the evolution of cumulative culture as a means of adaptation in our species. However, the frequency of teaching and how we teach are known to vary across human sociocultural contexts. Understanding this variation adds to our understanding of the complex interplay between cognition and culture in shaping learning behavior but also contributes to theory around the costs and benefits of different social learning processes. Here, we examined how prior experience with formal education is related to the frequency and diversity of teaching behaviors in an experimental paradigm where caregivers were motivated (but not instructed) to teach a simple skill to a child (7-10 years old). We identified and coded a suite of subtle nonverbal behaviors that could be construed as facilitating learning. Dyads (n = 64) were recruited from two communities on Tanna Island that differ in their experience with formal schooling and their acceptance of Western institutions. We found evidence for parallel teaching strategies in both communities. However, the rate and diversity of teaching behaviors were positively associated with caregiver's experience with formal schooling and independently and negatively associated with being from a village that rejects Western-derived institutions. These results further our understanding of how multiple cultural processes influence social learning and highlights the powerful influence of formal schooling on the cultural evolution of teaching in humans.

What is the expected human childhood? Insights from evolutionary anthropology

In psychological research, there are often assumptions about the conditions that children expect to encounter during their development. These assumptions shape prevailing ideas about the experiences that children are capable of adjusting to, and whether their responses are viewed as impairments or adaptations. Specifically, the expected childhood is often depicted as nurturing and safe, and characterized by high levels of caregiver investment. Here, we synthesize evidence from history, anthropology, and primatology to challenge this view. We integrate the findings of systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and cross-cultural investigations on three forms of threat (infanticide, violent conflict, and predation) and three forms of deprivation (social, cognitive, and nutritional) that children have faced throughout human evolution. Our results show that mean levels of threat and deprivation were higher than is typical in industrialized societies, and that our species has experienced much variation in the levels of these adversities across space and time. These conditions likely favored a high degree of phenotypic plasticity, or the ability to tailor development to different conditions. This body of evidence has implications for recognizing developmental adaptations to adversity, for cultural variation in responses to adverse experiences, and for definitions of adversity and deprivation as deviation from the expected human childhood.

Culture is an optometrist: Cultural contexts adjust the prescription of social learning bifocals

The “prescription” of humans' social learning bifocals is fine-tuned by cultural norms and, as a result, the readiness with which the instrumental or conventional lenses are used to view behavior differs across cultures. We present evidence for this possibility from cross-cultural work examining children's imitation and innovation.

Viewing Development Through the Lens of Culture: Integrating Developmental and Cultural Psychology to Better Understand Cognition and Behavior

Although many definitions of culture exist, studies in psychology typically conceptualize different cultures as different countries. In this article, we argue that cultural psychology also provides a useful lens through which to view developmental milestones. Like other forms of culture, different developmental milestones are demarcated by shared values and language as well as transmission of particular social norms. Viewing development through the lens of cultural psychology sheds light on questions of particular interest to cultural psychologists, such as those concerning the emergence of new cultures and the role of culture in shaping psychological processes. This novel framework also clarifies topics of particular interest to developmental psychology, such as conflict between individuals at different milestones (e.g., arguments between older and younger siblings) and age-related changes in cognition and behavior.

Leveraging cognitive science to foster children's persistence

Persistence is crucial for overcoming academic and interpersonal challenges. However, there has been little progress in developing effective interventions to improve persistence in childhood. Here we outline how recent insights from cognitive science can be leveraged to promote young children's persistence and highlight future directions to bridge research with practice.

Exploration, Explanation, and Parent-Child Interaction in Museums

Young children develop causal knowledge through everyday family conversations and activities. Children's museums are an informative setting for studying the social context of causal learning because family members engage together in everyday scientific thinking as they play in museums. In this multisite collaborative project, we investigate children's developing causal thinking in the context of family interaction at museum exhibits. We focus on explaining and exploring as two fundamental collaborative processes in parent-child interaction, investigating how families explain and explore in open-ended collaboration at gear exhibits in three children's museums in Providence, RI, San Jose, CA, and Austin, TX. Our main research questions examined (a) how open-ended family exploration and explanation relate to one another to form a dynamic for children's learning; (b) how that dynamic differs for families using different interaction styles, and relates to contextual factors such as families' science background, and (c) how that dynamic predicts children's independent causal thinking when given more structured tasks. We summarize findings on exploring, explaining, and parent-child interaction (PCI) styles. We then present findings on how these measures related to one another, and finally how that dynamic predicts children's causal thinking. In studying children's exploring we described two types of behaviors of importance for causal thinking: (a) Systematic Exploration: Connecting gears to form a gear machine followed by spinning the gear machine. (b) Resolute Behavior: Problem-solving behaviors, in which children attempted to connect or spin a particular set of gears, hit an obstacle, and then persisted to succeed (as opposed to moving on to another behavior). Older children engaged in both behaviors more than younger children, and the proportion of these behaviors were correlated with one another. Parents and children talked to each other while interacting with the exhibits. We coded causal language, as well as other types of utterances. Parents' causal language predicted children's causal language, independent of age. The proportion of parents' causal language also predicted the proportion of children's systematic exploration. Resolute behavior on the part of children did not correlate with parents' causal language, but did correlate with children's own talk about actions and the exhibit. We next considered who set goals for the play in a more holistic measure of parent-child interaction style, identifying dyads as parent-directed, child-directed, or jointly-directed in their interaction with one another. Children in different parent-child interaction styles engaged in different amounts of systematic exploration and had parents who engaged in different amounts of causal language. Resolute behavior and the language related to children engaging in such troubleshooting, seemed more consistent across the three parent-child interaction styles. Using general linear mixed modeling, we considered relations within sequences of action and talk. We found that the timing of parents' causal language was crucial to whether children engaged in systematic exploration. Parents' causal talk was a predictor of children's systematic exploration only if it occurred prior to the act of spinning the gears (while children were building gear machines). We did not observe an effect of causal language when it occurred concurrently with or after children's spinning. Similarly, children's talk about their actions and the exhibit predicted their resolute behavior, but only when the talk occurred while the child was encountering the problem. No effects were found for models where the talk happened concurrently or after resolving the problem. Finally, we considered how explaining and exploring related to children's causal thinking. We analyzed measures of children's causal thinking about gears and a free play measure with a novel set of gears. Principal component analysis revealed a latent factor of causal thinking in these measures. Structural equation modeling examined how parents' background in science related to children's systematic exploration, parents' causal language, and parent-child interaction style, and then how those factors predicted children's causal thinking. In a full model, with children's age and gender included, children's systematic exploration related to children's causal thinking. Overall, these data demonstrate that children's systematic exploration and parents' causal explanation are best studied in relation to one another, because both contributed to children's learning while playing at a museum exhibit. Children engaged in systematic exploration, which supported their causal thinking. Parents' causal talk supported children's exploration when it was presented at certain times during the interaction. In contrast, children's persistence in problem solving was less sensitive to parents' talk or interaction style, and more related to children's own language, which may act as a form of self-explanation. We discuss the findings in light of ongoing approaches to promote the benefit of parent-child interaction during play for children's learning and problem solving. We also examine the implications of these findings for formal and informal learning settings, and for theoretical integration of constructivist and sociocultural approaches in the study of children's causal thinking.