Contextual and individual differences in young children’s cultural learning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Children are natural cultural learners. From a young age they are capable of both learning traditions and conventions in their exact form, and using their own knowledge and judgement to select what to learn and what to ignore. Why do children choose to follow certain practices faithfully but not others? Research showed that social learning itself can be socialized: Subtle contextual cues may suggest to children that certain practices are normative and need to be copied with high fidelity even if they look arbitrary, yet other practices are instrumental for a goal at hand so they can be copied in a more flexible manner. How children receive these cues may further depend on their own attributes, such as what social group they identify with, and their own personality.
This symposium aims to examine some of these contextual and individual factors, and how they interact to affect children’s cultural learning and imitation. Talk 1 showed that compared to instrumental language, conventional language prompted children to imitate and transmit a model’s tool choice, even when the tool is clearly inefficient. Talk 2 showed that a combination of gender labelling and generic gender norms enhanced same-gender imitation of an inefficient method. Talk 3 showed that children’s tendencies to imitate faithfully or emulate the model’s goal can transcend beyond a particular task, and persist from toddlerhood to preschool years. Our discussant, an eminent developmental psychologist, will draw these talks together and discuss their implications on cultural learning.

Sub Unit

• Social Cognition

Chair

• Yue Yu, Nanyang Technological University

Discussant

• Harriet Over, University of York

Individual Presentations

• Children Attend to Normative Language When Imitating and Transmitting the use of Inefficient Tools - Presenting Author: Cara J DiYanni, Rider University; Non-Presenting Author: Jennifer Marie Clegg, Texas State University; Non-Presenting Author: Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University

• Enhancing Same-Gender Imitation by Highlighting Gender Norms in Preschool Children: The “Double Social Effect” - Non-Presenting Author: Zhidan Wang, Jiangsu Normal University; Presenting Author: Frankie T. K. Fong, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Non-Presenting Author: Andrew N Meltzoff, University of Washington

• Individual Differences in Young Children’s Faithful Imitation and Goal Emulation From Toddlerhood to Preschool Years - Presenting Author: Yue Yu, Nanyang Technological University; Non-Presenting Author: Tamar Kushnir, Duke Univeristy