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Related Concept Videos

Socioemotional Development during Infancy01:30

Socioemotional Development during Infancy

Socio-emotional development in infancy is primarily shaped by early emotional responses and social connections, with temperament playing a central role. Temperament refers to the consistent patterns in an individual's emotional and behavioral responses, observable even in infancy. By examining temperament, researchers can better understand an infant's unique ways of interacting with the world, influencing subsequent personality and socio-emotional growth.
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Empathy02:34

Empathy

Some researchers suggest that altruism operates on empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s perspective, to feel what he or she feels. An empathetic person makes an emotional connection with others and feels compelled to help (Batson, 1991). Empathy can be expressed in several ways, including cognitive, affective, and motor.
Relationship with Parents: Attachment01:28

Relationship with Parents: Attachment

Parent-child interactions lay the foundation for how we understand relationships throughout life. These interactions are not uniform across families; instead, they are shaped by a range of environmental, emotional, and behavioral factors unique to each caregiver-child dynamic. Social psychologists study these early relationships to understand how patterns formed in infancy influence social functioning and interpersonal behavior in adulthood.Attachment Theory and Early Relational ModelsJohn...
Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development01:14

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

The sensorimotor stage, the initial phase of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, spans the first two years of a child's life. During this period, infants actively engage with their surroundings, building cognitive awareness through direct interaction with the world. This interaction is primarily based on sensory perception and motor actions, allowing infants to gradually understand basic physical properties and predict how objects interact within their environment.
Exploration...
Egoism and Altruism01:55

Egoism and Altruism

Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people is called prosocial behavior. Why do people help other people? Is personal benefit such as feeling good about oneself the only reason people help one another?
Inclusive Fitness00:57

Inclusive Fitness

Most altruistic behavior—in which one animal helps another at a cost to themselves—occurs between relatives. Scientists think these altruistic behaviors evolved because they increase the inclusive fitness of the animal providing help.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 13, 2026

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
06:07

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Intention-mediated selective helping in infancy.

Kristen A Dunfield1, Valerie A Kuhlmeier

  • 1Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. 4kad@queensu.ca

Psychological Science
|April 29, 2010
PubMed
Summary

Infants selectively help others based on previous intentions, not just outcomes. This early helping behavior mirrors complex adult reciprocal relationships, indicating a foundation for prosocial development.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Cooperation is crucial for social species, yet costly aid risks exploitation by non-reciprocators.
  • Selective helping based on past interactions is a key strategy to maintain cooperation in adults.
  • The origins of such selective helping in early human development remain largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether infants exhibit specificity in their helping behaviors.
  • To determine if infants consider the intention behind an action when deciding to help.
  • To explore the developmental roots of reciprocal helping observed in adult prosocial behavior.

Main Methods:

  • Three experiments were conducted with human infants.

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A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants
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Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm
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Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm

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Last Updated: Jun 13, 2026

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
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A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants
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A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

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  • Infants were presented with scenarios involving individuals with differing prior intentions to help.
  • Helping preferences were assessed based on previous interactions, focusing on intention over outcome.

    • Main Results:

    • Infants preferred to help an individual who previously intended to provide a toy over one who did not.
    • This preference for positive intention persisted even when the outcome was negative.
    • Infants demonstrated selective helping, favoring individuals showing willingness to provide aid.

    Conclusions:

    • Early human helping behavior exhibits specificity, mirroring adult reciprocal strategies.
    • Infants consider positive intentions, not solely outcomes, when engaging in helping.
    • These findings suggest a foundational basis for complex prosocial behaviors and reciprocal relationships in infancy.