The informative value of emotional expressions: ‘social referencing’ in mother–child pretense

Abstract

Mothers begin to pretend with their children during the second year, when children still have much to learn about the real world. Although it would be easy to confuse what is pretend with what is real, children at this young age often demonstrate comprehension during pretense situations. It is plausible that social referencing, in which the child uses the mother's emotional expression as a guide to behavior, might facilitate this emerging knowledge by signaling to the child not to take the pretend situation seriously. Data from 32 pairs of mothers and their 18-montholds who had engaged in pretend and real snack behaviors were subjected to a sequential analysis to investigate a social referencing interpretation. Consistent with our hypothesis, behaviors suggestive of a baby's understanding pretense were more likely to follow a specific combination of behaviors consistent with social referencing than other combinations of behaviors. These results provide support for the possibility that children use information obtained through social referencing to assist understanding during pretense interactions.

Do Children Realize That Pretend Emotions Might Be Unreal?

“…Furthermore, Gardner et al (1988) suggested it is likely that 4-year-olds understand that emotions expressed in pretend play do not need to correspond to internal emotions. Indeed, a number of pretend play features could indicate that children may understand the emotional AR distinction better in pretend play than in deception situations: (a) the existence of the mannerisms, or the typical gestures of pretend play which help children to distinguish when someone is pretending (Leslie, 1988;Lillard & Witherington, 2004;Piaget, 1962); (b) the specificity of the language used during pretend play (Auwarter, 1986;Garvey & Kramer, 1989); (c) the evidence that social referencing might function as a sign for the children to interpret the pretence acts (Nishida & Lillard, 2007); (d) children's early capacity to distinguish reality from fiction (Giménez-Dasí, 2003); and (e) the fact that while in deception acts there is always someone who knows something about the real state of the affairs and another person who does not, in pretence, all participants share the same representation of the reality (Peskin, 1996). Therefore, we expected children in the present research to understand the emotional AR distinction before and better in pretend play situations than in deception situations.…”

Preschoolers’ Theory-of-Mind Knowledge Influences Whom They Trust About Others’ Theories of Mind

“…Most preschoolers have a more action-based understanding of pretending, in which they equate pretending with behaving like or appearing like an entity, regardless of that person's other mental states (Lillard, 1993b(Lillard, , 1996(Lillard, , 1998Sobel, 2004Sobel, , 2007Sobel & Lillard, 2002), even though they can pretend appropriately (e.g., Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993) and recognize when another person is pretending just from behavioral cues (e.g., Lillard & Witherington, 2004;Ma & Lillard, 2006;Nishida & Lillard, 2007). By age 6 to 7 years old, the majority of children begin to respond based on the individual's mental states (Richert & Lillard, 2002).…”

Social looking, social referencing and humor perception in 6- and-12-month-old infants

“…In accord with studies on this phenomenon (Nishida & Lillard, 2007; Sorce et al, 1985; Vaish & Striano, 2004), social looking was defined as infants' looks towards the parent. If infants were smiling during the look, then this behavior was coded as “baby smiles at parent” instead of social looking.…”

“…Furthermore, Nishida and Lillard (2007) point out that SR research employs strange or confusing situations (e.g., visual cliff, confronting a stranger), and propose that researchers should investigate whether SR is used in “situations that are not entirely novel and ambiguous, but slightly ‘out-of-the-ordinary’” (p.206). For example, although numerous studies have shown that infants use SR to interpret ambiguity as threatening, none have examined whether they use it to interpret ambiguity as humorous.…”

“…Consistent with this, Campos (1983) noted that affective communication can be imposed on others, and Walden (1993) reports that although younger infants may not intentionally refer to their parents to interpret ambiguous situations, parents provide these emotional messages anyway, and infants tend to match their affect as a result. In addition, although their study employed older infants, Nishida and Lillard (2007) demonstrated that 18-month-olds use their mothers as a social referent to understand pretend play, a situation that is closer to humor than threat.…”