Hyowon Gweon

All Publications

• Theory of Minds: Early Understanding of Interacting Minds ANNUAL REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Chuey, A., Gweon, H. 2025; 7 (1): 91-115

  View details for DOI 10.1146/annurev-devpsych-111323-115032

  View details for Web of Science ID 001641248000016

• Socially intelligent machines that learn from humans and help humans learn. Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences Gweon, H., Fan, J., Kim, B. 2023; 381 (2251): 20220048

  Abstract

  A hallmark of human intelligence is the ability to understand and influence other minds. Humans engage in inferential social learning (ISL) by using commonsense psychology to learn from others and help others learn. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are raising new questions about the feasibility of human-machine interactions that support such powerful modes of social learning. Here, we envision what it means to develop socially intelligent machines that can learn, teach, and communicate in ways that are characteristic of ISL. Rather than machines that simply predict human behaviours or recapitulate superficial aspects of human sociality (e.g. smiling, imitating), we should aim to build machines that can learn from human inputs and generate outputs for humans by proactively considering human values, intentions and beliefs. While such machines can inspire next-generation AI systems that learn more effectively from humans (as learners) and even help humans acquire new knowledge (as teachers), achieving these goals will also require scientific studies of its counterpart: how humans reason about machine minds and behaviours. We close by discussing the need for closer collaborations between the AI/ML and cognitive science communities to advance a science of both natural and artificial intelligence. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Cognitive artificial intelligence'.

  View details for DOI 10.1098/rsta.2022.0048

  View details for PubMedID 37271177

• Young children infer and manage what others think about them. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Asaba, M., Gweon, H. 2022; 119 (32): e2105642119

  Abstract

  We care about what others think of us and often try to present ourselves in a good light. What cognitive capacities underlie our ability to think (or even worry) about reputation, and how do these concerns manifest as strategic self-presentational behaviors? Even though the tendency to modify one's behaviors in the presence of others emerges early in life, the degree to which these behaviors reflect a rich understanding of what others think about the self has remained an open question. Bridging prior work on reputation management, communication, and theory of mind development in early childhood, here we investigate young children's ability to infer and revise others' mental representation of the self. Across four experiments, we find that 3- and 4-y-old children's decisions about to whom to communicate (Experiment 1), what to communicate (Experiments 2 and 3), and which joint activity to engage in with a partner (Experiment 4) are systematically influenced by the partner's observations of the children's own past performance. Children in these studies chose to present self-relevant information selectively and strategically when it could revise the partner's outdated, negative representation of the self. Extending research on children's ability to engage in informative communication, these results demonstrate the sophistication of early self-presentational behaviors: Even young children can draw rich inferences about what others think of them and communicate self-relevant information to revise these representations.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2105642119

  View details for PubMedID 35930665

• Inferential social learning: cognitive foundations of human social learning and teaching. Trends in cognitive sciences Gweon, H. 2021

  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. I argue that both learning from others (social learning) and helping others learn (teaching) can be characterized as probabilistic inferences guided by an intuitive understanding of how people think, plan, and act. Consistent with this idea, even young children draw rich inferences from evidence provided by others and generate informative evidence that helps others learn. By studying social learning and teaching through a common theoretical lens, inferential social learning provides an integrated account of how human cognition supports acquisition and communication of abstract knowledge.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.tics.2021.07.008

  View details for PubMedID 34417094

• Young children consider the expected utility of others' learning to decide what to teach. Nature human behaviour Bridgers, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H. 2019

  Abstract

  Direct instruction facilitates learning without the costs of exploration, yet teachers must be selective because not everything can nor needs to be taught. How do we decide what to teach and what to leave for learners to discover? Here we investigate the cognitive underpinnings of the human ability to prioritize what to teach. We present a computational model that decides what to teach by maximizing the learner's expected utility of learning from instruction and from exploration, and we show that children (aged 5-7years) make decisions that are consistent with the model's predictions (that is, minimizing the learner's costs and maximizing the rewards). Children flexibly considered either the learner's utility or their own, depending on the context, and even considered costs they had not personally experienced, to decide what to teach. These results suggest that utility-based reasoning may play an important role in curating cultural knowledge by supporting selective transmission of high-utility information.

  View details for DOI 10.1038/s41562-019-0748-6

  View details for PubMedID 31611659

• The rare preference effect: Statistical information influences social affiliation judgments. Cognition Velez, N., Bridgers, S., Gweon, H. 2019; 192: 103994

  Abstract

  Shared preferences-liking the same things-facilitate and strengthen bonds between individuals. However, not all shared preferences are equally meaningful; sharing a rare preference with someone is often more exciting and meaningful than sharing a common preference. Here we present evidence for the rare preference effect: Participants chose to interact with (Experiment 1), and endorsed interactions between (Experiment 2), individuals who shared a rare preference, rather than those who shared a common preference, and this tendency increased with the relative rarity of the preference. While having a preference usually implies knowing and liking something, the presence of shared knowledge alone was sufficient to give rise to the rare preference effect (Experiments 3 & 4). Further, we find that social affiliation judgments are modulated by the causal process by which individuals came to have shared knowledge: Participants preferred to interact with someone who acquired a shared preference deliberately rather than accidentally (Experiment 5). In addition to the many cultural and emotional factors that drive mutual attraction, these results suggest that people's decisions about with whom to interact are systematically influenced by the statistics of the social environment.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.06.006

  View details for PubMedID 31229739

• 16-Month-Olds Rationally Infer Causes of Failed Actions SCIENCE Gweon, H., Schulz, L. 2011; 332 (6037): 1524-1524

  Abstract

  Sixteen-month-old infants (N = 83) rationally used sparse data about the distribution of outcomes among agents and objects to solve a fundamental inference problem: deciding whether event outcomes are due to themselves or the world. When infants experienced failed outcomes, their causal attributions affected whether they sought help or explored.

  View details for DOI 10.1126/science.1204493

  View details for Web of Science ID 000291990000035

  View details for PubMedID 21700866

• Infants consider both the sample and the sampling process in inductive generalization PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., Schulz, L. E. 2010; 107 (20): 9066-9071

  Abstract

  The ability to make inductive inferences from sparse data is a critical aspect of human learning. However, the properties observed in a sample of evidence depend not only on the true extension of those properties but also on the process by which evidence is sampled. Because neither the property extension nor the sampling process is directly observable, the learner's ability to make accurate generalizations depends on what is known or can be inferred about both variables. In particular, different inferences are licensed if samples are drawn randomly from the whole population (weak sampling) than if they are drawn only from the property's extension (strong sampling). Given a few positive examples of a concept, only strong sampling supports flexible inferences about how far to generalize as a function of the size and composition of the sample. Here we present a Bayesian model of the joint dependence between observed evidence, the sampling process, and the property extension and test the model behaviorally with human infants (mean age: 15 months). Across five experiments, we show that in the absence of behavioral cues to the sampling process, infants make inferences consistent with the use of strong sampling; given explicit cues to weak or strong sampling, they constrain their inferences accordingly. Finally, consistent with quantitative predictions of the model, we provide suggestive evidence that infants' inferences are graded with respect to the strength of the evidence they observe.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1003095107

  View details for Web of Science ID 000277822600011

  View details for PubMedID 20435914

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC2889113

• Young children infer the informativeness of others' praise. Developmental psychology Asaba, M., Stegall, J., Hembacher, E., Frank, M. C., Gweon, H. 2025

  Abstract

  Praise is not only rewarding but also informative. It can provide children with information about their competence, especially when they are uncertain or unable to judge for themselves. Not all praise is equally meaningful, however: someone who praises only high-quality work is more informative than someone who praises indiscriminately. Across four experiments, we find that 4- to 5-year-old U.S. children-from both in-person preschool and online samples-can infer the informativeness of others' praise based on the statistical dependence between praise and the quality of work evaluated. Participants were more likely to endorse praise from a teacher whose previous praise covaried with the quality of work over a teacher who praised indiscriminately or a teacher who praised only lower quality work (Experiment 1). Although children did not show a preference between teachers when seeking out praise for themselves (Experiment 2), they sought out praise from different teachers on behalf of another learner depending on the learner's goal (Experiments 3-4). Collectively, these findings show that even young children understand that praise is more than just positive reinforcement. Rather, they can reason about a speaker's inferred informativeness and use this to guide whose praise to seek out and endorse. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/dev0002073

  View details for PubMedID 41100302

• When Success Is Surprising: Children's Ability to Use Surprise to Infer Competence. Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science Asaba, M., Wu, Y., Carrillo, B., Gweon, H. 2025; 9: 825-843

  Abstract

  How do we learn who is good at what? Building on the idea that humans draw rich inferences from others' emotional expressions, here we ask whether others' surprised reactions to performance outcomes can elicit inferences about competence. Across three experiments, participants were asked to choose "who is better" in scenarios where two students performed identically on the same task but their teacher expressed surprise to only one of them. In Experiment 1 (n = 60, adults) and Experiment 2 (n = 90, 6- to 8-year-old children), participants' responses were modulated by not only the students' performance outcomes (success or failure) but also the teacher's response to the outcomes (surprise or no surprise). Specifically, participants preferentially chose the student who did not elicit the teacher's surprise as more competent when both students succeeded, but chose the student who elicited surprise when both failed. Experiment 3a (n = 150, 4- to 8-year-olds) replicated this pattern in 6- to 8-year-olds as a group-but not in 4- to 5-year-olds-with increasing robustness with age. Finally, this pattern was significantly reduced in Experiment 3b where the teacher's surprise was directed at an irrelevant event rather than the student's performance (n = 90, 6- to 8-year-olds). Taken together, these results suggest that even non-valenced emotional reactions to performance outcomes-being surprised at someone's success or failure-can inform inferences about valenced qualities such as competence. More broadly, the current findings demonstrate that emotional expressions we observe in our daily lives can lead to nuanced yet consequential social judgments.

  View details for DOI 10.1162/opmi.a.2

  View details for PubMedID 40697897

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC12283150

• Infants follow the gaze of same-age peers, young children, and adults SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT Eiteljoerge, S., Matzerath, A., Gweon, H., Mani, N. 2025; 34 (1)

  View details for DOI 10.1111/sode.12786

  View details for Web of Science ID 001467762000001

• Where is the baby in core knowledge? The Behavioral and brain sciences Gweon, H., Zhu, P. 2024; 47: e129

  Abstract

  What we know about what babies know - as represented by the core knowledge proposal - is perhaps missing a place for the baby itself. By studying the baby as an actor rather than an observer, we can better understand the origins of human intelligence as an interface between perception and action, and how humans think and learn about themselves in a complex world.

  View details for DOI 10.1017/S0140525X2300314X

  View details for PubMedID 38934435

• Expecting the Unexpected: Infants Use Others' Surprise to Revise Their Own Expectations. Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science Wu, Y., Merrick, M., Gweon, H. 2024; 8: 67-83

  Abstract

  Human infants show systematic responses to events that violate their expectations. Can they also revise these expectations based on others' expressions of surprise? Here we ask whether infants (N = 156, mean = 15.2 months, range: 12.0-18.0 months) can use an experimenter's expression of surprise to revise their own expectations about statistically probable vs. improbable events. An experimenter sampled a ball from a box of red and white balls and briefly displayed either a surprised or an unsurprised expression at the outcome before revealing it to the infant. Following an unsurprised expression, the results were consistent with prior work; infants looked longer at a statistically improbable outcome than a probable outcome. Following a surprised expression, however, this standard pattern disappeared or was even reversed. These results suggest that even before infants can observe the unexpected events themselves, they can use others' surprise to expect the unexpected. Starting early in life, human learners can leverage social information that signals others' prediction error to update their own predictions.

  View details for DOI 10.1162/opmi_a_00117

  View details for PubMedID 38435704

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC10898783

• This too shall pass, but when? Children's and adults' beliefs about the time duration of emotions, desires, and preferences. Child development Kramer, H. J., Lara, K. H., Gweon, H., Zaki, J., Miramontes, M., Lagattuta, K. H. 2024

  Abstract

  This research investigated children's and adults' understanding of the mind by assessing beliefs about the temporal features of mental states. English-speaking North American participants, varying in socioeconomic status (Study 1: N = 50 adults; Study 2: N = 112, 8- to 10-year-olds and adults; and Study 3: N = 116, 5- to 7-year-olds and adults; tested 2017-2022), estimated the duration (seconds to a lifetime) of emotions, desires (wanting), preferences (liking), and control trials (e.g., napping and having eyes). Participants were 56% female and 44% male; 32% Asian, 1% Black, 13% Hispanic/Latino, 38% White (non-Hispanic/Latino), and 16% multiracial or another race/ethnicity. Children and adults judged that preferences last longer than emotions and desires, with age differences in distinguishing specific emotions by duration ( η p 2 s > .03 $$ {\eta}_{\mathrm{p}}^2\mathrm{s}>.03 $$ ). By 5 to 7 years, ideas about the mind include consideration of time.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.14072

  View details for PubMedID 38334228

• Open dataset of theory of mind reasoning in early to middle childhood. Data in brief Sotomayor-Enriquez, K., Gweon, H., Saxe, R., Richardson, H. 2024; 52: 109905

  Abstract

  Theory of mind (ToM) reasoning refers to the process by which we reason about the mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) of others. Here, we describe an open dataset of responses from children who completed a story booklet task for assessing ToM reasoning (n=321 3-12-year-old children, including 64 (neurotypical) children assessed longitudinally and 68 autistic children). Children completed one of two versions of the story booklet task (Booklet 1 or 2). Both versions include two-alternative forced choice and free response questions that tap ToM concepts ranging in difficulty from reasoning about desires and beliefs to reasoning about moral blameworthiness and mistaken referents. Booklet 2 additionally includes items that assess understanding of sarcasm, lies, and second-order belief-desire reasoning. Compared to other ToM tasks, the booklet task provides relatively dense sampling of ToM reasoning within each child (Booklet 1: 41 items; Booklet 2: 65 items). Experimental sessions were video recorded and data were coded offline; the open dataset consists of children's accuracy (binary) on each item and, for many children (n=171), transcriptions of free responses. The dataset also includes children's scores on standardized tests of receptive language and non-verbal IQ, as well as other demographic information. As such, this dataset is a valuable resource for investigating the development of ToM reasoning in early and middle childhood.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.dib.2023.109905

  View details for PubMedID 38146306

• Toddlers Prefer Agents Who Help Those Facing Harder Tasks. Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science Woo, B. M., Liu, S., Gweon, H., Spelke, E. S. 2024; 8: 483-499

  Abstract

  Capacities to understand and evaluate others' actions are fundamental to human social life. Infants and toddlers are sensitive to the costs of others' actions, infer others' values from the costs of the actions they take, and prefer those who help others to those who hinder them, but it is largely unknown whether and how cost considerations inform early understanding of third-party prosocial actions. In three experiments (N = 94), we asked whether 16-month-old toddlers value agents who selectively help those who need it most. Presented with two agents who attempted two tasks, toddlers preferentially looked to and touched someone who helped the agent in greater need, both when one agent's task required more effort and when the tasks were the same but one agent was weaker. These results provide evidence that toddlers engage in need-based evaluations of helping, applying their understanding of action utilities to their social evaluations.

  View details for DOI 10.1162/opmi_a_00129

  View details for PubMedID 38665545

• Children seek help based on how others learn. Child development Bridgers, S., De Simone, C., Gweon, H., Ruggeri, A. 2023

  Abstract

  Do children consider how others learned when seeking help? Across three experiments, German children (N = 536 3-to-8 year olds, 49% female, majority White, tested 2017-2019) preferred to learn from successful active learners selectively by context: They sought help solving a problem from a learner who had independently discovered the solution to a previous problem over those who had learned through instruction or observation, but only when the current problem was novel, yet related, to the learners' problem (Experiment 1). Older, but not younger, children preferred the active learner even when she was offered help (Experiment 2), though only when her discovery was deliberate (Experiment 3). Although a preference to learn from successful active learners emerges early, a genuine appreciation for process beyond outcome increases across childhood.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.13926

  View details for PubMedID 37185813

• Children selectively demonstrate their competence to a puppet when others depict it as an agent COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Asaba, M., Li, X., Yow, W., Gweon, H. 2022; 62

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cogdev.2022.101186

  View details for Web of Science ID 000805238300004

• The effects of information utility and teachers' knowledge on evaluations of under-informative pedagogy across development. Cognition Bass, I., Bonawitz, E., Hawthorne-Madell, D., Vong, W. K., Goodman, N. D., Gweon, H. 2022; 222: 104999

  Abstract

  Teaching is a powerful way to transmit knowledge, but with this power comes a hazard: When teachers fail to select the best set of evidence for the learner, learners can be misled to draw inaccurate inferences. Evaluating others' failures as teachers, however, is a nontrivial problem; people may fail to be informative for different reasons, and not all failures are equally blameworthy. How do learners evaluate the quality of teachers, and what factors influence such evaluations? Here, we present a Bayesian model of teacher evaluation that considers the utility of a teacher's pedagogical sampling given their prior knowledge. In Experiment 1 (N=1168), we test the model predictions against adults' evaluations of a teacher who demonstrated all or a subset of the functions on a novel device. Consistent with the model predictions, participants' ratings integrated information about the number of functions taught, their values, as well as how much the teacher knew. Using a modified paradigm for children, Experiments 2 (N=48) and 3 (N=40) found that preschool-aged children (2a, 3) and adults (2b) make nuanced judgments of teacher quality that are well predicted by the model. However, after an unsuccessful attempt to replicate the results with preschoolers (Experiment 4, N=24), in Experiment 5 (N=24) we further investigate the development of teacher evaluation in a sample of seven- and eight-year-olds. These older children successfully distinguished teachers based on the amount and value of what was demonstrated, and their ability to evaluate omissions relative to the teacher's knowledge state was related to their tendency to spontaneously reference the teacher's knowledge when explaining their evaluations. In sum, our work illustrates how the human ability to learn from others supports not just learning about the world but also learning about the teachers themselves. By reasoning about others' informativeness, learners can evaluate others' teaching and make better learning decisions.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104999

  View details for PubMedID 35032868

• Beyond knowledge versus belief: The contents of mental-state representations and their underlying computations. The Behavioral and brain sciences Asaba, M., Chuey, A., Gweon, H. 2021; 44: e141

  Abstract

  Moving beyond distinguishing knowledge and beliefs, we propose two lines of inquiry for the next generation of theory of mind (ToM) research: (1) characterizing the contents of different mental-state representations and (2) formalizing the computations that generate such contents. Studying how children reason about what others think of the self provides an illuminating window into the richness and flexibility of human social cognition.

  View details for DOI 10.1017/S0140525X20001879

  View details for PubMedID 34796826

• Moderated Online Data-Collection for Developmental Research: Methods and Replications FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY Chuey, A., Asaba, M., Bridgers, S., Carrillo, B., Dietz, G., Garcia, T., Leonard, J. A., Liu, S., Merrick, M., Radwan, S., Stegall, J., Velez, N., Woo, B., Wu, Y., Zhou, X. J., Frank, M. C., Gweon, H. 2021; 12: 734398

  Abstract

  Online data collection methods are expanding the ease and access of developmental research for researchers and participants alike. While its popularity among developmental scientists has soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, its potential goes beyond just a means for safe, socially distanced data collection. In particular, advances in video conferencing software has enabled researchers to engage in face-to-face interactions with participants from nearly any location at any time. Due to the novelty of these methods, however, many researchers still remain uncertain about the differences in available approaches as well as the validity of online methods more broadly. In this article, we aim to address both issues with a focus on moderated (synchronous) data collected using video-conferencing software (e.g., Zoom). First, we review existing approaches for designing and executing moderated online studies with young children. We also present concrete examples of studies that implemented choice and verbal measures (Studies 1 and 2) and looking time (Studies 3 and 4) across both in-person and online moderated data collection methods. Direct comparison of the two methods within each study as well as a meta-analysis of all studies suggest that the results from the two methods are comparable, providing empirical support for the validity of moderated online data collection. Finally, we discuss current limitations of online data collection and possible solutions, as well as its potential to increase the accessibility, diversity, and replicability of developmental science.

  View details for DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734398

  View details for Web of Science ID 000720000200001

  View details for PubMedID 34803813

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC8595939

• Emotion as Information in Early Social Learning CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Wu, Y., Schulz, L. E., Frank, M. C., Gweon, H. 2021

  View details for DOI 10.1177/09637214211040779

  View details for Web of Science ID 000711431700001

• Preschool-Aged Children Jointly Consider Others' Emotional Expressions and Prior Knowledge to Decide When to Explore. Child development Wu, Y., Gweon, H. 2021

  Abstract

  Emotional expressions are abundant in children's lives. What role do they play in children's causal inference and exploration? This study investigates whether preschool-aged children use others' emotional expressions to infer the presence of unknown causal functions and guide their exploration accordingly. Children (age: 3.0-4.9; N=112, the United States) learned about one salient causal function of a novel toy and then saw an adult play with it. Children explored the toy more when the adult expressed surprise than when she expressed happiness (Experiment 1), but only when the adult already knew about the toy's salient function (Experiment 2). These results suggest that children consider others' knowledge and selectively interpret others' surprise as vicarious prediction error to guide their own exploration.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.13585

  View details for PubMedID 34033118

• Learning from other minds: an optimistic critique of reinforcement learning models of social learning CURRENT OPINION IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES Lez, N., Gweon, H. 2021; 38: 110-115

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.01.006

  View details for Web of Science ID 000642225400016

• Learning from other minds: An optimistic critique of reinforcement learning models of social learning. Current opinion in behavioral sciences Vélez, N., Gweon, H. 2021; 38: 110-115

  Abstract

  Reinforcement learning models have been productively applied to identify neural correlates of the value of social information. However, by operationalizing social information as a lean, reward-predictive cue, this literature underestimates the richness of human social learning: Humans readily go beyond action-outcome mappings and can draw flexible inferences from a single observation. We argue that computational models of social learning need minds, i.e, a generative model of how others' unobservable mental states cause their observable actions. Recent advances in inferential social learning suggest that even young children learn from others by using an intuitive, generative model of other minds. Bridging developmental, Bayesian, and reinforcement learning perspectives can enrich our understanding of the neural bases of distinctively human social learning.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.01.006

  View details for PubMedID 35321420

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC8936759

• The Division of Labor in Communication: Speakers Help Listeners Account for Asymmetries in Visual Perspective. Cognitive science Hawkins, R. D., Gweon, H., Goodman, N. D. 2021; 45 (3): e12926

  Abstract

  Recent debates over adults' theory of mind use have been fueled by surprising failures of perspective-taking in communication, suggesting that perspective-taking may be relatively effortful. Yet adults routinely engage in effortful processes when needed. How, then, should speakers and listeners allocate their resources to achieve successful communication? We begin with the observation that the shared goal of communication induces a natural division of labor: The resources one agent chooses to allocate toward perspective-taking should depend on their expectations about the other's allocation. We formalize this idea in a resource-rational model augmenting recent probabilistic weighting accounts with a mechanism for (costly) control over the degree of perspective-taking. In a series of simulations, we first derive an intermediate degree of perspective weighting as an optimal trade-off between expected costs and benefits of perspective-taking. We then present two behavioral experiments testing novel predictions of our model. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence or absence of occlusions in a director-matcher task. We found that speakers spontaneously modulated the informativeness of their descriptions to account for "known unknowns" in their partner's private view, reflecting a higher degree of speaker perspective-taking than previously acknowledged. In Experiment 2, we then compared the scripted utterances used by confederates in prior work with those produced in interactions with unscripted directors. We found that confederates were systematically less informative than listeners would initially expect given the presence of occlusions, but listeners used violations to adaptively make fewer errors over time. Taken together, our work suggests that people are not simply "mindblind"; they use contextually appropriate expectations to navigate the division of labor with their partner. We discuss how a resource-rational framework may provide a more deeply explanatory foundation for understanding flexible perspective-taking under processing constraints.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cogs.12926

  View details for PubMedID 33686646

• Leaving a Choice for Others: Children's Evaluations of Considerate, Socially-Mindful Actions. Child development Zhao, X., Zhao, X., Gweon, H., Kushnir, T. 2021

  Abstract

  People value those who act with others in mind even as they pursue their own goals. Across three studies (N=566; 4- to 6-year-olds), we investigated children's developing understanding of such considerate, socially-mindful actions. By age 6, both U.S. and Chinese children positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves a snack choice for others over a character who leaves no choice (Study 1), but only when the actors had alternative possible actions (Study 2) and when a clear beneficiary was present (Study 3). These results suggest an emerging ability to infer underlying social intentions from self-oriented actions, providing insights into the role of social-cognitive capacities versus culture-specific norms in children's moral evaluations.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.13480

  View details for PubMedID 33458830

• StoryCoder: Teaching Computational Thinking Concepts Through Storytelling in a Voice-Guided App for Children Dietz, G., Le, J. K., Tamer, N., Han, J., Gweon, H., Murnane, E. L., Landay, J. A., ASSOC COMP MACHINERY ASSOC COMPUTING MACHINERY. 2021

  View details for DOI 10.1145/3411764.3445039

  View details for Web of Science ID 000758168000002

• Online Developmental Science to Foster Innovation, Access, and Impact. Trends in cognitive sciences Sheskin, M., Scott, K., Mills, C. M., Bergelson, E., Bonawitz, E., Spelke, E. S., Fei-Fei, L., Keil, F. C., Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., Jara-Ettinger, J., Adolph, K. E., Rhodes, M., Frank, M. C., Mehr, S. A., Schulz, L. 2020

  Abstract

  We propose that developmental cognitive science should invest in an online CRADLE, a Collaboration for Reproducible and Distributed Large-Scale Experiments that crowdsources data from families participating on the internet. Here, we discuss how the field can work together to further expand and unify current prototypes for the benefit of researchers, science, and society.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.tics.2020.06.004

  View details for PubMedID 32624386

• The role of communication in acquisition, curation, and transmission of culture. The Behavioral and brain sciences Gweon, H. n. 2020; 43: e104

  Abstract

  Veissière et al.'s proposal aims to explain how cognition enables cultural learning, but fails to acknowledge a distinctively human behavior critical to this process: communication. Recent advances in developmental and computational cognitive science suggest that the social-cognitive capacities central to TTOM also support sophisticated yet remarkably early-emerging inferences and communicative behaviors that allow us to learn and share abstract knowledge.

  View details for DOI 10.1017/S0140525X19002863

  View details for PubMedID 32460922

• Integrating Expectations and Outcomes: Preschoolers' Developing Ability to Reason About Others' Emotions DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Asaba, M., Ong, D. C., Gweon, H. 2019; 55 (8): 1680–93

  Abstract

  People's emotional experiences depend not only on what actually happened, but also on what they thought would happen. However, these expectations about future outcomes are not always communicated explicitly. Thus, the ability to infer others' expectations in context and understand how these expectations influence others' emotions is an important aspect of our social intelligence. Prior work suggests that an abstract understanding of how expectations modulate emotional responses may not emerge until 7 to 8 years of age. Using a novel paradigm that capitalizes on intuitive physics to generate contextually plausible expectations, we present evidence for expectation-based emotion inference in preschool-aged children. Given two bowlers who experienced identical final outcomes (hitting 3 of 6 pins), we varied the trajectory of their balls such that one would initially expect to hit all pins (high-expectation), while the other would expect to hit none (low-expectation). In Experiment 1, both 4- and 5-year-olds appropriately adjusted characters' happiness ratings upward (low-expectation) or downward (high-expectation) relative to their initial emotions; however, only 5-year-olds made adjustments robust enough to manifest as higher final ratings for the low-expectation than the high-expectation character. In Experiments 2-3, we replicate these results and show that 5-year-olds reliably differentiate the characters' emotions even when their expectations must be inferred from context. An internal meta-analysis revealed a robust and consistent effect across the three experiments. Together, these findings provide the earliest evidence for expectation-based emotion reasoning and suggest that the ability to spontaneously generate and consider others' expectations continues to develop during preschool years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/dev0000749

  View details for Web of Science ID 000476498000010

  View details for PubMedID 31094560

• Integrating Incomplete Information With Imperfect Advice TOPICS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE Velez, N., Gweon, H. 2019; 11 (2): 299–315

  View details for DOI 10.1111/tops.12388

  View details for Web of Science ID 000467986500003

• Response patterns in the developing social brain are organized by social and emotion features and disrupted in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior Richardson, H. n., Gweon, H. n., Dodell-Feder, D. n., Malloy, C. n., Pelton, H. n., Keil, B. n., Kanwisher, N. n., Saxe, R. n. 2019; 125: 12–29

  Abstract

  Adults and children recruit a specific network of brain regions when engaged in "Theory of Mind" (ToM) reasoning. Recently, fMRI studies of adults have used multivariate analyses to provide a deeper characterization of responses in these regions. These analyses characterize representational distinctions within the social domain, rather than comparing responses across preferred (social) and non-preferred stimuli. Here, we conducted opportunistic multivariate analyses in two previously collected datasets (Experiment 1: n = 20 5-11 year old children and n = 37 adults; Experiment 2: n = 76 neurotypical and n = 29 5-12 year old children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)) in order to characterize the structure of representations in the developing social brain, and in order to discover if this structure is disrupted in ASD. Children listened to stories that described characters' mental states (Mental), non-mentalistic social information (Social), and causal events in the environment (Physical), while undergoing fMRI. We measured the extent to which neural responses in ToM brain regions were organized according to two ToM-relevant models: 1) a condition model, which reflected the experimenter-generated condition labels, and 2) a data-driven emotion model, which organized stimuli according to their emotion content. We additionally constructed two control models based on linguistic and narrative features of the stories. In both experiments, the two ToM-relevant models outperformed the control models. The fit of the condition model increased with age in neurotypical children. Moreover, the fit of the condition model to neural response patterns was reduced in the RTPJ in children diagnosed with ASD. These results provide a first glimpse into the conceptual structure of information in ToM brain regions in childhood, and suggest that there are real, stable features that predict responses in these regions in children. Multivariate analyses are a promising approach for sensitively measuring conceptual and neural developmental change and individual differences in ToM.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.11.021

  View details for PubMedID 31958654

• Integrating Incomplete Information With Imperfect Advice. Topics in cognitive science Velez, N., Gweon, H. 2018

  Abstract

  When our own knowledge is limited, we often turn to others for information. However, social learning does not guarantee accurate learning or better decisions: Other people's knowledge can be as limited as our own, and their advice is not always helpful. This study examines how human learners put two "imperfect" heads together to make utility-maximizing decisions. Participants played a card game where they chose to "stay" with a card of known value or "switch" to an unknown card, given an advisor's advice to stay or switch. Participants used advice strategically based on which cards the advisor could see (Experiment 1), how helpful the advisor was (Experiment 2), and what strategy the advisor used to select advice (Experiment 3). Overall, participants benefited even from imperfect advice based on incomplete information. Participants' responses were consistent with a Bayesian model that jointly infers how the advisor selects advice and the value of the advisor's card, compared to an alternative model that weights advice based on the advisor's accuracy. By reasoning about others' minds, human learners can make the best of even noisy, impoverished social information.

  View details for PubMedID 30414253

• Development of Children's Sensitivity to Overinformativeness in Learning and Teaching DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Gweon, H., Shafto, P., Schulz, L. 2018; 54 (11): 2113–25

  Abstract

  Effective communication requires knowing the "right" amount of information to provide; what is necessary for a naïve learner to arrive at a target hypothesis may be superfluous and inefficient for a knowledgeable learner. The current study examines 4- to 7-year-olds' developing sensitivity to overinformative communication and their ability to decide how much information is appropriate depending on the learner's prior knowledge. In Experiment 1 (N = 184, age = 4.09-7.98 years), 5- to 7-year-old children preferred teachers who gave costly, exhaustive demonstrations when learners were naïve, but preferred teachers who gave efficient, selective demonstrations when learners were already knowledgeable given their prior experience (i.e., common ground). However, 4-year-olds did not show a clear preference. In Experiment 2 (N = 80, age = 4.05-6.99 years), we asked whether children flexibly modulated their own teaching based on learners' knowledge. Five and 6-year-olds, but not 4-year-olds, were more likely to provide exhaustive demonstrations to naïve learners than to knowledgeable learners. These results suggest that by 5 years of age, children are sensitive to overinformativeness and understand the trade-off between informativeness and efficiency; they reason about what others know based on the presence or absence of common ground and flexibly decide how much information is appropriate both as learners and as teachers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

  View details for DOI 10.1037/dev0000580

  View details for Web of Science ID 000448187100010

  View details for PubMedID 30265027

• Means-Inference as a Source of Variability in Early Helping. Frontiers in psychology Bridgers, S., Gweon, H. 2018; 9: 1735

  Abstract

  Humans, as compared to their primate relatives, readily act on behalf of others: we help, inform, share resources with, and provide emotional comfort for others. Although these prosocial behaviors emerge early in life, some types of prosocial behaviors seem to emerge earlier than others, and some tasks elicit more reliable helping than others. Here we discuss existing perspectives on the sources of variability in early prosocial behaviors with a particular focus on the variability within the domain of instrumental helping. We suggest that successful helping behavior not only requires an understanding of others' goals (goal-inference), but also the ability to figure out how to help (means-inference). We review recent work that highlights two key factors that support means-inference: causal reasoning and sensitivity to the expected costs and rewards of actions. Once we begin to look closely at the process of deciding how to help someone, even a seemingly simple helping behavior is, in fact, a consequence of a sophisticated decision-making process; it involves reasoning about others (e.g., goals, actions, and beliefs), about the causal structure of the physical world, and about one's own ability to provide effective help. A finer-grained understanding of the role of these inferences may help explain the developmental trajectory of prosocial behaviors in early childhood. We discuss the promise of computational models that formalize this decision process and how this approach can provide additional insights into why humans show unparalleled propensity and flexibility in their ability to help others.

  View details for DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01735

  View details for PubMedID 30319483

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC6168682

• Means-Inference as a Source of Variability in Early Helping FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY Bridgers, S., Gweon, H. 2018; 9

  View details for DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01735

  View details for Web of Science ID 000445684000001

• From Exploration to Instruction: Children Learn From Exploration and Tailor Their Demonstrations to Observers' Goals and Competence. Child development Gweon, H., Schulz, L. 2018

  Abstract

  This study investigated whether children learn from exploration and act as effective informants by providing informative demonstrations tailored to observers' goals and competence. Children (4.0-6.9years, N=98) explored a causally ambiguous toy to discover its causal structure and then demonstrated the toy to a naive observer. Children provided more costly and informative evidence when the observer wanted to learn about the toy than observe its effects (Experiment 1) and when the observer was ordinary than exceptionally intelligent (Experiment 2). Relative to the evidence they generated during exploration, children produced fewer, less costly actions when the observer wanted or needed less evidence. Children understand the difference between acting-to-learn and acting-to-inform; after learning from exploration, they consider others' goals and competence to provide "uninstructed instruction".

  View details for PubMedID 29635785

• 'To the victor go the spoils': Infants expect resources to align with dominance structures. Cognition Enright, E. A., Gweon, H., Sommerville, J. A. 2017; 164: 8-21

  Abstract

  Previous research has found that within the first year of life infants possess rich knowledge about social structures (i.e., that some individuals are dominant over other individuals) as well as expectations about resource distributions (i.e., that resources are typically distributed equally to recipients). We investigated whether infants' expectations about resource distribution can be modulated by information about the dominance structure between the recipients. We first replicated the finding that infants attribute a stable dominance hierarchy to a pair of individuals when their goals conflicted and one individual yielded to the other (Expt. 1), and that this sensitivity is not driven by lower-level perceptual factors (Expt. 2). In Experiments 3-5, we tested our main hypothesis that infants' attention to equal and unequal distributions varies as a function of prior social dominance information. We first replicated and extended prior work by establishing that infants looked significantly longer to unequal than equal resource distributions when no prior information about dominance was provided about recipients (Expt. 3). Critically, following social dominance information, infants looked significantly longer to an equal distribution of resources than a distribution that favored the dominant individual (Expt. 4), and looked significantly longer when the submissive individual received more resources compared to when the dominant individual received more resources (Expts. 4 and 5). Together, these findings suggest that infants expect resources to align with social dominance structures.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.03.008

  View details for PubMedID 28346870

• Order Matters: Children's Evaluation of Underinformative Teachers Depends on Context. Child development Gweon, H., Asaba, M. 2017

  Abstract

  The ability to evaluate "sins of omission"-true but pragmatically misleading, underinformative pedagogy-is critical for learning. This study reveals a developmental change in children's evaluation of underinformative teachers and investigates the nature of their limitations. Participants rated a fully informative teacher and an underinformative teacher in two different orders. Six- and 7-year-olds (N = 28) successfully distinguished the teachers regardless of the order (Experiment 1), whereas 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 82) succeeded only when the fully informative teacher came first (Experiments 2 and 3). After seeing both teachers, 4-year-olds (N = 32) successfully preferred the fully informative teacher (Experiment 4). These results are discussed in light of developmental work in pragmatic implicature, suggesting that young children might struggle with spontaneously generating relevant alternatives for evaluating underinformative pedagogy.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.12825

  View details for PubMedID 28542838

• Learning the Structure of Social Influence COGNITIVE SCIENCE Gershman, S. J., Pouncy, H. T., Gweon, H. 2017; 41: 545-575

  Abstract

  We routinely observe others' choices and use them to guide our own. Whose choices influence us more, and why? Prior work has focused on the effect of perceived similarity between two individuals (self and others), such as the degree of overlap in past choices or explicitly recognizable group affiliations. In the real world, however, any dyadic relationship is part of a more complex social structure involving multiple social groups that are not directly observable. Here we suggest that human learners go beyond dyadic similarities in choice behaviors or explicit group memberships; they infer the structure of social influence by grouping individuals (including themselves) based on choices, and they use these groups to decide whose choices to follow. We propose a computational model that formalizes this idea, and we test the model predictions in a series of behavioral experiments. In Experiment 1, we reproduce a well-established finding that people's choices are more likely to be influenced by someone whose past choices are more similar to their own past choices, as predicted by our model as well as dyadic similarity models. In Experiments 2-5, we test a set of unique predictions of our model by looking at cases where the degree of choice overlap between individuals is equated, but their choices indicate a latent group structure. We then apply our model to prior empirical results on infants' understanding of others' preferences, presenting an alternative account of developmental changes. Finally, we discuss how our model relates to classical findings in the social influence literature and the theoretical implications of our model. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that structure learning is a powerful framework for explaining the influence of social information on decision making in a variety of contexts.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cogs.12480

  View details for Web of Science ID 000399736400008

  View details for PubMedID 28294384

• The Naïve Utility Calculus: Computational Principles Underlying Commonsense Psychology. Trends in cognitive sciences Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E., Tenenbaum, J. B. 2016; 20 (8): 589-604

  Abstract

  We propose that human social cognition is structured around a basic understanding of ourselves and others as intuitive utility maximizers: from a young age, humans implicitly assume that agents choose goals and actions to maximize the rewards they expect to obtain relative to the costs they expect to incur. This 'naïve utility calculus' allows both children and adults observe the behavior of others and infer their beliefs and desires, their longer-term knowledge and preferences, and even their character: who is knowledgeable or competent, who is praiseworthy or blameworthy, who is friendly, indifferent, or an enemy. We review studies providing support for the naïve utility calculus, and we show how it captures much of the rich social reasoning humans engage in from infancy.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.tics.2016.05.011

  View details for PubMedID 27388875

• Learning From Others and Spontaneous Exploration: A Cross-Cultural Investigation CHILD DEVELOPMENT Shneidman, L., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E., Woodward, A. L. 2016; 87 (3): 723-735

  Abstract

  How does early social experience affect children's inferences and exploration? Following prior work on children's reasoning in pedagogical contexts, this study examined U.S. children with less experience in formal schooling and Yucatec Mayan children whose early social input is predominantly observational. In Experiment 1, U.S. 2-year-olds (n = 77) showed more restricted exploration of a toy following a pedagogical demonstration than an interrupted, accidental, or no demonstration (baseline). In Experiment 2, Yucatec Mayan and U.S. 2-year-olds (n = 66) showed more restricted exploration following a pedagogical than an observational demonstration, while only Mayan children showed more restriction with age. These results suggest that although schooling is not a necessary precursor for sensitivity to pedagogy, early social experience may influence children's inferences and exploration in pedagogical contexts.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/cdev.12502

  View details for Web of Science ID 000379913500009

  View details for PubMedID 27189400

• Children's understanding of the costs and rewards underlying rational action COGNITION Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., Schulz, L. E. 2015; 140: 14-23

  Abstract

  Humans explain and predict other agents' behavior using mental state concepts, such as beliefs and desires. Computational and developmental evidence suggest that such inferences are enabled by a principle of rational action: the expectation that agents act efficiently, within situational constraints, to achieve their goals. Here we propose that the expectation of rational action is instantiated by a naïve utility calculus sensitive to both agent-constant and agent-specific aspects of costs and rewards associated with actions. In four experiments, we show that, given an agent's choices, children (range: 5-6 year olds; N=96) can infer unobservable aspects of costs (differences in agents' competence) from information about subjective differences in rewards (differences in agents' preferences) and vice versa. Moreover, children can design informative experiments on both objects and agents to infer unobservable constraints on agents' actions.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.03.006

  View details for Web of Science ID 000355042100002

  View details for PubMedID 25867996

• Sins of omission: Children selectively explore when teachers are under-informative COGNITION Gweon, H., Pelton, H., Konopka, J. A., Schulz, L. E. 2014; 132 (3): 335-341

  Abstract

  Do children know when people tell the truth but not the whole truth? Here we show that children accurately evaluate informants who omit information and adjust their exploratory behavior to compensate for under-informative pedagogy. Experiment 1 shows that given identical demonstrations of a toy, children (6- and 7-year-olds) rate an informant lower if the toy also had non-demonstrated functions. Experiment 2 shows that given identical demonstrations, six-year-olds explore a toy more broadly if the informant previously committed a sin of omission. These results suggest that children consider both accuracy and informativeness in evaluating others' credibility and adjust their exploratory behavior to compensate for under-informative testimony when an informant's credibility is in doubt.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.04.013

  View details for Web of Science ID 000340013900009

  View details for PubMedID 24873737

• Differences in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus but no general disruption of white matter tracts in children with autism spectrum disorder PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Koldewyn, K., Yendiki, A., Weigelt, S., Gweon, H., Julian, J., Richardson, H., Malloy, C., Saxe, R., Fischl, B., Kanwisher, N. 2014; 111 (5): 1981-1986

  Abstract

  One of the most widely cited features of the neural phenotype of autism is reduced "integrity" of long-range white matter tracts, a claim based primarily on diffusion imaging studies. However, many prior studies have small sample sizes and/or fail to address differences in data quality between those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typical participants, and there is little consensus on which tracts are affected. To overcome these problems, we scanned a large sample of children with autism (n = 52) and typically developing children (n = 73). Data quality was variable, and worse in the ASD group, with some scans unusable because of head motion artifacts. When we follow standard data analysis practices (i.e., without matching head motion between groups), we replicate the finding of lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in multiple white matter tracts. However, when we carefully match data quality between groups, all these effects disappear except in one tract, the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF). Additional analyses showed the expected developmental increases in the FA of fiber tracts within ASD and typical groups individually, demonstrating that we had sufficient statistical power to detect known group differences. Our data challenge the widely claimed general disruption of white matter tracts in autism, instead implicating only one tract, the right ILF, in the ASD phenotype.

  View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1324037111

  View details for Web of Science ID 000330587600075

  View details for PubMedID 24449864

  View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3918797

• Theory of Mind Performance in Children Correlates With Functional Specialization of a Brain Region for Thinking About Thoughts CHILD DEVELOPMENT Gweon, H., Dodell-Feder, D., Bedny, M., Saxe, R. 2012; 83 (6): 1853-1868

  Abstract

  Thinking about other people's thoughts recruits a specific group of brain regions, including the temporo-parietal junctions (TPJ), precuneus (PC), and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). The same brain regions were recruited when children (N=20, 5-11 years) and adults (N=8) listened to descriptions of characters' mental states, compared to descriptions of physical events. Between ages 5 and 11 years, responses in the bilateral TPJ became increasingly specific to stories describing mental states as opposed to people's appearance and social relationships. Functional activity in the right TPJ was related to children's performance on a high level theory of mind task. These findings provide insights into the origin of neural mechanisms of theory of mind, and how behavioral and neural changes can be related in development.

  View details for DOI 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01829.x

  View details for Web of Science ID 000314111900002

  View details for PubMedID 22849953

• The double-edged sword of pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery COGNITION Bonawitz, E., Shafto, P., Gweon, H., Goodman, N. D., Spelke, E., Schulz, L. 2011; 120 (3): 322-330

  Abstract

  Motivated by computational analyses, we look at how teaching affects exploration and discovery. In Experiment 1, we investigated children's exploratory play after an adult pedagogically demonstrated a function of a toy, after an interrupted pedagogical demonstration, after a naïve adult demonstrated the function, and at baseline. Preschoolers in the pedagogical condition focused almost exclusively on the target function; by contrast, children in the other conditions explored broadly. In Experiment 2, we show that children restrict their exploration both after direct instruction to themselves and after overhearing direct instruction given to another child; they do not show this constraint after observing direct instruction given to an adult or after observing a non-pedagogical intentional action. We discuss these findings as the result of rational inductive biases. In pedagogical contexts, a teacher's failure to provide evidence for additional functions provides evidence for their absence; such contexts generalize from child to child (because children are likely to have comparable states of knowledge) but not from adult to child. Thus, pedagogy promotes efficient learning but at a cost: children are less likely to perform potentially irrelevant actions but also less likely to discover novel information.

  View details for DOI 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.10.001

  View details for Web of Science ID 000293312400003

  View details for PubMedID 21216395