Summary: Human children depend on caregivers for extended periods, employing complex vocal and cognitive cues to elicit adult attention and care. Recent research shows that adults prioritize vocal cues when assessing children’s emotions and perceived helplessness, while cognitive cues weigh more in evaluating intelligence.
When vocal and cognitive signals conflict, adults tend to rely on vocal cues, highlighting their evolutionary significance in interpreting a child’s needs. Understanding these dynamics can enhance caregiver-child interactions and inform supportive strategies for child development.
Key Facts:
- Influence of Cues: Adults focus more on vocal cues to assess children’s emotions and helplessness, but prioritize cognitive cues when evaluating intelligence.
- Evolutionary Role: Children’s prolonged dependence on adults may have driven the evolution of complex signaling to secure attention and care.
- Mixed Signals: When vocal and cognitive cues conflict, adults typically rely on vocal signals, emphasizing their evolutionary role in caregiving.
Source: FAU
Compared to other mammals, human children are dependent on their caregivers for a remarkably long time. Throughout the ages, they have developed “psychological tactics” to endear themselves to adults and thus enhance their chances of survival.
This prolonged dependency is believed to have driven the evolution of complex signaling mechanisms to help infants attract and maintain adult attention.
As babies grow, their methods of communication evolve from simple cries and facial expressions to more sophisticated vocal and cognitive cues.
Research has shown that when children are young, adults are drawn to certain signs of immaturity in their voices and thoughts, which help them understand what the children need.
A key question that has not been thoroughly studied is how caregivers weigh a child’s vocal versus cognitive cues during early childhood. For instance, if a child’s voice sounds immature but their reasoning is advanced, which aspect influences caregivers more?
To address this, researchers from Florida Atlantic University and Universitat I Jaume in Spain, examined how adults interpret these signals and the dynamics between different types of cues such as facial expressions, voices and cognitive signals.
Researchers created two main scenarios: one where a child’s vocal and cognitive cues matched (a consistent condition) and another where they did not (an inconsistent condition). For example, in a consistent condition, a child might show an immature voice and magical thinking, where they believe their thoughts or actions can unrealistically affect the world. In contrast, an inconsistent condition might feature a child with a mature reasoning but an immature-sounding voice.
Study participants listened to recordings of children talking while researchers examined how they responded to these children. They focused on two types of signs: how the children’s voices sounded and the way they reasoned.
Results of the study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, found that adults are more attentive to children’s voices when assessing their happiness or helplessness.
However, when evaluating a child’s intelligence (related to magical thinking) or negative emotions (associated with natural thinking), adults focus more on the content of what the child says rather than the tone of their voice.
“When vocal and cognitive cues matched, children with immature voices and magical thinking were seen as more helpless, while those with mature voices and logical reasoning were viewed as more intelligent and less needy,” said David Bjorklund, Ph.D., co-author, associate chair and professor, Department of Psychology within FAU’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science.
“When cues conflicted, adults relied more on vocal signals, especially for assessing emotions and helplessness. This shows how vocal signals heavily influence emotional judgments and perceived care needs, reflecting the evolved ways children use these cues to elicit care.”
During infancy, children do not use language, so caregivers rely heavily on facial and vocal cues to gauge their needs and emotions. For instance, a baby’s cry or facial expression can signal hunger or discomfort, helping caregivers respond appropriately.
Interestingly, when evaluating intelligence, adults appeared to rely more on cognitive cues rather than vocal ones. For children expressing natural thinking, the maturity of their reasoning was particularly influential in judgments about their intelligence. However, this was not always the case.
For supernatural or magical reasoning, the influence of cognitive and vocal cues was more mixed, suggesting that the interplay between these signals can vary based on the context.
“Our research shows that while facial expressions remain important, they are less effective in conveying certain types of information compared to vocal and cognitive signals,” said Bjorklund.
“Understanding these dynamics can improve our grasp of caregiver-child interactions and inform approaches to support both children and caregivers.”
Study co-authors are Carlos Hernández Blasi, Ph.D.; Sonia Agut, Ph.D.; Franciso Lozano Nomdedeu, Ph.D.; and Miguel Ángel Martínez, Ph.D., all with the Department of Psychology within the Universitat I Jaume.
About this neurodevelopment research news
Author: Gisele Galoustian
Source: FAU
Contact: Gisele Galoustian – FAU
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Children’s evolved cues to promote caregiving: Are voices more powerful than thoughts in signaling young children’s attributes and needs to adults?” by David Bjorklund et al. Evolution and Human Behavior
Abstract
Children’s evolved cues to promote caregiving: Are voices more powerful than thoughts in signaling young children’s attributes and needs to adults?
Children have evolved “psychological weapons” to endear them to adults, enhancing their chances of surviving. Earlier research has shown that, during early childhood, caregivers feel positively attracted by children’s vocal and cognitive cues of immaturity, which in turn provide adults with information about children’s attributes and needs.
The purpose of this study was to disentangle which of these two cues (vocal or cognitive), if either, might be more relevant for adults in assessing children’s attributes and needs.
College students (n = 273) listened to four pairs of children reasoning either in a mature or an immature manner about two types of thinking, one we labeled supernatural that reflects “magical thinking” (e.g., “The sun’s not out because it’s mad”) and the other we labeled natural that reflects abilities such as estimating one’s cognition abilities or inhibition (e.g., “I can remember all the words you showed me”).
In one condition (Consistent), the immaturity/maturity of children’s reasoning matched the immaturity/maturity of their voices, whereas in the other condition (Inconsistent) they did not.
Results revealed that, regardless of the type of reasoning, children’s vocal cues prevailed over cognitive cues for assessing attributes of positive affect and helplessness.
Conversely, children’s cognitive cues prevailed over vocal cues for assessing intelligence (but only for supernatural thinking), and negative affect (but only for natural thinking).
The results reveal natural selection’s use of different cues of immaturity to promote caregiving during early childhood and reflect the complexity of multimodal features when adults evaluate young children.
