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Updated: Sep 3, 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 infer potential social partners by observing the interactions of their parent with unknown others

Ashley J Thomas1,2,3,4, Rebecca Saxe1,4, Elizabeth S Spelke3,4

  • 1Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|July 25, 2022
PubMed

Insights

Infants learn social partners by observing interactions involving their parents. They infer relationships based on parental affiliation and direct engagement, understanding who is part of their family network.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Cognition
  • Infant Social Learning

Background:

  • Infants are born into complex social networks.
  • Understanding how infants identify potential social partners is crucial for early social development.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how 12-month-old infants learn to identify potential social partners.
  • To determine if infants use parental social interactions to guide their own social partner selection.

Main Methods:

  • Digitally edited videos depicted social interactions between unfamiliar individuals and infants' parents.
  • Infants' expectations of social engagement were tested based on observed parental affiliation and direct interaction.

Main Results:

  • Infants inferred that puppets showing affiliation with their parent would engage with them.
  • Infants also inferred that puppets engaging with them would interact with their parent.
  • These inferences were specific to interactions involving their own parent, not another infant's parent.

Conclusions:

  • Infants actively combine observed social dynamics with their existing knowledge of parental relationships.
  • This process enables infants to identify and navigate their social world, discovering new social partners for themselves and their family.

Keywords:
cognitive developmentrelationshipssocial cognitionsocial developmentsocial networks

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