A Research On Infants' Sensitivity To Social Information During Social Referencing Situation

Social referencing is one of the most important psychological capacities during individual's early development. It also helps individual learn experience and adaptive behavior in the environment. By using novel food paradigm, the present study aims to investigate the 12-month-old, 18-month-old and 24-month-old infants' sensitivity to social information within social referencing context.The dissertation consists of three studies:In the first study, the author examined two hypotheses about the behavior mechanism of infants' social referencing by means of novel food paradigm.The two hypotheses are social cognitive hypothesis and emotion contagion hypothesis.The result showed that when negative emotional message was delievered, there would be an interaction between age variable and stimulus type variable. The approach scores of 24-month-old infant on target stimulus are significantly different from control stimulus. This implys the 24-month-old infants' reaction toward target stimulus is based on their cognitive appraisal of emotional message rather than emotion contagion.Study 2 focused on the 12-month-old and 24-month-old infant's sensitivity to 'expert's message. The result showed that under negative emotion condition, there existed an interaction between age variable and information source variable. The 24-month-old infant would behave according to the quality of expert's message. However, the 12-month-old infant did not react in such a way.The goal of study 3 was to explore the developmental difference of cognitve sensitivity to expert's message between 18-month-old and 24-month-old. The result showed that when the message delivered by expert was contrary to the non-experts' message, the 24-month-old infants tended to react according to expert's message. On the contrary, the 18-month-old infants had no preference of expert's message or non-expert's message.In sum, the present study showed that until 2 years old, infant showed enough sensitivity to social information in certain context. Before that time, young infants' referecing behavior may be mainly driven by emtion contagion. This study enriched our understanding about social referencing behavior and the relationship between the social referencing and the development of social cognition during infancy.