Abstract
Previous research has already demonstrated that even very young children are sensitive to language cues and learn differently from native and foreign speaker models. A possible explanation for this phenomenon suggests that spoken language is a sign of someone's cultural background and in this sense demonstrates the person's culture specific knowledge. The aim of the present study was to investigate what children think about native and foreign speakers' behavior in a domain that is typically regulated by cultural norms (tool usage), specifically whether they expect group members to act alike or not. In a violation of expectation paradigm, two-year-old toddlers first watched a video on which a native and a foreign speaker person used different tools for achieving the same goal. In the test phase a new native speaker model appeared and selected one of the previously seen tools for the same goal as it was used before. Results indicated that toddlers were surprised if the native speaker model had chosen the tool that had previously been used by the foreign speaker. In Experiment 2, the familiarization phase was exactly the same as in Experiment 1, but during the test phase, the model spoke a foreign language. Results, in this case, showed no significant differences between looking times. These experiments suggest that two-year-olds expect native (but not foreign) speakers to use the same tool for the same goals. As tool usage is a fundamental element of cultural knowledge, we propose that this pattern of results suggest that children expect native speakers to possess shared cultural knowledge at least in the domain of artifacts.
Highlights
Children are surrounded by an endless flow of information of which they have to select the relevant pieces that should be inevitably learned in order to become a reliable member of a given society
It has been suggested that linguistic group membership may be privileged in this respect, since language use provides a strong cue about the cultural background of the individual and can be seen as a good marker of cultural knowledgeability (Kinzler et al, 2012; Esseily et al, 2016; Soley and Spelke, 2016)
The teleo-functional stance is a basic element of human cognition, it develops during the first years of life (Casler and Kelemen, 2007) which means learning—and especially cultural learning— could take an important role in the process
Summary
Children are surrounded by an endless flow of information of which they have to select the relevant pieces that should be inevitably learned in order to become a reliable member of a given society. Children Expect Shared Cultural Knowledge evidence supports the idea that even young children view language cues as relevant during learning processes. Begus and her colleagues found that 11 months infants pay more attention to a native speaker model because they expect that they would provide them with relevant pieces of information (Begus et al, 2016). Infants selectively imitate and learn culture specific information (e.g., the proper way of doing things) from linguistic in-group members. Oláh et al (2016) and Peto et al (2018) demonstrated that learning about an object’s function can be influenced by the model’s spoken language at the age of three and four (Oláh et al, 2016; Peto et al, 2018)
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