Abstract Plants have been a fundamental component of human diets over evolutionary time. However, plants pose dangers to humans due to the variety of toxic chemical and mechanical defenses they manufacture. Accordingly, recent developmental work has shown that infants exhibit a reluctance to touch plants—a behavioral strategy that is an effective way of mitigating plant dangers. A similar protective avoidance strategy occurs in the food domain, food neophobia, which can be reduced by social facilitation. In the current study we investigated whether infants modify their behavior toward plants when social information is present. We presented 8- to 18-month-olds with plants and control objects after an adult conveyed information about each object and measured infants’ touch behavior. The results provide the first evidence that social information reduces infants’ reluctance to touch plants and converge with previous findings that social facilitation reduces food neophobia. This provides a broader evolutionary framework for understanding food learning and food rejection early in life.

中文翻译：

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社会信息减少了婴儿对植物的回避

摘要 在进化过程中，植物一直是人类饮食的基本组成部分。然而，由于植物制造的各种有毒化学和机械防御措施，植物对人类构成了危险。因此，最近的发展工作表明，婴儿表现出不愿接触植物的行为——这是一种减轻植物危险的有效方法。类似的保护性回避策略发生在食物领域，食物新恐惧症，可以通过社会促进来减少。在当前的研究中，我们调查了当存在社会信息时婴儿是否会改变他们对植物的行为。在成人传达有关每个对象的信息并测量婴儿的触摸行为后，我们向 8 至 18 个月大的婴儿展示了植物和对照对象。结果提供了第一个证据，证明社会信息减少了婴儿不愿接触植物的意愿，并与之前的研究结果一致，即社会促进减少了食物新恐惧症。这为理解生命早期的食物学习和食物拒绝提供了更广泛的进化框架。