Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Caregiving relationships are central to survival, yet little is known about how humans represent them. We investigate whether 3- to 7-year-old children (N=426) and adults (N=134) attend to intimacy (who is family) and asymmetry (who is an adult) to predict who provides care. We predicted that when the potential caregivers were both adults (mom, teacher) or both children (sister, friend), participants would expect the family member to respond, and when they were both family (mom, sister), participants would expect the adult to respond. Our hypothesis was partially supported. Adults and children expected a mom to comfort and provide food when the alternative was a teacher. However, unlike adults, children did not have strong expectations that a mom would provide care when the alternative was a child's same-aged sister. Ultimately, understanding caregiving relationships as both intimate and asymmetric may develop relatively slowly.