The native language of social cognition

TLDR

Humans tend to group socially, favoring in‑group members, and early predispositions—partly driven by natural language—underlie this tendency and may set the stage for later group preferences and conflicts. Infants and preschoolers show a strong preference for native‑language speakers, looking at, accepting toys from, and selecting them as friends, with even accent differences triggering these social biases before speech comprehension develops.

Abstract

What leads humans to divide the social world into groups, preferring their own group and disfavoring others? Experiments with infants and young children suggest these tendencies are based on predispositions that emerge early in life and depend, in part, on natural language. Young infants prefer to look at a person who previously spoke their native language. Older infants preferentially accept toys from native-language speakers, and preschool children preferentially select native-language speakers as friends. Variations in accent are sufficient to evoke these social preferences, which are observed in infants before they produce or comprehend speech and are exhibited by children even when they comprehend the foreign-accented speech. Early-developing preferences for native-language speakers may serve as a foundation for later-developing preferences and conflicts among social groups.