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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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Preverbal infants expect members of social groups to act alike

Lindsey J Powell1, Elizabeth S Spelke

  • 1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|September 25, 2013
PubMed

Insights

Seven-month-old infants expect social group members to behave similarly. They distinguish group-consistent actions from inconsistent ones, but only in social contexts, suggesting early social cognition development.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Cognition
  • Infant Behavior

Background:

  • Conformity and stereotyping emerge early in human development.
  • Early social cognition may involve expectations about group behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if preverbal infants expect social group members to share common behaviors.
  • To determine the developmental origins of social expectations regarding group conformity.

Main Methods:

  • Experiments with 7-month-old infants observing actions of social agents.
  • Comparing infant responses to group-consistent versus group-inconsistent actions.
  • Testing responses in social versus nonsocial contexts (inanimate objects).

Main Results:

  • Infants differentiated actions based on social group consistency by 7 months of age.
  • This differentiation occurred only when observing social agents, not inanimate objects.
  • Preverbal infants show expectations of covariation between social group membership and behavior.

Conclusions:

  • Infants form expectations about social group behavior before extensive experience or language.
  • These early expectations may underpin later conformity and stereotyping.
  • Foundational social cognitive mechanisms are present in infancy.

Keywords:
infancysocial development

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