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Published on: April 19, 2017
Early social experience predicts referential communicative adjustments in five-year-old children
Arjen Stolk1, Sabine Hunnius, Harold Bekkering
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. a.stolk@donders.ru.nl
Plos One
|September 7, 2013
Summary
Early non-familial social interaction, like daycare, enhances children's ability to adjust communication based on their understanding of others. This impacts how children design their communication for a specific audience.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Social Cognition
- Communication Studies
Background:
- Research often examines children's understanding of others' mental states.
- Less is known about factors influencing children's ability to shape others' mental states.
- Early collaborative experiences may be key for mental coordination.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the impact of familial versus non-familial social exposure on children's audience design.
- To understand developmental factors shaping children's communicative adjustments based on their mental models.
Main Methods:
- Five-year-old children played an online interactive game.
- Their non-verbal communication was analyzed for adjustments to an interlocutor's presumed mental state.
- The study correlated communicative adjustments with time spent in daycare versus familial social environments.
Main Results:
- Children spontaneously adjusted non-verbal communication based on their beliefs about the interlocutor.
- Time spent in daycare from birth to four years predicted the magnitude of these communicative adjustments.
- Daycare effects remained significant beyond the influence of the familial social environment.
Conclusions:
- Early and extensive non-familial social interaction, such as daycare, significantly influences children's audience design abilities.
- The degree of early non-familial social exposure modulates how children's beliefs affect their referential communication.
- Findings highlight the importance of social environments beyond the family for developing social-communicative skills.
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