Children use salience to solve coordination problems

Abstract

Humans are routinely required to coordinate with others. When communication is not possible, adults often achieve this by using salient cues in the environment (e.g. going to the Eiffel Tower, as an obvious meeting point). To explore the development of this capacity, we presented dyads of 3-, 5-, and 8-year-olds (N = 144) with a coordination problem: Two balls had to be inserted into the same of four boxes to obtain a reward. Identical pictures were attached to three boxes whereas a unique -and thus salient -picture was attached to the fourth. Children either received one ball each, and so had to choose the same box (experimental condition), or they received both balls and could get the reward independently (control condition). In all cases, children could neither communicate nor see each other's choices. Children were significantly more likely to choose the salient option in the experimental condition than in the control condition. However, only the two older age groups chose the salient box above chance levels. This study is the first to show that children from at least age 5 can solve coordination problems by converging on a salient solution. Research highlights• Dyads of children (3-, 5-, and 8-year-olds) were presented with a coordination problem where they had to choose the same of four options as their partner to be rewarded.

Conforming to coordinate: Children use majority information for peer coordination

“…Our results add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that by the late preschool years, children are capable of using a variety of different strategies to solve coordination problems with peers with and without communication (Duguid et al ., ; Grueneisen et al ., ; Wyman et al ., ). Furthermore, in line with previous studies (Chen et al ., ; Haun & Tomasello, ), our results underline that children do not ‘blindly’ conform to majorities but instead flexibly use their conformist tendencies in order to achieve specific social goals.…”

“…In the experimental condition, on the other hand, children of both sexes conformed at equal levels, suggesting that there are no sex differences in the capacity to strategically use conformity for coordination purposes. Correspondingly, no sex differences were found in previous studies on children's strategic decision‐making in coordination problems (Grueneisen et al ., ,b; Wyman et al ., ).…”

“…Recent research indicates that children start mastering formal coordination problems at the late preschool age. In one study, for instance, dyads of children were shown to be able to use a salient option as a focal point for achieving coordination (Grueneisen, Wyman, & Tomasello, ): To receive a reward, children were required to insert a ball each into the same of four boxes. They had to achieve this without any communication and without seeing their partner's choice.…”

“…While the reasons for this are not clear, these results are congruous with findings of early sex differences of basic imitative abilities (Nagy, Kompagne, Orvos, & Pal, ). So far, no sex differences have been found in children's social coordination abilities (Duguid et al ., ; Grueneisen et al ., ,b). Yet, given these previous findings of sex differences in majority influence and imitation skills, conformity might be a coordination strategy where one might expect sex differences to be present as well.…”

Cognitive Skills and the Development of Strategic Sophistication

“…We study strategic behavior in competitive games, rather than cooperative behavior. A few papers investigate how cooperation or coordination changes with age in strategic games (Kagan and Madsen, 1971;Stingle and Cook, 1985;Fan, 2000;Harbaugh and Krause, 2000;Sally and Hill, 2006;Devetag et al, 2013;Grueneisen et al, 2015;, while a couple of papers investigate the role of theory-of-mind with a focus on autistic children (Sally and Hill, 2006;Li et al, 2014). 7 We now turn to intentions.…”