Facilitation of object encoding in infants by the observation of giving

Abstract

We propose that humans are prepared to interpret giving as a diagnostic cue of reciprocal–exchange relations from infancy. A prediction following from this hypothesis is that infants will represent the identity of an object they see being given, because this information is critical for evaluating potential future reciprocation. Across three looking-time experiments we tested whether the observation of a transfer action induces 12-month-olds to encode the identity of a single object handled by an agent. We found that infants encoded the object identity when the agent gave the object (Experiment 1), but not when she took it (Experiment 2), despite being able to represent the goal of both actions (Experiments 1 and 3). Consistent with our hypothesis, these results suggest that the infants’ representation of giving comprises information necessary for comparing the value of transferred goods across sharing episodes.

Direct and Observed Joint Attention Modulate 9-Month-Old Infants’ Object Encoding

“…For example, German and Swedish infants between 7 and 13 months of age increasingly orient their attention to third-party face-to-face interactions (Galazka et al, 2014 ; Handl et al, 2013 ; Thiele et al, 2021a ) and 13-month-olds are intrinsically motivated to seek out situations in which they can observe third-party interactions (Thiele, Hepach, Michel, Gredebäck et al, 2021 ). The present study adds to another line of research showing that infants furthermore organize their attention and referential learning during the observation situation (Elsner et al, 2014 ; Tatone et al, 2021 ; Thorgrimsson et al, 2014 ). Without any external guidance, 9-month-old German infants recognized interpersonal sharedness between third parties and used it as a relevant dimension when processing and memorizing a novel object.…”

“…Already during the second half of the first year of life, infants in the Global North develop foundational abilities and preferences enabling them to detect, process, and sustainedly observe dyadic social interactions between third parties (Farris et al, 2022 ; Galazka et al, 2014 ; Goupil et al, 2022 ; Handl et al, 2013 ; Thiele et al, 2021a ). During the same period, infants develop an increasing understanding of third-party interactions, including the turn-taking dynamic between two social partners (Augusti et al, 2010 ; Bakker et al, 2011 ; Beier & Spelke, 2012 ), their communicative intentions (Thorgrimsson et al, 2014 , 2015 ), their reciprocal exchange relations (Tatone et al, 2021 ), and their (shared) action goals (Elsner et al, 2014 ; Gredebäck & Melinder, 2010 ). In addition, some evidence indicates that observing others’ interactions actuates an internal attentional stance in infants, potentially facilitating the encoding of novel information.…”

Rectifying inequities in resource collection in young children

“…These studies show that infants treat an event in which one agent gives another agent a resource as social in nature; they expect the giver to repeat that action in a new situation (i.e., to give again). Infants distinguish giving from taking event, but taking events are not interpreted in the same manner – that is, infants do not interpret the taker as necessarily going to repeat that action (see also Tatone et al., 2021; Ziv et al., 2021, for further studies suggesting infants initially conceptualize collecting resources from others differently from distributing resources to others).…”

The Representation of Giving Actions: Event Construction in the Service of Monitoring Social Relationships

“…Two recent findings suggest that preverbal infants may interpret giving as instantiating relations based on longterm balance (i.e., a coordination rule by which disparities in social investment are leveled through reciprocal acts of altruism; Fiske, 1992). First, when familiarized to an actor manipulating a single object (a context in which lack of sensitivity to changes in object identity has been repeatedly reported; e.g., Woodward, 1998), infants encode its identity if the event could be construed as an act of giving, but not of taking (Tatone et al, 2021). Second, even when induced to interpret both giving and taking in structurally equivalent (interactive) terms, infants encode the direction of object transfer only in the representation of giving .…”