Abstract

The main objective of the present dissertation was to investigate the psychological mechanisms underlying selective social learning in infancy. Specifically, it was of interest to examine whether domain-specific or domain-general abilities guide infants’ selective behaviour. The aim of Study 1 was to examine whether theory of mind abilities (knowledge inference and false belief) and/or statistical learning abilities relate to 18-month-olds’ selective word learning. Results demonstrated that infants who had a superior performance on the knowledge inference task were less likely to learn a novel word from an informant who labeled objects inaccurately (i.e., who labeled a ball as a shoe). Infants’ false belief and statistical learning abilities were unrelated to their selective social learning.

The goal of Study 2 was to examine whether infants’ knowledge inference and/or associative learning abilities were linked with 14-month-olds’ selective trust in an emotional congruence paradigm. Findings revealed that infants with superior knowledge inference abilities were less likely to trust an incongruent emoter, that is, an emoter who expressed an emotional reaction that did not match the situation (i.e., expressing happiness after examining an empty container). No relation was present with the associative learning task.

Lastly, the objective of Study 3 was to investigate whether infants’ theory of mind abilities (knowledge inference and false belief) and/or associative learning abilities were related to 18-month-olds’ performance on a selective word learning task using a within-subjects paradigm. Consistent with the two previous studies, only infants’ knowledge inference abilities were associated with their mistrust of the unreliable informant.

Taken together, the findings from the three studies demonstrate that infants use domain-specific abilities, such as their ability to infer others’ knowledge states, to selectively trust and learn from others. In other words, infants with superior knowledge inference abilities may be better able to infer whether someone is ignorant/unreliable and therefore not a good source to learn from. These results provide evidence for a rich interpretation of infants’ selective social learning.