Children selectively demonstrate their competence to a puppet when others depict it as an agent

Young children care what others think of them, but are these concerns specific to interactions with humans? Here we ask whether 4-year-old children engage in self-presentational behaviors even with a puppet. After failing to activate a toy in the presence of a puppet, children selectively demonstrated their success on the toy when the puppet was absent during their final success. This pattern was found when the puppet was treated as an agent capable of holding mental states (Exp.1), but not when it was treated as an object (Exp.2); we further explore the role of indirect, linguistic cues to the puppet's agency (Exp.3). These results highlight the importance of social contexts, particularly how an entity is depicted by others, in eliciting self-presentational behaviors. We discuss how depiction of puppets may influence their effectiveness in developmental research, and the possibility of self-presentational concerns in children's interactions with social robots and AI agents.

Automated summary

The study found that even when interacting with puppets, 4-year-old children exhibit self-presentational behaviors, especially when the puppet is treated as an entity capable of having mental states. These results highlight the importance of social contexts in eliciting self-presentational behaviors.