Large language models (LLMs) challenge Chomsky’s long-standing mysterian view of the creative aspect of language use (CALU). By exhibiting fluent, situation-appropriate linguistic behavior and offering concrete mechanistic hypotheses, they provide the first viable scientific models of CALU. We endorse Futrell and Mahowald’s call to integrate LLMs into linguistic inquiry and suggest a bolder aim: elucidating the mechanisms underlying linguistic creativity.

Regarding the utility of language models for linguistic research, Futrell and Mahowald advance a crackpot realism, wherein the concerns of a powerful elite are portrayed as “realistic” in a sense which is technocratic and detached from broader human consequences.

Large Language Models (LLMs) can serve as tools for understanding how probabilistic constraints interact during language acquisition. To motivate such use cases of LLMs, we discuss several examples from allied fields, including neurobiology and animal behavior, of how soft constraints shape learning and development in cognitive systems. We end by outlining four challenges that LLM cognitive modeling should address in the coming decade.

Norm, the formal theoretical linguist, and Claudette, the computational language scientist, have a lovely time discussing whether modern language models can inform important questions in the language sciences. Just as they are about to part ways until they meet again, 25 of their closest friends show up – from linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, and computer science. We use this discussion to highlight what we see as some common underlying issues: the String Statistics Strawman (the mistaken idea that LMs can’t be linguistically competent or interesting because they, like their Markov model predecessors, are statistical models that learn from strings) and the As Good As It Gets Assumption (the idea that LM research as it stands in 2026 is the limit of what it can tell us about linguistics). We clarify the role of LM-based work for scientific insights into human language and advocate for a more expansive research program for the language sciences in the AI age, one that takes on the commentators’ concerns in order to produce a better and more robust science of both human language and of LMs.

The human capacity for culture is a key determinant of our success as a species. While much work has examined adults’ abilities to create and transmit cultural knowledge, relatively less work has focused on the role of children (approximately 3–17 years) in this important process. In the cases where children are acknowledged, they are largely portrayed as acquirers of cultural knowledge from adults, rather than cultural producers in their own right. In this paper, we bring attention to the important role that children play in cultural adaptation by highlighting the structure, function, and ubiquity of the large body of knowledge produced and transmitted by children, known as peer cultures. Supported by evidence from diverse disciplines, we argue that children are independent producers and maintainers of these autonomous cultures, which exist with regularity across diverse societies, and persist despite compounding threats. Critically, we argue that peer cultures are a source of community knowledge diversity, encompassing both material and immaterial knowledge related to geography, ecology, subsistence, norms, and language. Through a number of case studies, we further argue that peer culture products and associated practices – including exploration, learning, and the retention of abandoned adult cultural traits – may help populations adapt to changing ecological and social conditions, contribute to community resilience, and even produce new cultural communities. We end by highlighting the pressing need for research which more carefully investigate s children’s roles as active agents in cultural adaptation.

Lew-Levy and Amir (L&A)’s hypothesis that peer cultures contribute to cultural adaptation pulls from findings in children’s folklore studies. We consider the implications of two central theoretical concerns in children’s folklore scholarship, the triviality barrier and Newell’s paradox, and argue that the playful, parodical, and taboo-breaking nature of children’s folklore will be important for L&A’s hypothesis. Additionally, we suggest that adults’ tendencies to trivialize children’s folklore support the resilience of peer cultures in an adult-dominated world.

By failing to recognize that adulthood and childhood are just examples – the former of an unmarked social category inappropriately used to generalize about people – the latter of a marked social category commonly overlooked in theories about our species, Lew-Levy and Amir miss an opportunity to make an important observation about social-cultural diversity and what it means to be human.

Our commentary expands upon Lew-Levy and Amir’s insights into the role of peer culture in cultural evolution. Drawing on field data from the Koygu, Nyangatom, and Aka communities, we identify two modes of group transmission (concerted and cumulative) that contribute to the stability of peer cultures over time. We describe how culturally constructed niches shape peer learning, helping explain the intercultural diversity of peer cultures.

Greater emphasis on the bidirectionality of peer interaction and cognitive development would complement the suggested framework of children’s contribution to cultural evolution. We outline different aspects/forms of socio-cognitive development to illustrate their roles in cultural processes: social learning, theory of mind, and pretend play. We encourage the consideration of peer cultures in urban settings and the role siblings play.

Lew-Levy and Amir note that by adolescence, children shift from speaking like their parents to using the vernacular of their peers, suggesting that children attend closely to linguistic input from other children. But unlike adult input, peer input has been neglected in research. We believe this is due to methodological limitations that long-form audio recordings are uniquely equipped to overcome.

Children’s peer cultures hold the potential to drive cultural evolution, depending on demography and social transmission pathways. Understanding their interactions can inform cultural-evolutionary theory and promote adaptable cultural institutions. Here, we outline the next steps for theoretical models, clarifying the importance of peer cultures, and introduce sustainable behavior as a compelling test case for children- and youth-driven cultural change.

In this commentary I critique individualist biases in developmental and cultural evolutionary science, highlighting the need to study children’s peer cultures as relational and culturally situated. Emphasizing perspectives from the Global South, I call for a genuinely inclusive framework that integrates non-Western developmental theories into the core of cultural evolutionary research.

The target paper brings a new dimension to cultural evolution research. The findings it reports are consistent with the hypothesis that it is integrated cognitive networks – i.e., ways of structuring knowledge – that evolve through culture, as opposed to discrete units of cultural knowledge. The impact of child peer groups on cultural evolution could be modeled using methods from network science.

Children’s natural curiosity, playfulness, sociability, and future orientation predispose them for cultural adaptation. I exemplify this with Sugata Mitra’s “hole in the wall experiment,” adolescents’ role in the computer revolution, and the likely role of play in children’s development of Nicaraguan Sign Language; and I give an example of juvenile play resulting in cultural innovation in Macaques.

Innovation does not occur in all environments. Rather, it is a cultural product of particular socioecological conditions, for example, schooling and commercial activity. Tool innovation is a product of cognitive development. It requires a developmental process that enables concrete cognition around age eight and abstract cognition in the teenage years. These conclusions arise from long-term study of textile production in a Maya community.

Language differs from other cultural domains in its high degree of normativity and conventionality; hence, many linguistic innovations by young children are considered acquisition errors that do not diffuse into language communities. Moreover, young children’s cognitive-pragmatic limitations hinder their ability to introduce structure into novel communication systems. Consequently, children are unlikely agents of language change or drivers of language emergence.

Lew-Levy and Amir highlight children as agents of cultural adaptation and widespread presence of peer cultures across populations, but their account underestimates peer culture in East Asian societies. Drawing on East Asian contexts, we show how strict family, school, and social structures lead peer culture to take on more covert forms, underscoring the need for broader cross-cultural perspectives.

This brief commentary offers another source of evidence for the arguments made in the target article. The lives of street kids are usually seen as deplorable, as a social blight that must be eradicated. But ethnographic literature can turn this shibboleth on its head. Scholars like the authors have forced us to see the enormous capacity that autonomous children have for acquiring, transmitting, and creating culture. Street kids provide an excellent illustration of this argument.

Lew-Levy and Amir begin to identify mechanisms through which peer interactions can drive cultural change. We highlight an additional important mechanism: peer disagreement. We propose that the egalitarian and learning-oriented nature of peer disagreements prompts children to reflect on the limitations of their knowledge, and to evaluate and integrate competing perspectives, thereby providing fertile ground for the co-creation of new insights.

Lew-Levy and Amir argue that the cultural role of human children has been overlooked. Juveniles have been similarly overlooked in research on animal culture. Youngsters are often innovative, and ample opportunities exist for cultural transmission to peers and adults. We review the evidence and argue that the young may be a powerful cultural force in human and nonhuman societies alike.