Selective Social Learning of Plant Edibility in 6- and 18-month-old Infants

Recent research underscores the importance of social learning to the development of food preferences. Here, we explore whether social information about edibility--an adult placing something in his or her mouth--can be selectively tied to certain types of entities. Given that humans have relied on gathered plant resources across evolutionary time, and given the costs of trial-and-error learning, we predicted that human infants may possess selective social learning strategies that rapidly identify edible plants. Evidence from studies with 6- and 18-month-olds demonstrated that infants selectively identify plants, over artifacts, as food sources after seeing the same food-relevant social information applied to both object types. These findings are the first evidence for content-specific social learning mechanisms that facilitate the identification of edible plant resources. Evolved learning mechanisms such as these have enabled humans to survive and thrive in varied and changing environments.