Social categories guide young children’s preferences for novel objects

To whom do children look when deciding on their own preferences? To address this question, 3-year-old children were asked to choose between objects or activities that were endorsed by unfamiliar people who differed in gender, race (White, Black), or age (child, adult). In Experiment 1, children demonstrated robust preferences for objects and activities endorsed by children of their own gender, but less consistent preferences for objects and activities endorsed by children of their own race. In Experiment 2, children selected objects and activities favored by people of their own gender and age. In neither study did most children acknowledge the influence of these social categories. These findings suggest that gender and age categories are encoded spontaneously and influence children's preferences and choices. For young children, gender and age may be more powerful guides to preferences than race.Psycholog

Social Information Guides Infants' Selection of Foods

Two experiments investigated the influence of socially conveyed emotions and speech on infants' choices among food. After watching films in which two unfamiliar actresses each spoke while eating a different kind of food, 12-month-old infants were allowed to choose between the two foods. In Experiment 1, infants selected a food endorsed by a speaker of their native language who displayed positive affect over a food endorsed by a foreign-language speaker who displayed negative affect. In Experiment 2, both actresses displayed positive affect, but they spoke in different languages, and infants again selected the food associated with the speaker of their native language. The findings contrast with previous research in which infants and toddlers have shown little selectivity when presented with foods that differ in their intrinsic properties such as color, texture, and familiarity. Although infants may lack capacities for evaluating foods on their own, they do look to other people for guidance in food selection.Psycholog

Core knowledge and its limits: The domain of food

Adults, preschool children, and nonhuman primates detect and categorize food objects according to substance information, conveyed primarily by color and texture. In contrast, they perceive and categorize artifacts primarily by shape and rigidity. The present experiments investigated the origins of this distinction. Using a looking time procedure, Experiment 1 extended previous findings that rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) generalize learning about novel food objects by color over changes in shape. Six additional experiments then investigated whether human infants show the same signature patterns of perception and generalization. Nine-month-old infants failed to detect food objects in accord with their intrinsic properties, in contrast to rhesus monkeys tested in previous research with identical displays. Eight-month-old infants did not privilege substance information over other features when categorizing foods, even though they detected and remembered this information. Moreover, infants showed the same property generalization patterns when presented with foods and tools. The category-specific patterns of perception and categorization shown by human adults, children, and adult monkeys therefore were not found in human infants, providing evidence for limits to infants’ domains of knowledge.Psycholog

Competence-based helping: Children's consideration of need when providing others with help

When and how other people's needs influence children's helping is poorly understood. Here we focused on whether children use information about other people's competence in their helping. In Study 1 (N = 128 4- to 8-year-old children), children could provide help to both an incompetent target and a competent target by pushing levers. Whereas older children helped incompetent targets more than competent targets, younger children (<5 years) helped both targets equally. Two further experiments (N = 20 and N = 28) revealed that 4-year-olds understood that the incompetent person needed more help and also understood how they could help. Thus, young children do not, like older children, give more help to those who need it the most. We discuss potential developmental changes toward competence-based helping

When Helping Hurts:Children Think Groups That Receive Help Are Less Smart

Helping has many positive consequences for both helpers and recipients. However, in the present research, we considered a possible downside to receiving help: that it signals a deficiency. We investigated whether young children make inferences about intelligence from observing some groups of people receive help and other groups not. In a novel group paradigm, we show that children (4-6 years) think groups that receive help are less smart (n = 44) but not less nice (n = 45). Children also generalized their inferences about relative intelligence to new group members (n = 55; forced-choice-method). These results have implications for understanding how children develop stereotypes about intelligence as well as for educational practices that group children according to their ability

How information about what is "healthy" versus "unhealthy" impacts children's consumption of otherwise identical foods

Can brief messages about health influence children’s consumption of identical foods? Across a series of studies, we manipulated children’s consumption of identical foods (fruit sauces) by pairing those foods with brief messages about each food’s health status. What initially appeared to be a preference for foods described as healthy among 5–6-year-old children (Studies 1–2) actually reflected a preference for alternatives to foods described as unhealthy (Studies 3–5), including comparison foods that were described with negative or neutral content. Although the two foods on each trial were identical, children consistently ate more of the alternative to a food described as unhealthy. Similar effects were observed among 8–9-year-old children (Study 6). These results demonstrate that children’s eating behavior is affected by messages they receive from other people, including messages about health. Further, these studies reveal basic psychological mechanisms that contribute to children’s choices among foods, which could lead to effective interventions in the food domain

When helping hurts: Children think groups that receive help are less smart

In this project we investigated whether young children make inferences about intelligence from observing some groups of people receive help and other groups no