Resumen de The Development of Selective Copying: Children's Learning From an Expert Versus Their Mother

Amanda J. Lucas, Emily R. R. Burdett, Vanessa Burgess, Lara A. Wood, Nicola McGuigan, Paul L. Harris, Andrew Whiten

• This study tested the prediction that, with age, children should rely less on familiarity and more on expertise in their selective social learning. Experiment 1 (N = 50) found that 5- to 6-year-olds copied the technique their mother used to extract a prize from a novel puzzle box, in preference to both a stranger and an established expert. This bias occurred despite children acknowledging the expert model's superior capability. Experiment 2 (N = 50) demonstrated a shift in 7- to 8-year-olds toward copying the expert. Children aged 9–10 years did not copy according to a model bias. The findings of a follow-up study (N = 30) confirmed that, instead, they prioritized their own—partially flawed—causal understanding of the puzzle box.