Acquiring sub-efficient and efficient variants of novel means by integrating information from multiple social models in preschoolers.
Convention
Culture
Language
Over-imitation
Selectivity
Social learning
Journal
Journal of experimental child psychology
ISSN: 1096-0457
Titre abrégé: J Exp Child Psychol
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 2985128R
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
07 2020
07 2020
Historique:
received:
06
09
2019
revised:
02
02
2020
accepted:
10
03
2020
pubmed:
12
4
2020
medline:
25
5
2021
entrez:
12
4
2020
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Sub-efficient action routines often represent culture-specific conventional forms of actions that belong to the repertoire of cultural knowledge shared by a social group. Children readily acquire such sub-efficient routines from social demonstrations and often preserve them in their action repertoire despite encountering more efficient alternatives. This suggests that they can treat sub-efficient conventional forms and their efficient alternatives in a context-sensitive selective manner. We hypothesized that children may rely on their sensitivity to differentiate speakers of their own language versus a foreign language as an informative cue indicating whether the model belongs to their own cultural community and the action modeled represents shared cultural knowledge. We assessed preschoolers' imitation following two different demonstrations. The first model demonstrated a sub-efficient action sequence, whereas the second model presented a more efficient alternative to obtain the same goal. We varied whether the children had heard the models speak their own language or a foreign language before their nonverbal action demonstrations. We found that 4-year-olds adopted the second model's efficient alternative, but only when she spoke their own language. However, they disregarded the efficient alternative if it was presented by a foreign-language speaker and continued to perform the sub-efficient routine they initially acquired. Therefore, 4-year-olds employed the cue of shared language to optimize acquiring and maintaining culturally shared sub-efficient action routines by selectively updating their action repertoire relying on their language-based evaluation of the demonstrator's culture-specific competence. In contrast, 5- and 6-year-olds adopted the efficient alternative independently of the demonstrator's language. Possible reasons for this developmental trend are discussed.
Identifiants
pubmed: 32278116
pii: S0022-0965(19)30478-3
doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104847
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
104847Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.