Children’s Decision to Transmit Information is Guided by their Evaluation of the Nature of that Information

Ronfard, Samuel; Harris, Paul L.

doi:10.1007/s13164-017-0344-5

Cited by 21 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Another promising avenue for future research is cultural transmission of different types of information (Corriveau et al, 2017;Flynn & Whiten, 2012;M. Paulus et al, 2015;Ronfard & Harris, 2018). In the present study, we investigated easy to acquire, developmentally appropriate, rewarding, causally unambiguous, accurate, and easily verifiable information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Two-year old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Bazhydai¹,

Silverstein²,

Parise³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Children are sensitive to both social and non-social aspects of the learning environment. Among social cues, pedagogical communication has been shown to not only play a role in children’s learning, but also in their own active transmission of knowledge. Vredenburgh et al. (2015) showed that 2-year-olds are more likely to demonstrate an action to a naive adult after learning it in a pedagogical than in a non-pedagogical context. This finding was interpreted as evidence that pedagogically transmitted information has a special status as culturally relevant. Here we test the limits of this claim by setting it in contrast with an explanation in which the relevance of information is the outcome of multiple interacting social (e.g., pedagogical demonstration) and non-social properties (e.g., action complexity). To test these competing hypotheses, we varied both pedagogical cues and action complexity in an information transmission paradigm with 2-year-old children. In Experiment 1, children preferentially transmitted simple non-pedagogically demonstrated actions over pedagogically demonstrated more complex actions. In Experiment 2, when both actions were matched for complexity, we found no evidence of preferential transmission of pedagogically demonstrated actions. We discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy between our results and previous literature showing an effect of pedagogical cues on cultural transmission and conclude that our results are compatible with the view that pedagogical and other cues interact, but incompatible with the theory of a privileged role for pedagogical cues.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Two-year old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Bazhydai¹,

Silverstein²,

Parise³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Another promising avenue for future research is cultural transmission of different types of information (Corriveau, Ronfard, et al, ; Flynn & Smith, ; Paulus et al, ; Ronfard & Harris, ). In the present study, we investigated easy to acquire, developmentally appropriate, rewarding, causally unambiguous, accurate, and easily verifiable information.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two‐year‐old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Bazhydai

Silverstein

Parise

et al. 2020

Developmental Science

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Social transmission of information is achieved through observation, imitation, and explicit teaching. The human capacity to flexibly engage learners in pedagogical contexts is at the core of transmission of complex cumulative human culture (Burdett, Dean, & Ronfard, 2017; Caldwell, Renner, & Atkinson, 2017; Kline, 2015). Although socially mediated learning in early childhood has been studied extensively, little is known about child-initiated teaching (Nakao & Andrews,

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“…By 4 years, children tailor their communication based on the linguistic skill and world knowledge of others (Baer & Friedman, 2018; Shatz & Gelman, 1973), using fewer words and talking about general rather than specific properties to ensure successful understanding. Furthermore, preschoolers opt to help someone faced with a difficult task rather than an easy one, reflecting an understanding that the chances of success were lower on the difficult task (Bennett‐Pierre et al, 2018; Bridgers et al, 2020; Ronfard & Harris, 2017). Children, therefore, demonstrate their understanding of others’ chances of success for achieving their own goals and when assisting others to achieve goals.…”

Section: The Development Of Strategic Division Of Labormentioning

confidence: 99%

Mini managers: Children strategically divide cognitive labor among collaborators, but with a self‐serving bias

Baer

Odic

2021

Child Development

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Strategic collaboration according to the law of comparative advantage involves dividing tasks based on the relative capabilities of group members. Three experiments (N = 405, primarily White and Asian, 45% female, collected 2016-2019 in Canada) examined how this strategy develops in children when dividing cognitive labor. Children divided questions about numbers between two partners. By 7 years, children allocated difficult questions to the skilled partner (Experiment 1, d = 1.42; Experiment 2, d = 0.87). However, younger children demonstrated a self-serving bias, choosing the easiest questions for themselves. Only when engaging in a third-party collaborative task did 5-year-olds assign harder questions to the more skilled individual (Experiment 3, d = 0.55). These findings demonstrate early understanding of strategic collaboration subject to a self-serving bias.

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Children’s Decision to Transmit Information is Guided by their Evaluation of the Nature of that Information

Cited by 21 publications

References 46 publications

Two-year old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Two-year old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Two‐year‐old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

Mini managers: Children strategically divide cognitive labor among collaborators, but with a self‐serving bias

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