Veissière et al.'s proposal aims to explain how cognition enables cultural learning, but fails to acknowledge a distinctively human behavior critical to this process: communication. Recent advances in developmental and computational cognitive science suggest that the social-cognitive capacities central to TTOM also support sophisticated yet remarkably early-emerging inferences and communicative behaviors that allow us to learn and share abstract knowledge.

A key benefit of Bayesian reasoning is that it stipulates how to optimally integrate unreliable sources of information. The authors present evidence that humans use Bayesian inference to determine how much to trust advice from another person, based on information about that person's knowledge and strategy.

Recent debates over adults' theory of mind use have been fueled by surprising failures of perspective-taking in communication, suggesting that perspective-taking may be relatively effortful. Yet adults routinely engage in effortful processes when needed. How, then, should speakers and listeners allocate their resources to achieve successful communication? We begin with the observation that the shared goal of communication induces a natural division of labor: The resources one agent chooses to allocate toward perspective-taking should depend on their expectations about the other's (...) allocation. We formalize this idea in a resource-rational model augmenting recent probabilistic weighting accounts with a mechanism for (costly) control over the degree of perspective-taking. In a series of simulations, we first derive an intermediate degree of perspective weighting as an optimal trade-off between expected costs and benefits of perspective-taking. We then present two behavioral experiments testing novel predictions of our model. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence or absence of occlusions in a director–matcher task. We found that speakers spontaneously modulated the informativeness of their descriptions to account for “known unknowns” in their partner's private view, reflecting a higher degree of speaker perspective-taking than previously acknowledged. In Experiment 2, we then compared the scripted utterances used by confederates in prior work with those produced in interactions with unscripted directors. We found that confederates were systematically less informative than listeners would initially expect given the presence of occlusions, but listeners used violations to adaptively make fewer errors over time. Taken together, our work suggests that people are not simply “mindblind”; they use contextually appropriate expectations to navigate the division of labor with their partner. We discuss how a resource-rational framework may provide a more deeply explanatory foundation for understanding flexible perspective-taking under processing constraints. (shrink)

Online data collection methods are expanding the ease and access of developmental research for researchers and participants alike. While its popularity among developmental scientists has soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, its potential goes beyond just a means for safe, socially distanced data collection. In particular, advances in video conferencing software has enabled researchers to engage in face-to-face interactions with participants from nearly any location at any time. Due to the novelty of these methods, however, many researchers still remain uncertain about (...) the differences in available approaches as well as the validity of online methods more broadly. In this article, we aim to address both issues with a focus on moderated data collected using video-conferencing software. First, we review existing approaches for designing and executing moderated online studies with young children. We also present concrete examples of studies that implemented choice and verbal measures and looking time across both in-person and online moderated data collection methods. Direct comparison of the two methods within each study as well as a meta-analysis of all studies suggest that the results from the two methods are comparable, providing empirical support for the validity of moderated online data collection. Finally, we discuss current limitations of online data collection and possible solutions, as well as its potential to increase the accessibility, diversity, and replicability of developmental science. (shrink)

We routinely observe others’ choices and use them to guide our own. Whose choices influence us more, and why? Prior work has focused on the effect of perceived similarity between two individuals, such as the degree of overlap in past choices or explicitly recognizable group affiliations. In the real world, however, any dyadic relationship is part of a more complex social structure involving multiple social groups that are not directly observable. Here we suggest that human learners go beyond dyadic similarities (...) in choice behaviors or explicit group memberships; they infer the structure of social influence by grouping individuals based on choices, and they use these groups to decide whose choices to follow. We propose a computational model that formalizes this idea, and we test the model predictions in a series of behavioral experiments. In Experiment 1, we reproduce a well-established finding that people's choices are more likely to be influenced by someone whose past choices are more similar to their own past choices, as predicted by our model as well as dyadic similarity models. In Experiments 2–5, we test a set of unique predictions of our model by looking at cases where the degree of choice overlap between individuals is equated, but their choices indicate a latent group structure. We then apply our model to prior empirical results on infants’ understanding of others’ preferences, presenting an alternative account of developmental changes. Finally, we discuss how our model relates to classical findings in the social influence literature and the theoretical implications of our model. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that structure learning is a powerful framework for explaining the influence of social information on decision making in a variety of contexts. (shrink)

In this article, I describe my experience of preparing and delivering a brand new computing undergraduate course in a new university and in doing so, share how the special institutional push of the active learning pedagogy of the university changed the way I prepared and delivered the course, and ended up transforming my own view of teaching. I was faced with an unusual cohort of students who were already familiar with active learning styles in classes, were proactive, vocal, and argumentative, (...) were not afraid of making mistakes and of challenging the authorities, were extremely articulate expressing themselves and who had worked in a project- and team-based setting throughout the programme. As such, a very different method of teaching needed to be in place, not for the purpose of improving the in-class engagement, but out of necessity. In the process of creating and running this course, I witnessed a major shift in the allocation of my time, efforts and other resources: from general to specific, from teaching to advising to observing, from elaborate preclass preparations to impromptu, in-class discussions, thus bringing all my design skills and experiences to the table. (shrink)

Despite the growing body of research on emotional labor, little has been known about the social consequences of emotional labor. Drawing on emotional dissonance theory, the authors investigate the relationship between the felt emotional dissonance and prosocial behavior (e.g., donation to a charity). Findings from multiple studies suggest that higher emotional dissonance serially influences perceived lack of control, emotional exhaustion, lowered sympathy for others’ feeling, and subsequently lower willingness to help others. when individuals are asked to recall their past experiences (...) of emotional dissonance, they expressed lack of control and emotional exhaustion (Study 3), lower sympathy for others’ feeling (Study 1, 3), and subsequently become less willing to help others both in their intention (Study 2A and 3) and with actual money (Study 2B). Further, this negative relationship is moderated by the display rules (i.e., surface acting vs. deep acting, Study 3). Managerial and public policy implications are discussed. (shrink)

A conceptual model articulating the nature of customer expectations and satisfaction over services was proposed with emotional factors. Five propositions about consumer emotional service expectations as a primary antecedent toward confirmation, perceived quality, and satisfaction were provided. As moderators, two dimensions of consumer detection of emotional labor (i.e., detecting deep acting and surface acting) were imposed on each of the relationships. Evidence demonstrated the roles of emotional service expectation in service confirmation and satisfaction. The moderating effects of consumer detection of (...) employees’ emotional strategies were limited to the relationship between emotional service expectation and confirmation; its relationship was weakened by detections of surface acting while other relationships were not moderated by detections of deep nor surface acting. Structural equation modeling analyses were conducted using online survey data targeting consumers in the hotel / restaurant industry. (shrink)

Since service providers directly conduct emotional labor to customers, it is important to identify the factors influencing emotional labor of service providers. Even though the studies identifying the predisposing factors influencing emotional labor are taking place, there is no empirical evidence confirming how relationship bonds, which have been established between corporations and service providers, are related to emotional labor. This study examined the influences of relationship bonds on emotional labor through person-organization fit (P-O fit) and the moderating effects of collectivism (...) between P-O fit and emotional labor. Analysis was conducted by performing questionnaire surveys targeting 365 employees in the financial industry. As a result of the analysis, it has been found that financial bonds, social bonds, and structural bonds enhanced P-O fit and P-O fit improved deep acting. In addition, this study identified that collectivism of service providers strengthened the influence of P-O fit toward deep acting. This study not only suggested the empirical evidence identifying the process of relationship bonds influencing emotional labor but also expanded the scope of study by examining moderating roles of collectivism in cultural psychology aspect. (shrink)