Mother knows best: Young infants prefer individuals whom their caregivers favor

• In Event: Early Representations of Caregiver Relationships and Consequences for Social Cognition

Abstract

Infants display early attachment to their caregivers (Ainsworth, 1974), and they are sensitive to their caregivers’ emotional expressions (Klinnert 1984). Here, we assess whether infants’ social preferences are guided by their caregivers’ expressed evaluations of other individuals.

We recruited infants from two age groups, 7-month-olds (N=21; 11 female; Mage=7.54 months), and 9-month-olds (N=21; 12 female; Mage=9.87 months). First, in a separate room from the infant, an experimenter walked the parent through a training detailing their role in a puppet show. The experimenter instructed the parent to express positivity toward one of two puppets (e.g., a monkey) while saying, “See” and holding the puppet out for their infant to view, and then saying “I like you!” to the puppet in a positive tone of voice while smiling. The experimenter then instructed the parent to express negativity toward the other puppet (e.g., a pig) while saying, “See” and holding the puppet out for their infant to view, and then saying, “I don’t like you!” using a negative tone of voice while frowning. A pilot study failed to reveal a baseline preference for either of the two puppets. The parent was then asked to practice the puppet show, as if their infant was present, until they were comfortable. If the parent made any errors or displayed unclear affect, the experimenter corrected them and asked them to practice the show once more. After the training, the infant entered the testing room and either sat on their parent’s lap (if both parents were present) or in a strap in booster seat. The experimenter who conducted the training stood out of the infant’s view and handed each puppet to the parent, in turn, for them to present to their infant. We counterbalanced the order in which the parent presented the puppet and the pairing of the puppets to the parents’ expressions. Finally, a second experimenter, blind to which expression was paired to which puppet, offered the infant a choice between the two characters. The experimenter offered the choice up to three times until the infant touched one puppet in a visually guided manner, or until roughly 60 seconds elapsed (Figure 1).

The proportion of infants choosing the parent-favored puppet served as our main dependent measure. We predicted that younger infants (7-month-olds) would preferentially select the individual preferred by their caregiver (see pre-registration: http://aspredicted.org/blind.php?x=d9dn7u). Indeed, 7-month-olds preferentially selected the individual that their caregiver favored, N=16 of 21, p=.027, binomial test, two-tailed. Older infants’ choices did not differ from chance (50%), N=9 of 21, p=.664. A chi-square test revealed that the percentage of infants that chose the parent-favored individual differed significantly between the two age groups, p = .028 (Figure 2).

These findings suggest that infants encode their caregivers’ social preferences from an early age and use this information to form their own social evaluations. Ongoing work is examining whether these preferences are specifically driven by the caregiver relationship by comparing infants’ preferences for a parent-preferred individual to their preferences for an experimenter-preferred individual.

Authors

• Ashley Eliza Jordan, Princeton University
  Presenting Author

• Karen Wynn, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author