Why wearing a yellow hat is impossible: Chinese and U.S. children's possibility judgments.

When thinking about possibility, one can consider both epistemic and deontic principles (i.e., physical possibility and permissibility).

Expressions of uncertainty in invisible scientific and religious phenomena during naturalistic conversation.

Across cultures, studies report more confidence in the existence of unobservable scientific phenomena, such as germs, as compared to unobservable religious phenomena, such as angels. We investigated a potential cultural mechanism for the transmission of confidence in the existence of invisible entities. Specifically, we asked whether parents in societies with markedly different religious profiles-Iran and China-signal differential confidence across the domains of science and religion during unmoderated conversations with their children (N = 120 parent-child dyads in total; 5- to 11-year-olds).

Everyone's a Critic (Sometimes): Young Children Show High Awareness of, But Lower Adherence to, Prosocial Lying Norms.

From an early age, children are taught norms about socially-acceptable behaviors; however, children's ability to recognize these norms often predates their tendency to follow them. This conflict between understanding and action has been predominantly studied in cases when enacting the norm would be costly for the child (i.e.

Culture is an optometrist: Cultural contexts adjust the prescription of social learning bifocals.

The "prescription" of humans' social learning bifocals is fine-tuned by cultural norms and, as a result, the readiness with which the instrumental or conventional lenses are used to view behavior differs across cultures. We present evidence for this possibility from cross-cultural work examining children's imitation and innovation.

Cognitive flexibility supports the development of cumulative cultural learning in children.

The scale of cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is a defining characteristic of humans. Despite marked scientific interest in CCE, the cognitive underpinnings supporting its development remain understudied. We examined the role cognitive flexibility plays in CCE by studying U.

Children's Ideas About What Can Really Happen: The Impact of Age and Religious Background.

Five- to 11-year-old U.S. children, from either a religious or secular background, judged whether story events could really happen.

If I told you everyone picked that (non-affordant) tool, would you? Children attend to conventional language when imitating and transmitting tool use.

This study explored how conventional versus instrumental language influenced children's imitation and transmission of non-affordant tool use. Rather than examining children's imitation of unnecessary actions that do not impede goal completion, we examined children's conformity with a modeled behavior that may result in sacrificing goal completion. Children (N = 96 4- to 6-year-olds) were presented with either a conventional or instrumental description of a model's actions before watching the model choose a non-affordant tool.

Teaching Through Collaboration: Flexibility and Diversity in Caregiver-Child Interaction Across Cultures.

Teaching supports the high-fidelity transmission of knowledge and skills. This study examined similarities and differences in caregiver teaching practices in the United States and Vanuatu (N = 125 caregiver and 3- to 8-year-old child pairs) during a collaborative problem-solving task. Caregivers used diverse verbal and nonverbal teaching practices and adjusted their behaviors in response to task difficulty and child age in both populations.

Are high levels of religiosity inconsistent with a high valuation of science? Evidence from the United States, China and Iran.

We asked whether high levels of religiosity are inconsistent with a high valuation of science. We explored this possibility in three countries that diverge markedly in the relation between the state and religion. Parents in the United States (n = 126), China (n = 234) and Iran (n = 77) completed a survey about their personal and parental stance towards science.

Epistemic justifications for belief in the unobservable: The impact of minority status.

Children hold beliefs about religious and scientific entities, such as angels or germs, that they cannot directly observe or interact with. Given their limited opportunities for first-hand observation, children's beliefs in these entities are a clear example of cultural learning and are likely to vary based on cultural factors. In the present study, we investigated variation in the epistemic stance of 4-11-year-old children growing up in a religious minority in China (N = 47), a religious majority in Iran (N = 85), and a religious majority in the U.

Religious testimony in a secular society: Belief in unobservable entities among Chinese parents and their children.

When learning about the existence of unobservable scientific phenomena such as germs or religious phenomena such as God, children are receptive to the testimony of other people. Research in Western cultures has shown that by 5 to 6 years of age, children-like adults-are confident about the existence of both scientific and religious phenomena. We examined the beliefs of secular and Christian children growing up in China as well as the beliefs of their parents.

Trust me, I'm a competent expert: Developmental differences in children's use of an expert's explanation quality to infer trustworthiness.

In this study, we examined how 3-, 4-, 5-, and 7-year-old children respond when informants who are labeled as experts fail to provide high-quality explanations about phenomena within their realm of expertise. We found that 4-, 5-, and 7-year-olds discounted their initial trust in an expert who provided low-quality explanations in a task related to the expert's area of expertise. The 5-year-olds' distrust of the expert who provided low-quality explanations also generalized to additional learning tasks.

God, Germs, and Evolution: Belief in Unobservable Religious and Scientific Entities in the U.S. and China.

Adults in the U.S. and China were asked to make judgments about the existence of a variety of scientific and religious entities, including God, germs, and evolution.

Children begin with the same start-up software, but their software updates are cultural.

We propose that early in ontogeny, children's core cognitive abilities are shaped by culturally dependent "software updates." The role of sociocultural inputs in the development of children's learning is largely missing from Lake et al.'s discussion of the development of human-like artificial intelligence, but its inclusion would help move research even closer to machines that can learn and think like humans.

Smart Conformists: Children and Adolescents Associate Conformity With Intelligence Across Cultures.

The current study used a novel methodology based on multivocal ethnography to assess the relations between conformity and evaluations of intelligence and good behavior among Western (U.S.) and non-Western (Ni-Vanuatu) children (6- to 11-year-olds) and adolescents (13- to 17-year-olds; N = 256).

Cultural differences in the imitation and transmission of inefficient actions.

Across two studies, we explored cultural differences in children's imitation and transmission of inefficient actions. Chinese American and Caucasian American preschoolers (N=115) viewed either one or three models using two inefficient tools to perform two different tasks. In the video, when the model(s) performed the task, only the inefficient tool was available; thus, their choice to use that tool could be considered rational.

Is non-conformity WEIRD? Cultural variation in adults' beliefs about children's competency and conformity.

Cross-cultural comparisons provide critical insight into variation in reasoning about intelligence. In two studies, the authors used a novel methodology based on multivocal ethnography to assess the role of conformity in U.S.

Parents scaffold flexible imitation during early childhood.

Children use imitation flexibly to acquire the instrumental skills and conventions of their social groups. This study (N=69 parent and 3- to 6-year-old child dyads) examined the impact of instrumental versus conventional language on (a) children's imitative flexibility in the context of parent-child interaction and (b) how parents scaffold children's imitation. Children in dyads presented with conventional language imitated with higher fidelity than children in dyads presented with instrumental language.

A cross-cultural comparison of children's imitative flexibility.

Recent research with Western populations has demonstrated that children use imitation flexibly to engage in both instrumental and conventional learning. Evidence for children's imitative flexibility in non-Western populations is limited, however, and has only assessed imitation of instrumental tasks. This study (N = 142, 6- to 8-year-olds) demonstrates both cultural continuity and cultural variation in imitative flexibility.

Instrumental and Conventional Interpretations of Behavior Are Associated With Distinct Outcomes in Early Childhood.

Four tasks (N = 191, 3- to 6-year-olds) examined the effect of instrumental versus conventional language cues on children's imitative fidelity of a necklace-making activity, their memory and transmission of the activity, and their perceptions of functional fixedness. Children in the conventional condition imitated with higher fidelity, transmitted more of the modeled behavior, and showed higher levels of functional fixedness than children in the instrumental condition. There were no differences in children's memory of the activity between conditions demonstrating that memory alone does not explain differences in imitative fidelity.