Priming infants to use color in an individuation task: does social context matter?

Infants' learn a great deal about the physical world during the first year of life. There is a growing body of research investigating the conditions under which this is most likely to occur. Most of this research has focused on the type of information that infants are presented. The current research moves the field in a new direction by investigating the extent to which the social context--who presents the information to the infant--influences knowledge acquisition. Infants were first presented with a color-priming event in a non-social context (Experiment 1) or a social context (Experiment 2). These two contexts differed primarily in whether the individual presenting the color-priming events was behind the apparatus and hidden from view or sat next to the infant and was visible, respectively. The extent to which viewing the color priming events increased infants' sensitivity to color differences in a subsequent object individuation task was then assessed. The results revealed that whereas 8.5-month-olds experienced color priming in the non-social context, 7.5-month-olds only experienced color priming within a social context. Furthermore, the 7.5-month-olds evidenced priming only when their own parent, not an unfamiliar adult, was the social partner performing the priming events. This provides new evidence for the significance of infant learning within a social context and the potential role of parents.