Social referencing as a function of information source: Mothers versus strangers (original) (raw)
Related papers
Social referencing: The infant's use of emotional signals from a friendly adult with mother present
Developmental Psychology, 1986
Previous studies have demonstrated that 1 -year-old infants look toward their mothers' facial expressions and use the emotional information conveyed. In this study, 46 1-year-olds were confronted with an unusual toy in a context where an experimenter familiar to the infants posed either happy or fearful expressions and where their mothers were present but did not provide facial signals. Most of the infants (83%) referenced the familiarized stranger. Once the adult's facial signals were noted, the infant's instrumental behaviors and expressive responses to the toy were influenced in the direction of the affective valence of the adult's expression. The results indicate that infants may be influenced by the emotional expressions of a much broader group of adults than has previously been recognized.
Infants' Responses to Facial and Vocal Emotional Signals in a Social Referencing Paradigm
Child Development, 1996
L. ; FEHNALD, ANNE; and HERRERA, CARLA. Infants' Responses to Facial and Vocal Emotional Signals in a Social Referencing Paradigm. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1996, 67, 3219-3237. The independent effects of facial and vocal emotional signals and of positive and negative signals on infant behavior were investigated in a novel toy social referencing paradigm. 90 12-month-old infants and their mothers were assigned to an expression condition (neutral, happy, or fear) nested within a modality condition (face-only or voice-only). Each infant participated in 3 trials: a baseline trial, an expression trial, and a final positive trial. We found that fearful vocal emotional signals, when presented without facial signals, were sufficient to elicit appropriate behavior regulation. Infants in the fear-voice condition looked at their mothers longer, showed less toy proximity, and tended to show more negative affect than infants in the neutral-voice condition. Happy vocal signals did not elicit differential responding. The infants' sex was a factor in the few effects that were found for infants' responses to facial emotional signals.
Infant Behavior and Development, 2010
Studies of infant social referencing have indicated that infants might be more influenced by vocal information contained in emotional messages than by facial expression, especially during fearful message conditions. The present study investigated the characteristics of emotional channels that parents used during social referencing, and corresponding infants' behavioral changes. Results of Study 1 indicated that parents used more vocal information during positive message conditions. Unlike previous findings, infants' behavioral change was related to the frequency of vocal information during positive condition. For fearful messages, infants were more influenced by the number of multi-modal channels used and the frequency of visual information. Study 2 further showed that the intensity of vocal tone was related to infant regulation only during positive message conditions. The results imply that understanding of social context is important to make sense of parent-infant's emotional interaction.
Acquisition of Social Referencing via Discrimination Training in Infants
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2012
This experiment investigated social referencing as a form of discriminative learning in which maternal facial expressions signaled the consequences of the infant's behavior in an ambiguous context. Eleven 4-and 5-month-old infants and their mothers participated in a discriminationtraining procedure using an ABAB design. Different consequences followed infants' reaching toward an unfamiliar object depending on the particular maternal facial expression. During the training phases, a joyful facial expression signaled positive reinforcement for the infant reaching for an ambiguous object, whereas a fearful expression signaled aversive stimulation for the same response. Baseline and extinction conditions were implemented as controls. Mothers' expressions acquired control over infants' approach behavior for all participants. All participants ceased to show discriminated responding during the extinction phase. The results suggest that 4-and 5month-old infants can learn social referencing via discrimination training.
Sensitivity to Social Contingency From Mothers and Strangers in 2-, 4-, and 6-Month-Old Infants
Infancy, 2003
Infants' sensitivity to changes in social contingency was investigated by presenting 2-, 4-, and 6-month-old infants with 3 episodes of social interaction from mothers and strangers: 2 contingent interactions and 1 noncontingent replay. Three orders were presented: (a) contingent, noncontingent, contingent; (b) contingent, contingent, noncontingent; and (c) noncontingent, contingent, contingent. Contingency and carryover effects were shown to both mothers and strangers in the different orders of presentation. Infants were more visually attentive to contingent interactions than to the noncontingent replay when contingent interactions occurred prior to the replay, and the infants' level of attention to the noncontingent replay carried over to subsequent contingent interactions. The 4-and 6-month-old infants showed contingency and carryover effects by their visual attention and smiling. Examination of effect sizes for attention suggests 2-month-old infants may be beginning to show the effects. Reasons for age changes in sensitivity to social contingency are discussed.
Developmental Science, 2004
To examine the influences of facial versus vocal cues on infants' behavior in a potentially threatening situation, 12-month-olds on a visual cliff received positive facial-only, vocal-only, or both facial and vocal cues from mothers. Infants' crossing times and looks to mother were assessed. Infants crossed the cliff faster with multimodal and vocal than with facial cues, and looked more to mother in the Face Plus Voice compared to the Voice Only condition. The findings suggest that vocal cues, even without a visual reference, are more potent than facial cues in guiding infants' behavior. The discussion focuses on the meaning of infants' looks and the role of voice in development of social cognition.
Determining the Function of Social Referencing: The Role of Familiarity and Situational Threat
Frontiers in Psychology, 2020
In ambiguous situations, infants have the tendency to gather information from a social interaction partner to regulate their behavior [social referencing (SR)]. There are two main competing theories concerning SR’s function. According to social-cognitive information-seeking accounts, infants look at social interaction partners to gain information about the ambiguous situation. According to co-regulation accounts, infants look at social interaction partners to receive emotional support. This review provides an overview of the central developments in SR literature in the past years. We focus on the role of situational aspects such as familiarity of SR partners and situational threat, not only for SR (looking), but also for subsequent behavioral regulation (exploration, affect). As the competing accounts make different predictions concerning both contextual factors, this approach may reveal novel insights into the function of SR. Findings showed that a higher familiarity of SR partners...
Infancy, 2006
Two-month-old infants (N = 29) participated in face-to-face interactions with their mothers and with strangers. The contingent responsiveness for smiles and vocalizations, while attending to the partner, was assessed for each partner in both interactions. For smiles and for vocalizations, infants were less responsive to the stranger relative to the mother when the stranger's contingent responsiveness was either more contingent or less contingent than that of the mother. Results are supportive of the hypothesis that young infants develop sensitivities to levels of social contingency present in their maternal interactions, which influence their responsiveness to others. Infants' early awareness of the contingency between self-actions and external consequences occurs most readily in parent-infant face-to-face social interactions (Neisser, 1991). Parents tend to respond contingently to infants' vocalizations, gestures, and facial affect. For infants under 6 months, parental responses to infant