Infants infer potential social partners by observing the interactions of their parent with unknown others

Abstract

Infants are born into networks of individuals who are socially connected. How do infants begin learning which individuals are their own potential social partners? Using digitally edited videos, we showed 12-mo-old infants’ social interactions between unknown individuals and their own parents. In studies 1 to 4, after their parent showed affiliation toward one puppet, infants expected that puppet to engage with them. In study 5, infants made the reverse inference; after a puppet engaged with them, the infants expected that puppet to respond to their parent. In each study, infants’ inferences were specific to social interactions that involved their own parent as opposed to another infant’s parent. Thus, infants combine observation of social interactions with knowledge of their preexisting relationship with their parent to discover which newly encountered individuals are potential social partners for themselves and their families.

Core knowledge, language learning, and the origins of morality and pedagogy: Reply to reviews of What babies know

“…Research suggests that infants who view people acting on objects learn about kinds of actions, such as acts of reaching or locomotion (e.g., Sommerville & Woodward, 2005; Woo et al, 2023). In contrast, infants who view people engaging with others learn about specific people and the social relationships that connect them to one another (e.g., Spokes & Spelke, 2017; Thomsen et al, 2011) or to the infant (e.g., Thomas, Saxe, & Spelke, 2022). Together, these findings suggest that infants can represent a person's behavior either as agentive or as social.…”

Infants Infer Social Relationships Between Individuals Who Engage in Imitative Social Interactions

“…However, in line with dispositional inferences, their expectations are asymmetric: They do not expect the targets of imitation to approach the individual who initiated the imitation. Likewise 4-month-old infants preferentially look at imitators, and 12 month-old infants reach for imitators, and neither age group has demonstrated any preference for the targets of imitation (Powell & Spelke, 2018a ; Thomas et al, 2020 ; Thomas, Saxe, et al, 2022 ). Infants’ distinction between initiators and responders in prosocial interactions could be evidence that younger infants attribute dispositions to imitators.…”

“…One set of results strongly suggests that 12-month-old infants see imitation as a cue to relationships: They distinguish between the targets of their parent’s imitation and the targets of a stranger’s imitation (Thomas, Saxe, et al, 2022 ), reaching for and expecting social engagement from the targets of their parent’s imitation but not from the targets of an unfamiliar adult’s imitation. Importantly, in this study, the parents had a friendly and contingent interaction with two puppets, but they only imitated one puppet.…”

“…In the target condition, one puppet is imitated by the central person and the other is not, and then the central person expresses distress. These events allow us to compare infants’ predictions about those who are imitated compared to those who are not imitated, by determining who infants looked to first: a measure of their expectations about who would respond (see Thomas, Saxe, et al, 2022 ).…”

“…In Study 1, we ask whether 11–12-month-old infants and 16-18 month old toddlers expect imitators and their targets to respond to their social partner’s distress. We chose to test infants and toddlers in our first study because previous studies tested in these age ranges (Spokes & Spelke, 2017 ; Thomas et al, 2020 ; Thomas, Saxe, et al, 2022 ; Thomas, Woo, et al, 2022 ) (Spokes & Spelke, 2017 ; Thomas, Saxe, et al, 2022 ). In Study 2, we ask whether infants’ expectations are limited to the individuals involved in the original interactions, or whether they expect imitators to be responsive to anyone who expresses distress.…”