Learning From Others and Spontaneous Exploration: A Cross‐Cultural Investigation

Shneidman, Laura A.; Gweon, Hyowon; Schulz, Laura; Woodward, Amanda L.

doi:10.1111/cdev.12502

Cited by 63 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It should be acknowledged that our sample was limited to children reared within the United States; it is therefore unclear how our findings might generalize to other cultures. In some Mayan communities, for instance, children become proficient teachers at earlier ages than they do in Western cultures (Gaskins, 1999;Maynard, 2002; see also Shneidman, Gweon, Schulz, & Woodward, 2016). If ToM development and teaching abilities are indeed linked as we report here, this could have implications for how ToM develops across cultures where natural pedagogy emerges at different ages.…”

Section: Children's Theory Of Mind and Evidence Selectionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Children's Developing Theory of Mind and Pedagogical Evidence Selection

Bass¹,

Gopnik²,

Hanson³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Natural pedagogy emerges early in development, but good teaching requires tailoring evidence to learners’ knowledge. How does the ability to reason about others’ minds support early pedagogical evidence selection abilities? In three experiments (N = 205), we investigated preschool-aged children’s ability to consider others’ knowledge when selecting evidence in the service of teaching. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that four-year-olds reliably selected evidence to rectify others’ false beliefs, and provided causal explanations in their teaching, whereas three-year-olds did not. In Experiment 2, we tie children’s evidence selection abilities to Theory of Mind (ToM) development, above and beyond effects of age and numerical conservation abilities. In Experiment 3, we employed a 6-week training of children’s pedagogical evidence selection with a new teaching task, and further explored the relationship between these skills and children’s ToM abilities. We qualitatively replicated our results from Experiment 2, and report tentative evidence for a link between the pedagogical training and improvements in ToM. Together, our findings suggest important connections between reasoning about others’ minds and evidential reasoning in natural pedagogy in early childhood.

show abstract

Section: Children's Theory Of Mind and Evidence Selectionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Children's Developing Theory of Mind and Pedagogical Evidence Selection

Bass¹,

Gopnik²,

Hanson³

et al. 2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Alternatively, is it only those children that have been exposed to a good deal of formal teaching who come to assume that teachers provide all the information they need? Contrary to what might have been expected, Schneidman, Gweon, Schulz, and Woodward () provide evidence for the funneling effect of instruction among Yucatan Mayan children in southeastern Mexico, despite their minimal exposure to formal teaching. By implication, children grasp the implications of deliberate pedagogy early in life, before they have started formal schooling.…”

Section: The Distribution Of Cultural Learningmentioning

confidence: 80%

The Ontogeny of Cultural Learning

Legare

Harris

2016

Child Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Developmental research has the potential to address some of the critical gaps in our scientific understanding of the role played by cultural learning in ontogenetic outcomes. The goal of this special section was to gather together leading examples of research on cultural learning across a variety of social contexts and caregiving settings. Although the field of developmental psychology continues to struggle with the persistent problem of oversampling U.S. and Western European populations, we argue that the articles in this special section add to the growing evidence that children everywhere draw on a repertoire of cultural learning strategies that optimize their acquisition of the specific practices, beliefs, and values of their communities. We also identify future directions and outline best practices for the conduct of research on cultural learning.

show abstract

“…We chose our study sites for comparison primarily because the researchers have expertise and long‐term fieldwork experience in these regions (Moya in Huatasani, Peru; Kline and Gervais in Yasawa, Fiji) and because work at these sites will improve the global coverage of sampled populations with particular features relevant to the development of social learning. In comparison to a typical Western sample, these populations have more kin‐based social organization, mixed‐age socialization among children, and learning of practical skills outside the classroom (see also Berl & Hewlett, ; Clegg & Legare, ; Nielsen & Tomaselli, ; Nielsen, Tomaselli, Mushin, & Whiten, ; Shneidman, Gweon, Schulz, & Woodward, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Irrelevant‐action imitation is short‐term and contextual: Evidence from two under‐studied populations

Kline

Gervais

Moya

et al. 2019

Developmental Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Across the lifespan and across populations, humans ‘overimitate’ causally unnecessary behaviors. Such irrelevant‐action imitation facilitates faithful cultural transmission, but its immediate benefits to the imitator are controversial. Over short time scales, irrelevant‐action imitation may bootstrap artifact exploration or interpersonal affiliation, and over longer time scales it may facilitate acquisition of either causal models or social conventions. To investigate these putative functions, we recruited community samples from two under‐studied populations: Yasawa, Fiji, and Huatasani, Peru. We use a two‐action puzzle box: first after a video demonstration, and again one month later. Treating age as a continuous variable, we reveal divergent developmental trajectories across sites. Yasawans (44 adults, M = 39.9 years, 23 women; 42 children, M = 9.8 years, 26 girls) resemble documented patterns, with irrelevant‐action imitation increasing across childhood and plateauing in adulthood. In contrast, Huatasaneños (48 adults, M = 37.6 years, 33 women; 47 children, M = 9.3 years, 13 girls) evince a parabolic trajectory: adults at the site show the lowest irrelevant‐action imitation of any demographic set in our sample. In addition, all age sets in both populations reduce their irrelevant actions at Time 2, but do not reduce their relevant‐action imitation or goal attainment. Taken together, and considering the local cultural contexts, our results suggest that irrelevant‐action imitation serves a short‐term function and is sensitive to the social context of the demonstration.

show abstract

Learning From Others and Spontaneous Exploration: A Cross‐Cultural Investigation

Cited by 63 publications

References 65 publications

Children's Developing Theory of Mind and Pedagogical Evidence Selection

Children's Developing Theory of Mind and Pedagogical Evidence Selection

The Ontogeny of Cultural Learning

Irrelevant‐action imitation is short‐term and contextual: Evidence from two under‐studied populations

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About