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The development of social referencing
1Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203.
Insights
Infant social referencing develops significantly between 6-22 months. Older infants use facial cues more selectively, especially fearful ones, to guide toy interactions.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Infant Behavior
- Social Cognition
Background:
- Social referencing is crucial for infant development, allowing them to use caregiver cues to interpret novel situations.
- Understanding the developmental trajectory of social referencing provides insights into early social cognition and emotional regulation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the developmental changes in social referencing behaviors in infants aged 6-22 months.
- To examine how age influences infants' visual attention to parents and their instrumental behaviors in response to parental cues.
Main Methods:
- Studied 40 infants across three age groups (6-9, 10-13, 14-22 months).
- Defined social referencing broadly, including looks toward parents, toy behaviors, and affective expressions.
- Analyzed infants' visual attention patterns and behavioral responses to parental affective cues (positive and fearful).
Main Results:
- Infants' visual referencing became more selective with age, with older infants focusing on parents' faces.
- Younger infants (6-9 months) looked more when parents showed positive affect; older infants (10-13 months) looked more during fearful reactions.
- Behavioral regulation of toy interaction emerged by 10-13 months, with clear inhibition of touching toys until after referencing observed in infants over 14 months.
Conclusions:
- Social referencing involves developing component skills, with significant changes occurring in the first and second years of life.
- Looking behaviors serve different functions in younger versus older infants, indicating developmental shifts in social referencing.
- Findings do not support mood modification or simple imitation as primary drivers of these referencing behaviors.
Abstract:
The development of social referencing in 40 infants aged 6-9, 10-13, and 14-22 months was investigated in this study. Social referencing was defined broadly to include children's looks toward parents, their instrumental toy behaviors, affective expressions, and other behaviors toward parents. Children's looks at parents were more selective with increasing age, with older infants preferring to look directly at their parents' faces and younger infants showing no preference for looks to faces over looks elsewhere at the parent. Younger infants looked most often when their parents expressed positive affect, whereas older infants looked most often when parents displayed fearful reactions toward a stimulus. Evidence of a behavioral regulatory effect on instrumental toy behaviors was found only among infants 10-13 months of age. However, only infants older than 14 months of age inhibited touching the toy until after referencing the parent. On some measures these older infants showed a preference for toys associated with fearful messages. Affective expressions were in line with positive and negative behavior toward toys. No support for mood modification or simple imitation as explanations for the effects was found. Results indicated that the looking behavior of younger children may function differently than that of older children, and that social referencing involves a number of component skills that develop during the end of the first year and throughout the second year of life.