Children Attend to Normative Language When Imitating and Transmitting the use of Inefficient Tools

• In Event: Contextual and individual differences in young children’s cultural learning

Abstract

Imitation has been shown to be an important mechanism for early social learning and the transmission of cultural information (Meltzoff, 1995; Whiten et al., 2009). Recent work has focused on how imitative fidelity is influenced by particular social factors. For example, model-specific factors, such as the model’s knowledgeability, social group membership, or intentionality, and situational factors, such as the presence or absence of the model or the number of models all play a role in the faithfulness of imitation. In the current study, we extend research on children’s selective imitation by examining the impact of an additional social factor—normativity—on children’s decision about whether to imitate inefficient actions in the context of tool use. We asked how conventional versus instrumental language would influence the imitation and transmission of inefficient actions. We focus, for the first time, on the impact of linguistic cues on children’s imitation of inefficient tool use. Previous work examining the influence of these cues has focused on children’s over-imitation of unnecessary actions within tasks with non-consequential end-goals. In the current study, the model’s selection of an inefficient tool makes the completion of the task substantially more difficult. The question is whether the drive to follow a stated convention is so strong that children are willing to exert considerably more effort to achieve the desired end-state–or perhaps risk not achieving the end-state at all–in order to follow the normative behavior.
Ninety-six 4- through 6-year-olds participated. Half watched a video in which a model used instrumental language (e.g., “I am going to crush a cookie”) and half heard a model use conventional language (e.g., “We always do it this way”). Next, the model chose an inefficient tool over an efficient alternative to complete a task. The child was then given the choice between the two tools to perform the task. To explore cultural transmission, a second experimenter invited the child to demonstrate the task to a puppet.
Figure 1 shows that the percentage of children who imitated the model’s (inefficient) tool choice was significantly higher in the Conventional condition (M = 0.72, SE = 0.05) than in the Instrumental condition (M = 0.59, SE = 0.05; OR = 2.50, p = .028). Children were also more likely to teach using the inefficient tool after hearing a Conventional cue (M = 0.69, SE = 0.05) than after hearing an Instrumental cue (M = 0.52, SE = 0.05; OR = 4.77, p = .003). These results are consistent with those of previous research (Clegg & Legare, 2016; Corriveau et al., 2017; Legare et al., 2015) and demonstrate that conventional language impacts even the imitation of inefficient actions. Taken together, the results from our study indicate that even in instances where children have intuitions about how best to complete a task, the language to which young children are exposed impacts the way in which they interpret the behavior of others. This, in turn, has consequences for their own behavior as well as what they choose to faithfully transmit to others.

Authors

• Cara J DiYanni, Rider University
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer Marie Clegg, Texas State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author