The native language of social cognition
Abstract
What leads humans to divide the social world into groups, preferring their own group and disfavoring others? Experiments with infants and young children suggest these tendencies are based on predispositions that emerge early in life and depend, in part, on natural language. Young infants prefer to look at a person who previously spoke their native language. Older infants preferentially accept toys from native-language speakers, and preschool children preferentially select native-language speakers as friends. Variations in accent are sufficient to evoke these social preferences, which are observed in infants before they produce or comprehend speech and are exhibited by children even when they comprehend the foreign-accented speech. Early-developing preferences for native-language speakers may serve as a foundation for later-developing preferences and conflicts among social groups.
Acknowledgments
We thank K. Shutts, a collaborator on the studies looking at friendship choices in childhood, who offered valuable advice for the looking-time method used with 5- to 6-month-old infants. We thank Professor Cabrol for providing access to the Port Royal Maternity Ward, where the Paris infants were tested. We also thank S. Pinker and J. Halberda for advice and I. Berner, J. DeJesus, K. Ellison, R. Lizcano, S. Margules, S. McCarthy, and C. Pemberton for assistance. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant HD23103 (to E.S.S.).
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© 2007 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
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Received: April 4, 2007
Published online: July 24, 2007
Published in issue: July 24, 2007
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Acknowledgments
We thank K. Shutts, a collaborator on the studies looking at friendship choices in childhood, who offered valuable advice for the looking-time method used with 5- to 6-month-old infants. We thank Professor Cabrol for providing access to the Port Royal Maternity Ward, where the Paris infants were tested. We also thank S. Pinker and J. Halberda for advice and I. Berner, J. DeJesus, K. Ellison, R. Lizcano, S. Margules, S. McCarthy, and C. Pemberton for assistance. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant HD23103 (to E.S.S.).
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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The native language of social cognition, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
104 (30) 12577-12580,
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0705345104
(2007).
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