Inferential social learning: Cognitive foundations of human social learning and teaching
Hyowon Gweon
Abstract
Social learning is often portrayed as a passive process of copying and trusting others. This view, however, does not fully capture what makes human social learning so powerful: Social information is often “curated” by helpful teachers. Inferential social learning explains our abilities as learners and teachers as interpretation and generation of evidence in social contexts, characterizing both as probabilistic inference guided by an intuitive understanding of how people think, plan, and act. Consistent with its predictions, even young children draw rich inferences from others’ behaviors and communicate information that helps others learn. By studying social learning and teaching through a common theoretical lens, this account paints an integrated picture of how human cognition supports acquisition and communication of abstract knowledge.