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Specifying links between infants' theory of mind, associative learning, and selective trust
Author(s) -
Crivello Cristina,
Grossman Shawna,
PoulinDubois Diane
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
infancy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.361
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1532-7078
pISSN - 1525-0008
DOI - 10.1111/infa.12407
Subject(s) - psychology , associative learning , theory of mind , inference , associative property , cognitive psychology , cognition , task (project management) , sequence learning , competence (human resources) , social cognition , developmental psychology , social psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science , mathematics , management , neuroscience , pure mathematics , economics
The psychological mechanisms underlying infants' selective social learning are currently a subject of controversy. The main goal of the present study was to contribute data to this debate by investigating whether domain‐specific or domain‐general abilities guide infants' selectivity. Eighteen‐month‐olds observed a reliable and an unreliable speaker, and then completed a forced‐choice word learning paradigm, two theory of mind tasks, and an associative learning task. Results revealed that infants showed sensitivity to the verbal competence of the speaker. Additionally, infants with superior knowledge inference abilities were less likely to learn from the unreliable speaker. No link was observed between selective social learning and associative learning skills. These results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that socio‐cognitive abilities are linked to infants' selective social learning.