Do You Do as I Do?: Young Toddlers Prefer and Copy Toy Choices of Similarly Acting Others

Infants' biased individuation of in-group members

Adults tend to construe members of their group as "unique individuals" more than members of other groups. This study investigated whether infants exhibit this tendency, even in regard to unfamiliar arbitrary groups. Ninety-six White 1-year-olds were assigned to an Ingroup, Outgroup, or No-Group condition, based on whether or not they shared two preferences (food and shirt color) with women appearing on video sequences. In the critical trial, infants saw two women (Ingroup, Outgroup, or No-Group) - one at a time - appearing from behind a curtain. The curtain opened to reveal only one woman. Infants in the Ingroup condition looked longer at this display than infants in the other two conditions. This suggests that infants in the Ingroup condition had a stronger expectation than those in the other two conditions that there would be two women behind the curtain. In other words, infants individuated in-group members more than out-group members.

Understanding preferences in infancy

A preference is defined as a dispositional state that helps explain why a person chooses one option over another. Preference understanding is a significant part of interpreting and predicting others' behavior, which can also help to guide social encounters, for instance, to initiate interactions and even form relationships based on shared preferences. Cognitive developmental research in the past several decades has revealed that infants have relatively sophisticated understandings about others' preferences, as part of investigations into how young children make sense of others' behavior in terms of mental states such as intentions, dispositions including preferences, and epistemic states. In recent years, research on early psychological knowledge expands to including infant understanding of social situations. As such, infants are also found to use their preference understandings in their social life. They treat favorably others who share their own preferences, and they prefer prosocial and similar others (e.g., those who speak their language). In reviewing these results, we point out future directions for research and conclude with further suggestions and recommendations. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development Psychology > Development and Aging.

When Are Similar Individuals a Group? Early Reasoning About Similarity and In-Group Support

Beginning in infancy, children expect individuals in a group to care for and be loyal to in-group members. One prominent cue that children use to infer that individuals belong to the same group is similarity. Does any salient similarity among individuals elicit an expectation of in-group preference, or does contextual information modulate these expectations? In Experiments 1 and 2, 12-month-old infants expected in-group preference between two individuals who wore the same novel outfit, but they dismissed this similarity if one of the outfits was used to fulfill an instrumental purpose. In Experiment 3, 26-month-old toddlers expected in-group preference between two individuals who uttered the same novel labels, but they dismissed this similarity if the labels were used to convey incidental as opposed to categorical information about the individuals. Together, the results of these experiments (N = 96) provide converging evidence that from early in life, children possess a context-sensitive mechanism for determining whether similarities mark groups.

Copy the In-group: Group Membership Trumps Perceived Reliability, Warmth, and Competence in a Social-Learning Task

Surprisingly little is known about how social groups influence social learning. Although several studies have shown that people prefer to copy in-group members, these studies have failed to resolve whether group membership genuinely affects who is copied or whether group membership merely correlates with other known factors, such as similarity and familiarity. Using the minimal-group paradigm, we disentangled these effects in an online social-learning game. In a sample of 540 adults, we found a robust in-group-copying bias that (a) was bolstered by a preference for observing in-group members; (b) overrode perceived reliability, warmth, and competence; (c) grew stronger when social information was scarce; and (d) even caused cultural divergence between intermixed groups. These results suggest that people genuinely employ a copy-the-in-group social-learning strategy, which could help explain how inefficient behaviors spread through social learning and how humans maintain the cultural diversity needed for cumulative cultural evolution.

Origins of homophily: Infants expect people with shared preferences to affiliate

Homophily structures human social networks: people tend to seek out or be attracted to those who share their preferences or values, and to generally expect social connections between similar people. Here, we probe the nature and extent of infants' homophilic thinking by asking whether infants can use information about other people's shared preferences in the absence of other socially relevant behaviors (e.g., their proximity or joint attention) to infer their affiliation. To do so, we present infants with scenarios in which two people either share a preference or have opposing preferences while varying (across studies) the degree to which those people engage in other socially relevant behaviors. We show that by 14 months of age, infants demonstrate clear inferences of homophily: they expect two people with a shared preference to be more likely to affiliate than two people without such similarity, even in the absence of other social behaviors that signal friendship. Although such cognition begins to emerge by 6-months, younger infants' inferences are bolstered by social behaviors that signal friendship. Thus, an abstract understanding that homophily guides third-party affiliation has its roots in the second year of life, and potentially earlier.

More than just accent? The role of dialect words in children's language-based social judgments

Recent research suggests that young children are capable of distinguishing between phonetically dissimilar spoken accents yet have difficulty in distinguishing between phonetically similar accents. The current studies aimed to determine whether the presence of dialect-specific vocabulary enhances young children's ability to categorize speakers. In Study 1, 4- to 7-year-old children performed tasks in which they matched speakers based on the dialect-specific vocabulary the speakers used. Participants were successful in matching speakers based on vocabulary at a rate significantly greater than chance. In Study 2, participants performed a task in which they inferred a speaker's future dialect-specific vocabulary use based on the speaker's previous vocabulary use. Participants were able to infer a speaker's vocabulary use at a rate significantly greater than chance, and participants also showed social preference for and selective trust of speakers who used the participants' native dialect vocabulary over those who used a non-native dialect vocabulary. These interesting results suggest that when accent differences are too subtle for children to categorize speakers, dialect-specific vocabulary may enhance young children's ability to categorize a speaker. The results of preference and selective trust questions also suggest that children as young as 4 years use their knowledge of a speaker's vocabulary to guide their preferred social interactions, choosing to interact with others who speak similarly to them.

Use of Repeated Within-Subject Measures to Assess Infants' Preference for Similar Others

Research employing single-choice paradigms in which an infant is asked to make a single choice between two puppets suggest that infants show a preference for prosocial others and those who are similar to themselves. However, the extent to which infants’ preference for similar others is stable is unknown, as are other factors within the paradigm that may influence infants’ choices. The purpose of this study (two experiments, N = 44 infants, aged 8–15 months) was to replicate and extend previous work by including (1) within-subject repeated measures and (2) an experimental manipulation of a plausible demand characteristic. Results for the first-choice trial indicated a majority of the infants did not choose the similar puppet. Results from the within-subject repeated trials also indicated that a majority of the infants did not choose the similar puppet but a majority did choose a puppet from the same side. The experimental manipulation of the demand characteristic showed no effect on infant puppet choices. These results suggest that a closer examination of the single-choice puppet paradigm for assessing infants’ social evaluation is warranted. These findings also support recommendations made by others, including publishing null findings, standardizing data collection and reporting methods, and examining individual differences by employing within-subject designs with repeated measures.

Rhythm and melody as social signals for infants

Infants typically experience music through social interactions with others. One such experience involves caregivers singing to infants while holding and bouncing them rhythmically. These highly social interactions shape infant music perception and may also influence social cognition and behavior. Moving in time with others-interpersonal synchrony-can direct infants' social preferences and prosocial behavior. Infants also show social preferences and selective prosociality toward singers of familiar, socially learned melodies. Here, we discuss recent studies of the influence of musical engagement on infant social cognition and behavior, highlighting the importance of rhythmic movement and socially relevant melodies.

The Origins of Social Categorization

Forming conceptually-rich social categories helps people to navigate the complex social world by allowing them to reason about the likely thoughts, beliefs, actions, and interactions of others, as guided by group membership. Nevertheless, social categorization often has nefarious consequences. We suggest that the foundation of the human ability to form useful social categories is in place in infancy: social categories guide the inferences infants make about the shared characteristics and social relationships of other people. We also suggest that the ability to form abstract social categories may be separable from the eventual negative downstream consequences of social categorization, including prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping. Although a tendency to form inductively-rich social categories appears early in ontogeny, prejudice based on each particular category dimension may not be inevitable.