More Like this

1. The Scope of Generic Generalizations: Developmental Changes in Judgments about Contextually-Restricted Generics

   Ritchie, Katherine; Curiel, Alejandro; Zhu, Tiffany; Pederneschi, Anna; Vasil, Ny (August 2025, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society)

   Barner, David; Bramley, Neil; Ruggeri, Azzurra; Walker, Caren (Ed.)

   Generalizations are powerful tools to convey information agents need to predict and control their environments. However, some generalizations are restricted to “sociocultural bubbles”. How are such patterns communicated? We report one interdisciplinary study — bridging philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive developmental psychology — which examined the developing capacity for contextual restriction of generics in 4- 7-year-olds (N=137) and adults (N=63). We provided context cues signaling that the speaker used a generic generalization to convey a broad vs. contextually-restricted regularity, and measured endorsement of generics attributing properties prevalent globally vs. within “bubbles”. Adults endorsed generics flexibly, tracking context cues, but younger children struggled, over-attributing socially contingent properties to the group beyond the “bubble”, on par with context-general regularities. This reveals a troubling discrepancy between children and adults’ interpretations of generics, opening the door for cross-generational miscommunication. We discuss strategies to mitigate this in educational and family communication settings. 

   more » « less
2. Contextual Restriction and Faultless Disagreement about Generics across Development

   Vasil, Ny; Campos, Gaia; Rouzbehani, Bahar; Curiel, Alejandro; Caoile, Jason; Khurelkhuu, Suren; Ritchie, Katherine (August 2025, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society)

   Barner, David; Bramley, Neil; Ruggeri, Azzurra; Walker, Caren (Ed.)

   We report a study examining developmental changes in perceptions of disagreements among speakers who use generics to describe contextually-restricted or unrestricted regularities. Participants (65 adults and 222 5-12-year-olds) reacted to generic claims from two speakers who attributed ostensibly contradictory properties to a biological kind (e.g. “Xs are striped” and “Xs are spotted”). Crucially, we manipulated the scope of each speaker’s claim, or its contextual restriction: whether they made a claim restricted to a specific context (island habitat), or an unrestricted claim. Participants were asked whether the speakers could “both be right” (faultless disagreement rating). Adults were sensitive to contextual restriction: they allowed for faultless disagreement when contextual restrictions mis-aligned (with additional differentiation among experimental conditions described below), and denied it when both speakers restricted to the same context. Young children demonstrated striking partial competence in faultless disagreement judgments much earlier than prior developmental literature suggested; however, their response pattern was not quite adult-like. This is the first study to document faultless disagreement between differentially restricted generics, both in adults and in children, and to start mapping developmental changes in this capacity. We discuss the developmental trajectory, and implications for social functioning and learning, and draw connections to semantic theories. 

   more » « less
3. Age- and Gender-Related Differences in Speech Alignment Toward Humans and Voice-AI

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.600361  

   Zellou, Georgia; Cohn, Michelle; Ferenc Segedin, Bruno (January 2021, Frontiers in Communication)

   null (Ed.)

   Speech alignment is where talkers subconsciously adopt the speech and language patterns of their interlocutor. Nowadays, people of all ages are speaking with voice-activated, artificially-intelligent (voice-AI) digital assistants through phones or smart speakers. This study examines participants’ age (older adults, 53–81 years old vs. younger adults, 18–39 years old) and gender (female and male) on degree of speech alignment during shadowing of (female and male) human and voice-AI (Apple’s Siri) productions. Degree of alignment was assessed holistically via a perceptual ratings AXB task by a separate group of listeners. Results reveal that older and younger adults display distinct patterns of alignment based on humanness and gender of the human model talkers: older adults displayed greater alignment toward the female human and device voices, while younger adults aligned to a greater extent toward the male human voice. Additionally, there were other gender-mediated differences observed, all of which interacted with model talker category (voice-AI vs. human) or shadower age category (OA vs. YA). Taken together, these results suggest a complex interplay of social dynamics in alignment, which can inform models of speech production both in human-human and human-device interaction. 

   more » « less
4. Children can represent complex social status hierarchies: Evidence from Indonesia

   https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13951  

   Amemiya, Jamie; Widjanarko, Kiara; Chung, Irene; Bian, Lin; Heyman, Gail D. (June 2023, Child Development)

   Children's ethnicity-status associations are often studied in societies where one ethnic group possesses status across multiple dimensions, such as political influence and wealth. This study examined children's (6–12 years) and adults' representations of more complex hierarchies in Indonesia (N = 341; 38% Native Indonesian, 33% Chinese Indonesian, and 27% other ethnicities; 55% female, 36% male; 2021–2022), a society where ethnic groups hold distinct forms of status (on average, Native Indonesians have political influence; Chinese Indonesians have wealth). By 6.5 years, children associated Native Indonesians with political influence and Chinese Indonesians with wealth. Intersectional analyses indicated that ethnicity-status associations were stronger for male than female targets. Children of all ethnicities preferred Chinese Indonesians and preferences were predicted by wealth judgments. 

   more » « less
5. Moral preferences in helping dilemmas expressed by matching and forced choice

   Erlandsson, A. (January 2020, Judgment and decision making)

   null (Ed.)

   This paper asks whether moral preferences in eight medical dilemmas change as a function of how preferences are expressed, and how people choose when they are faced with two equally attractive help projects. In two large-scale studies, participants first read dilemmas where they “matched” two suggested helping projects (which varied on a single attribute) so that they became equally attractive. They did this by filling in a missing number (e.g., how many male patients must Project M save in order to be equally attractive as Project F which can save 100 female patients). Later, the same participants were asked to choose between the two equally attractive projects. We found robust evidence that people do not choose randomly, but instead tend to choose projects that help female (vs. male), children (vs. adult), innocent (vs. non-innocent), ingroup (vs. outgroup) and existing (vs. future) patients, and imply no (vs. some) risk of a harmful side-effect, even when these projects have been matched as equally attractive as, and save fewer patients than the contrasting project. We also found that some moral preferences are hidden when expressed with matching but apparent when expressed with forced choice. For example, 88–95% of the participants expressed that female and male patients are equally valuable when doing the matching task, but over 80% of them helped female patients in the choice task. 

   more » « less