Conveners
From curiosity to exploration
- Elena Altmann
From curiosity to exploration
- Feride Nur Haskaraca Kizilay
Curiosity has long been assumed to promote exploration, and in turn, to support cognitive map formation. However, little research has directly investigated these claims. Recently, Cen et al. (2024) demonstrated that when participants feel more curious about specific virtual environments, they (1) explore those environments more thoroughly, and (2) display better memory for environmental...
Sophisticated social learning abilities have been considered as one of the key behavioural traits of the human phenotype, and many authors have appealed to domain-specific cognitive learning mechanisms to explain why it emerged in humans specifically. However, according to a recent theoretical proposal, the Postnatal Dependency Hypothesis, human infants' social learning abilities are grounded...
Curiosity plays a critical role in primate cognition, yet its mechanisms remain underexplored. Most research has focused on responses to novel stimuli, often overlooking curiosity toward familiar objects and the potential for social influences on curiosity. This study examined both novelty-driven and socially contagious curiosity in 22 captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) at two zoos,...
Children's initial steps towards social interaction begin with their attention to a desired social partner, typically by focusing on the partner's face. While research has shown that children tend to look more at adults' faces than children's faces in controlled environments, this may not accurately reflect the complexities of real-world social interactions. To gain a deeper understanding of...
18-month-old children can learn novel words by overhearing triadic interactions. Evidence of label learning from overheard speech in nonhuman species would suggest that the social-learning skills enabling this process may have also evolved in other species. Gifted Word Learner Dogs (GWLD) learn object labels by engaging in playful social interactions with their owners. We examined whether...
When learning novel words, referential ambiguity is a constant part of children’s learning environment. However, to date it is unclear whether children are aware of the different levels of uncertainty in referent identification, and to what extent they can effectively use this information. In two pre-registered studies, we assessed preschoolers’ and adults’ ability to monitor their uncertainty...
Norms are central to human cognition and interaction, shaping how we communicate and coordinate. Language, in particular, is governed by socially shared expectations about how and when to speak. However, the evolutionary origins of such communicative norms remain poorly understood, as protonormative behaviors in non-human primate communication are rarely documented. Vocal accommodation in the...
Successfully navigating the social world requires balancing strict adherence to social norms with their flexible interpretation. This poses a particularly interesting problem for early development: learning when to strictly follow rules and when not.
Across two preregistered experiments, we examined how 6- to 11-year-old children evaluate agents who follow different rule strategies:...
