Early Representations of Caregiver Relationships and Consequences for Social Cognition

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

The relationships between caregivers and their children have long been thought to be foundational for the development of social cognition (e.g. Ainsworth et al. 1974; Bowlby and Ainsworth 2013; Hrdy 2001). However, little is known about the cognitive representation of these relationships. In three talks we provide evidence that infants and children represent these relationships and incorporate this information into their behavior. The first presentation finds that younger infants (7-month-olds) but not older babies (9-month-olds) preferentially reach for individuals whom their caregivers favor, instead of disfavor. The second presentation provides evidence that 12-month-olds see the affiliates of their caregivers as more relevant to them than strangers. Infants reached more for the affiliates of their caregivers, but did not reach more for the affiliates of other infant’s caregivers. They also associated the affiliates of their caregivers with friendly voices that used the baby’s name, but did not associate the affiliates of other caregivers with this friendly voice. The third presentation provides evidence that children are less able to think about different people’s perspectives when they are playing a game with their caregivers compared to when they are playing with an experimenter. The effects are weaker when the manipulation is between an experimenter from their ingroup compared to an experimenter from their outgroup. Together these studies are some of the first to show that representations of caregiver relationships appear early on and affect social behaviors.

Sub Unit

• Social Relationships

Chair

• Ashley J Thomas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Discussant

• Hyowon Gweon, Stanford University

Individual Presentations

• Mother knows best: Young infants prefer individuals whom their caregivers favor - Presenting Author: Ashley Eliza Jordan, Princeton University; Non-Presenting Author: Karen Wynn, Yale University

• Expanding Social Circles: Infants see the affiliates of their caregivers as more relevant to them than others. - Presenting Author: Ashley J Thomas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Non-Presenting Author: Rebecca Saxe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth S. Spelke, Harvard University

• Shared Social Groups or Shared Experiences? The effect of similarity on children's perspective taking. - Presenting Author: Laura Anderson, Victoria University of Wellington; Non-Presenting Author: Zoe Liberman, University of California - Santa Barbara; Non-Presenting Author: Alia Martin