Explaining and exploring the dynamics of parent-child interactions and children's causal reasoning at a children's museum exhibit

This study examines how parents' and children's explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors support children's causal reasoning at a museum in San Jose, CA in 2017. One-hundred-nine parent-child dyads (3-6 years; 56 girls, 53 boys; 32 White, 9 Latino/Hispanic, 17 Asian-American, 17 South Asian, 1 Pacific Islander, 26 mixed ethnicity, 7 unreported) played at an air flow exhibit with a nonobvious causal mechanism. Children's causal reasoning was probed afterward. The timing of parents' explanatory talk and exploratory behaviors was related to children's systematic exploration during play. Children's exploratory behavior, and parents' goal setting during play, were related to children's subsequent causal reasoning. These findings support the hypothesis that children's exploration is related to both internal learning processes and external social scaffolding.

Changes in discourse on unmet need for family planning among married women in India: evidence from NFHS-5 (2019-2021)

Unmet needs for contraception in India have declined over time but the rate has not been uniform among women across geographies and socio-economic strata. Identifying the characteristics of women in communities where unmet need is still high is important to devise appropriate strategies to ensure access and uptake of modern contraceptive methods. The current study examined whether there was a national decline in unmet need over time and if regional disparities exist in unmet need. Demographic variations in unmet need based on factors such as maternal age, education, religion, caste, wealth index quintile, family size, and access to antenatal care (ANC) were also documented. Our approach was to document the prevalence of total unmet need for family planning and unmet need for spacing among married Indian women and quantify variability based on socio-economic and demographic drivers within a hierarchal framework, thus providing both macro and micro perspectives. We used data from the fourth and fifth rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) collected from all the States and Union Territories (UTs) in India. Quantile regression analysis and multilevel regression techniques were used to understand the predictors for the total unmet need for family planning and the unmet need for spacing. Results show a considerable decline in the prevalence of unmet need for family planning in India from NFHS-4 to 5 (from 12.9 to 9.3%) in the last six6 years. The north-eastern states show a significant reduction in unmet need for family planning in Manipur (17.8%), Nagaland (13.5%), and followed by Sikkim (9.1%). The predictors such as years of schooling, place of residence, caste, religion, wealth quintile, number of antenatal care (ANC) visits, and children ever born have a significant association with unmet needs for family planning and spacing among married women in India. There is a significant association between years of schooling with the total unmet needs for family planning at (q25) quantiles and the unmet need for spacing at (q25, q50) quantiles. Results reveal that the demand for unmet need for spacing and limiting was the highest among the women in the age categories 15-19 (17.8%) and 20-24 (17.3%). The demand for limiting was the highest (6.8%) among Muslim women. Across wealth quantile categories, the overall unmet demand (11.4%) for spacing and limiting was the highest among the women in the lowest socioeconomic groups. We conclude that greater access to frontline health workers among young wives, and significant investment in education in general, will continue to reduce the unmet needs for family planning in India.

Quantifying quality: The impact of measures of school quality on children's academic achievement across diverse societies

Recent decades have seen a rapid acceleration in global participation in formal education, due to worldwide initiatives aimed to provide school access to all children. Research in high income countries has shown that school quality indicators have a significant, positive impact on numeracy and literacy-skills required to participate in the increasingly globalized economy. Schools vary enormously in kind, resources, and teacher training around the world, however, and the validity of using diverse school quality measures in populations with diverse educational profiles remains unclear. First, we assessed whether children's numeracy and literacy performance across populations improves with age, as evidence of general school-related learning effects. Next, we examined whether several school quality measures related to classroom experience and composition, and to educational resources, were correlated with one another. Finally, we examined whether they were associated with children's (4-12-year-olds, N = 889) numeracy and literacy performance in 10 culturally and geographically diverse populations which vary in historical engagement with formal schooling. Across populations, age was a strong positive predictor of academic achievement. Measures related to classroom experience and composition were correlated with one another, as were measures of access to educational resources and classroom experience and composition. The number of teachers per class and access to writing materials were key predictors of numeracy and literacy, while the number of students per classroom, often linked to academic achievement, was not. We discuss these results in the context of maximising children's learning environments and highlight study limitations to motivate future research. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We examined the extent to which four measures of school quality were associated with one another, and whether they predicted children's academic achievement in 10 culturally and geographically diverse societies. Across populations, measures related to classroom experience and composition were correlated with one another as were measures of access to educational resources to classroom experience and composition. Age, the number of teachers per class, and access to writing materials were key predictors of academic achievement across populations. Our data have implications for designing efficacious educational initiatives to improve school quality globally.

Examining relations between performance on non-verbal executive function and verbal self-regulation tasks in demographically-diverse populations

Self-regulation is a widely studied construct, generally assumed to be cognitively supported by executive functions (EFs). There is a lack of clarity and consensus over the roles of specific components of EFs in self-regulation. The current study examines the relations between performance on (a) a self-regulation task (Heads, Toes, Knees Shoulders Task) and (b) two EF tasks (Knox Cube and Beads Tasks) that measure different components of updating: working memory and short-term memory, respectively. We compared 107 8- to 13-year-old children (64 females) across demographically-diverse populations in four low and middle-income countries, including: Tanna, Vanuatu; Keningau, Malaysia; Saltpond, Ghana; and Natal, Brazil. The communities we studied vary in market integration/urbanicity as well as level of access, structure, and quality of schooling. We found that performance on the visuospatial working memory task (Knox Cube) and the visuospatial short-term memory task (Beads) are each independently associated with performance on the self-regulation task, even when controlling for schooling and location effects. These effects were robust across demographically-diverse populations of children in low-and middle-income countries. We conclude that this study found evidence supporting visuospatial working memory and visuospatial short-term memory as distinct cognitive processes which each support the development of self-regulation.

Cognitive flexibility supports the development of cumulative cultural learning in children

The scale of cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is a defining characteristic of humans. Despite marked scientific interest in CCE, the cognitive underpinnings supporting its development remain understudied. We examined the role cognitive flexibility plays in CCE by studying U.S. children’s (N = 167, 3–5-year-olds) propensity to relinquish an inefficient solution to a problem in favor of a more efficient alternative, and whether they would resist reverting to earlier versions. In contrast to previous work with chimpanzees, most children who first learned to solve a puzzlebox in an inefficient way switched to an observed, more efficient alternative. However, over multiple task interactions, 85% of children who switched reverted to the inefficient method. Moreover, almost all children in a control condition (who first learned the efficient method) switched to the inefficient method. Thus, children were keen to explore an alternative solution but, like chimpanzees, are overall conservative in reverting to their first-learned one.

Facilitating behavioral change: A comparative assessment of ASHA efficacy in rural Bihar

Community health worker (CHW) programs are essential for expanding health services to many areas of the world and improving uptake of recommended behaviors. One of these programs, called Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), was initiated by the government of India in 2005 and now has a workforce of about 1 million. ASHAs primarily focus on improving maternal and child health but also support other health initiatives. Evaluations of ASHA efficacy have found a range of results, from negative, to mixed, to positive. Clarity in forming a general impression of ASHA efficacy is hindered by the use of a wide range of evaluation criteria across studies, a lack of comparison to other sources of behavioral influence, and a focus on a small number of behaviors per study. We analyze survey data for 1,166 mothers from Bihar, India, to assess the influence of ASHAs and eight other health influencers on the uptake of 12 perinatal health behaviors. We find that ASHAs are highly effective at increasing the probability that women self-report having practiced biomedically-recommended behaviors. The ASHA's overall positive effect is larger than any of the nine health influencer categories in our study (covering public, private, and community sources), but their reach needs to be more widely extended to mothers who lack sufficient contact with ASHAs. We conclude that interactions between ASHAs and mothers positively impact the uptake of recommended perinatal health behaviors. ASHA training and program evaluation need to distinguish between individual-level and program-level factors in seeking ways to remove barriers that affect the reach of ASHA services.

Tradition, taste and taboo: the gastroecology of maternal perinatal diet

Background

Maternal malnutrition is a major source of regional health inequity and contributes to maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. Bihar, a state in eastern India adjacent to Jharkhand and West Bengal, has relatively high neonatal mortality rates because a large portion of infants are born to young mothers. Bihar has the second-highest proportion of underweight children under 3 in India, with infant mortality rates of 48 per 1000 live births. Maternal malnutrition remains a major threat to perinatal health in Bihar, where 58.3% of pregnant women are anaemic.

Methods

We examined dietary beliefs and practices among mothers, mothers-in-law and community members, including Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), using focus group discussions (n=40 groups, 213 participants), key informant interviews (n=50 participants) and quantitative surveys (n=1200 recent mothers and 400 community health workers). We report foods that are added/avoided during the perinatal period, along with stated reasons underlying food choice. We summarise the content of the diet based on responses to the quantitative survey and identify influencers of food choice and stated explanations for adding and avoiding foods.

Key findings

Analyses for all methodologies included gathering frequency counts and running descriptive statistics by food item, recommendation to eat or avoid, pregnancy or post partum, food group and health promoting or risk avoiding. During pregnancy, commonly added foods were generally nutritious (milk, pulses) with explanations for consuming these foods related to promoting health. Commonly avoided foods during pregnancy were also nutritious (wood apples, eggplant) with explanations for avoiding these foods related to miscarriage, newborn appearance and issues with digestion. Post partum, commonly added foods included sweets because they ease digestion whereas commonly avoided foods included eggplants and oily or spicy foods. Family, friends, relatives or neighbours influenced food choice for both mothers and ASHAs more than ASHAs and other health workers.

Perinatal dietary beliefs and behaviours are shaped by local gastroecologies or systems of knowledge and practice that surround and inform dietary choices, as well as how those choices are explained and influenced. Our data provide novel insight into how health influencers operating within traditional and biomedical health systems shape the perinatal dietary beliefs of both mothers and community health workers.

Leveling the playing field in studying cumulative cultural evolution: Conceptual and methodological advances in nonhuman animal research

Cumulative cultural evolution (CCE), the improvement of cultural traits over generations via social transmission, is widely believed to be unique to humans. The capacity to build upon others' knowledge, technologies, and skills has produced the most diverse and sophisticated technological repertoire in the animal kingdom. Yet, inconsistency in both the definitions and criteria used to determine CCE and the methodology used to examine it across studies may be hindering our ability to determine which aspects are unique to humans. Issues regarding how improvement is defined and measured and whether some criteria are empirically testable are of increasing concern to the field. In this article, we critically assess the progress made in the field and current points of debate from conceptual and methodological perspectives. We discuss how inconsistency in definitions is detrimental to our ability to document potential evidence of CCE to nonhuman animals. We build on Mesoudi and Thornton's (2018) recently described core and extended CCE criteria to make specific recommendations about, from a comparative lens, which criteria should be used as evidence of CCE. We evaluate existing data from both wild and captive studies of nonhuman animals using these suggestions. We finish by discussing issues currently faced by researchers studying CCE in nonhuman animals, particularly nonhuman primates, and provide suggestions that may overcome these concerns and move the field forward. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

An Infant Carrier Intervention and Breastfeeding Duration: A Randomized Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVES

Parent-infant skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth increases initiation and duration of bodyfeeding. We hypothesized that providing ergonomic carriers to parents during pregnancy would increase the likelihood of breastfeeding and expressed human milk feeding through the first 6 months of life.

METHODS

A randomized two-arm, parallel-group trial was conducted between February 2018 and June 2019 in collaboration with a home-visiting program in a low-income community. At 30 weeks' gestation, 50 parents were randomly assigned to receive an ergonomic infant carrier and instruction on proper use to facilitate increased physical contact with infants (intervention group), and 50 parents were assigned to a waitlist control group. Feeding outcomes were assessed with online surveys at 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months postpartum.

RESULTS

Parents in the intervention group were more likely to be breastfeeding or feeding expressed human milk at 6 months (68%) than control group parents (40%; P = .02). No significant differences were detected in feeding outcomes at 6 weeks (intervention: 78% versus control: 81%, P = .76) or 3 months (intervention: 66% versus control: 57%, P = .34). Exclusive human milk feeding did not differ between groups (intervention versus control at 6 weeks: 66% vs 49%, P = .20; 3 months: 45% vs 40%, P = .59; 6 months: 49% vs 26%, P = .06).

CONCLUSIONS

Infant carriers increased rates of breastfeeding and expressed human milk feeding at 6 months postpartum. Large-scale studies are warranted to further examine the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of providing carriers as an intervention to increase access to human milk.

Teaching Through Collaboration: Flexibility and Diversity in Caregiver-Child Interaction Across Cultures

Teaching supports the high-fidelity transmission of knowledge and skills. This study examined similarities and differences in caregiver teaching practices in the United States and Vanuatu (N = 125 caregiver and 3- to 8-year-old child pairs) during a collaborative problem-solving task. Caregivers used diverse verbal and nonverbal teaching practices and adjusted their behaviors in response to task difficulty and child age in both populations. U.S. caregivers used practices consistent with a direct active teaching style typical of formal education, including guiding children's participation, frequent praise, and facilitation. In contrast, Ni-Vanuatu caregivers used practices associated with informal education and divided tasks with children based on difficulty. The implications of these findings for claims about the universality and diversity of caregiver teaching are discussed.

Relations between parent-child interaction and children's engagement and learning at a museum exhibit about electric circuits

Play is critical for children's learning, but there is significant disagreement over whether and how parents should guide children's play. The objective of the current study was to examine how parent-child interaction affected children's engagement and problem-solving behaviors when challenged with similar tasks. Parents and 4- to 7-year-old children in the U.S. (N = 111 dyads) played together at an interactive electric circuit exhibit in a children's museum. We examined how parents and children set and accomplished goals while playing with the exhibit materials. Children then participated in a set of challenges that involved completing increasingly difficult circuits. Children whose parents set goals for their interactions showed less engagement with the challenge task (choosing to attempt fewer challenges), and children whose parents were more active in completing the circuits while families played with the exhibit subsequently completed fewer challenges on their own. We discuss these results in light of broader findings on the role of parent-child interaction in museum settings.

Cultural Variation in the Development of Beliefs About Conservation

Examining variation in reasoning about sustainability between diverse populations provides unique insight into how group norms surrounding resource conservation develop. Cultural institutions, such as religious organizations and formal schools, can mobilize communities to solve collective challenges associated with resource depletion. This study examined conservation beliefs in a Western industrialized (Austin, Texas, USA) and a non-Western, subsistence agricultural community (Tanna, Vanuatu) among children, adolescents, and adults (N = 171; n = 58 7-12-year-olds, n = 53 13-17-year-olds, and n = 60 18-68-year-olds). Participants endorsed or rejected four types of justifications for engaging in land and animal conservation: sustainability, moral, religious, or permissible. In both populations, participants endorsed sustainability justifications most frequently. Religious justifications increased with age in Tanna and decreased with age in Austin. Tannese participants were also more likely to endorse multiple justifications for conservation than Austin participants. Data across all justification types show a main effect of age in both communities; endorsement of conservation decreased with age in Austin, but increased with age in Tanna. Across age groups, participants were more likely to endorse the conservation of animals than land in Austin, yet equally as likely to endorse the conservation of land and animals in Tanna. Overall, these results reveal similarities and differences in the beliefs that support the conservation of natural resources across populations.

Ritual explained: interdisciplinary answers to Tinbergen's four questions

Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that rituals are a psychologically prepared and culturally inherited behavioural hallmark of our species. The dramatic diversity of ritual practices ranges from simple greetings to elaborate religious ceremonies, from the benign to life-threatening. Yet our scientific understanding of this core human trait remains limited. Explaining the universality, functionality and diversity of ritual requires insight from multiple disciplines. This special issue integrates research from anthropology, archaeology, biology, primatology, cognitive science, psychology, religious studies and demography to build an interdisciplinary account of ritual. The objective is to contribute to an integrative explanation of ritual by addressing Tinbergen's four key questions. These include answering ultimate questions about the (i) phylogeny and (ii) adaptive functions of ritual; and proximate questions about the (iii) mechanisms and (iv) ontogeny of ritual. The intersection of these four complementary lines of inquiry yields new avenues for theory and research into this fundamental aspect of the human condition, and in so doing, into the coevolution of cognition and culture. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.

Perinatal risk and the cultural ecology of health in Bihar, India

The objective of the current study is to examine the cultural ecology of health associated with mitigating perinatal risk in Bihar, India. We describe the occurrences, objectives and explanations of health-related beliefs and behaviours during pregnancy and postpartum using focus group discussions with younger and older mothers. First, we document perceived physical and supernatural threats and the constellation of traditional and biomedical practises including taboos, superstitions and rituals used to mitigate them. Second, we describe the extent to which these practises are explained as risk-preventing versus health-promoting behaviour. Third, we discuss the extent to which these practises are consistent, inconsistent or unrelated to biomedical health practises and describe the extent to which traditional and biomedical health practises compete, conflict and coexist. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the relationships between traditional and biomedical practises in the context of the cultural ecology of health and reflect on how a comprehensive understanding of perinatal health practises can improve the efficacy of health interventions and improve outcomes.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours’.

Watch me, watch you: ritual participation increases in-group displays and out-group monitoring in children

Collective rituals serve social functions for the groups that perform them, including identifying group members and signalling group commitment. A novel social group paradigm was used in an afterschool programme (N = 60 4-11-year-olds) to test the influence of participating in a ritual task on in-group displays and out-group monitoring over repeated exposures to the group. The results demonstrate that ritual participation increases in-group displays (i.e. time spent displaying materials to in-group members) and out-group monitoring (i.e. time spent looking at out-group members) compared with a control task across three time points. This study provides evidence for the processes by which rituals may influence children's behaviours towards in- and out-group members and discusses implications for understanding the development of ritual cognition and behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.

Exploration, Explanation, and Parent-Child Interaction in Museums

Young children develop causal knowledge through everyday family conversations and activities. Children's museums are an informative setting for studying the social context of causal learning because family members engage together in everyday scientific thinking as they play in museums. In this multisite collaborative project, we investigate children's developing causal thinking in the context of family interaction at museum exhibits. We focus on explaining and exploring as two fundamental collaborative processes in parent-child interaction, investigating how families explain and explore in open-ended collaboration at gear exhibits in three children's museums in Providence, RI, San Jose, CA, and Austin, TX. Our main research questions examined (a) how open-ended family exploration and explanation relate to one another to form a dynamic for children's learning; (b) how that dynamic differs for families using different interaction styles, and relates to contextual factors such as families' science background, and (c) how that dynamic predicts children's independent causal thinking when given more structured tasks. We summarize findings on exploring, explaining, and parent-child interaction (PCI) styles. We then present findings on how these measures related to one another, and finally how that dynamic predicts children's causal thinking. In studying children's exploring we described two types of behaviors of importance for causal thinking: (a) Systematic Exploration: Connecting gears to form a gear machine followed by spinning the gear machine. (b) Resolute Behavior: Problem-solving behaviors, in which children attempted to connect or spin a particular set of gears, hit an obstacle, and then persisted to succeed (as opposed to moving on to another behavior). Older children engaged in both behaviors more than younger children, and the proportion of these behaviors were correlated with one another. Parents and children talked to each other while interacting with the exhibits. We coded causal language, as well as other types of utterances. Parents' causal language predicted children's causal language, independent of age. The proportion of parents' causal language also predicted the proportion of children's systematic exploration. Resolute behavior on the part of children did not correlate with parents' causal language, but did correlate with children's own talk about actions and the exhibit. We next considered who set goals for the play in a more holistic measure of parent-child interaction style, identifying dyads as parent-directed, child-directed, or jointly-directed in their interaction with one another. Children in different parent-child interaction styles engaged in different amounts of systematic exploration and had parents who engaged in different amounts of causal language. Resolute behavior and the language related to children engaging in such troubleshooting, seemed more consistent across the three parent-child interaction styles. Using general linear mixed modeling, we considered relations within sequences of action and talk. We found that the timing of parents' causal language was crucial to whether children engaged in systematic exploration. Parents' causal talk was a predictor of children's systematic exploration only if it occurred prior to the act of spinning the gears (while children were building gear machines). We did not observe an effect of causal language when it occurred concurrently with or after children's spinning. Similarly, children's talk about their actions and the exhibit predicted their resolute behavior, but only when the talk occurred while the child was encountering the problem. No effects were found for models where the talk happened concurrently or after resolving the problem. Finally, we considered how explaining and exploring related to children's causal thinking. We analyzed measures of children's causal thinking about gears and a free play measure with a novel set of gears. Principal component analysis revealed a latent factor of causal thinking in these measures. Structural equation modeling examined how parents' background in science related to children's systematic exploration, parents' causal language, and parent-child interaction style, and then how those factors predicted children's causal thinking. In a full model, with children's age and gender included, children's systematic exploration related to children's causal thinking. Overall, these data demonstrate that children's systematic exploration and parents' causal explanation are best studied in relation to one another, because both contributed to children's learning while playing at a museum exhibit. Children engaged in systematic exploration, which supported their causal thinking. Parents' causal talk supported children's exploration when it was presented at certain times during the interaction. In contrast, children's persistence in problem solving was less sensitive to parents' talk or interaction style, and more related to children's own language, which may act as a form of self-explanation. We discuss the findings in light of ongoing approaches to promote the benefit of parent-child interaction during play for children's learning and problem solving. We also examine the implications of these findings for formal and informal learning settings, and for theoretical integration of constructivist and sociocultural approaches in the study of children's causal thinking.

The Development of Cumulative Cultural Learning

Human culture is unique among animals in its complexity, variability, and cumulative quality. This article describes the development and diversity of cumulative cultural learning. Children inhabit cultural ecologies that consist of group-specific knowledge, practices, and technologies that are inherited and modified over generations. The learning processes that enable cultural acquisition and transmission are universal but are sufficiently flexible to accommodate the highly diverse cultural repertoires of human populations. Children learn culture in several complementary ways, including through exploration, observation, participation, imitation, and instruction. These methods of learning vary in frequency and kind within and between populations due to variation in socialization values and practices associated with specific educational institutions, skill sets, and knowledge systems. The processes by which children acquire and transmit the cumulative culture of their communities provide unique insight into the evolution and ontogeny of human cognition and culture.

Competing Explanations of Competing Explanations: Accounting for Conflict Between Scientific and Folk Explanations

People who hold scientific explanations for natural phenomena also hold folk explanations, and the two types of explanations compete under some circumstances. Here, we explore the question of why folk explanations persist in the face of a well-understood scientific alternative, a phenomenon known as explanatory coexistence. We consider two accounts: an associative account, where coexistence is driven by low-level associations between co-occurring ideas in experience or discourse, and a theory-based account, where coexistence reflects high-level competition between distinct sets of causal expectations. We present data that assess the relative contributions of these two accounts to the cognitive conflict elicited by counterintuitive scientific ideas. Participants (134 college undergraduates) verified scientific statements like "air has weight" and "bacteria have DNA" as quickly as possible, and we examined the speed and accuracy of their verifications in relation to measures of associative information (lexical co-occurrence of the statements' subjects and predicates) and theory-based expectations (ratings of whether the statements' subjects possess theory-relevant attributes). Both measures explained a significant amount of variance in participants' responses, but the theory-based measures explained three to five times more. These data suggest that the cognitive conflict elicited by counterintuitive scientific ideas typically arises from competing theories and that such ideas might be made more intuitive by strengthening scientific theories or weakening folk theories.

Culture, carrying, and communication: Beliefs and behavior associated with babywearing

Ethnographic research suggests mother-infant physical contact predicts high levels of maternal responsiveness to infant cues, yet it is unclear whether this responsiveness is driven by the act of physical contact or by underlying beliefs about responsiveness. We examine beliefs and behavior associated with infant carrying (i.e., babywearing) among U.S. mothers and experimentally test the effect of mother-infant physical contact on maternal responsiveness. In Study 1 (N = 23 dyads), babywearing mothers were more likely to interact contingently in response to infant cues than non-babywearing mothers during an in-lab play session. In Study 2 (N = 492 mothers), babywearing predicted maternal beliefs emphasizing responsiveness to infant cues. In Study 3 (N = 20 dyads), we experimentally manipulated mother-infant physical contact in the lab using a within-subjects design and found that babywearing increased maternal tactile interaction, decreased maternal and infant object contact, and increased maternal responsiveness to infant vocalizations. Our results motivate further research examining how culturally-mediated infant carrying practices shape the infant's early social environment and subsequent development.

Using data to solve problems: Children reason flexibly in response to different kinds of evidence

This study examined children's (5- to 9-year-olds, N = 363) abilities to use information seeking and explanation to solve problems using conclusive or inconclusive (i.e., consistent, inconsistent, or ambiguous) evidence. Results demonstrated that inconsistent and ambiguous evidence, not consistent evidence, motivate more requests for information than conclusive evidence. In addition, children's explanations were flexible in response to evidence; explanations based on transitive inference were more likely to be associated with an accurate conclusion than other explanation types. Children's requests for additional information in response to inconclusive evidence increased with age, as did their problem-solving accuracy. The data demonstrate that children's capacity to use information seeking and explanation develop in tandem as tools for problem solving.

Smart Conformists: Children and Adolescents Associate Conformity With Intelligence Across Cultures

The current study used a novel methodology based on multivocal ethnography to assess the relations between conformity and evaluations of intelligence and good behavior among Western (U.S.) and non-Western (Ni-Vanuatu) children (6- to 11-year-olds) and adolescents (13- to 17-year-olds; N = 256). Previous research has shown that U.S. adults were less likely to endorse high-conformity children as intelligent than Ni-Vanuatu adults. The current data demonstrate that in contrast to prior studies documenting cultural differences between adults' evaluations of conformity, children and adolescents in the United States and Vanuatu have a conformity bias when evaluating peers' intelligence and behavior. Conformity bias for good behavior increases with age. The results have implications for understanding the interplay of conformity bias and trait psychology across cultures and development.

Explain This, Explore That: A Study of Parent-Child Interaction in a Children's Museum

Parents visiting a gear exhibit at a children's museum were instructed to encourage their children (N = 65; ages 4-6) to explain, explore, or engage as usual. Instructions led to different patterns of play at the exhibit: Encouragement to explain led to greater discussion of gear mechanisms, whereas encouragement to explore led to more time connecting gears. In the explain condition, parents' questions predicted their children's discussion and further testing of gears. Questions also predicted the amount of time children spent on a follow-up task. Parents' exploration predicted an increase in exploration by their children. These data indicate that minimal interventions impact parent-child interaction at a museum exhibit and that prompts to explore or explain uniquely influence parent and child behavior.

Cross-cultural variation in the development of folk ecological reasoning

Two studies examined children's reasoning about biological kinds in populations that vary in formal education and direct experience with the natural world, a Western (urban U.S.) and a Non-Western population (Tanna, Vanuatu). Study 1 examined children's concepts of ecological relatedness between species (N = 97, 5-13- year-olds). U.S. children provided more taxonomic explanations than Ni-Vanuatu children, who provided more ecological, physiological, and utility explanations than U.S. children. Ecological explanations were most common overall and more common among older than younger children across cultures. In Study 2, children (N=106, 6-11-year-olds) sorted pictures of natural kinds into groups. U.S. children were more likely than Ni-Vanuatu children to categorize a human as an animal and the tendency to group a human with other animals increased with age in the U.S. Despite substantial differences in cultural, educational, and ecological input, children in both populations privileged ecological reasoning. In contrast, taxonomic reasoning was more variable between populations, which may reflect differences in experience with formal education.

Causal learning is collaborative: Examining explanation and exploration in social contexts

Causal learning in childhood is a dynamic and collaborative process of explanation and exploration within complex physical and social environments. Understanding how children learn causal knowledge requires examining how they update beliefs about the world given novel information and studying the processes by which children learn in collaboration with caregivers, educators, and peers. The objective of this article is to review evidence for how children learn causal knowledge by explaining and exploring in collaboration with others. We review three examples of causal learning in social contexts, which elucidate how interaction with others influences causal learning. First, we consider children's explanation-seeking behaviors in the form of "why" questions. Second, we examine parents' elaboration of meaning about causal relations. Finally, we consider parents' interactive styles with children during free play, which constrains how children explore. We propose that the best way to understand children's causal learning in social context is to combine results from laboratory and natural interactive informal learning environments.

The persistent sampling bias in developmental psychology: A call to action

Psychology must confront the bias in its broad literature toward the study of participants developing in environments unrepresentative of the vast majority of the world's population. Here, we focus on the implications of addressing this challenge, highlight the need to address overreliance on a narrow participant pool, and emphasize the value and necessity of conducting research with diverse populations. We show that high-impact-factor developmental journals are heavily skewed toward publishing articles with data from WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations. Most critically, despite calls for change and supposed widespread awareness of this problem, there is a habitual dependence on convenience sampling and little evidence that the discipline is making any meaningful movement toward drawing from diverse samples. Failure to confront the possibility that culturally specific findings are being misattributed as universal traits has broad implications for the construction of scientifically defensible theories and for the reliable public dissemination of study findings.

The Ontogeny of Cultural Learning

Developmental research has the potential to address some of the critical gaps in our scientific understanding of the role played by cultural learning in ontogenetic outcomes. The goal of this special section was to gather together leading examples of research on cultural learning across a variety of social contexts and caregiving settings. Although the field of developmental psychology continues to struggle with the persistent problem of oversampling U.S. and Western European populations, we argue that the articles in this special section add to the growing evidence that children everywhere draw on a repertoire of cultural learning strategies that optimize their acquisition of the specific practices, beliefs, and values of their communities. We also identify future directions and outline best practices for the conduct of research on cultural learning.

Does the Body Survive Death? Cultural Variation in Beliefs About Life Everlasting

Mounting evidence suggests that endorsement of psychological continuity and the afterlife increases with age. This developmental change raises questions about the cognitive biases, social representations, and cultural input that may support afterlife beliefs. To what extent is there similarity versus diversity across cultures in how people reason about what happens after death? The objective of this study was to compare beliefs about the continuation of biological and psychological functions after death in Tanna, Vanuatu (a Melanesian archipelago), and the United States (Austin, Texas). Children, adolescents, and adults were primed with a story that contained either natural (non-theistic) or supernatural (theistic) cues. Participants were then asked whether or not different biological and psychological processes continue to function after death. We predicted that across cultures individuals would be more likely to endorse the continuation of psychological processes over biological processes (dualism) and that a theistic prime would increase continuation responses regarding both types of process. Results largely supported predictions; U.S. participants provided more continuation responses for psychological than biological processes following both the theistic and non-theistic primes. Participants in Vanuatu, however, provided more continuation responses for biological than psychological processes following the theistic prime. The data provide evidence for both cultural similarity and variability in afterlife beliefs and demonstrate that individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the same events.

The coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations within and across domains and development

People across highly diverse cultural contexts use both natural and supernatural explanations to explain questions of fundamental concern such as death, illness, and human origins. The present study examines the development of explanatory coexistence within and across domains of existential concern in individuals in Tanna, Vanuatu. We examined three age groups: 7- to 12-year-old children, 13- to 18-year-old adolescents, and 19- to 70-year-old adults (N = 72). Within the domain of death, biological and spontaneous explanations were most common across all ages. For illness, children showed the highest rates of explanatory coexistence, while adolescents and adults favoured biological explanations. Within the human origins domain, theistic explanations were most common across the age groups. Overall, these data show that coexistence reasoning in these domains is pervasive across cultures, yet at the same time it is deeply contextually specific, reflecting the nuanced differences in local ecologies and cultural beliefs. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Individuals across highly diverse cultural contexts use both natural and supernatural explanations to understand the events that occur in their lives. Context and cultural input play a large role in determining when and how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations. The development of explanatory coexistence has primarily studied explanations for isolated domains. What does this study add? We examined explanatory coexistence in a culture with recent conversion to Christianity and formal education. The current research examines how individuals reason within and across the domains of human origins, illness, and death. Developmental differences associated with explanatory coexistence are examined.

Is non-conformity WEIRD? Cultural variation in adults' beliefs about children's competency and conformity

Cross-cultural comparisons provide critical insight into variation in reasoning about intelligence. In two studies, the authors used a novel methodology based on multivocal ethnography to assess the role of conformity in U.S. and Ni-Vanuatu adults' judgments of children's intelligence and, as a comparison trait, good behavior. In Study 1, there were cultural differences in the impact of conformity on U.S. and Ni-Vanuatu adults' judgments of children's intelligence and good behavior. When evaluating U.S. children only, U.S. adults were less likely to endorse high conformity children as intelligent, often citing creativity as a justification for their judgments. In contrast, Ni-Vanuatu adults were more likely to endorse Ni-Vanuatu high conformity children as intelligent. Ni-Vanuatu adults were also more likely to endorse high conformity children as well-behaved than U.S. adults. In Study 2, there were no effects of socioeconomic status on U.S. adults' evaluations of conformity. U.S. adults were less likely to endorse high conformity children as intelligent than Ni-Vanuatu adults. Taken together, the data demonstrate that beliefs about the relations between intelligence, conformity, and creativity vary within and across cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record

Parents scaffold flexible imitation during early childhood

Children use imitation flexibly to acquire the instrumental skills and conventions of their social groups. This study (N=69 parent and 3- to 6-year-old child dyads) examined the impact of instrumental versus conventional language on (a) children's imitative flexibility in the context of parent-child interaction and (b) how parents scaffold children's imitation. Children in dyads presented with conventional language imitated with higher fidelity than children in dyads presented with instrumental language. Parents in dyads presented with conventional language also provided their children with more instruction to imitate and engaged in more encouragement, demonstration, and monitoring than parents in dyads presented with instrumental language. The relation between language cue and children's imitative fidelity was mediated by parent scaffolding behavior. The results provide evidence that caregivers support the development of flexible imitation during early childhood by adjusting their scaffolding according to the goal of the behavior.

The Social Functions of Group Rituals

Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that ritual is a psychologically prepared, culturally inherited, behavioral trademark of our species. We draw on evidence from the anthropological and evolutionary-science literatures to offer a psychological account of the social functions of ritual for group behavior. Solving the adaptive problems associated with group living requires psychological mechanisms for identifying group members, ensuring their commitment to the group, facilitating cooperation with coalitions, and maintaining group cohesion. The intersection of these lines of inquiry yields new avenues for theory and research on the evolution and ontogeny of social group cognition.

In-Group Ostracism Increases High-Fidelity Imitation in Early Childhood

The Cyberball paradigm was used to examine the hypothesis that children use high-fidelity imitation as a reinclusion behavior in response to being ostracized by in-group members. Children ( N = 176; 5- to 6-year-olds) were either included or excluded by in- or out-group members and then shown a video of an in-group or an out-group member enacting a social convention. Participants who were excluded by their in-group engaged in higher-fidelity imitation than those who were included by their in-group. Children who were included by an out-group and those who were excluded by an out-group showed no difference in imitative fidelity. Children ostracized by in-group members also displayed increased anxiety relative to children ostracized by out-group members. The data are consistent with the proposal that high-fidelity imitation functions as reinclusion behavior in the context of in-group ostracism.

Causal learning in children

How do children learn the causal structure of the environment? We first summarize a set of theories from the adult literature on causal learning, including associative models, parameter estimation theories, and causal structure learning accounts, as applicable to developmental science. We focus on causal graphical models as a description of children's causal knowledge, and the implications of this computational description for children's causal learning. We then examine the contributions of explanation and exploration to causal learning from a computational standpoint. Finally, we examine how children might learn causal knowledge from others and how computational and constructivist accounts of causal learning can be integrated. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:413-427. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1291 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article.

Examining explanatory biases in young children's biological reasoning

Despite the well-established literature on explanation in early childhood, little is known about what constrains children's explanations. State change and negative outcomes were examined as potential explanatory biases in the domain of naïve biology, extending upon previous work in the domain of naïve physics. In two studies, preschool children (N = 70, 3- to 5-year-olds) were informed of the distinct health outcomes of characters in four between-subjects conditions (i.e., becoming ill, recovering from illness, continuous health, and continuous illness) and asked to provide explanations. Whereas children in both studies provided relevant information for health outcomes, they more often explained outcomes that included a salient health state change. Presence of a state change also influenced the interpretation of potentially relevant information and improved memory for health outcomes. We discuss how biases in children's explanations constrain children's reasoning and may exacerbate difficulties with reasoning about important health-related topics such as illness prevention.