What evidence is required to determine whether infants infer the kinship of third parties? A commentary on Spokes and Spelke (2017)

Billingsley, Joseph; Boos, Beverly; Lieberman, Debra

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.05.013

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…In past research, infants inferred relationships after they observed responses to distress and after seeing actions that implied saliva-sharing, both of which are cross-cultural and cross-species cues of relationships (Cheney & Seyfarth, 1992 ; Fiske, 1992 ). In one study, 15- to 17-month-old toddlers used responses to distress to infer triadic closure: they expected that two small characters who had been comforted by the same large character, or two large characters who had comforted the same small character, would affiliate by approaching one another and coordinating their actions; (Billingsley et al, 2019 ). In another study, infants as young as 8 months predicted that individuals who shared saliva would be more likely to respond to one another’s distress, compared to individuals who shared a toy or who touched one another in a non-affiliative way (Thomas, Woo, et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kudrnova,

Spelke,

Thomas

2024

Open Mind

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Infants are born into rich social networks and are faced with the challenge of learning about them. When infants observe social interactions, they make predictions about future behavior, but it is not clear whether these predictions are based on social dispositions, social relationships, or both. The current studies (N = 188, N = 90 males) address this question in 12-month-old infants and 16- to 18-month-old toddlers who observe social interactions involving imitation. In Studies 1 and 3, infants and toddlers expected that imitators, compared to non-imitators, would respond to their social partners’ distress. Likewise, they expected the targets of imitation, compared to non-targets, to respond to their partner’s distress. In Study 2, these expectations did not generalize to interactions with a new partner, providing evidence that infants learned about the relationships between individuals as opposed to their dispositions. In Study 3, infants did not make predictions about responses to laughter, suggesting that infants see imitation as indicative of a specific kind of social relationship. Together, these results provide evidence that imitative interactions support infants’ and toddlers’ learning about the social relationships connecting unknown individuals.

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