All Outputs (23)

The development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior: Protocol for Wave 1 data collection with children and parents by the Developing Belief Network (2024)
Journal Article

The Developing Belief Network is a consortium of researchers studying human development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the interplay between general cognitive development and culturally specific processes of socialization and cu... Read More about The development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior: Protocol for Wave 1 data collection with children and parents by the Developing Belief Network.

Religion-related Values Differently Influence Moral Attitude for Robots in the US and Japan (2023)
Journal Article

Tinkering to Innovation: How Children Refine Tools Over Multiple Attempts (2023)
Journal Article

The human capacity for technological innovation and creative problem-solving far surpasses that of any species but develops quite late. Prior work has typically presented children with problems requiring a single solution, a limited number of resourc... Read More about Tinkering to Innovation: How Children Refine Tools Over Multiple Attempts.

Riding the elephant in the room: Towards a revival of the optimal level of stimulation model (2022)
Journal Article

Phenomena such as engagement, attention and curiosity rely heavily on the “optimal-level of stimulation (or arousal)” model, which suggests they are driven by stimuli being neither too simple nor too complex. Two points often overlooked in psychology... Read More about Riding the elephant in the room: Towards a revival of the optimal level of stimulation model.

Economy of Grace and the Infinite Circle: A Theological Reception of the Social Evolutionary Origins of Gratitude (2022)
Journal Article

This article considers the social evolutionary research on gratitude and reciprocity and focuses on two mechanisms, upstream reciprocity and increased gratitude to strangers, that have strong consonance with various theological accounts of gift-givin... Read More about Economy of Grace and the Infinite Circle: A Theological Reception of the Social Evolutionary Origins of Gratitude.

British Children’s and Adults’ Perceptions of Robots (2022)
Journal Article

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) systems are quickly becoming a familiar part of different aspects of everyday life. We know very little about how children and adults perceive the abilities of different robots and whether these ascriptions a... Read More about British Children’s and Adults’ Perceptions of Robots.

The ontogeny of selective social learning: Young children flexibly adopt majority- or payoff-based biases depending on task uncertainty (2021)
Journal Article

Humans have adapted well to diverse environments in part because of their ability to efficiently acquire information from their social environment. However, we still know very little as to how young children acquire cultural knowledge and in particul... Read More about The ontogeny of selective social learning: Young children flexibly adopt majority- or payoff-based biases depending on task uncertainty.

When does it pay to follow the crowd? Children optimize imitation of causally- irrelevant actions performed by a majority (2021)
Journal Article

Cultural evolutionary theory posits that human cultural complexity rests on a set of adaptive learning biases that help to guide functionality and optimality in social learning, but this sits in contrast with the commonly held view that children are... Read More about When does it pay to follow the crowd? Children optimize imitation of causally- irrelevant actions performed by a majority.

Do neurotypical people like or dislike autistic people? (2021)
Journal Article

Background: This study investigated whether neurotypical individuals’ judgments that they dislike a person are more common when viewing autistic individuals than when viewing neurotypical individuals. Methods: Videos of autistic and neurotypical targ... Read More about Do neurotypical people like or dislike autistic people?.

Why do chimpanzees have diverse behavioral repertoires yet lack more complex cultures? Invention and social information use in a cumulative task (2020)
Journal Article

Humans are distinctive in their dependence upon products of culture for survival, products that have evolved cumulatively over generations such that many cannot now be created by a single individual. Why the cultural capacity of humans appears unriva... Read More about Why do chimpanzees have diverse behavioral repertoires yet lack more complex cultures? Invention and social information use in a cumulative task.

A cognitive developmental approach is essential to understanding cumulative technological culture (2020)
Journal Article

Osiurak and Reynaud argue that children are not a good methodological choice to examine cumulative technological culture. However, the manuscript ignores other current work that suggests that young children do display some aspects of creative problem... Read More about A cognitive developmental approach is essential to understanding cumulative technological culture.

The child’s pantheon: Children’s hierarchical belief structure in real and non-real figures (2020)
Journal Article

To what extent do children believe in real, unreal, natural and supernatural figures relative to each other, and to what extent are features of culture responsible for belief? Are some figures, like Santa Claus or an alien, perceived as more real tha... Read More about The child’s pantheon: Children’s hierarchical belief structure in real and non-real figures.

Children’s Developing Understanding of the Cognitive Abilities of Supernatural and Natural Minds: Evidence from Three Cultures (2020)
Journal Article

Despite a wealth of research exploring developmental patterns of children’s understanding of the thoughts and desires of another (or, their theory of mind), relatively little research has explored children’s developing understanding of supernatural m... Read More about Children’s Developing Understanding of the Cognitive Abilities of Supernatural and Natural Minds: Evidence from Three Cultures.

Cultivating virtue in postgraduates: An empirical study of the Oxford Global Leadership Initiative (2019)
Journal Article

Although virtue ethics has emerged as an influential ethical theory within the academy, universities have not generally taken up the practical task of virtue cultivation. Some academics even resist the effort altogether. In response, this article pre... Read More about Cultivating virtue in postgraduates: An empirical study of the Oxford Global Leadership Initiative.

The Minds of God, Mortals, and In-betweens: Children's Developing Understanding of Extraordinary and Ordinary Minds across Four Countries (2019)
Journal Article

Several theory-of-mind (ToM) studies have explored how children differentiate ordinary minds (humans, dogs) and extraordinary minds (God, spirits), but these studies have yielded divergent results and interpretations and have not offered cross-cultur... Read More about The Minds of God, Mortals, and In-betweens: Children's Developing Understanding of Extraordinary and Ordinary Minds across Four Countries.

The interaction of social and perceivable causal factors in shaping ‘over-imitation’ (2018)
Journal Article

Over-imitation has become a well-documented phenomenon. However there is evidence that both social and visible, physically causal factors can influence the occurrence of over-imitation in children. Here we explore the interplay between these two fact... Read More about The interaction of social and perceivable causal factors in shaping ‘over-imitation’.

Innovation and social transmission in experimental micro-societies: Exploring the scope of cumulative culture in young children (2017)
Journal Article

© 2017 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. The experimental study of cumulative culture and the innovations essential to it is a young science, with child studies so rare that the scope of cumulative cultural capacities... Read More about Innovation and social transmission in experimental micro-societies: Exploring the scope of cumulative culture in young children.

A Diverse and Flexible Teaching Toolkit Facilitates the Human Capacity for Cumulative Culture (2017)
Journal Article

© 2017, The Author(s). Human culture is uniquely complex compared to other species. This complexity stems from the accumulation of culture over time through high- and low-fidelity transmission and innovation. One possible reason for why humans retain... Read More about A Diverse and Flexible Teaching Toolkit Facilitates the Human Capacity for Cumulative Culture.

The Development of Selective Copying: Children's Learning From an Expert Versus Their Mother (2016)
Journal Article

© 2016 The Authors. Child Development © 2016 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. This study tested the prediction that, with age, children should rely less on familiarity and more on expertise in their selective social learning. Experimen... Read More about The Development of Selective Copying: Children's Learning From an Expert Versus Their Mother.

Do Children Copy an Expert or a Majority? Examining Selective Learning in Instrumental and Normative Contexts (2016)
Journal Article

© 2016 Burdett et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are cr... Read More about Do Children Copy an Expert or a Majority? Examining Selective Learning in Instrumental and Normative Contexts.