Social referencing and mood modification in 1-year-olds

doi:10.1016/S0163-6383(97)90023-0

Infant Behavior and Development

Volume 20, Issue 2, April–June 1997, Pages 209-217

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(97)90023-0 Get rights and content

Abstract

There has been a discussion in the literature about the processes involved in infant behavior regulation. In this study, social referencing and mood modification were contrasted by looking for specificity in infant behavior regulation following different types of affective messages about a stimulus toy. Forty-eight 1-year-olds were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 maternal message conditions. In 2 conditions, the mothers conveyed a specific positive or negative message through both the facial and vocal channels. In 2 other conditions, the mothers conveyed a general positive or negative message through only the facial channel. For social referencing to be considered, the infant's behavior had to be changed with regard to the toy and not to anything else. The mood modification hypothesis required the behavioral change to consist of a general alteration of reactions to many aspects of the environment. The results were interpreted as showing that specific messages give rise to social referencing, whereas general messages give rise to mood modification. It was clear that vocal signals are important in infant behavior regulation as early as the end of the first year.

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Cited by (38)

Social Referencing
2020, Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development
Social referencing is a process where one looks toward another person's reactions to a novel or uncertain event or object to obtain information about how to appraise and respond to the situation. There may be variations in the valence of the information (positive/negative), the modalities through which the information is conveyed (visual/auditory), and when the information is conveyed (solicited/unsolicited), with negative multimodal messages having the strongest impact on young children. Social referencing cannot be explained by attachment or mood modification but is influenced by others' expertise and contingency of responding. Social referencing is present in many animal species and can be impaired in atypically developing children.
Fourteen-month-olds selectively search for and use information depending on the familiarity of the informant in both laboratory and home contexts
2018, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Infants are selective in their learning from others. However, there is only very limited research on the possible factors that shape this selectivity, especially when it comes to the impact of infants’ familiarity with the informant and the context. The current study investigated whether 14-month-olds preferred to receive and use information provided by an unfamiliar informant (experimenter) compared with a familiar informant (parent) and whether this pattern depended on the context (home vs. laboratory). We tested infants either in the laboratory (n = 67) or in their home (n = 70). When both informants presented a novel object with positive or negative emotions, we measured infants’ gaze behavior as an indicator for information search. When infants acted on the novel object themselves, we measured their exploratory behavior as an indicator of information use. Results revealed no effect of context on infants’ information search and use. Rather, we found that the familiarity of informant had distinct effects on infant attention and object exploration. Namely, infants looked longer at the unfamiliar informant across contexts, but they explored more when the familiar informant presented the object compared with when the unfamiliar informant did so. Thus, during information search, 14-month-olds paid most attention to an unfamiliar source of information. However, participants explored the objects more when they came from a familiar source than when they came from an unfamiliar one. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.
Effects of adults’ contingent responding on infants’ behavior in ambiguous situations
2017, Infant Behavior and Development
Citation Excerpt :
Hence, both information seeking and behavior regulation constitute a social referencing process (e.g., Walden & Kim, 2005). When an adult has reacted positively towards a novel object, e.g., with smiles, positive utterances (Stenberg & Hagekull, 1997), infants have shown approach behaviors towards the object, while adult’s negative reactions led to avoidance behaviors (e.g., Stenberg & Hagekull, 1997; Walden & Baxter, 1989). Striano et al. (2006) examined selective looking by 12- and 13-month-old infants to a temporally contingent adult.
We examined the effect of adults’ contingency in responding to infants’ behavior in an ambiguous situation in two experiments. In Experiment 1, forty-four 12-month-old infants were exposed to an ambiguous toy. An unfamiliar adult responded either contingently or non-contingently to the infant’s bids and then presented the toy and provided positive information. During toy presentation, infants in the non-contingent condition looked less at the experimenter than infants in the contingent condition. In a concluding free-play situation infants in the non-contingent condition played less and tended to touch the toy less. In Experiment 2 (forty-four 12-month-old infants), the parent either responded promptly or with a delay each time the infant made contact initiatives and then presented an ambiguous toy and delivered the positive information. The infants in the non-contingent condition tended to look less at the parent during toy presentation and also tended to play less with the toy during the concluding free-play situation. The findings show that adults’ contingency in responding influences infants’ behavior in ambiguous situations.
Social Referencing during Infancy and Early Childhood across Cultures
2015, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Second Edition
The article reviews the state of knowledge on infants' social referencing. The developmental course of social referencing throughout infancy is described, as well as current debates on the motivation behind social referencing. Variation in social referencing depending on the type or information, information source, and characteristics of the infant are described. Finally, cultural variation and the presence of social referencing in nonhumans are discussed.
An examination of referential and affect specificity with five emotions in infancy
2014, Infant Behavior and Development
Referential specificity and affect specificity were examined in 12- to 14-month-olds (n = 20), and 16- to 18-month-olds (n = 20). Infants were presented with a televised social referencing paradigm involving an actress who emoted a simple descriptive message to one of two objects appearing on the video. The actress altered her affective message using a neutral baseline first, followed by 5 discrete emotions (anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise). Infants were given 30 s to interact with the objects after watching the affective episode. Older infants demonstrated referential and affect specificity, as evidenced by their differential treatment of the target and distracter toy in response to messages of anger, fear, surprise, and happiness. In contrast, the younger infants did not show evidence of either referential or affect specificity, as evidenced by the lack of differentiation in their treatment of the target and distracter toy in response to positive and negative emotional messages across all emotional episodes.
Social referencing: Water rescue trained dogs are less affected than pet dogs by the stranger's message
2013, Applied Animal Behaviour Science
Citation Excerpt :
A number of studies have investigated whether in infants the two different components of social referencing, namely referential looking and behavioural regulation, occur equally when the emotional message towards the potentially scary stimulus is conveyed by a stranger or a familiar person (Klinnert et al., 1983; Camas and Sachs, 1991; Stenberg and Hagekull, 2007). Results show that in infants’ referential looking occurs both with the mother and a stranger acting as the informant (Klinnert et al., 1983; Camas and Sachs, 1991; Stenberg and Hagekull, 1997; Zarbatany and Lamb, 1985) and that behavioural regulation (based on the stranger's message) can occur also when the stranger is the informant, but only if the mother is present during the test. So far two studies have investigated social referencing in dog–human interactions (Merola et al., 2012a,b), showing that dogs engage in communication with humans not only when unable to reach/obtain a desired object (Miklósi et al., 2000, 2003), but potentially also to gather information about an unfamiliar situation/object (i.e. information gathering).
Recent studies provide evidence of social referencing in dog–human interactions indicating that dogs use the emotional information provided by a human informant about a novel object/stimulus to guide their own behaviour towards it. Water rescue training is a type of educational activity aimed at creating human–dog dyads specialized in rescuing people who are drowning. A central aspect of the training programme is to strengthen the dog-owner bond whilst at the same time engendering in dogs a strong positive attitude towards strangers. In this study 11 water rescue dogs with the SICS Water Rescue Certificate^® (Water rescue trained group) were tested and compared with 11 pet dogs (Pet group) of the same breed in a Social referencing paradigm, to assess the potential influence of the specific training received by water rescue dogs on referential looking and behavioural regulation with a stranger acting as the informant. Almost all pet and water rescue trained dogs showed referential looking towards the stranger, however only pet dogs approached the object more, following the stranger's positive emotional message (p = 0.03). Results provide further evidence that Social Referencing occurs in dogs even when the human informant is an unfamiliar person. Furthermore, they suggest that the specific training experience of water rescue trained dogs affected their reaction to the stranger's message, reducing their inclination to follow it when compared to pet dogs.

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Social referencing and mood modification in 1-year-olds

Abstract

Infant Behavior and Development

Infant Behavior and Development

Infant Behavior and Development

Infant Behavior and Development

Infant Behavior and Development

Patterns of attachment

The importance of affective communication in social referencing: A comentary on Feinman

Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales

Educational and Psychological Measurement

Unmasking the face

Social referencing research

Social referencing in infancy

Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

Emotional expression, social referencing, and preparedness for learning in infancy-Mother knows best, but sometimes I know better

Bringing babies back into the social world

What do we know and where shall we go?

Social referencing at ten months: A second-order effect on infants' responses to strangers

Child Development