A cross-cultural investigation of children's willingness to imitate prosocial and antisocial groups.

Extensive research has documented that the antisocial behavior of others influences children's perceptions of and behavior toward them. In general, children report liking antisocial agents less, allocate them fewer resources, and are less likely to help them. Despite this, no research to date has explored how antisocial behavior may influence another socially driven behavior-imitation. Moreover, no research has addressed this question cross-culturally. To explore this, children were shown groups behaving prosocially or antisocially and were subsequently given the chance to imitate causally opaque actions (employed to highlight their normative framework) performed by these groups. Children from two cultures in Australia were included in the sample: Brisbane, a medium to large metropolitan city, and Borroloola, a remote indigenous community. Results revealed no impact of prosocial or antisocial behavior on imitative actions in either culture. However, we did identify differences in imitation rates between communities. Specifically, children from Borroloola persisted with imitation at far higher rates than children from Brisbane, highlighting the need for further nuanced research to unpack cross-cultural differences in social learning proclivities.

Young Children From Three Diverse Cultures Spontaneously and Consistently Prepare for Alternative Future Possibilities.

This study examined future-oriented behavior in children (3-6 years; N = 193) from three diverse societies-one industrialized Western city and two small, geographically isolated communities. Children had the opportunity to prepare for two alternative versions of an immediate future event over six trials. Some 3-year-olds from all cultures demonstrated competence, and a majority of the oldest children from each culture prepared for both future possibilities on every trial. Although there were some cultural differences in the youngest age groups that approached ceiling performance, the overall results indicate that children across these communities become able to prepare for alternative futures during early childhood. This acquisition period is therefore not contingent on Western upbringing, and may instead indicate normal cognitive maturation.

Young children's tool innovation across culture: Affordance visibility matters.

Young children typically demonstrate low rates of tool innovation. However, previous studies have limited children's performance by presenting tools with opaque affordances. In an attempt to scaffold children's understanding of what constitutes an appropriate tool within an innovation task we compared tools in which the focal affordance was visible to those in which it was opaque. To evaluate possible cultural specificity, data collection was undertaken in a Western urban population and a remote Indigenous community. As expected affordance visibility altered innovation rates: young children were more likely to innovate on a tool that had visible affordances than one with concealed affordances. Furthermore, innovation rates were higher than those reported in previous innovation studies. Cultural background did not affect children's rates of tool innovation. It is suggested that new methods for testing tool innovation in children must be developed in order to broaden our knowledge of young children's tool innovation capabilities.

Imitation, Collaboration, and Their Interaction Among Western and Indigenous Australian Preschool Children.

This study explored how overimitation and collaboration interact in 3- to 6-year-old children in Westernized (N = 48 in Experiment 1; N = 26 in Experiment 2) and Indigenous Australian communities (N = 26 in Experiment 2). Whether working in pairs or on their own rates of overimitation did not differ. However, when the causal functions of modeled actions were unclear, the Indigenous Australian children collaborated at enhanced rates compared to the Western children. When the causal role of witnessed actions was identifiable, collaboration rates were correlated with production of causally unnecessary actions, but in the Indigenous Australian children only. This study highlights how children employ imitation and collaboration when acquiring new skills and how the latter can be influenced by task structure and cultural background.

Expanded transition spaces: the case of Garrwa.

Accounts of turn-taking in much of the CA literature have largely focused on talk which progresses with minimal gaps between turns at talk, longer gaps being found to be symptomatic of, for example, engagement in non-talk activities, or as indicators of some kind of trouble in the interaction. In this paper we present an account of turn-taking in conversations between Indigenous Australians where longer gaps are frequent and regular. We show that in sequences of such slow-paced conversation, gaps are not always treated as problematic, nor are they associated with non-talk activities that might inhibit talk. In such contexts we argue that there is less orientation to gap minimization, reflecting a lack of pressure for continuous talk. We also discuss qualitative differences in the nature of the gaps between turns in which there is a selection of next speaker, and those where no next speaker has been selected. Finally we consider whether such talk is a feature of Indigenous Australian conversation, or a more widespread practice.

Where culture takes hold: "overimitation" and its flexible deployment in Western, Aboriginal, and Bushmen children.

Children often "overimitate," comprehensively copying others' actions despite manifest perceptual cues to their causal ineffectuality. The inflexibility of this behavior renders its adaptive significance difficult to apprehend. This study explored the boundaries of overimitation in 3- to 6-year-old children of three distinct cultures: Westernized, urban Australians (N = 64 in Experiment 1; N = 19 in Experiment 2) and remote communities of South African Bushmen (N = 64) and Australian Aborigines (N = 19). Children overimitated at high frequency in all communities and generalized what they had learned about techniques and object affordances from one object to another. Overimitation thus provides a powerful means of acquiring and flexibly deploying cultural knowledge. The potency of such social learning was also documented compared to opportunities for exploration and practice.

Exploring tool innovation: a comparison of Western and Bushman children.

A capacity for constructing new tools, or using old tools in new ways, to solve novel problems is a core feature of what it means to be human. Yet current evidence suggests that young children are surprisingly poor at innovating tools. However, all studies of tool innovation to date have been conducted with children from comparatively privileged Western backgrounds. This raises questions as to whether or not previously documented tool innovation failure is culturally and economically specific. In the current study, thus, we explored the innovation capacities of children from Westernized urban backgrounds and from remote communities of South African Bushmen. Consistent with past research, we found tool innovation to occur at extremely low rates and that cultural background had no bearing on this. The current study is the first to empirically test tool innovation in children from non-Western backgrounds, with our data being consistent with the view that despite its key role in human evolution, a capacity for innovation in tool making remains remarkably undeveloped during early childhood.