An examination was made of some predictions of social learning theory for the development of peer-oriented social behaviors of infants. Naturalistic observations were made of 32 pairs of 9-month-old infants who were brought together in their own homes for 11 (experimental) or two (control) playsessions. Over 10 play sessions the experimental infants increased their peer-oriented behavior in complexity and in degree of social engagement and the controls did not increase. The increase in peer-oriented behavior generalized to a new playsession mate on an 11th session. Since the increase in peer-oriented behavior was not found to be related to the amount of contingent responding elicited from the playsession mate but. was related to the total amount of behavior received from the playsession mate, it was concluded that the increase occurred as a result of the infant having been exposed to the stimulating behavior of another infant, but was not an associative learning effect. The role of peer behavior as an eliciting stimulus was discussed.There has been very little research on peer-oriented social behavior in human infants, especially as compared to the wealth of information which has been collected on the socio-emotional attachment of the infant to his caretaker. The literature which exists is conflicted about whether infants and young children are interested in one another and benefit from experience with peers.
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