Understanding Others to Learn and Help Others Learn

Abstract

Through learning from others and sharing what we know in our everyday social interactions, we learn things that go far beyond what we can directly experience. What makes human social learning so distinctive, powerful, and effective? This chapter reviews recent developmental evidence on how our understanding of others—basic aspects of human social cognition—can support effective learning and communication. Even at a young age, humans show remarkable abilities to reason about others’ minds to (1) draw sophisticated inferences from information provided by others, (2) use such information to evaluate others’ informativeness, and (3) actively teach and communicate information to others. These studies suggest that human social learning is rooted in the basic social-cognitive abilities to understand what others want, need, and know, as well as what is useful or costly for others. Such abilities allow even young children to make flexible and rational decisions to learn from others and teach others, providing foundations for the development of distinctively human social learning.