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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 29, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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Do infants recognize relationships indirectly?

Ayshe Ozlu1, Claudia G Sehl1, Stephanie Denison1

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada aozlu@uwaterloo.ca claudia.sehl@uwaterloo.ca stephanie.denison@uwaterloo.ca friedman@uwaterloo.ca.

The Behavioral and Brain Sciences
|May 27, 2026
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Infants may recognize relationships by observing how others interact, not just direct contact. This indirect social learning helps distinguish relationship types and understand their strength.

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Social Cognition

Background:

  • Infants utilize direct social interactions to understand interpersonal relationships.
  • Existing research focuses on how infants learn from direct social cues.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if infants can infer relationships indirectly by observing third-party interactions.
  • To explore the role of indirect social information in distinguishing between relationship types (communal sharing vs. equality matching).
  • To examine how indirect observations might inform infants' understanding of relationship strength.

Main Methods:

  • Observational studies analyzing infant responses to third-party interactions.
  • Experimental paradigms assessing infant discrimination between different relationship types based on indirect cues.

Main Results:

  • Infants demonstrate the capacity to recognize relationships by observing indirect social interactions.
  • Indirect social information is utilized by infants to differentiate between communal sharing and equality matching relationships.
  • Observing third-party interactions supports infants' inferences about the strength of relationships.

Conclusions:

  • Infants possess sophisticated social cognitive abilities, extending beyond direct interactions.
  • Indirect social learning is a crucial mechanism for infants' understanding of social structures and relationships.
  • This research highlights the early development of social inference skills in infants.