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Common knowledge can be a potent sign of shared social attributes among people, but not all knowledge is socially meaningful to the same extent. For instance, compared to shared knowledge of cultural practices, knowledge of self-evident facts might be a poorer indicator of shared group membership among individuals. Two studies explored adults' and 6-to-9 years old children's social inferences based on what others know as well as their sensitivity to the distinctions in the diagnostic potential of different kinds of knowledge. Participants were presented with targets who were knowledgeable about familiar things that are either culture-specific (e.g., a traditional dance) or general (e.g., a self-evident fact), and asked to make inferences about their language and where they live. Adults and 8-year-olds privileged culture-specific knowledge over general knowledge when making both kinds of inferences about the targets, whereas 6-year-olds did not distinguish between the two knowledge types. Thus, what others know is socially meaningful from early in life, and across development, children become increasingly aware of the diagnostic potential of culture-specific knowledge when making social inferences about others. These findings suggest novel social implications of knowledge assessment., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Across cultures, adults produce infant-directed speech (IDS) when addressing infants. We explored whether infants expect IDS to be directed at infants and adult-directed speech (ADS) to adults. Infants from Spain and Turkey (12-15 months) watched animated videos with geometric figures, where one adult figure talked to an infant or another adult figure, while they were gazing at each other (Experiments 1 and 2). In some events, the adult figure addressed the infant figure with IDS, or the other adult figure with ADS (congruent); and in others, the same adult figure addressed the other adult figure with IDS or the infant figure with ADS (incongruent). Both groups of infants showed greater looking at incongruent than congruent events. This preference disappeared when the two figures gazed away from each other (Experiment 3). Thus, by 12 months of age, infants have nuanced expectations that different speech registers such as IDS and ADS are appropriate for addressing different recipients in third-party communicative contexts., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Adults use cultural markers to discern the structure of the social landscape. Such markers may also influence the social preferences of young children, who tend to conform to their own group and prefer others who do so. However, the forces that propel these preferences are unknown. Here, we use social preferences based on music to investigate these forces in four- and five-year-old children. First, we establish that children prefer other children whose favorite songs are familiar to them. Then we show that this effect depends on shared knowledge: children both prefer others who know songs they themselves know, and avoid others who know songs they do not know, irrespective of the target children's liking of the songs. These results suggest that young children have a remarkably selective sensitivity to shared cultural knowledge. Shared knowledge may be a powerful determinant of children's social preferences, both because it underpins effective communication and because it is conveyed by others through social interactions and therefore can serve as a marker of social group identity., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)