Article

Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture

Details

Citation

Blakey KH, Rafetseder E, Atkinson M, Renner E, Cowan-Forsythe F, Sati SJ & Caldwell CA (2021) Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture. PLOS ONE, 16 (8), Art. No.: e0256605. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256605

Abstract
Human learners are rarely the passive recipients of valuable social information. Rather, learners usually have to actively seek out information from a variety of potential others to determine who is in a position to provide useful information. Yet, the majority of developmental social learning paradigms do not address participants’ ability to seek out information for themselves. To investigate age-related changes in children’s ability to seek out appropriate social information, 3- to 8-year-olds (N = 218) were presented with a task requiring them to identify which of four possible demonstrators could provide critical information for unlocking a box. Appropriate information seeking improved significantly with age. The particularly high performance of 7- and 8-year-olds was consistent with the expectation that older children’s increased metacognitive understanding would allow them to identify appropriate information sources. Appropriate social information seeking may have been overlooked as a significant cognitive challenge involved in fully benefiting from others’ knowledge, potentially influencing understanding of the phylogenetic distribution of cumulative culture.

Journal
PLOS ONE: Volume 16, Issue 8

StatusPublished
FundersEuropean Commission (Horizon 2020)
Publication date31/12/2021
Publication date online24/08/2021
Date accepted by journal10/08/2021
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/33161
PublisherPublic Library of Science (PLoS)
eISSN1932-6203

People (2)

Professor Christine Anna Caldwell

Professor Christine Anna Caldwell

Professor, Psychology

Dr Eva Rafetseder

Dr Eva Rafetseder

Associate Professor, Psychology

Projects (1)