Infant, control thyself: Infants’ integration of multiple social cues to regulate their imitative behavior

•Infants regulated their imitation based on observing social interactions between two adults.•Infants integrated emotional and visual-perceptual cues in order to self-regulate.•Infants’ temperament scores (impulsivity) predicted their imitation regulation.•The findings provide new insight into the r...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognitive development 2014-10, Vol.32, p.46-57
Main Authors: Repacholi, Betty M., Meltzoff, Andrew N., Rowe, Hillary, Toub, Tamara Spiewak
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Child development
Developmental psychology
Emotion
Executive function
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gaze following
Imitation
Newborn. Infant
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social referencing
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Summary:•Infants regulated their imitation based on observing social interactions between two adults.•Infants integrated emotional and visual-perceptual cues in order to self-regulate.•Infants’ temperament scores (impulsivity) predicted their imitation regulation.•The findings provide new insight into the roots of executive functions in infancy. This study investigated 15-month-old infants’ (N=150) ability to self-regulate based on observing a social interaction between two adults. Infants were bystanders to a social exchange in which an Experimenter performed actions on objects and an Emoter expressed anger, as if they were forbidden acts. Next, the Emoter became neutral and her visual access to the infant was experimentally manipulated. The Emoter either: (a) left the room, (b) turned her back, (c) faced the infant but looked down at a magazine, or (d) faced and looked toward the infant. Infants were then presented with the test objects. When the previously angry Emoter was facing them, infants were hesitant to imitate the demonstrated acts in comparison to the other conditions. We hypothesize that infants integrated the emotional and visual-perceptual cues to determine whether the Emoter would get angry at them, and then regulated their behavior accordingly. Temperament was related to infants’ self-regulation – infants with higher impulsivity scores were more likely to perform the forbidden acts. Taken together, these findings provide insight into the roots of executive functions in late infancy.
ISSN:0885-2014
1879-226X
DOI:10.1016/j.cogdev.2014.04.004