Abstract
Rituals are a ubiquitous feature of human behavior, yet we know little about the cognitive
mechanisms that enable children to recognize them and respond accordingly. In this study, 3
to 6 year old children living in Bushman communities in South Africa were shown a sequence
of causally irrelevant actions that differed in the extent to which goal demotion was a feature.
The children consistently replicated the causally irrelevant actions but when such actions were
also fully goal demoted they were reproduced at significantly higher rates. These findings
highlight how causal opacity and goal demotion work in tandem to demarcate actions as
being ritualistic, and specifically, how goal demotion uniquely influences the reproduction of
ritualistic actions.