Acquiring sub-efficient and efficient variants of novel means by integrating information from multiple social models in preschoolers

Altınok, Nazlı; Hernik, Mikołaj; Király, Ildikó; Gergely, György

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104847

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Our ratio analysis further revealed that infants in the same-language condition were more likely to interact with the box using their heads than their hands when compared to the infants in the foreign-language condition. This finding constitutes further evidence indicating that infants were not only inclined to selectively learn from the speakers of their own language, but they were also more likely to preserve the sub-efficient action manner that the same language demonstrator presented to them despite being able to operate the lamp more efficiently with their hands (see Altınok, Hernik, Király, & Gergely, 2020;Krieger, Aschersleben, Sommerfeld, & Buttelmann, 2020, for a similar pattern of findings with preschoolers).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

The Propensity to Learn Shared Cultural Knowledge from Social Group Members: Selective Imitation in 18-month-olds

Altınok¹,

Király

Gergely³

2021

Journal of Cognition and Development

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Fourteen-month-olds selectively imitated a sub-efficient means (illuminating a lightbox by a head-touch) when this was modeled by linguistic ingroup members in video-demonstrations. A follow-up study with slightly older infants, however, could replicate this effect only in a video-demonstration context. Hence it still remains unclear whether infants' apparent tendency to be selective in learning opaque manners of novel skills from linguistic ingroup members is, indeed, a characteristic constraining property of cultural knowledge transmission that can be reliably manifested in live demonstration contexts that are more representative of naturalistic learning environments. To answer this question, we aimed to replicate the original study using live demonstration with a group of older infants (N = 48; 28 females). We found that eighteen-month-olds imitated the opaque manner of sub-efficient means action as a function of whether the demonstrator was a speaker of their own language. In a no-demonstration control group, infants relied on the self-discovered efficient means (handaction), just like infants observing the foreign speaker. These findings suggest that selectivity in learning sub-efficient opaque actions from linguistic ingroups has evolved to support transmission of culturespecific manner of action practices shared within social groups.Humans are unique in their capacity to acquire and faithfully transmit culturally shared action routines. Given their cognitively opaque and arbitrary characteristics, while acquiring such customary, normative and sub-efficient action routines, naïve learners mostly rely on demonstrations by knowledgeable others . As shown by previous research, ostensive communicative signals (e.g., establishing eye contact and being addressed by infant directed speech) have a special role in aiding infants' acquisition of cognitively opaque information , 2009Gergely, Egyed, & Király, 2007). Ostensive signals facilitate infants' learning about the functions of novel tools despite the opacity of their demonstrated manner of operation and the manifested function served by the novel artifacts (Futó, Téglás, Csibra, & Gergely, 2010). They also help infants to form novel means-actions representations (Hernik & Csibra, 2015), highlight the hidden dispositional properties of objects (

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

The Propensity to Learn Shared Cultural Knowledge from Social Group Members: Selective Imitation in 18-month-olds

Altınok¹,

Király

Gergely³

2021

Journal of Cognition and Development

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“…Moreover, when the actions deviated from efficiency, such as using the head to turn on a lamp without any use of the hands, preschool children exhibited a high degree of fidelity to imitate and over imitate the actions regardless of the causally irrelevant actions to achieve the goal (Evans, Laland, Carpenter, & Kendal, 2018; Gergely, Bekkering, & Király, 2002; Király, Csibra, & Gergely, 2013). It was claimed that inefficient actions are often construed as culturally relevant routines to be acquired and, accordingly, are imitated with fidelity (Altınok, Hernik, Király, & Gergely, 2020; Csibra & Gergely, 2009). As inefficient actions violate the rationale to discriminate the start–end state, they cannot be meaningfully interpreted as having caused physical outcomes but rather as showing causal opacity, and thus, they are usually regarded as ritualistic (Kapitány & Nielsen, 2015; Legare & Souza, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Action Generalization Across Group Members: Action Efficiency Matters

Duan

Jiang

et al. 2021

Cognitive Science

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Actions are usually generalized among social group members. Importantly, the efficiency of an action with respect to achieving an external target determines action understanding, and it may have different degrees of social relevance to social groups. Thus, this study explored the role of action efficiency in action generalization. We used computer animations to simulate actions in social groups initiated by visual action cues or category labels, and we measured differences in response times between identifying actions that were and were not consistent with group members, without explicit requirements regarding generalization. It was found that in both visually introduced and explicitly labeled social groups, when the group members acted inefficiently toward the external object, perceivers identified group‐consistent actions faster than group‐inconsistent actions, indicating that the exemplars' common inefficient actions are generalized to the unknown ingroup member, accordingly facilitating the identification of expected consistent inefficient action (Experiment 1). As this effect was not present when removing social group cues, it was determined to be specific to social groups (Experiment 2). Importantly, such generalization was not observed when the identical action was deemed efficient toward the external object (Experiment 3) and was specific to the demonstration of the action being completed by multiple group members rather than being repeated twice by one group member, supporting the group‐based inference and ruling out the possibility of the increased memorability of inefficient actions leading to more generalization relative to efficient actions (Experiment 4). Therefore, the efficiency of an action bounds the generalization of the action across social group members through a process that is spontaneous and implicit. This constrained action generalization may be due to inefficient actions being represented as culture‐specific conventional forms.

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“…The result that social categories are viewed as social constructs from an early age is in line with studies that highlight the role of social category representations in guiding cultural learning. It has been repeatedly shown that children from the age of 14 months prefer to acquire culturally relevant knowledge from linguistic in-group members 13 – 16 , 48 , but do not necessarily use these distinctions to make inferences about the idiosyncratic preferences of category members 13 . Moreover, Krieger and colleagues 49 failed to find similar selectivity in learning when potential teachers differed along race rather than language use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social categorization based on permanent versus transient visual traits in neurotypical children and children with autism spectrum disorder

Kiss

Oláh

Fehér

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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The present study was designed to test the relative weight of different types of category markers in children’s representations of social and biological kinds. We reasoned that in order to efficiently navigate through the mesh network of overlapping social categories, the representational system dedicated to processing information about social groups should be prepared to flexibly switch between potential ways of categorizing fellow humans. Thus, we hypothesized that children would assign more relevance to transient but symbolic features, such as shirt colour, when categorizing humans than other animal species. Across two experiments, we investigated whether typically developing children as well as children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder would categorize drawings of humans and dogs along a transient or a biologically set, permanent marker. The results show that both groups of children overwhelmingly selected the permanent feature to categorize dogs, however, they were more likely to categorize fellow humans based on transient features. We suggest that this tendency lays the ground for humans’ ability to efficiently represent the complex structure of societies.

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Acquiring sub-efficient and efficient variants of novel means by integrating information from multiple social models in preschoolers

Cited by 7 publications

References 40 publications

The Propensity to Learn Shared Cultural Knowledge from Social Group Members: Selective Imitation in 18-month-olds

The Propensity to Learn Shared Cultural Knowledge from Social Group Members: Selective Imitation in 18-month-olds

Action Generalization Across Group Members: Action Efficiency Matters

Social categorization based on permanent versus transient visual traits in neurotypical children and children with autism spectrum disorder

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