Social Category Formation Is Induced by Cues of Sharing Knowledge in Young Children

Abstract

Previous research has shown that human infants and young children are sensitive to the boundaries of certain social groups, which supports the idea that the capacity to represent social categories constitutes a fundamental characteristic of the human cognitive system. However, the function this capacity serves is still debated. We propose that during social categorization the human mind aims at mapping out social groups defined by a certain set of shared knowledge. An eye-tracking paradigm was designed to test whether two-year-old children differentially associate conventional versus non-conventional tool use with language-use, reflecting an organization of information that is induced by cues of shared knowledge. Children first watched videos depicting a male model perform goal-directed actions either in a conventional or in a non-conventional way. In the test phase children were presented with photographs taken of the model and of a similarly aged unfamiliar person while listening to a foreign (Experiment 1) or a native language (Experiment 2) text. Upon hearing the foreign utterance children looked at the model first if he had been seen to act in an unconventional way during familiarization. In contrast, children looked at the other person if the model had performed conventional tool use actions. No such differences were found in case of the native language. The results suggest that children take the conventionality of behavior into account in forming representations about a person, and they generalize to other qualities of the person based on this information.

Similarity between an unfamiliar human and the owner affects dogs’ preference for human partner when responding to an unsolvable problem

“…Young children, therefore, do not discriminate based on any arbitrary cue (e.g., colored arm band; Plötner, Over, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2015), while the language the potential partner speaks is a fundamental group-relevant characteristic to guide their preferences (Buttelmann et al, 2013;Howard, Henderson, Carrazza, & Woodward, 2015). Moreover, it seems that the conventionality of tool-using behavior is also a relevant indicator of in-group-out-group membership: Even 2-year-olds tend to associate foreign and native languages differentially with people based on the conventionality of the adult's toolusing behavior (Oláh, Elekes, Bródy, & Király, 2014).…”

Infants’ preferences for native speakers are associated with an expectation of information

“…Allocating more attention to someone speaking the same language (3,15) would be a sensible learning strategy, given that language can indicate a common culture and a native speaker is therefore more likely to convey relevant information than a nonnative speaker. Indeed, it has been shown that 2-y-olds expect foreign language use to associate with other cultural knowledge, such as unconventional tool use, supporting the hypothesis that social categories, such as linguistic groups, may be formed based on, and with the function of, defining barriers of culturally shared knowledge (16). Infants' preference for the conventions (6), food preferences (4), and musical tastes (5) conveyed by a native language speaker is consistent with this hypothesis because it is exactly these kinds of arbitrary, culturally dependent phenomena that a same-group member would be best placed to transmit.…”

What Do Group Members Share? The Privileged Status of Cultural Knowledge for Children

“…Infants and young children are more likely to adopt behaviors and preferences, if they are endorsed by members of their linguistic ingroup (Buttelmann, Zmyj, Daum, & Carpenter, 2013;Kinzler, Corriveau, & Harris, 2011;Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, 2007;Shutts, Kinzler, McKee, & Spelke, 2009;Soley & Sebasti an-Gall es, 2015). Starting around the age of 2 years, children associate conventional actions with native speakers (Liberman, Howard, Vasquez, & Woodward, 2018;Ol ah, Elekes, Br ody, & Kir aly, 2014), they expect normative behaviors to apply to members of the same group (Kalish, 2012;Weatherhead, White, & Friedman, 2016), and they enforce norms selectively to ingroup members (Schmidt, Rakoczy, & Tomasello, 2012). Previous research also suggests that 3-to 6-year-old children consider social norms (e.g., the rules of a game) to be specific to social groups, but moral norms (e.g., not to steal from someone) to be applicable to everyone (Liberman, Howard et al, 2018).…”