Do 12-month-old infants maintain expectations of contingent or non-contingent responding based on prior experiences with unfamiliar and familiar adults?
Gunilla Stenberg | Uppsala University
The current study examined whether infants use previous encounters for maintaining expectations for adults’
contingent responding. An unfamiliar adult responded contingently or non-contingently to infant signaling during an initial play
situation and 10 min later presented an ambiguous toy while providing positive information (Experiment 1; forty-two
12-month-olds). The infants in the contingent group looked more at the adult during toy presentation and played more with the toy
during the concluding free-play situation than the infants in the non-contingent group. When the parent had responded contingently
or non-contingently to infant bids (Experiment 2; forty 12-month-olds), the infants in the contingent group tended to look more at
the parent and tended to play more with the toy than did the infants in the non-contingent group. The results indicate that from
just a brief exposure, infants form expectations about adults’ responsiveness and maintain these expectations of
contingent/non-contingent responding from one situation to another.
Keywords: infants, contingency, social referencing, unfamiliar adult, familiar adult
Article outline
- Experiment 1
- Method
- Participants
- Situations and experimental conditions
- Setup and materials
- Design and procedure
- Contingency situation
- Ten-minute break
- Toy exposure situation
- Free-play situation
- Coding and reliability
- Manipulation checks
- Contingency situation
- Toy exposure situation
- Infant behaviors
- Contingency situation
- Toy exposure situation
- Free-play situation
- Results
- Toy exposure situation
- Free-play situation
- Discussion
- Experiment 2
- Method
- Participants
- Situations and experimental conditions
- Setup and materials
- Design and procedure
- Training phase
- Free-play situation
- Coding and reliability
- Contingency situation
- Toy exposure situation
- Infant behaviors
- Contingency situation
- Toy exposure situation
- Free-play situation
- Results
- Toy exposure situation
- Free-play situation
- Discussion
- General discussion
- Acknowledgements
-
References
Published online: 17 September 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18044.ste
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18044.ste
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