title: The influence of social information on children's statistical and causal inferences.
abstract: Constructivist accounts of learning posit that causal inference is a child-driven process. Recent interpretations of such accounts also suggest that the process children use for causal learning is rational: Children interpret and learn from new evidence in light of their existing beliefs. We argue that such mechanisms are also driven by informative social cues and suggest ways in which such information influences both preschoolers' and infants' inferences. In doing so, we argue that a rational constructivist account should not only focus on describing the child's internal cognitive mechanisms for learning but also on how social information affects the process of learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA. david_sobel_l@brown.edu
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Sobel
authors.forename: Natasha Z
authors.initials: NZ
authors.lastname: Kirkham
mesh_terms: D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D003463:Cues; D003469:Culture; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D033182:Intention; D007389:Internal-External Control; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D011337:Probability Learning; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012931:Social Environment; D012951:Socialization; D013067:Speech Perception