AUTHOR=Esseily Rana , Somogyi Eszter , Guellai Bahia 

TITLE=The Relative Importance of Language in Guiding Social Preferences Through Development

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 7 - 2016

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01645

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01645

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=In this paper, we review evidence from infants, toddlers and preschoolers to tackle the ques-tion of how individuals orient preferences and actions towards social partners and how these preferences change over development. We aim at emphasizing the importance of language in guiding categorization relatively to other cues such as age, race and gender. We discuss the importance of language as part of a communication system that orients infants and older chil-dren’s attention towards relevant information in their environment and towards affiliated so-cial partners who are potential sources of knowledge. We argue that other cues (visually per-ceptible features) are less reliable in informing individuals whether others share a common knowledge and whether they can be source of information.