The effect of context and age on social referencing.

The present study investigated social referencing in 2 settings, familiar child-care centers and an unfamiliar university laboratory. 48 children from 6 to 40 months, divided into 3 age groups (6-12, 13-23, and 24-40 months), participated with 1 parent. Looking at parents varied with age and setting. Younger children looked more often when parents expressed positive reactions, whereas middle children looked more at fearful expressions, and the oldest children looked equally at positive and fearful expressions. Children looked at their parents sooner and were more involved with parents in the child-care setting. Behavioral regulation--less play with the fearful-message than the positive-message toy--was observed in both settings. Affect was not influenced by setting and showed regulation only for the oldest children. These results indicate that some effects of social referencing, such as behavior regulation, may be generalizable across some settings, but that parent proximity and looking at parents are sensitive to the context in which referencing occurs.

[1]  Megan R. Gunnar,et al.  The effects of maternal positive, neutral and negative affective communications on infant responses to new toys , 1987 .

[2]  J. Kagan,et al.  Separation Protest in Infants in Home and Laboratory , 1975 .

[3]  M. Klinnert,et al.  The regulation of infant behavior by maternal facial expression , 1984 .

[4]  P. Meehl.  Theoretical risks and tabular asterisks: Sir Karl, Sir Ronald, and the slow progress of soft psychology. , 1978 .

[5]  S. J. Carr,et al.  Mother-infant attachment: the importance of the mother's visual field. , 1975, Child development.

[6]  A. Ragozin.  Attachment behavior of day-care children: naturalistic and laboratory observations. , 1980, Child development.

[7]  T. Walden,et al.  The development of social referencing. , 1988, Child development.

[8]  A descriptive analysis of infant social referencing. , 1988 .

[9]  E. Hock,et al.  The effects of experimental context and experiential background on infants' behavior toward their mothers and a stranger. , 1976 .

[10]  K. Skarin.  Cognitive and contextual determinants of stranger fear in six- and eleven-month-old infants. , 1977, Child development.

[11]  J. Belsky.  Mother-infant interaction at home and in the laboratory: a comparative study. , 1980, The Journal of genetic psychology.

[12]  William J. McGuire,et al.  A Contextualist Theory of Knowledge: Its Implications for Innovation and Reform in Psychological Research* , 1983 .

[13]  B. Tabachnick,et al.  Using Multivariate Statistics , 1983 .

[14]  S. Feinman,et al.  Social Referencing in Infancy. , 1982 .

[15]  M. Hoffman,et al.  Review of Child Development Research , 1966 .

[16]  M. H. Parry.  INFANTS' RESPONSES TO NOVELTY IN FAMILIAR AND UNFAMILIAR SETTINGS , 1972 .

[17]  Mary D. Salter Ainsworth,et al.  14. The Development of Infant-Mother Attachment , 1982 .

[18]  R. Emde,et al.  Mother's presence is not enough: Effect of emotional availability on infant exploration. , 1981 .

[19]  William J. Broad.  Lost in Thought. , 1978 .

[20]  S. Feinman,et al.  Social referencing at ten months: a second-order effect on infants' responses to strangers. , 1983, Child development.

[21]  J. Campos,et al.  The Importance of Affective Communication in Social Referencing: A Commentary on Feinman. , 1983 .

[22]  Jacob Cohen.  A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales , 1960 .

[23]  G. Fein.  Children's Sensitivity to Social Contexts at 18 Months of Age. , 1975 .

[24]  M. Blank,et al.  Situational specificity of behavior in young children. , 1975 .

[25]  J. Campos,et al.  Maternal emotional signaling: Its effect on the visual cliff behavior of 1-year-olds. , 1985 .