Abstract

Selective social learning has been the focus of many recent studies, however the mechanisms which guide this selectivity in young children is a source of controversy. The purpose of this study was to gather evidence in support of lower-order and higher-order mechanisms involved in learning selectivity in young children. We administered tasks measuring both lower-order (paired-associate learning) and higher-order (metacognition) potential concurrent correlates of selective learning to preschoolers (Mage= 4 years). Their accuracy scores on these tasks were analyzed in relation to their performance on a selective social learning task. Results from a hierarchical regression analysis demonstrated that explicit metacognitive abilities emerged as the sole statistically significant predictor of selective social learning performance after accounting for age, gender, and paired-associate learning abilities. These results provide evidence for the view that children’s development of sophisticated selective learning strategies might be dependent on their ability to explicitly reason about their own thoughts. This study provides support for a higher-order interpretation of selective social learning in preschoolers.