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Empirical findings and theorizations of both imitation and selective trust offer different views on and interpretations of children's social learning mechanisms. The imitation literature provides ample documentation of children's behavioural patterns in the acquisition of socially appropriate norms and practices. The selective trust literature provides insights into children's cognitive processes of choosing credible informants and what information to learn in future interactions. In this paper, we place together findings from both fields and note that they share analogically similar theoretical underpinnings and offer explanations that are complementary to each other. We contend that children's imitative tendency may be due to their selection of in-group members as "cultural experts," who serve as reliable sources of conventional information. Moving forward, we note the importance of evaluating individual differences and cultural factors to provide a more holistic understanding of universality and variation in children's social learning mechanisms.

Recent research has shown that a religious upbringing renders children receptive to ordinarily impossible outcomes, but the underlying mechanism for this effect remains unclear. Exposure to religious teachings might alter children's basic understanding of causality. Alternatively, religious exposure might only affect children's religious cognition, not their causal judgments more generally. To test between these possibilities, 6- to 11-year-old children attending either secular (n = 49, 51% female, primarily White and middle-class) or parochial schools (n = 42, 48% female, primarily White and middle-class) heard stories in which characters experienced negative outcomes and indicated how those characters could have prevented them. Both groups of children spontaneously invoked interventions consistent with natural causal laws. Similarly, when judging the plausibility of several counterfactual interventions, participants endorsed the intervention consistent with natural laws at high levels, irrespective of schooling. However, children's endorsement of supernatural interventions inconsistent with these laws revealed both group similarities and differences. Although both groups of children judged divine intervention (i.e., via prayer) as more plausible than mental (i.e., via wishing) and magical (i.e., via magical powers) interventions, children receiving religious (vs. secular) schooling were more likely to do so. Moreover, although children with a secular upbringing overwhelmingly chose naturalistic interventions as the most effective, children with a religious upbringing chose divine as well as naturalistic intervention. These results indicate that religious teaching does not alter children's basic understanding of causality but rather adds divine intervention to their repertoire of possible causal factors.

Question-explanation exchanges in parent-child interactions foster children's early learning, especially when children are inquiring about unobservable scientific phenomena such as the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). As with other unobservable entities, children must rely on adults to acquire knowledge about COVID-19. Yet, we know very little about what children understand about COVID-19 or its consequences. In our study, we explored developmental changes in children's questions about COVID-19 and parents' explanations. Parents (n = 182) of children (aged 3-8) completed an online survey, which included demographic information, parents' explanations, and children's questions. Parents' explanations "referenced germs," used "illness analogies," and mentioned "mitigation strategies." Most of children's COVID-related questions focused on the "consequences of COVID-19." Whereas older children asked more about "death," younger children asked about loss of "activities." The findings advance our understanding of the impact of COVID-19 on parents and children.

Eighty-six 4- and 5-year-old children were assigned to one of four conditions, three experimental conditions, in which children read a story about a famous scientist, and one baseline condition. In the "Achievement" condition: the scientist was described as receiving awards and recognition through their lifetime, with no discussion of setbacks; in the "Intellectual Struggles," the scientist was described as making mistakes along the way to success; and in the "Life Struggles," the book emphasized personal struggles, such as having no money for food. In the "Baseline" condition, children completed a persistence task without having first read the story. In each experimental condition, children were asked 12 questions adapted from the Dimension of Mastery Questionnaire-18, which examined their persistence and motivation when faced with a challenging task. Finally, children were presented with the persistence task. Analyses revealed that children in the "Intellectual Struggles" and "Life Struggles" conditions persisted longer on the task than children in the "Achievement Condition." These findings suggest that storybooks that emphasize the process of science, rather than solely focusing on achievement can impact persistence as well as feelings of relatedness in STEM.

We explored the role of parental testimony in children's developing beliefs about the ontological status of typically unobservable phenomena. US parents and their 5- to 7-year-old children (N = 25 dyads) separately rated their confidence in the existence of scientific and religious unobservable entities (e.g., germs, angels), and were invited to engage in an unmoderated dyadic conversation about the entities. Both parents and children were more confident in the existence of the scientific entities compared to the religious entities. Parental religiosity predicted the strength of their belief in the religious entities, and these beliefs were positively associated with their children's judgments in the domain of religion. We coded parental testimony produced during the unmoderated conversation for a number of subtle linguistic cues that convey their confidence and prevailing beliefs in an entity's existence. The results revealed consistent cross-domain differences: parents expressed more "uncertainty," were more likely to mention "variation in people's beliefs" and "make explicit claims about the ontological status" of the religious, as compared to the scientific entities. However, with increasing religiosity, parents produced fewer cues to uncertainty, mentioned belief variation less often, and were more likely to make claims of endorsement when talking about the religious unobservables. Importantly, the pattern of coded linguistic cues in parental testimony was significantly associated with children's ontological judgments. The present findings have implications for understanding the socio-cultural mechanisms by which confidence in the existence of invisible agents and processes develops in childhood.

The early use of person perception terms was examined via an analysis of the spontaneous speech of four young children in conversation with their parents at home. All four children were producing such terms early in their third year. Like their parents, children used the terms in two distinguishable ways: to attribute a trait to a person or to characterize a person's ongoing action. Most of these terms were evaluative, whether positive or negative. Parents often made direct comments to their children about both their traits and ongoing actions; children made similar comments about themselves. Parents also used person perception terms to make comments about others who were not party to the conversation; children did likewise. A considerable proportion of the trait terms that children produced served as interpretive comments on someone's actions or preferences. Our findings suggest that from an early age, children are trait theorists. Not only do they describe ongoing actions using trait vocabulary, they interpret those ongoing actions by attributing traits.

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. All participants--secular and Christian children, as well as their parents--were confident about the existence of the scientific phenomena. No such consensus emerged for religious phenomena. Whereas secular children and their parents were skeptical, Christian children and their parents were confident about the existence of the religious phenomena. Moreover, a similar pattern was found for Christian children in preschools and for Christian children with more extensive exposure to the secular state curriculum. Indeed, for religious phenomena, a positive association was found between the beliefs of Christian children and their parents, highlighting the potential influence of parental input in a predominantly secular society. Overall, the results indicate that children's religious beliefs are related to the beliefs of their parents, even when those beliefs go against the majority view.

The impact of social group information on the learning and socializing preferences of Hong Kong Chinese children were examined. Specifically, the degree to which variability in racial out-group exposure affects children's use of race to make decisions about unfamiliar individuals (Chinese, White, Southeast Asian) was investigated. Participants (N = 212; M[subscript age] = 60.51 months) chose functions for novel objects after informants demonstrated their use; indicated with which peer group member to socialize; and were measured on racial group recognition, preference, and identification. Overall, children preferred in-group members, though out-group exposure and the relative social status of out-groups mattered as well. At a young age, children's specific experiences with different races influence how they learn and befriend others across racial group lines.

This study explored differences in caregiver-child interactions following children's information-seeking questions. Naturalistic speech from thirty-seven 4-year-olds and their caregivers was used to explore children's information-seeking questions, the caregiver's response, and children's subsequent follow-up. Half of the families were low-socioeconomic status (SES) and the other half were mid-SES. Although children across socioeconomic groups asked a similar proportion of questions, mid-SES caregivers offered significantly more explanatory responses to causal questions as well as more noncircular explanations than low-SES caregivers. No differences were found in children's follow-up to responses given to fact-based questions; however, after hearing unsatisfactory responses to causal questions, mid-SES children were significantly more likely to provide their own explanation. Such variability in caregiver-child interaction may have implications for subsequent learning.

Deciding whose words to trust profoundly impacts children's knowledge acquisition. In evaluating informants' trustworthiness, children are attentive to their social dominance. Previous studies have shown that children's trust preferences may differ across cultures based on the dominance of the informant: children in Western cultures prefer to trust in testimony from dominant informants, whereas children in Eastern cultures prefer to trust subordinate informants (Bernard et al., 2016; Charafeddine et al., 2019). We aim to investigate the potential cultural difference in the trust preferences of European American children (in the United States) and Chinese children (in China) from informants of varying levels of dominance, using a more refined method to assess children's trust preferences. We propose that different levels of authoritarianism – advocacies to obey authorities – in Western and Eastern cultures may explain the potential difference in children's selective trust. Specifically, as impacted by societal cultures, Chinese parents may possess a higher level of authoritarianism than European American parents and may place a higher emphasis on obedience in their parenting. Consequently, Chinese children may show stronger trust preferences from subordinate informants over dominant informants than European American children. Our research will offer insights into the potential mechanism underlying children's different learning preferences across cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effects of early shared reading and access to books on reading vocabulary in middle childhood and the pathways associated with later reading success. Path analysis of data from four waves of a national longitudinal study of children (N = 7,751) was used to investigate direct and indirect effects of early home literacy practices at age 3 on reading attainment at age 9, controlling for demographic and family characteristics. Children were aged 3, 5, 7, and 9 years at each respective wave of data collection, and 49.1% of the sample were girls. The majority of caregivers in the study were White (94.3%). Early shared reading and availability of books predicted higher reading scores at age 9, controlling for covariates at age 3. Sixty-four percent of the association between early shared reading and reading attainment in middle childhood was explained by several paths incorporating language and literacy variables at age 5 and reading for pleasure at age 7. The association between books at age 3 and vocabulary at age 9 was fully accounted for through an increase in the number of books at age 5 and greater likelihood of reading for pleasure at age 7. Both early shared reading and availability of books predicted reading attainment in middle childhood though through different pathways. The findings support reading interventions that provide books and shared reading opportunities in early childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children in the United States come to distinguish historical from fictional story figures between the ages of 3 and 5 years, guided by the plausibility of the story events surrounding the figure (Corriveau, Kim, Schwalen, & Harris, 2009; Woolley & Cox, 2007). However, U.S. children vary in their reactions to stories that include fantastical events. Secular children with no religious education think of such stories and their protagonists as fictional, whereas children who have had a religious education are more prone to think of them as historically true. In the current studies, we asked if a sample of children in Iran who are regularly exposed to religious narratives in their daily lives resemble religious children in the United States. As expected, Iranian 5- and 6-year-olds systematically categorized figures in realistic stories as real, but they were also prone to think of figures in fantastical stories as real. We suggest that children's willingness to conceive of figures in fantastical stories as real is explained by their exposure to religious narratives alleging that miracles have actually happened.

To adult humans, the task of forming an impression of another social being seems effortless and even obligatory. In 2 experiments, we offer the first systematic cross-cultural examination of impression formation in European American and East Asian preschool children. Children across both cultures easily inferred basic personality traits, such as "nice" and "mean," about unfamiliar peers from behavioral information, whether or not they were specifically prompted to do so. Children were able to identify peers they had seen before, to remember the traits associated with these peers, and to anticipate future behaviors consistent with the traits they had attributed. Thus, for basic traits, the ability to make behavior-to-behavior predictions, via an intervening trait inference, is present in young children across diverse cultures.

Two experiments investigated whether 4- and 5-year-old children choose to learn from informants who use more complex syntax (passive voice) over informants using more simple syntax (active voice). In Experiment 1 (N = 30), children viewed one informant who consistently used the passive voice and another who used active voice. When learning novel words from the two informants, children were more likely to endorse information from the passive informant. Experiment 2 (N = 32) explored whether preference for the passive informant varied by socioeconomic status (SES; eligibility for free/reduced lunch). Although higher SES children selectively preferred the passive informant, lower SES children preferred the active informant. Explanations are discussed for why SES might moderate children's sensitivity to syntactic complexity when choosing from whom to learn.

In two studies, 5-and 6-year-old children were questioned about the status of the protagonist embedded in three different types of stories. In realistic stories that only included ordinary events, all children, irrespective of family background and schooling, claimed that the protagonist was a real person. In religious stories that included ordinarily impossible events brought about by divine intervention, claims about the status of the protagonist varied sharply with exposure to religion. Children who went to church or were enrolled in a parochial school, or both, judged the protagonist in religious stories to be a real person, whereas secular children with no such exposure to religion judged the protagonist in religious stories to be fictional. Children's upbringing was also related to their judgment about the protagonist in fantastical stories that included ordinarily impossible events whether brought about by magic (Study 1) or without reference to magic (Study 2). Secular children were more likely than religious children to judge the protagonist in such fantastical stories to be fictional. The results suggest that exposure to religious ideas has a powerful impact on children's differentiation between reality and fiction, not just for religious stories but also for fantastical stories.

Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3-8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (White, Black, and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority-primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in-group members, indicating their in-group preferences are contextually based.

These two studies explored 3- and 5-year-olds' evaluation of noncircular and circular explanations, and their use of such explanations to determine informant credibility. Although 5-year-olds demonstrated a selective preference for noncircular over circular explanations (Experiment 1: Long Explanations; Experiment 2: Short Explanations), 3-year-olds only demonstrated a preference for the noncircular when the explanations were shortened (Experiment 2). Children's evaluation of the explanations extended to their inferences about the informants' future credibility. Both age groups demonstrated a selective preference for learning novel explanations from an informant who had previously provided noncircular explanations--although only 5-year-olds also preferred to learn novel labels from her. The implications and scope of children's ability to monitor the quality of an informant's explanation are discussed.