@article {3773, title = {At 4.5 but not 5.5 years, children favor kin when the stakes are moderately high}, journal = {PLOS ONE}, volume = {13}, year = {2018}, month = {08/2018}, chapter = {e0202507}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0202507}, url = {http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202507}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2534, title = {The cradle of social knowledge: Infants{\textquoteright} reasoning about caregiving and affiliation}, journal = {Cognition}, volume = {159}, year = {2017}, month = {02/2017}, pages = {102-116}, abstract = {

Considerable research has examined infants{\textquoteright} understanding and evaluations of social agents, but two questions remain unanswered: First, do infants organize observed social relations into larger structures, inferring the relationship between two social beings based on their relations to a third party? Second, how do infants reason about a type of social relation prominent in all societies: the caregiving relation between parents and their babies? In a series of experiments using animated events, we ask whether 15- to 18-month-old infants infer that two babies who were comforted by the same adult, or two adults who comforted the same baby, will affiliate with one another. We find that infants make both of these inferences, but they make no comparable inferences when presented with the same visible events with voices that specify a peer context, in which one adult responds to another laughing adult. Thus, infants are sensitive to at least one aspect of caregiving and organize relations between infants and adults into larger social structures.

}, keywords = {caregiving, social cognition, social development}, doi = {10.1016/j.cognition.2016.11.008}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {3477, title = {Five-month-old infants attend to responsive caregivers}, year = {2017}, address = {Portland, OR}, abstract = {

Toddlers are sensitive to comforting interactions in animated events with geometric forms of different sizes that first move together, then separate, prompting the smaller form to emit a baby{\textquoteright}s cry (Johnson et al., 2007), and they expect adults who comfort the same crying baby to engage with one another (Spokes \& Spelke, 2017), but an earlier sensitivity to comforting interactions is unknown. Two OSF- preregistered experiments (N=32) asked if 5-month-old infants prefer an adult who comforts a crying baby over one who does not. In Experiment 1, infants viewed alternating events in which a baby cried, and two adults responded by approaching or fleeing the baby, moving the same distances in different directions. When the adults then appeared together without the baby for one 20-sec visual preference trial, infants looked longer to the responsive adult, M = 0.608, SD = 0.206, t(15) = 2.167, p = 0.047, Figure 1. Experiment 2 replaced the crying baby with a car emitting a siren noise, comparable in salience to a baby{\textquoteright}s cry. Infants looked as long at approach and avoid events as in Exp. 1 but showed no test preference for the adult who approached the car, M = 0.486, SD = 0.212, t(15) = 0.264, p = 0.795, Figure 1. Infants{\textquoteright} looking patterns in Exp. 1 thus cannot be explained by a general preference for an approaching over avoiding adult and suggest that infants attend to more responsive caregivers before they can approach or use language to communicate with their own social partners.

}, url = {https://cogdevsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CDS2017AbstractBook.pdf}, author = {A C Spokes and Tara Venkatesan and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @proceedings {3478, title = {Four-year-old children favor kin when the stakes are higher}, year = {2017}, address = {Portland, OR}, abstract = {

Only in cases when the stakes are high--donating a kidney or risking injury to rescue someone in peril-- do adults report more willingness to help siblings over close friends (Stewart-Williams, 2007). When people are dividing plentiful, low-value resources, children expect them to share equally with friend and siblings (Olson \& Spelke, 2008). However, will children show a kinship preference when the stakes are higher? We first tested young children{\textquoteright}s relative favoring of kin versus friends and strangers in distributing limited resources--one item instead of many (Spokes \& Spelke, 2016). We found that 3- to 5- year-old children (n=252) shared more with kin and friends than with strangers but did not favor kin over friend, either when reasoning about fictional characters (Experiments 1, 3) or about their own friends and family (Experiment 2). This pattern of results could have occurred for two reasons: first, young children do not yet have the kinship index mechanisms that guide adults{\textquoteright} recent altruistic favors and reported likelihood of donating an organ to siblings (Lieberman, Tooby \& Cosmides, 2007). Second, the hypothetical costs and rewards used may not be relevant or valuable to children. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we asked whether children would show a preference for kin if the cost was more relevant to them--their own time and effort. In the present experiment, we asked if children would work harder for kin over non-kin when playing a challenging geometry game (Dillon, Huang, \& Spelke, 2013). Each round, they could earn stickers for a different recipient: themselves, a parent, sibling, friend, or an unfamiliar child. Children could end the round whenever they wanted. We measured the number of trials played, trials answered correctly, and duration of play. Data for the number of trials and duration played were log-normally distributed, so we log transformed these variables prior to analyses (Csibra, Hernik, Mascaro, Tatone, \& Lengyel, 2016). Across these measures, one-way ANOVAs revealed that four-year-olds (n=24) played more trials for their kin relations--siblings and parents--than for non-kin--friends and strangers, F(1, 46) = 4.27, p = .044, answered more trials correctly, F(1, 46) = 4.57, p = .038, and played marginally longer, F(1, 46) = 3.14, p = .083. There was no main effect of recipient when comparing across all four recipients nor significant pairwise comparisons. Five-year-olds (n=24) did not differ when playing for kin versus non-kin (ps \> .05). These findings provide initial evidence that four-year-old children calibrate their time and effort in a task differently according to who will reap the rewards, but five-year-olds do not. Five-year-olds may find the task easier and less costly or may have different social experiences having attended school. Nonetheless, we found that children{\textquoteright}s social decisions depend upon the recipient of their generosity. We provide initial evidence that children may favor kin when the stakes are higher and resources--their time and effort--are more meaningful to them: four-year-olds played more trials and did so more accurately when winning for kin.

}, url = {https://cogdevsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/CDS2017AbstractBook.pdf}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2609, title = {Like adults, children make consistent welfare tradeoff allocations}, year = {2017}, address = {Austin, Texas}, author = {A C Spokes and Howard, R and S A Mehr and Krasnow, M M} } @conference {2607, title = {Like Adults, children make consistent welfare tradeoff allocations}, booktitle = {Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development}, year = {2017}, address = {Budapest, Hungary}, author = {A C Spokes and Howard, R and S A Mehr and Krasnow, M M} } @article {1821, title = {Children{\textquoteright}s Expectations and Understanding of Kinship as a Social Category}, journal = {Frontiers in Psychology}, volume = { 7}, year = {2016}, pages = {1664-1078}, abstract = {

In order to navigate the social world, children need to understand and make predictions about how people will interact with one another. Throughout most of human history, social groups have been prominently marked by kinship relations, but few experiments have examined children{\textquoteright}s knowledge of and reasoning about kinship relations.\  In the current studies, we investigated how 3- to 5-year-old children understand kinship relations, compared to non-kin relations between friends, with questions such as, {\textquotedblleft}Who has the same grandmother?{\textquotedblright} We also tested how children expect people to interact based on their relations to one another, with questions such as {\textquotedblleft}Who do you think Cara would like to share her treat with?{\textquotedblright} Both in a storybook context and in a richer context presenting more compelling cues to kinship using face morphology, 3- and 4-year-old children failed to show either robust explicit conceptual distinctions between kin and friends, or expectations of behavior favoring kin over friends, even when asked about their own social partners. By 5 years, children{\textquoteright}s understanding of these relations improved, and they showed some expectation that others will preferentially aid siblings over friends.\  Together, these findings suggest that explicit understanding of kinship develops slowly over the preschool years.

}, issn = {1664-1078}, doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00440 }, url = {http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00440/full}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {1820, title = {Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks}, booktitle = {International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS)}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, LA}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @conference {1961, title = {The Functions of Infants{\textquoteright} Social Categorization: Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Social Networks}, booktitle = {International Conference on Infant Studies (ICIS)}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, Louisiana}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1818, title = {How Infants Reason About Affective States and Social Interactions}, year = {2016}, month = {05/2016}, address = {New Orleans, Louisiana }, author = {A C Spokes}, editor = {Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {2608, title = {Welfare-tradeoff ratios in children}, year = {2016}, address = {Vancouver, Canada}, author = {A C Spokes and Howard, R and S A Mehr and Krasnow, M M} } @article {1957, title = {Early Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving}, number = {ID: 325/PS-III: 39}, year = {2015}, month = {01/2015}, abstract = {

Considerable\  research\  has\  examined\  infants{\textquoteright}\  reasoning\  about\  and\  evaluations\  of\  social\  agents,\  but\  two\  questions\  remain\  unanswered: First, do infants organize observed social relations into larger structures, inferring the relationship between t wo social\  beings\  based\  on\  their\  relations\  to\  a\  third\  party?\  Second,\  how\  do\  infants\  reaso n\  about\  a\  type\  of\  social\  relations\  prominent\  in\  all\  societies:\  kinship\  relations\  that\  modulate\  caregiving?\  In\  a\  series\  of\  experiments\  using\  animated\  events,\  we\  ask\  whether\  9 - ,\  11 - ,\  and 15 - to 18 - month - old infants expect two babies\  who\  were comforted by the same caregiver, or two caregivers\  who comforted\  the same baby, to affiliate with one another. We find that older infants make these inferences in a caregiving context, but n ot in a\  different context involving social interactions among adults. Thus, infant s are sensitive to at least one aspect of kinship relations {\textemdash} caregiving {\textemdash} and organize these relations into larger social structures.

}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1344, title = {Early reasoning about affiliation and kinship.}, year = {2015}, month = {03/2015}, publisher = {Poster presentation at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA}, author = {A C Spokes and Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1817, title = {Infants{\textquoteright} Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, author = {A C Spokes}, editor = {Elizabeth S Spelke} } @article {1819, title = {Infants{\textquoteright} Reasoning about Affiliation and Caregiving}, year = {2015}, month = {10/2015}, address = {Columbus, Ohio}, author = {A C Spokes}, editor = {Elizabeth S Spelke} }