Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 15, 2026

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants
11:14

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

Published on: October 4, 2015

Developmental pathways of infant helping toward caregivers and unfamiliar adults: A longitudinal study

Natalie Christner1, Marina Kammermeier1, Anja Kaßecker1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.

Child Development
|May 13, 2026
PubMed

Insights

By 12 months, infants help others. This study reveals early helping behavior in infants is linked to motor skills, social interaction quality, and caregiver actions, highlighting a developmental systems approach.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Infant Behavior
  • Social Development

Background:

  • Infants demonstrate helping behaviors by their first birthday.
  • The developmental trajectories and influencing factors of early helping remain underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the associations between caregiver-child interaction quality, motor development, action anticipation, and caregiver encouragement/modeling with infant helping behaviors.
  • To examine these associations longitudinally across infancy.

Main Methods:

  • Longitudinal study design with data collected at 6, 10, and 14 months of age.
  • Path modeling analysis was used to examine developmental pathways.
  • Participants included 118 infants (49 female), primarily of White, European background.

Main Results:

  • Helping the mother was associated with infant motor development and maternal modeling.
  • Helping the experimenter was associated with infant motor development, action anticipation, and maternal interaction quality.
  • Findings suggest distinct pathways for helping different individuals.

Conclusions:

  • Early infant helping behavior is influenced by a complex interplay of factors within a developmental systems framework.
  • Motor development and social interaction quality are crucial components shaping infant prosociality.
  • Caregiver actions, including encouragement and modeling, play a significant role in fostering helping behaviors.

Keywords:
caregiver–child interactionhelpinginfancymotor developmentsocial understanding

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