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1. Perspective taking as a mechanism for children’s developing preferences for equitable distributions

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84968-2  

   Sobel, David M.; Blankenship, Jayd (March 2021, Scientific Reports)

   Abstract How do young children develop a concept of equity? Infants prefer dividing resources equally and expect others to make such distributions. Between the ages of 3–8, children begin to exhibit preferences to avoid inequitable outcomes in their distributions, dividing resources unequally if the result of that distribution is a more equitable outcome. Four studies investigated children’s developing preferences for generating equitable distributions, focusing on the mechanisms for this development. Children were presented with two characters with different amount of resources, and then a third character who will distribute more resources to them. Three- to 8-year-olds were asked whether the third character should give an equal number of resources to the recipients, preserving the inequity, or an unequal number to them, creating an equitable outcome. Starting at age 7, children showed a preference for equitable distributions (Study 1, N = 144). Studies 2a (N = 72) and 2b (N = 48) suggest that this development is independent of children’s numerical competence. When asked to take the perspective of the recipient with fewer resources, 3- to 6-year-olds were more likely to make an equitable distribution (Study 3, N = 122). These data suggest that social perspective taking underlies children’s prosocial actions, and supports the hypothesis that their spontaneous capacity to take others’ perspectives develops during the early elementary-school years. 

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2. Dinos and GoPros: Children’s exploratory behaviors in a museum and their reflections on their learning

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1110612  

   Weisberg, Deena Skolnick; Dunlap, Lucretia C; Sobel, David M (February 2023, Frontiers in Psychology)

   Research in both laboratory and museum settings suggests that children’s exploration and caregiver–child interaction relate to children’s learning and engagement. Most of this work, however, takes a third-person perspective on children’s exploration of a single activity or exhibit, and does not consider children’s perspectives on their own exploration. In contrast, the current study recruited 6-to 10-year-olds (N = 52) to wear GoPro cameras, which recorded their first-person perspectives as they explored a dinosaur exhibition in a natural history museum. During a 10-min period, children were allowed to interact with 34 different exhibits, their caregivers and families, and museum staff however they wished. Following their exploration, children were asked to reflect on their exploration while watching the video they created and to report on whether they had learned anything. Children were rated as more engaged when they explored collaboratively with their caregivers. Children were more likely to report that they learned something when they were more engaged, and when they spent more time at exhibits that presented information didactically rather than being interactive. These results suggest that static exhibits have an important role to play in fostering learning experiences in museums, potentially because such exhibits allow for more caregiver–child interaction. 

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3. Calculating probabilities from imagined possibilities: Limitations in 4-year-olds

   Leahy, Brian; Vivanco, Vicente; Cheyette, Sam; Smith, Kevin A; White, Lucy; Feiman, Roman; Schulz, Laura; Tenenbaum, Joshua B (May 2025, Cognitive Science Society)

   Adults can calculate probabilities by running simulations and calculating proportions of each outcome. How does this ability develop? We developed a method that lets us bring computational modeling to bear on this question. A study of 40 adults and 31 4-year-olds indicates that unlike adults, many 4-year-olds use a single simulation to estimate probability distributions over simulated possibilities. We also implemented the 3-cups task, an established test of children’s sensitivity to possibilities, in a novel format. We replicate existing 3-cups results. Moreover, children who our model categorized as running a single simulation on our novel task show a signature of running a single simulation in the 3-cups task. This signature is not observed in children who were categorized as running multiple simulations. This validates our model and adds to the evidence that about half of 4-year-olds don’t evaluate multiple candidates for reality in parallel. 

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4. Children use artifacts to infer others' shared interests

   Pesowski, M.L.; Kelemen, D.; Schachner, A. (July 2021, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society)

   Fitch, T.; Lamm, C.; Leder, H.; Teßmar-Raible, K. (Ed.)

   Artifacts – the objects we own, make, and choose – provide a source of rich social information. Adults use people’s artifacts to judge others’ traits, interests, and social affiliations. Here we show that 4-year-old children (N=32) infer others’ shared interests from their artifacts. When asked who had the same interests as a target character, children chose the character with a conceptually similar object to the target’s – an object used for the same activity – over a character with a perceptually similar object. When asked which person had the same arbitrary property (bedtime, birthday, or middle name), children did not systematically select either character, and most often reported that they did not know. Adults (N=32) made similar inferences, but differed in their tendency to use artifacts to infer friendships. Overall, by age 4, children show a sophisticated ability to make selective, warranted inferences about others’ interests based solely on their artifacts. 

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5. When Success Is Surprising: Children’s Ability to Use Surprise to Infer Competence

   https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi.a.2  

   Asaba, Mika; Wu, Yang; Carrillo, Brandon; Gweon, Hyowon (May 2025, Open mind)

   Abstract How do we learn who is good at what? Building on the idea that humans draw rich inferences from others’ emotional expressions, here we ask whether others’ surprised reactions to performance outcomes can elicit inferences about competence. Across three experiments, participants were asked to choose “who is better” in scenarios where two students performed identically on the same task but their teacher expressed surprise to only one of them. In Experiment 1 (n = 60, adults) and Experiment 2 (n = 90, 6- to 8-year-old children), participants’ responses were modulated by not only the students’ performance outcomes (success or failure) but also the teacher’s response to the outcomes (surprise or no surprise). Specifically, participants preferentially chose the student who did not elicit the teacher’s surprise as more competent when both students succeeded, but chose the student who elicited surprise when both failed. Experiment 3a (n = 150, 4- to 8-year-olds) replicated this pattern in 6- to 8-year-olds as a group—but not in 4- to 5-year-olds—with increasing robustness with age. Finally, this pattern was significantly reduced in Experiment 3b where the teacher’s surprise was directed at an irrelevant event rather than the student’s performance (n = 90, 6- to 8-year-olds). Taken together, these results suggest that even non-valenced emotional reactions to performance outcomes—being surprised at someone’s success or failure—can inform inferences about valenced qualities such as competence. More broadly, the current findings demonstrate that emotional expressions we observe in our daily lives can lead to nuanced yet consequential social judgments. 

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