Costly rituals are ubiquitous and adaptive. Yet, little is known about how children develop to acquire them. The current study examined children's imitation of costly rituals. Ninety-three 4–6 year olds (47 girls, 45% Oceanians, tested in 2022) were shown how to place tokens into a tube to earn stickers, using either a ritualistic or non-ritualistic costly action sequence. Children shown the ritualistic actions imitated faithfully at the expense of gaining stickers; conversely, those shown the non-ritualistic actions ignored them and obtained maximum reward. This highlights how preschool children are adept at and motivated to learn rituals, despite significant material cost. This study provides insights into the early development of cultural learning and the adaptive value of rituals in group cognition.

中文翻译：

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儿童对重复昂贵仪式的独特驱动力

昂贵的仪式无处不在且具有适应性。然而，人们对儿童如何发展获得这些能力知之甚少。目前的研究调查了儿童对昂贵仪式的模仿。 93 名 4-6 岁的孩子（47 名女孩，45% 是大洋洲人，2022 年进行的测试）被展示如何使用仪式性或非仪式性的昂贵动作序列将代币放入管子中以获得贴纸。孩子们以牺牲获得贴纸为代价，忠实地模仿仪式行为；相反，那些表现出非仪式行为的人忽视了它们并获得了最大的奖励。这突显了学龄前儿童如何擅长并积极地学习仪式，尽管物质成本很高。这项研究为文化学习的早期发展和仪式在群体认知中的适应性价值提供了见解。