Week 5-The Social World Of Infants

Question 1

What are the 5 key phases of social development?

Answer 1

1. Birth/1 month: A basic attraction to people
2. 2 months: Core relatedness
3. 5 months: Topic-based relatedness
4. 9-10 months: Connected-up relatedness
5. 18 months: Cooperative relatedness

Question 2

Babies’ basic attraction to people: Explain how the newborn’s social readiness was tested

Answer 2

Goren, Sarty, and Wu (1975):
– 40 newborns (median age: 9 minutes)
– greater visual preference (following) towards face-like stimuli on white paddle, compared to scrambled or blank ones. (showing basic attraction+ready to engage with eyes)

Question 3

What was found in a newborn’s social readiness in relation to eyes?

Answer 3

Babies have attraction for faces that are ready to engage:
– with eyes open rather than closed (Batki, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Connellan & Ahluwalia, 2000)
– with eyes forward rather than sideways (Farroni, Csibra, Simion & Johnson, 2002)
-overall showing babies have sensitivity for faces

Question 4

What do infants show sensitivity to in addition to faces?

Answer 4

■ attraction for voices especially familiar (Mehler, 1978; de Casper, 1980)
– First recognition and reactions to maternal voice: 3rd trimester of
pregnancy! (Jardri et al., 2012)
■ attraction for mother’s smell (Cernoch, 1985)

Question 5

Adult responses to infant faces:
a basic attraction. Explain the Baby Schema (Lorenz, 1943)

Answer 5

The typical facial configuration of infants:
* Big, round head
* High forehead
* Big eyes
* Chubby cheeks
* Small nose and mouth

Question 6

What are adult responses to infant faces: a basic attraction

Answer 6

–Specific brain responses to ‘baby’ faces motivating caretaking behaviour (Glocker et al., 2008; Kringlebach et al., 2008; Parsons et al., 2013)
–This is even stronger with own infant (Swain, 2008)

Question 7

How do newborns communicate as seen in Meltzoff & Moore, 1977?

Answer 7

-Babies engage in neonatal imitation
-e.g. adults open mouth=infants open mouth/adult protrude their tongue=babies protrude their tongue
-this is also seen in baby animals (Ferrari et al., 2006)

Question 8

Define Motherese aka infant directed speech

Answer 8

-Speech to very young children (c. 16 months and younger) (Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman,1977)
Characterised by:
– exaggerated intonation (rise/fall of voice)/melody
– simple often diminutive (very small vocab)
– repetition

Question 9

Give 3 key points about Motherese

Answer 9

-Infants show preference towards IDS, compared to adult-directed speech (Fernald, 1985, Cooper & Aslin, 1990).
-It has similar properties across cultural contexts (Werker, Pegg, & McLeod, 1994).
-Also found in primates (Ferrari, Paukner, Ionica, & Suomi, 2009).

Question 10

What occurs in the 1st phase: birth/1 month?

Answer 10

-A basic, fundamental, connection ensuring:
– Parents - are sympathetic and emotionally involved
– Infants - have a strong motivation to engage

allows a close connection to establish laying the foundations for social communication.

Question 11

Define core relatedness

Answer 11

the encounter where a child reaches out to a person communicatively with the goal to connect

Question 12

How is core relatedness/primary intersubjectivity seen in 2-4 month-olds?

Answer 12

-Very social and emotionally intimate one-to-one engagements occurring
-parents notice important change in infants (become ‘really human’/recognised person in infant)

Question 13

What can infants do from 6-8 weeks?

Answer 13

– Hold eye contact
– Vocalise
– Smile
– Show ‘Pre-speech’ (mouth openings, lip/tongue protrusions)

Question 14

What did Lavelli & Fogel, 2002 find in the development of face-to-face contact in the first three months?

Answer 14

by two months reached peak eye contact/mutual gaze duration

Question 15

Explain the Still Face Experiment (Tronick et al., 1978)

Answer 15

-Infants fussy with what they want from their caregivers (want a partner present in social exchanges)
-Mum asked to be expressionless/quiet for a few minutes=puzzled infant
-Infant tries to communicate to bid for a response but eventually gives up
-Shows infants want active interactive partners

Question 16

What were the effects of non-contingency: the Double Video Experiment (Murray & Trevarthen, 1985)

Answer 16

-interaction between baby/mum through a monitoring camera set
-live footage=went fine interaction wise
-non-contingent/replay=unhappy infants showing gradual withdrawal
-shows contingency (back and forth) is important for infants who are sensitive to the temporal contingency of maternal responses

Question 17

Maternal Responses: define mirroring

Answer 17

■ Mothers imitate/match infant’s behaviour
■ Response is attuned to the form, intensity and affective quality
of infant behaviour

Question 18

Maternal Responses: define
marking (positive or neutral)

Answer 18

■ Mother doesn’t mirror infant behaviour (marks/responds to a behaviour/singles it out)
■ Affective quality/intensity of response is well-attuned

Question 19

What are negative responses seen in marking?

Answer 19

■ Mis-attuned responses e.g., overshoots/undershoots
the intensity of infant behaviour e.g., infant smiles=mum just lightly smiles or doesn’t
■ Negating responses e.g., rejecting, mocking

Question 20

True or false: on infants social behaviours, adults tend to use mirroring (imitation) or positive marking (Murray et al. 2016)

Answer 20

True

Question 21

What is the functional architecture of mother-infant communication(Murray et al., 2016)?

Answer 21

■ Mirroring and Positive Marking
promotes the development of
infant social behaviour
-Positive Marking has a
generalised + effect on
infant behaviour, unspecific
to social expressiveness
-Maternal mirroring has a
specific effect on infant social
behaviour and is its
strongest promoter

Question 22

Summarise the phase 2-4-month-olds are usually at

Answer 22

– highly motivated to engage socially with others and become sophisticated social partners
– has a rich repertoire of gestures and vocal and facial expressions
– is remarkably sensitive to the quality of his partner’s engagement

Question 23

Explain how topic-based relatedness occurs in infants

Answer 23

■ Infants: Improvements in vision and grasping expand the field of interest.Decline in mutual eye contact as interested in other things (Lavelli & Fogel, 2002; Legerstee, Pomerleau, Malcuit, & Feider, 1987)
■ Parents: to engage the infant and share experience, they intuitively adjust via body games, object and triadic play(3 things playing together), showing, and using ‘ostensive marking’ (pointing out)
■ Interactions: go from being purely about communication to being about a ‘third’ topic. (TBR=something else gets brought into the equation socially)

Question 24

What type of body games could be played?

Answer 24

tickling (baby smiles at climax of the tickle usually)

Question 25

What games with rules could be used?

Answer 25

‘stand and stretch’ (used whilst changing baby e.g.) =shared climax (fun for baby/job done for mum)

Question 26

How is ‘Ostensive marking’ (Gergely, 2007) used?

Answer 26

-establishing the topic with eye contact, flash brow and smile
-then showing and explaining

Question 27

What triadic games could be played?

Answer 27

peek-a-boo (e.g., mum holds baby, dad behind door i.e. triadic/three) =imminent climax anticipated together which then happens

Question 28

Why is topic-based relatedness:
a necessary transitional phase?

Answer 28

-Infants acquire elaborate social skills, and their experience starts leaving ‘core relatedness’ boundaries
-Parents intuitively adjust their parenting, including ‘third’
shared objects of interest in their social engagements.
BUT link between his partner, the topic and his own experience still not directly acknowledged
E.g., to get his teddy when it is out of reach
– stretch towards
– grunt
– show desire
– But NOT look to partner to fetch it

Question 29

How does pointing develop in infants?

Answer 29

-9 months, infants follow others’ pointing gestures
-9-14 months (median onset 11 months), infants begin to point themselves with arm extended,
index finger curled in+separate from other fingers
-hard to detect when this first happens though so for parents to detect a pointing gesture, hand shape and gaze alternation might be important

Question 30

Give an example of connected-up relatedness: The infant spots his toy tractor

Answer 30

-spots toy tractor
-he points towards it
-he signals to his mum to get it (realising they can be connected in interaction i.e.,C-UR)
-shared climax

Question 31

What are other signs of connected-up relatedness?

Answer 31

Gaze following (Moore, 2008)
-infants begin to follow other people’s line of regard (Scaife & Bruner, 1975) affected by factors such as:
Whether the person’s head is moving or just their eyes
(Brooks & Meltzoff, 2005)
How far away and how far to the side the gaze target object is
(Butterworth, 1998)
-Gaze following is a good predictor of the onset of the pointing
gesture, which in turn predicts vocabulary development (Tomasello, 2008)

Question 32

Explain reciprocal play, and following suggestions
(Hubley and Trevarthen, 1979; Trevarthen and Hubley, 1978) in connected-up relatedness

Answer 32

RP=peek-a-boo (mum does it then infant wants to give it a go=shared climax)
OS=infant likes ‘giving’ games, dad suggests passing it to grandma which infant follows the suggestion

Question 33

Give an example of sharing interests (Liszkowski, Carpenter, Henning, Striano, & Tomasello,
2004) in connected-up relatedness

Answer 33

-Infant points to monkey on poster
and makes monkey call
-Mother shares interest
and joins in monkey call
-The joy of shared interest

Question 34

Summarise how secondary intersubjectivity develops in infants

Answer 34

-they have considerable physical mastery of the environment
(reaching and grabbing, manipulating objects, and
often crawling).
–building on the fundamental capacity for communication,
and supported in his interactions with others, they learn to grasp others’ engagement with the
environment, and coordinate this with their own experiences.

Question 35

How do infants demonstrate cooperative relatedness
and understanding of others?

Answer 35

-18-24 months have an impressive understanding of others’
experience (topics they start to think about, not just as part of interactions), and a more objective take on
own experience.
-largely intuitive understanding predicting later Theory of Mind abilities (3-4 years)(Thoermer, Sodian, Vuori, Perst, Kristen, 2012)

Question 36

An example of cooperative relatedness: playful manipulation (teasing Reddy, 2010)

Answer 36

-Preparing for the tease
-Parent colludes
-Mock shock
-Infant enjoying the trick

Question 37

Give an example of understanding others’ experience(Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997): cooperative relatedness

Answer 37

-Mother shows she likes food that the infant hates
-When mother asks, baby selects
mother’s, not own, preferred food

Question 38

True or false: Warneken & Tomasello (2006) demonstrated that 18-month-olds help others in simple tasks

Answer 38

True

Question 39

How can infants understand their own experience in cooperative relatedness?

Answer 39

Mirror recognition (Lewis & Ramsay, 2004)

Question 40

Give examples of how Intuitive parenting can promote the shift to cooperation and understanding

Answer 40

-Pretend play (Youngblade & Dunn, 1995; Lillard & Witherington, 2004)
-Talking about mental states and reasoning (Dunn, Brown, & Beardsall, 1991)
-Sibling conflict (Youngbalde & Dunn, 1995)

Question 41

Give an example of how sharing common goals develops an infants cooperative relatedness

Answer 41

-cooperation in a project
-‘cooperative compliance’ fosters positive social behaviour
-satisfaction
-and a sense of pride in doing something with and for others