Context-dependent model-based biases in cultural transmission: children's imitation is affected by model age over model knowledge state

By Lara A. Wood, Rachel L. Kendal, Emma Flynn. 2012

120 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many animals, including humans, acquire information through social learning. Although such information can be acquired easily, its potential unreliability means it should not be used indiscriminately. Cultural ‘transmission biases’ may allow individuals to weigh their reliance on social information according to a model's characteristics. In one of the first studies to juxtapose two model-based biases, we investigated whether the age and knowledge state of a model affected the fidelity of children's copying. Eighty-five 5-year-old children watched a video demonstration of either an adult or child, who had professed either knowledge or ignorance regarding a tool-use task, extracting a reward from that task using both causally relevant and irrelevant actions. Relevant actions were imitated faithfully by children regardless of the model's characteristics, but children who observed an adult reproduced more irrelevant actions than those who observed a child. The professed knowledge state of the model showed a weaker effect on imitation of irrelevant actions. Overall, children favored the use of a ‘copy adults’ bias over a ‘copy task-knowledgeable individual’ bias, even though the latter could potentially have provided more reliable information. The use of such social learning strategies has significant implications for understanding the phenomenon of imitation of irrelevant actions (overimitation), instances of maladaptive information cascades, and cumulative culture.

Subfields: Cultural Studies, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/45d9375a30a9eda37e73922e9e2464633af60022

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cultural Studies

1. Emma Flynn
2. Lara A. Wood
3. Rachel L. Kendal

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Lara A. Wood
2. Rachel L. Kendal
3. Kenneth Smith
4. Emma Flynn

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Emma Flynn
2. Kenneth Smith
3. Lara A. Wood
4. Rachel L. Kendal

Citations in the corpus

• Whom do children copy? Model-based biases in social learning (2013, background): “Likewise, fiveyear-old children’s imitation of a model is more influenced by the model’s group membership (adult versus child) than the model’s knowledge state (model stating knowledge or ignorance about task completion) even though children of this age are able to correctly identify knowledge state”
• Investigating the Mechanisms of Cultural Acquisition How Pervasive is Overimitation in Adults (2012, background): “…children, including increasing the salience of the actions (Lyons et al., 2007), increasing the motivation to extract the reward in the GCB as quickly as possible (Lyons et al., 2007, 2011), and changing the identity of the model (McGuigan et al., 2011; Nielsen & Blank, 2011; Wood et al., 2012).”