Children's distinct drive to reproduce costly rituals

Mingxuan Zhao; Frankie T. K. Fong; Andrew Whiten; Mark Nielsen

doi:10.1111/cdev.14061

Children's distinct drive to reproduce costly rituals

Mingxuan Zhao^*, Frankie T. K. Fong, Andrew Whiten, Mark Nielsen

^*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety‐three 4–6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non‐ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non‐ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition.

Original language	English
Journal	Child Development
Volume	Early View
Early online date	18 Dec 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14061
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 18 Dec 2023

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10.1111/cdev.14061Licence: CC BY

Zhao_2023_CD_DistinctDrive_CCBY
Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Ethology published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Final published version, 1.1 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Children's distinct drive to reproduce costly rituals",

abstract = "Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety‐three 4–6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non‐ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non‐ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition.",

author = "Mingxuan Zhao and Fong, {Frankie T. K.} and Andrew Whiten and Mark Nielsen",

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AU - Zhao, Mingxuan

AU - Fong, Frankie T. K.

AU - Whiten, Andrew

AU - Nielsen, Mark

N1 - This study was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant to MN and AW (DP140101410).

PY - 2023/12/18

Y1 - 2023/12/18

N2 - Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety‐three 4–6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non‐ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non‐ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition.

AB - Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety‐three 4–6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non‐ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non‐ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition.

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DO - 10.1111/cdev.14061

M3 - Article

SN - 0009-3920

VL - Early View

JO - Child Development

JF - Child Development

ER -

Children's distinct drive to reproduce costly rituals

Abstract

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