Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 29, 2026
05:35
Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
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
Summary
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.
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.
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