Abstract
The present study investigated 3-year-old children’s learning processes about object functions. We built on children’s tendency to commit scale errors with tools to explore whether they would selectively endorse object functions from a linguistic in-group over an out-group model. Participants (n = 37) were presented with different object sets, and a model speaking either in their native or a foreign language demonstrated how to use the presented tools. In the test phase, children received the object sets with two modifications: the original tool was replaced by one that was too big to achieve the goal but was otherwise identical, and another tool was added to the set that looked different but was appropriately scaled for goal attainment. Children in the Native language condition were significantly more likely to commit scale errors – that is, choose the over-sized tool – than children in the Foreign language condition (48 vs. 30%). We propose that these results provide insight into the characteristics of human-specific learning processes by showing that children are more likely to generalize object functions to a category of artifacts following a demonstration from an in-group member.
Highlights
Differentiating between people who belong to our social group from those who do not contributes greatly to our success in social interactions
Building on the phenomenon of scale error, the present study investigated whether 3-year-old children’s learning processes about tool functions would be influenced by the group membership of the person introducing the objects to them
We found that children were less prone to committing scale errors if the demonstration was performed by a person speaking in a foreign language
Summary
Differentiating between people who belong to our social group from those who do not contributes greatly to our success in social interactions. A study by Howard et al (2015) further extends our understanding of social category based learning processes by showing that 19-month-old children only took into account the group membership of the model in an imitation task when the demonstration was administered on screen, but not in the case of live modeling. We build on the phenomenon of scale error to investigate whether children can flexibly modulate their learning processes in response to the cultural group membership of the person demonstrating the object function. We involved 3-year-old children in the study, as this is the age where both the occurrence of scale errors (e.g., Ware et al, 2006) and selectivity based on the linguistic group membership of the model (Howard et al, 2015) have been robustly demonstrated
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