Reaching Experience Increases Face Preference in 3-month-old Infants

2011

The developing infant learns about the physical and the social world by engaging with objects and people. In the study reported here, we investigated the relationship between infants' interactions with the physical and the social world. Three-month-old infants were trained for two weeks and experienced either actively manipulating objects themselves or passively having objects touched to their hands. Following active or passive experiences, spontaneous orienting towards facing and objects was compared between the trained groups and the untrained 3-and 5-month olds. It is known that the onset of reaching behavior increases infants' interest in objects. However, we report that active, self-produced reaching experiences increase infants' spontaneous orienting towards faces, while passive experiences do not affect orienting behavior. Regression analyses provide evidence for a link between manual engagement and the development of orienting towards faces. Implications of orienting towards faces for the development or triadic interactions, joint attention, and social cognition in general are discussed.

Peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals Published/In Press

Consumers/Families, Professionals, Students

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