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Processing third-party social interactions in the human infant brain

Katrina Farris1, Caroline M Kelsey1, Kathleen M Krol1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.

Infant Behavior & Development
|June 6, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Infants

Area of Science:

  • Developmental neuroscience
  • Social cognition
  • Infant brain development

Background:

  • Understanding infant social brain development is crucial for early social and moral development.
  • Research has primarily focused on first-person interactions, leaving third-party observation systems unknown.
  • Observing third-party interactions is behaviorally linked to foundational social learning.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the brain systems infants use to process third-party social interactions.
  • To test if prefrontal and temporal cortex systems specialize in third-party observation during infancy.
  • To identify early-developing neural specializations for social learning.

Main Methods:

  • Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measured brain responses in 62 infants (6-13 months).
  • Infants viewed third-party social interactions, individual actions, and inverted social interactions.
  • Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex activity was analyzed in relation to observed stimuli.

Main Results:

  • Infants showed preferential engagement of the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC).
  • This specific brain region responded more to third-party social interactions than control conditions.
  • Findings indicate early specialization of the dmPFC for processing social dynamics.

Conclusions:

  • The infant brain shows early specialization for processing third-party social interactions.
  • Neural systems for interpreting social dynamics develop early in human ontogeny.
  • These early-developing systems likely support social interpretation and learning from observed interactions.

Keywords:
BrainDevelopmentInfancySocial cognitionSocial interaction

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