Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

As adults, we mentally represent the social connections around us as a network. While imperfect, such representations help us navigate the complexity of our social environments. Yet, it remains unclear how such representations emerge in development. The current work examines the extent to which young children can accurately represent their social networks. We asked 3- to 5-year-old children to report their good friends in their preschool classroom (first-person networks) and with whom they think their classmates are good friends (third-party networks). Teachers also reported children's friendships within these classrooms. Social networks derived from children's third-party reports were significantly more aligned with their first-person and teacher- derived networks than simulated networks of a similar size, even after removing children's own friendships. Using an ecologically valid method, the current work provides evidence that humans, starting early in life, can systematically encode and represent their social networks.