The social cognition and perception-action literatures are largely separate, both conceptually and empirically. However, both areas of research emphasize infants' emerging abilities to use available information-social and perceptual information, respectively-for making decisions about action. Borrowing methods from both research traditions, this study examined whether 18-month-old infants incorporate both social and perceptual information in their motor decisions. The infants' task was to determine whether to walk down slopes of varying risk levels as their mothers encouraged or discouraged walking. First, a psychophysical procedure was used to determine slopes that were safe, borderline, and risky for individual infants. Next, during a series of test trials, infants received mothers' advice about whether to walk. Infants used social information selectively: They ignored encouraging advice to walk down risky slopes and discouraging advice to avoid safe slopes, but they deferred to mothers' advice at borderline slopes. Findings indicate that 18-month-old infants correctly weigh competing sources of information when making decisions about motor action and that they rely on social information only when perceptual information is inadequate or uncertain. Two sources of information are available to infants for making decisions about action: perceptual information generated by infants' own exploratory movements and social information offered by infants' parents and other people. An eager infant poised at the top of the stairs as mother screams "No!," a timid infant who is encouraged to attempt the daunting playground slide, a crawling infant whose parent's silence conveys that it is okay to roam, and a beginning walker reluctant to take steps into mother's open arms must decide whether to descend, slide, crawl, and walk on the basis of the available perceptual and social information.Sometimes perceptual and social cues are concordant, offering redundant information that specifies the way to act (e.g., when parents nod toward an inviting toy or say "No, no" toward a menacing dog). Other times, perceptual and social information are at odds, specifying opposing courses of action (e.g., when parents warn their toddlers to stay away from an empty street or encourage their infants to crawl onto the unfamiliar surface of a sandy beach). Discordant perceptual and social information is especially interesting because infants confront an interpretive challenge: They must decide how to weigh and integrate competing sources of information. In such situations, infants might assign priority to social information and defer to mothers' advice, regardless of their own perceptual assessment of the situation. Alternatively, infants might rely on perceptual information and ignore their mothers' social messages. A third possibility is that infants assess social and perceptual cues on a case-by-case basis, relying selectively on social information when perceptual cues leave them uncertain about how to act. On this last account, infan...

The authors examined the effects of locomotor experience on infants’ perceptual judgments in a potentially risky situation—descending steep and shallow slopes—while manipulating social incentives to determine where perceptual judgments are most malleable. Twelve-month-old experienced crawlers and novice walkers were tested on an adjustable sloping walkway as their mothers encouraged and discouraged descent. A psychophysical procedure was used to estimate infants’ ability to crawl/walk down slopes, followed by test trials in which mothers encouraged and discouraged infants to crawl/walk down. Both locomotor experience and social incentives affected perceptual judgments. In the encourage condition, crawlers only attempted safe slopes within their abilities, but walkers repeatedly attempted impossibly risky slopes, replicating previous work. The discourage condition showed where judgments are most malleable. When mothers provided negative social incentives, crawlers occasionally avoided safe slopes, and walkers occasionally avoided the most extreme 50° increment, although they attempted to walk on more than half the trials. Findings indicate that both locomotor experience and social incentives play key roles in adaptive responding, but the benefits are specific to the posture that infants use for balance and locomotion.

This longitudinal research used a sociocultural perspective to examine planning competence in the everyday experiences of European American and Latino children from 7 to 9 years of age. Data on children's participation in planning their activities outside of school, parental expectations about children's planning competence, and children's planning in the classroom were collected yearly from Grades 2 to 4 from 140 children and their mothers, and the children's teachers. Results indicate that decision-making practices and parental expectations change with development and vary by ethnicity. Decision making at home was related to children's classroom planning; however, the nature of these relations changed over middle childhood. Results are discussed in terms of cultural and parental contributions to the development of planning skills.