Communicative Function Demonstration induces kind-based artifact representation in preverbal infants

Futó, Judit; Téglás, Ernő; Csibra, Gergely; Gergely, György

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.06.003

Cited by 128 publications

(102 citation statements)

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“…They also display interpretive biases that suggest that they expect to learn generic and shared knowledge from such communicative acts. For example, infants expect that ostensive signals will be followed by referential signals [4], pay preferential attention to generalizable kind-relevant features of objects that are referentially identified by demonstrative communicative acts addressed to them [5,6], learn causally opaque means actions from communicative demonstrations [7] and assume that communicated valence information about objects (i.e. whether they are evaluated positively or negatively) is shared by others [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation

Csibra¹,

Gergely²

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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We propose that the cognitive mechanisms that enable the transmission of cultural knowledge by communication between individuals constitute a system of 'natural pedagogy' in humans, and represent an evolutionary adaptation along the hominin lineage. We discuss three kinds of arguments that support this hypothesis. First, natural pedagogy is likely to be human-specific: while social learning and communication are both widespread in non-human animals, we know of no example of social learning by communication in any other species apart from humans. Second, natural pedagogy is universal: despite the huge variability in child-rearing practices, all human cultures rely on communication to transmit to novices a variety of different types of cultural knowledge, including information about artefact kinds, conventional behaviours, arbitrary referential symbols, cognitively opaque skills and know-how embedded in means-end actions. Third, the data available on early hominin technological culture are more compatible with the assumption that natural pedagogy was an independently selected adaptive cognitive system than considering it as a by-product of some other human-specific adaptation, such as language. By providing a qualitatively new type of social learning mechanism, natural pedagogy is not only the product but also one of the sources of the rich cultural heritage of our species.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation

Csibra¹,

Gergely²

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

656

327

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“…Moreover, they argue that young children are biased to expect information that is intentionally communicated to them to be relevant, important, and generalizable. Indeed, a number of empirical studies have shown that even infants process information differently and form difference expectations when evidence is deliberately manifested for them (Futó et al, 2010;Egyed, Király, & Gergely, 2013;Yoon, Johnson, & Csibra, 2008;) and by early childhood they treat that information as more important and generalizable in a variety of ways (Bonawitz et al, 2011;Butler & Markman, 2012, 2016Butler et al, 2015;Schmidt et al, 2016;Vredenburgh et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Seeing novel properties or actions demonstrated intentionally, with cues suggesting the pedagogical intent to transmit important infomation, leads children to make inductive generalizations about that evidence that are stronger and more resistant to counter-evidence (Butler & Markman, 2012b, 2016 Hernik & Cisbra, 2015), leads them to construct radically different conceptions of novel categories (Butler & Markman, 2014;Futó, Téglás, Csibra, & Gergely, 2010;Kovács, Téglás, Gergely, & Csibra, 2016;Yoon, Johnson, & Csibra, 2008), and leads them to infer that Pedagogy and counterevidence 6 the demonstrated action is the only (Bonawitz, Shafto et al, 2011) or normatively correct (Schmidt, Butler, Heinz, & Tomasello, 2016; Vrendenburgh, Kushnir, & Casasola, 2014) way to act. Taken together, this evidence suggests that children's sensitivity to whether or not actions are carried out with pedagogical intent towards the child shapes the inferences children make about the evidence those actions produce.…”

Section: Children's Use Of Social Cues To Guide Inductive Inferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Look again: Pedagogical demonstration facilitates children's use of counterevidence

Butler¹

2018

Preprint

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In learning about the world, we must not only make inferences based on minimal evidence, but must deal with conflicting evidence and question those initial inferences when they appear to be wrong. In three experiments (N=96), we found that in some cases young children only revise their causal beliefs when conflicting evidence is explicitly demonstrated for them.Four-and 5-year-old children inferred a rule about what objects had causal powers, and then saw evidence conflicting with that initial inference. Critically, the conflicting evidence was produced either instrumentally and intentionally, or demonstrated communicatively and pedagogically.Only when evidence was explicitly demonstrated for them did children revise their initial hypothesis and use a subtle clue to infer the correct rule.Keywords: belief revision; categorization; pedagogy; social cognition; conceptual development Pedagogy and counterevidence 3 Look again: Pedagogical demonstration facilitates children's use of counterevidenceAs humans, we live in a world of unfathomable uncertainty, yet assume that within that noise there are signals that will help us derive meaning and order. We search for meaningful patterns that help explain the structure of the world (Cimpian & Salomon, 2014), and we both strive to and succeed in identifying those patterns and using them to organize our knowledge, actions, judgments, and decisions across a wide variety of contexts (Gelman, 2003;Gelman & Wellman, 1991;Keil, 1989;Markman, 1989). And yet, as should be expected when drawing uncertain inferences from minimal data, much of the time the initial inferences that we make are wrong. We infer that the earth is flat, that the sun orbits the earth, that invisible entities determine everyday events, that moving objects have a hidden force inside them.Given that the evidence available to us is insufficient to ensure accuracy, and frequently leads to incorrect conclusions and common misconceptions, the capacity to revise our initial inferences based on of new and conflicting evidence is critical to constructing a coherent understanding of the world. And though this is undoubtedly true throughout the lifespan, it is especially true for children forming the initial causal theories that will frame their subsequent learning. Even very young children are sensitive to surprising or unexpected evidence, at least when it presents a clear conflict (Legare, 2012;Stahl & Feigenson, 2015). But relevant counterevidence may often be subtle and easily overlooked unless there is reason to think it might be particularly important. In making inferences, children use others as a source of knowledge to help guide inductive inferences in the face of uncertainty and to gauge the importance of new information. The current research aims to bring this work to bear on the critical process of hypothesis revision in the face of counterevidence. We asked whether children Pedagogy and counterevidence 4 might be more likely to make use of counterevidence in revising their initial hypotheses, when...

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“…As has been demonstrated in a series of experiments involving infants and preschoolers, children tend to give more credit to information derived from ostensive communication than to information obtained via direct experience (Csibra & Gergely 2006;Gergely et al 2007;Csibra 2010;Futó et al 2010;Gergely & Jacob 2012;Butler & Markman 2014). This is what makes the transmission of generic knowledge between generations possible.…”

Section: The Notion Of Ostension In Relevance Theory and In Natural Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifier spreading: children misled by ostensive cues

Kiss

Zétényi

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper calls attention to a methodological problem of acquisition experiments. It shows that the economy of the stimulus employed in child language experiments may lend an increased ostensive effect to the message communicated to the child. Thus, when the visual stimulus in a sentence-picture matching task is a minimal model abstracting away from the details of the situation, children often regard all the elements of the stimulus as ostensive clues to be represented in the corresponding sentence. The use of such minimal stimuli is mistaken when the experiment aims to test whether or not a certain element of the stimulus is relevant for the linguistic representation or interpretation. The paper illustrates this point by an experiment involving quantifier spreading. It is claimed that children find a universally quantified sentence like Every girl is riding a bicycle to be a false description of a picture showing three girls riding bicycles and a solo bicycle because they are misled to believe that all the elements in the visual stimulus are relevant, hence all of them are to be represented by the corresponding linguistic description. When the iconic drawings were replaced by photos taken in a natural environment rich in accidental details, the occurrence of quantifier spreading was radically reduced. It is shown that an extra object in the visual stimulus can lead to the rejection of the sentence also in the case of sentences involving no quantification, which gives further support to the claim that the source of the problem is not (or not only) the grammatical or cognitive difficulty of quantification but the unintended ostensive effect of the extra object.

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Communicative Function Demonstration induces kind-based artifact representation in preverbal infants

Cited by 128 publications

References 20 publications

Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation

Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation

Look again: Pedagogical demonstration facilitates children's use of counterevidence

Quantifier spreading: children misled by ostensive cues

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