Research
From birth, infants are attentive to differences in languages and prefer native speech. Does this early listening preference reflect a more general social preference for native speakers? In a series of Experiments, we have found that 5-month-old infants prefer to look at people who previously spoke in their native language with a native accent. Ten-month-old infants also prefer to accept toys from native speakers, and 12-month-old infants choose to eat foods first eaten by a native speaker. Older children’s social preferences based on accent extend beyond preferences for the comprehensible, reflecting an assessment of with whom children want to interact, not with whom they can communicate. Attention to the language and accent with which someone speaks, therefore, impacts the beginnings of social interactions and cultural learning.
Though language plays a critical role in driving children’s early preferences, one might question the specificity of these effects: would the same preferences be observed based on any dimension of familiarity? For instance, we know that the visual preferences of very young infants are influenced by the race of the faces they view. However, our findings suggest that when tested with measures of social exchange, both infants and children prioritize language and accent information over racial information in guiding their early social behaviors. Thus, attention to linguistic differences, rather than racial distinctions, may play a primary role in the development of infants’ and children’s early social reasoning.
Finally, though the research described above concerns children raised in predominantly monolingual societies, the majority of human societies are multi-lingual. Moreover, English is not only the American participants’ native and sole language, but it is also their society’s dominant language. Recent cross-cultural research investigating these phenomenon in South Africa finds that preferences for native over foreign speakers are both universal, and susceptible to knowledge of social dominance.
Representative publications
Kinzler, K.D., Dupoux, E., & Spelke, E.S. (2007). The native language of social cognition. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 12577-12580. [pdf]
Kinzler, K.D., Shutts, K., Dejesus, J., & Spelke, E.S. (in press). Accent trumps race in children’s social preferences. Social Cognition.
Shutts, K., Kinzler, K.D., McKee, C., & Spelke, E.S. (in preparation). Social information guides infants’ selection of foods.
Kinzler, K.D., Shutts, K., & Spelke, E.S. Own-language and dominant-language social preferences in Xhosa-speaking South African children.
Face memory provides a powerful tool for investigating the properties of individuals that are psychologically salient to children. Moreover, by presenting perceptually identical visual stimuli under different social contexts, we can measure conceptual influences on face memory. In one study, we found an “ambiguous race illusion” in children’s face memory. Children were shown visually identical ambiguous-race faces that, through context effects , were made to appear to children to be of one race or another. White children subsequently showed better memory for the ambiguous faces in their “White” rather than their “Black” context, providing evidence that even conceiving of a face as one race or another, in spite of the actual visual make-up of the face, leads to differential face memory. Thus, an interaction of perceptual and conceptual factors likely guide children’s memory for own-race and other-race faces.
In a second experiment, children were shown faces that were said to have previously committed either nice or mean action. Children subsequently exhibited better memory for “mean” than for “nice” faces. Control experiments revealed that this effect was due to perception of threat, rather than arousal due to negative valence. Current studies are investigating whether language and accent also modulate children’s face memory.
Representative publications
Shutts, K., & Kinzler, K.D. (2007). An ambiguous race illusion in children’s face memory. Psychological Science, 18, 763-767. [pdf]
Kinzler, K.D., & Shutts, K. (2008). Memory for “mean” over “nice”: The influence of threat on children’s face memory. Cognition, 107,775-783 [pdf]
We know little about the ways in which children’s positive social behavior and emotions are modulated by their attention to social categories. In one study, we investigated the role of race on children’s empathy, finding that children’s children’s feelings of empathy departed from their assessments of need, and their empathetic responses were susceptible to bias. Recent work tested the development of toddler’s giving behavior in relationship to the language and race of others.
Representative publications
Kinzler, K.D., Shutts, K., Epstein, A., & Spelke, E.S. (in preparation). Children’s irrational empathy: the role of race in guiding prosocial emotions.
Kinzler, K.D., Dupoux, E. & Spelke, E.S. (in preparation). Attention to native language guides social learning and social giving.
Language, accent, and the developmental of social cognition
The development of empathy and prosocial behavior
Face memory
