Infant Social Referencing Behavior After a Tenminute Delay

SMSU Event Center BC

To date, there are few published research that examined the extent to which infants can retain emotion information acquired in a social referencing encounter. The purpose of this study was to examine infants’ memory process for emotion acquired in a social referencing paradigm. We predicted that infants would approach objects paired with a positive and avoid objects paired with a negative. Furthermore, we predicted there is an association between looking behaviors at encoding and subsequent behaviors during retrieval. Ten- to fourteen- month-old were initially exposed to a social referencing paradigm and their encoding behaviors were recorded on an eye tracker, then after a 10-minute delay infants were reexposed to the event and their overt behaviors towards each object were recorded. There were no significant differences in encoding and retrieval behaviors between emotion conditions. However, there were significant correlations between encoding and retrieval behaviors. Specifically, infants touched fewer and spent less time with the target object in the positive condition and approached the target paired with a negative. Results from the study will add to our understanding of infants’ memory for emotion and its processes. Key words: memory, infants, social referencing.