Abstract
BackgroundHumans frequently engage in arbitrary, conventional behavior whose primary purpose is to identify with cultural in-groups. The propensity for doing so is established early in human ontogeny as children become progressively enmeshed in their own cultural milieu. This is exemplified by their habitual replication of causally redundant actions shown to them by adults. Yet children seemingly ignore such actions shown to them by peers. How then does culture get transmitted intra-generationally? Here we suggest the answer might be ‘in play’.Principal FindingsUsing a diffusion chain design preschoolers first watched an adult retrieve a toy from a novel apparatus using a series of actions, some of which were obviously redundant. These children could then show another child how to open the apparatus, who in turn could show a third child. When the adult modeled the actions in a playful manner they were retained down to the third child at higher rates than when the adult seeded them in a functionally oriented way.ConclusionsOur results draw attention to the possibility that play might serve a critical function in the transmission of human culture by providing a mechanism for arbitrary ideas to spread between children.
Highlights
When learning novel skills from adults children will replicate all of the actions demonstrated to them, including those having no apparent purpose or causal function [1,2,3,4]
McGuigan and Graham [8] had 3- and 5-year-olds watch an adult use a stick to retrieve a reward from a novel box after first inserting the stick into the box at several different openings [9,10]
The child shown these actions was given opportunity to act on the apparatus in front another child who had not seen the original demonstration
Summary
When learning novel skills from adults children will replicate all of the actions demonstrated to them, including those having no apparent purpose or causal function [1,2,3,4]. McGuigan and Graham [8] had 3- and 5-year-olds watch an adult use a stick to retrieve a reward from a novel box after first inserting the stick into the box at several different openings [9,10] The child shown these actions was given opportunity to act on the apparatus in front another child who had not seen the original demonstration. We included a No Demonstration Control condition in which the first child in each chain was given a box to explore but was not given any information on how to open it nor on how to use the object that came with it This provided a point of comparison to check that the redundant actions are unlikely to be exhibited without being modeled first. Regardless, this approach enables data collection from a more heterogeneous sample than would arise if only one community were sampled
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