The development of infants' responses to people and a doll: Implications for research in communication

Legerstee, Maria; Pomerleau, Andrée; Malcuit, Gérard; Feider, Helga

doi:10.1016/0163-6383(87)90008-7

Cited by 109 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Faced with a responsive person, infants smile, make pre-speech sounds and gesticulate with hand movements. Presented with a familiar object that sounds and moves when the infants look at it, they are more likely to make handand-reach movements while staring at the object intensely (Gelman and Spelke, 1981;Legerstee, 1991Legerstee, , 1992Legerstee et al, 1987Legerstee et al, , 1990. Thus, it appears that the ability to distinguish people from things begins early in life.…”

mentioning

confidence: 93%

Patterns of 4‐month‐old infant responses to hidden silent and sounding people and objects

Legerstee

1994

Early Dev. Parent.

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Responses of 4month-old infants to hidden people and objects were investigated with equated task demands. Twenty-one Cmonth~dd infants were administered a combined task, in which they were shown a sounding stimulus that continued to sound after hiding, an auditory task, in which sound was the only m e of information about the position of the object in space, and a vision task, in which a silent stimulus was shown to the infants prior to hiding. Five infant behaviours were coded: reaching, gazing, body movements, vocalizations and smiles. The infants reached significantly more for hidden objects than for people, to whom they vocalized instead. They further smiled, and moved their bodies more towards their invisible mother than to the other stimuli. Thus infants responded differentially to people and objects whether the stimuli were soundless (so that there was no cue to their presence) or not. This suggested that infants appreciated (a) that an object had been hidden; (b) this object was either animate or inanimate; and (c) different procedures were appropriate for the retrieval of, or for interacting with animate and inanimate objects. Discussion centres on the underlying representational system that allows for such appreciation.Key words: Object search, person search, multimodal.A question frequently addressed by Piaget (1954) concerned the developing understanding of the animate and inanimate distinction. As adults, we distinguish between people and things while knowing that all objects share certain fundamental properties. Both animate and inanimate objects have physical properties (size and shape), but only people act independently, have feelings and intentions. If we want to acquire knowledge about the two classes, we communicate with people and act on objects (Bretherton et al

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confidence: 93%

Patterns of 4‐month‐old infant responses to hidden silent and sounding people and objects

Legerstee

1994

Early Dev. Parent.

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“…Infant overall or generic smiling increases between 1 and 6 months of age (Gewirtz, 1965), particularly during face-to-face interactions (Legerstee, Pomerleau, Malcuit, & Feider, 1987). Cheek-raise and open-mouth smiling also increase during this period (Messinger et al, 1999).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

All smiles are positive, but some smiles are more positive than others.

Messinger¹,

Fogel²,

Dickson³

2001

Developmental Psychology

158

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Disagreement as to whether all smiling or specific types of smiling index positive emotion early in life was addressed by examining when infants produced different types of smiling and other facial expressions. Thirteen infants were observed weekly from 1 to 6 months of age. Smiling alone-without cheek raising or mouth opening-was relatively more likely than periods without smiling both when mothers were smiling and when infants were gazing at their mothers' faces. Cheek-raise (Duchenne) smiling was relatively more likely than smiling alone only when mothers were smiling. Open-mouth (play) smiling was relatively more likely than smiling alone only when infants were gazing directly at mothers' faces. Smiling involving both cheek raising and mouth opening was relatively likely both when mothers were smiling and when infants were gazing at mothers' faces and became increasingly likely with age when both conditions co-occurred. The cheek-raise and open-mouth dimensions of smiling appear to be associated with, respectively, the amplification of processes of sharing positive affect and of visual engagement that are present to a lesser degree in smiling alone.

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“…That infants might have an inborn capacity for intersubjectivity is plausible when one considers research that shows that infants become upset when adults in face-to-face interactions suddenly stop communicating with them for no apparent reason, a phenomenon which has been called the still-face response (Legerstee, Corter, & Kienapple, 1990;Legerstee, Pomerleau, Malcuit, & Feider, 1987;Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978), but not when mothers stop communicating for some salient reason, such as drinking a refreshment .…”

Section: Social Bonds-relationships Between Self and Othersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These findings suggest that by 3 months infants have developed a social bond with their mothers, and have developed particular expectations about face-to-face interactions. When these expectations are violated infants become distressed (Legerstee & Varghese, 2001;Legerstee et al, 1987Legerstee et al, , 1990.…”

Section: Social Bonds-relationships Between Self and Othersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that infants differentiate between animate and inanimate objects soon after birth (Wellman, 1990; see Legerstee, 1992, for a review; Legerstee et al, 1998Legerstee et al, , 1987Legerstee, 1991; and discriminate robustly between the faces of self and peers as early as 3 months (Bahrick, Moss, & Fadil, 1996) and also between faces and sounds of self, peers, and dolls between 5 and 8 months (Legerstee et al, 1998), the possibility remains that infants did not perceive their mother's behavior as a threat to their primary relationship, nor did they perceive their relationship to the rival doll as aversive. In contrast, the infants might have emitted approach behaviors and sad facial expressions because they desired the doll but were not permitted access.…”

Section: Infant Reactions To Social Exclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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