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

Bazhydai, Marina; Silverstein, Priya; Parise, Eugenio; Westermann, Gert

doi:10.1111/desc.12941

Cited by 25 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…Despite the paucity of empirical research on the ontogeny of teaching, studies have shown that infants start to engage in basic preverbal information transmission (e.g., by using informative pointing; Liszkowski et al, 2008) and preschoolers spontaneously teach their younger siblings who, in turn, spontaneously request teaching (Howe et al, 2016). Two-year-old children selectively transmit information about novel objects functions to ignorant adults upon request (Bazhydai, Silverstein, et al, 2020; Vredenburgh et al, 2015). Preschoolers and older children exhibit an expanded teaching strategies tool kit, gradually becoming more contingent and selective in their teaching, which is dependent on the development of mentalizing, metacognition, and executive function skills (Corriveau et al, 2018; Gweon & Schulz, 2019).…”

Section: Part 1: Traditions Of Social Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ABC of social learning: Affect, behavior, and cognition.

Gruber

Bazhydai

Sievers

et al. 2022

Psychological Review

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Debates concerning social learning in the behavioral and the developmental cognitive sciences have largely ignored the literature on social influence in the affective sciences despite having arguably the same object of study. We argue that this is a mistake and that no complete model of social learning can exclude an affective aspect. In addition, we argue that affect can allow bridging of the debates of the unique characteristics of social learning in humans compared to other animals. We first review the two major bodies of literature in non-human animals and human development, highlighting the fact that the former has adopted a behavioral approach while the latter has adopted a cognitive approach, leading to irreconcilable differences. We then introduce a novel framework, affective social learning (ASL), that studies the way we learn about value(s). We show that all three approaches are complementary and focus, respectively, on behavior towards, cognitions concerning, and feelings about objects, events and people in our environment. All three thus contribute to an affective, behavioral and cognitive story of knowledge transmission: the ABC of social learning. In particular, ASL can provide the backbone of an integrative approach to social learning. We argue that this novel perspective on social learning can allow both evolutionary continuity and ontogenetic development by lowering the cognitive thresholds that appear often too complex for other species and non-verbal infants. Yet, it can also explain some of the major achievements only found in human cultures.

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Section: Part 1: Traditions Of Social Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ABC of social learning: Affect, behavior, and cognition.

Gruber

Bazhydai

Sievers

et al. 2022

Psychological Review

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“…They consider learners' goals and abilities (Gweon & Schulz, 2019), social group affiliation (Karadağ & Soley, 2022;, and occupations (Danovitch, 2020). Further, children do not transmit all learned information indiscriminately, but variably prioritize generalizable (Baer & Friedman, 2018;Gelman, Ware, Manczak, & Graham, 2013), cognitively opaque (Ronfard, Was, & Harris, 2016), simple (Bazhydai, Silverstein, Parise, & Westermann, 2020), and information acquired through explicit pedagogy . Finally, children consider how much it would benefit the learner and how costly it would be for the learner to acquire information independently (Bridgers, Jara-Ettinger, & Gweon, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, while most of research to date stems from children of preschool age and above, when representations of knowledge and explicit understanding of its transmission develop (Ziv & Frye, 2004), research on active information transmission in prementalizing age is in its infancy (Bazhydai et al, 2020;Flynn, 2008;Karadağ, Bazhydai, & Westermann, 2022;Liszkowski, Carpenter, Striano, & Tomasello, 2006O'Neill, 1996). This limits our ability to draw generalizable conclusions with regard to the developmental trajectory of children's selectivity and stancetaking, domain specificity, or generality of the underlying cognitive mechanism and deliberateness or automaticity of these processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tradition and invention: The bifocal stance theory of cultural evolution

Jagiello¹,

Heyes²,

Whitehouse³

2022

Behav Brain Sci

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Cultural evolution depends on both innovation (the creation of new cultural variants by accident or design) and high-fidelity transmission (which preserves our accumulated knowledge and allows the storage of normative conventions). What is required is an overarching theory encompassing both dimensions, specifying the psychological motivations and mechanisms involved. The Bifocal Stance Theory (BST) of cultural evolution proposes that the co-existence of innovative change and stable tradition results from our ability to adopt different motivational stances flexibly during social learning and transmission. We argue that the ways in which instrumental and ritual stances are adopted in cultural transmission, influence the nature and degree of copying fidelity and thus also patterns of cultural spread and stability at a population level over time. BST creates a unifying framework for interpreting the findings of otherwise seemingly disparate areas of inquiry, including social learning, cumulative culture, overimitation and ritual performance. We discuss the implications of BST for competing by-product accounts which assume that faithful copying is merely a side-effect of instrumental learning and action parsing. We also set out a novel ‘cultural action framework’ bringing to light aspects of social learning that have been relatively neglected by behavioural ecologists and evolutionary psychologists and establishing a roadmap for future research on this topic. The BST framework sheds new light on the cognitive underpinnings of cumulative cultural change, selection, and spread within an encompassing evolutionary framework.

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“…To actively solicit information, infants have been shown to socially reference adults who were more likely to help them resolve an epistemically uncertain situation (Bazhydai, Westermann, & Parise, 2020c;Goupil, Romand-Monnier, & Kouider, 2016;Vaish, Demir, & Baldwin, 2011) and point to objects they want to learn about in the presence of a knowledgeable rather than an uninformed person Lucca & Wilbourn, 2018). To actively transmit information in situations where infants themselves were more knowledgeable than their social partners, they have been shown to use informative pointing (Liszkowski, Carpenter, Striano, & Tomasello, 2006;Meng & Hashiya, 2014; and deliberate action demonstration (Bazhydai, Silverstein, Parise, & Westermann, 2020a;Flynn, 2008;Vredenburgh, Kushnir, & Casasola, 2015) as communicative tools indicative of early emerging, proto-teaching strategies (Strauss & Ziv, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%