Poster #216 - Time Course of 5-Month-Old Social Contingency Learning and Extinction

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Contingency is an important feature of social functioning and constitutes a core component of social-emotional development. Infants as young as 2 months have been shown to learn contingencies between their behaviors and their mother’s as well as a stranger’s behaviors; however, the time course of such learning has yet to be examined. To examine how quickly infants learn from contingent interactions with a stranger as well as how quickly their behaviors extinguish, the current study employed a novel social contingency paradigm. Five-month-old infants (N=73, 35 males, M=5.13 months, SD=.21 months) interacted with a stranger during three 3-minute phases: Habituation, Social Contingency, Extinction. During Habituation and Extinction, the experimenter engaged the infant in structured, but non-contingent play and during Social Contingency, the experimenter responded only to infant vocalizations and positivity with social reward (i.e., touch and praise). Microanalytic (second-by-second) coding of vocalization frequency and positive facial affect (low vs. high smile quality) was conducted. When the mean percentage of behaviors were examined, it was found that infants displayed significant increases in vocalizations (F(2,144)=45.51,p<.001; Figure 1A) during Social Contingency compared to Habituation or Extinction. In addition, a significant increase in high (mouth open) vs. low quality (mouth closed) smiles was observed during Social Contingency compared to Habituation and Extinction, while no difference was observed for low quality smiles (Phase x Smile Quality: (F(2,144)=4.90, p<.05; Figure 2A). In order to examine the time course at which these behaviors are learned and at which they extinguish, data was binned into 10-sec epochs and the proportion of time in each epoch spent vocalizing or smiling was computed. Within the first 30 seconds of Social Contingency, infants already displayed a significant increase in their vocalizations (F(1,43) = 17.03, p < .001; Figure 1B, left shading) and high quality smiles (F(1,43) = 4.224, p < .05; Figure 2B, left shading) compared to the last 30 seconds of Habituation. Similarly, there was a significant decrease in vocalizations(F(1,43) = 31.80, p < .001, Figure 1B, right shading) and high quality smiles (F(1,47) = 7.529, p < .01, Figure 2B, right shading) between the last 30 seconds of Social Contingency and first 30 seconds of Extinction. In general, these findings suggest that infants learn social contingencies within a 3-minute period of time, with learning already being exhibited within the first 30 seconds of receiving contingent positive responding from a social partner. Furthermore, infants quickly learn when these contingencies end and extinguish the rewarded behavior within 30 seconds as well. Being able to easily detect such contingencies in the environment, particularly within a social context, may serve as a building block for later social behavior as well as help explain observed heterogeneity in social development in both typical and atypical pediatric populations. Future studies will examine individual differences in in the rate at which infants detect social contingences and whether this may predict the development of later social behaviors.

Authors

• Bethany Reeb-Sutherland, Florida International University
  Presenting Author

• Michelle Lee Ramos, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marqueline Cenatus, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rosario Pintos Lobo, Florida International University
  Non-Presenting Author