The native language of social cognition

Abstract

What leads humans to divide the social world into groups, preferring their own group and disfavoring others? Experiments with infants and young children suggest these tendencies are based on predispositions that emerge early in life and depend, in part, on natural language. Young infants prefer to look at a person who previously spoke their native language. Older infants preferentially accept toys from native-language speakers, and preschool children preferentially select native-language speakers as friends. Variations in accent are sufficient to evoke these social preferences, which are observed in infants before they produce or comprehend speech and are exhibited by children even when they comprehend the foreign-accented speech. Early-developing preferences for native-language speakers may serve as a foundation for later-developing preferences and conflicts among social groups. cognitive developmentThe Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivour of Ephraim said, ''Let me go over,'' the men of Gilead asked him, ''Are you an Ephraimite?'' If he replied, ''No,'' they said, ''All right, say 'Shibboleth'.'' If he said, ''Sibboleth,'' because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.Judges 12:5-6. The biblical story of Shibboleth speaks of the ancient massacre of those who could not correctly pronounce a phrase, thereby revealing their out-group status. Modern-day Shibboleth is ubiquitous: United States history alone abounds with examples of linguistic discrimination, from the severing of the tongues of slaves who spoke no English, to the forbidding of the public speaking of German during World War II and the execution of Russian speakers after the Alaskan purchase (1). Recent world history provides examples of linguicide paired with genocide of the Kurds in Turkey (2) and of imposed language policies initiating antiApartheid riots in South Africa (3). Favor for one's native language group pervades contemporary politics in more subtle ways as well, for example, in recent debates concerning bilingual education, the politics of sign languages in deaf education, or proposals to make English the national language of the United States. We present evidence that the connection between language and human social groups has roots in human infancy, where it guides early-developing social preferences and predisposes humans to interact with members of their own linguistic group.Newborn infants are sensitive to human speech and prefer the sound of their mother's voice and their native language (4-8).Throughout the first year of life, an ability to distinguish contrasts between nonnative speech sounds diminishes, whereas sensitivity to native speech is maintained (9-11). Although infants' looking time preferences to familiar vs. novel displays may vary based on factors such as complexity and duration of exposure (12)(13)(14)(15), often young infants demonstrate a preferen...

Cultural neuroscience and the category of race: the case of the other-race effect

“…12 The above concept agrees with the results of experiments on superior memory for own-versus othergroup faces conducted by VanBavel and Cunningham (2012). The foundation of their research was the thesis The analysis described above is consistent with studies conducted by Kinzler and Spelke (Kinzler et al 2007. These two researchers investigated the social preferences of infants concerning novel individuals.…”

“…Afterwards, children had to decide which of the two previously viewed individuals they would like to interact with (depending on the age: take a toy from the chosen person-10 months; give them a toy-2.5 years; choose them as a future friend-5 years). The first set of experiments (Kinzler et al 2007) provided evidence of a social preference for representatives of one's native language group in comparison with the representatives of other language groups. This preference develops in early infancy.…”

“…Based on these premises, Kinzler and Spelke carried out three series of experiments focused on three different goals (Kinzler et al 2007(Kinzler et al , 2009(Kinzler et al , 2011. They were all based on similar guiding principles, in brief the examined participants were infants and/or young children.…”

“…Such a preference could be an adaptation as familiar people are more likely to be members of the same group/coalition (Kinzler et al 2011, pp. 1-2); (2) In addition to familiarity, children's early social choices also indicate that the importance they grant to different social categories plays a significant role in shaping their behaviour; (3) Besides gender, age and race, language and accent are also valid predictors for social preferences and coalitional group membership (Kinzler et al 2007(Kinzler et al , 2009). …”

The mentalizing network orchestrates the impact of parochial altruism on social norm enforcement

“…Experimental evidence from laboratory [Brewer, 1979;Chen and Li, 2009;Kinzler et al, 2007;Koopmans and Rebers, 2009;Tajfel and Turner, 1979;Tajfel et al, 1971] and field studies [Bernhard et al, 2006;Fehr et al, 2008;Goette et al, 2006] demonstrates that parochial altruism strongly shapes the compliance and enforcement of social norms. Parochial altruism constitutes a persuasive psychological phenomenon which is qualified by a preference for altruistic behavior towards the members of one's ethnic, racial, or any other social group, combined with a tendency for indifference, mistrust, or even hostility toward outgroup members [Brewer, 1999;Hewstone et al, 2002].…”