Infant Memory for Emotion Experienced in a Social Referencing Paradigm

Event Center BC

Through social referencing, infants are able to use others’ emotions to guide their behavior during a novel situation. Specifically, infants tend to avoid objects receiving negative emotion, and approach those receiving positive emotion. Although social referencing is a powerful tool to guide future behavior, few investigations have examined long-term changes in behavior (i.e., memory for emotion learned in social referencing experience). There is evidence that 11-month-old infants do show retention after a short delay (i.e., 3 minutes) but may not after a 1-hour delay (Hertenstein & Campos, 2004). We extend this research, examining 10-14-month-olds’ visual and overt behaviors for evidence of memory for emotion information acquired in a social referencing experience. We hypothesize approach/avoid behavior (for positive/ negative emotion, respectively) will be stronger at the shorter delay. Participants are seated in front of a Tobii T60XL eye tracker and shown pre-recorded video clips of an experimenter displaying facial and verbal emotion toward one of two novel objects (Encoding Phase). After a delay (immediate or 10- minute, between subjects), the two objects from each trial are offered to the participant to allow her/him to interact with the objects (Retrieval Phase). Preliminary results (n = 3) indicate that infants pay greater attention and approach an object paired with a negative emotion than positive or neutral. Findings from this study will further expand our understanding of infants’ memory process for emotion experienced during a social referencing experience.