|
Discrimination learning processes
in infancy. Martha Pelaez Florida International University, USA Social referencing refers to the infant's use of facial emotional expressions of others to determine how to respond in ambiguous or unknown si uations (Campos, 1983; Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983; Hornik, Rinsenhoover, & Gunnar, 1987). In this presentation it argued that infant social referencing responses result from a discrimination-learning process. The research reported shows that in a context of ambiguity maternal facial expressions can be learned by the infant as cues by differentially conditioning them to positive and aversive stimulus events. Two experiments will be reported. In the first experiment, using a counterbalanced group design, 18 6- to 9-month-old infants were conditioned to respond to originally meaningless ambiguous cues (hand-to-face signals) provided by their mothers in context were ambiguous objects were presented through a puppet theater. In the second experiment, 18 4- to 5-month old infants were trained differentially to reach for an ambiguous object following joyful maternal emotional expressions/cues and not to reach following fearful maternal expressions/cues using a repeated-measures single subject design. After several conditioning sessions, all infants learned to reach differentially following presentations of joyful and fearful cues. In a subsequent extinction (reversal) phase, the pleasant and aversive contingencies on reaching for the ambiguous object were discontinued producing an extinction effect. However, in the last phase of this experiment the infants were retrained to respond differentially to the two maternal facial expressions of emotion. The results provide the bases for the hypothesis that infant social referencing results from operant contingency-based learning. Keywords: discrimination learning, infant social referencing |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|