Taking Turns or Not? Children's Approach to Limited Resource Problems in Three Different Cultures

Zeidler, Henriette; Herrmann, Eva; Haun, Daniel B. M.; Tomasello, Michael

doi:10.1111/cdev.12505

Cited by 18 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Our results with children confirm and extend previous work on children’s behaviour in competitive resource situations 2,8 . As measured both by the inequality of tool use as well as the frequency of turn-taking, children displayed a strong tendency to create equal output by alternating access to the tool.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…In chimpanzee social ecology, more long-term balancing mechanisms such as attitudinal reciprocity (also sometimes called emotional bookkeeping) 26,27 might guarantee the stability of cooperative relationships. In line with this argument, Zeidler and colleagues 8 show that also in humans, short-term turn-taking seems to be a more prevalent strategy in children from large-scale societies compared to children who grow up in small, close-knit communities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…In a first model, we looked at how the inequality varied between the two species on trial level. Then, in a second model, we investigated the level of inequality on a dyadic level since individuals could alternate in monopolizing the tool in each trial and thereby eventually end up with an equal outcome, too (see 8 ). More specifically, we fitted two GLMMs with binomial error structure and logit link function to investigate how the inequality of tool use varied between the two species on a trial basis (addressing the level of inequality for every trial, GLMM 1) and on the dyadic level (addressing the overall inequality per dyad, across trials, GLMM 2).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While results show that children at least sometimes used turn-taking strategies, the authors’ main interest was whether children were able to maintain cooperation (and successfully retrieve the marble) in the face of opposing preferences, rather than in their strategies for doing so. Additional work by Zeidler and colleagues 8 included a cross-cultural investigation of children’s behaviour in a similar limited resource problem.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Chimpanzees monopolize and children take turns in a limited resource problem

Knofe

Engelmann

Tomasello

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

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Competition over scarce resources is common across the animal kingdom. Here we investigate the strategies of chimpanzees and children in a limited resource problem. Both species were presented with a tug-of-war apparatus in which each individual in a dyad received a tool to access a reward, but tools could not be used simultaneously. We assessed the equality of tool use as well as the frequency of turn taking. Both species managed to overcome this conflict of interest but used different strategies to do so. While there was substantial variation in chimpanzee behaviour, monopolization was the common course of action: tool use was asymmetric with individual chimpanzees monopolizing the resource. In children, turn-taking emerged as the dominant strategy: tool use was symmetric and children alternated access to the tool at a high rate. These results suggest that while both species possess strategies for solving limited resource problems, humans might have evolved species unique motivations and socio-cognitive skills for dealing with such conflicts of interest.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Chimpanzees monopolize and children take turns in a limited resource problem

Knofe

Engelmann

Tomasello

et al. 2019

Sci Rep

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…There is also evidence for substantial variation in norms and expectations for social interaction. For example, Zeidler, Herrmann, Haun, and Tomasello () examined resource distribution and turn‐taking among German, Samburu, and Kikuyu 5‐ to 10‐year‐olds. Almost all German pairs solved the problem of unresource allocation by taking turns immediately.…”

Section: Research In Developmental Psychology Remains Weirdmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ontogeny of Cultural Learning

Legare

Harris

2016

Child Development

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Developmental research has the potential to address some of the critical gaps in our scientific understanding of the role played by cultural learning in ontogenetic outcomes. The goal of this special section was to gather together leading examples of research on cultural learning across a variety of social contexts and caregiving settings. Although the field of developmental psychology continues to struggle with the persistent problem of oversampling U.S. and Western European populations, we argue that the articles in this special section add to the growing evidence that children everywhere draw on a repertoire of cultural learning strategies that optimize their acquisition of the specific practices, beliefs, and values of their communities. We also identify future directions and outline best practices for the conduct of research on cultural learning.

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A roadmap to doing culturally grounded developmental science

et al. 2022

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This paper provides a roadmap for engaging in cross-cultural, developmental research in practical, ethical, and community-engaged ways. To cultivate the flexibility necessary for conducting cross-cultural research, we structure our roadmap as a series of questions that each research program might consider prior to embarking on cross-cultural examinations in developmental science. Within each topic, we focus on the challenges and opportunities inherent to different types of study designs, fieldwork, and collaborations because our collective experience in conducting research in multiple cultural contexts has taught us that there can be no single "best practice". Here we identify the challenges that are unique to cross-cultural research as well as present a series of recommendations and guidelines. We also bring to the forefront ethical considerations which are rarely encountered in the laboratory context, but which researchers face daily while conducting research in a cultural context which one is not a member. As each research context requires unique solutions to these recurring challenges, we urge researchers to use this set of questions as a starting point, and to expand and tailor the questions and potential solutions with community members to support their own research design or cultural context. This will allow us to move the field towards more inclusive and ethical research practices.

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Taking Turns or Not? Children's Approach to Limited Resource Problems in Three Different Cultures

Cited by 18 publications

References 20 publications

Chimpanzees monopolize and children take turns in a limited resource problem

Chimpanzees monopolize and children take turns in a limited resource problem

The Ontogeny of Cultural Learning

A roadmap to doing culturally grounded developmental science

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