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Updated: Sep 30, 2025

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' neural responses to helping and hindering scenarios

Enda Tan1, J Kiley Hamlin1

  • 1University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
|March 11, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Infants show neural responses to prosocial and antisocial characters. Six-month-olds exhibit approach motivation towards helping scenarios, indicating early social processing.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Social Cognition

Background:

  • Existing research suggests infants prefer prosocial individuals.
  • Previous studies on neural mechanisms had small sample sizes and limited scope.
  • Infants' sociomoral responding involves both motivational and social processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To systematically examine infants' neural responses to prosocial/antisocial interactions and characters.
  • To investigate age-related differences in neural responses using larger samples.
  • To explore the underlying neural mechanisms of infants' sociomoral evaluations.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized electroencephalography (EEG) to record neural activity in infants.
  • Examined event-related potentials (ERPs) and alpha power.
  • Included two age groups (6- and 12-month-olds) and larger sample sizes.

Main Results:

  • Six-month-olds displayed higher relative right frontal alpha power (approach motivation) during helping scenarios.
  • No group-level manual preferences for the helper were observed.
  • Both age groups showed differential ERP responses (P400, N290) to prosocial versus antisocial characters, indicating social perception.

Conclusions:

  • Infants' neural responses to prosocial/antisocial characters reflect social processing, not just attentional allocation.
  • Findings support the role of both motivational and social factors in early sociomoral development.
  • Provides a comprehensive understanding of infants' neural engagement with social morality.

Keywords:
EEGFrontal alpha asymmetryInfantNcP400/N290Sociomoral evaluation

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