Cultural evolutionary theory posits that human cultural complexity rests on a set of adaptive learning biases that help to guide functionality and optimality in social learning, but this sits in contrast with the commonly held view that children are unselective “over-imitators.” Here, we tested whether 4- and 6-year-old children use social learning biases flexibly to fine-tune their copying of irrelevant actions. Children watched a video of a majority demonstrating causally irrelevant actions and a minority demonstrating only causally relevant actions. In one condition observers approved of the majority and disapproved of the minority, and in the other condition observers watched the majority and minority neutrally. Results showed that both 4- and 6-year-olds copied the inefficient majority more often than the efficient minority when the observers had approved of the majority’s actions, but they copied the efficient minority significantly more when the observers had watched neutrally. We discuss the implications of children’s optimal selectivity in copying and the importance of integrating social approval into majority-biased learning when acquiring norms and conventions and in broader processes of cultural evolution.

文化进化理论认为，人类文化的复杂性取决于一组适应性学习偏见，这些偏见有助于指导社会学习的功能性和最优性，但这与普遍认为的儿童是无选择性的“过度模仿者”的观点形成鲜明对比。在这里，我们测试了 4 岁和 6 岁的孩子是否灵活地使用社会学习偏见来微调他们对无关动作的复制。孩子们观看了一段视频，其中大多数人展示了与因果关系无关的行为，而少数人只展示了与因果关系相关的行为。在一种情况下，观察者赞成多数人反对少数人，而在另一种情况下，观察者中立地观察多数人和少数人。结果表明，当观察者认可多数人的行为时，4 岁和 6 岁儿童模仿效率低下的多数人的次数要多于有效的少数人，但当观察者中立地观察时，他们抄袭效率高的少数人的次数要多得多。我们讨论了儿童在复制中最佳选择性的影响，以及在获得规范和惯例以及更广泛的文化进化过程中将社会认可融入多数偏见学习的重要性。