To date, there is limited 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 and the longevity of these memories. We predicted that infants would approach objects paired with a positive and avoid objects paired with a negative emotion. Furthermore, we examined the relationships between looking behaviors at encoding and subsequent behaviors during retrieval after a 10-minute delay. Ten- to fourteen- month-old were exposed to a social referencing paradigm with their encoding behaviors recorded on an eye tracker, then after a 10-minute delay infants were presented with the objects and their retrieval 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 between positive and negative conditions such as quicker latency towards the target at encoding resulted in a longer touch duration towards the object during retrieval in the positive condition and longer looking duration towards the target object at encoding resulted in more avoidance behaviors towards the object during retrieval in the negative condition. Results from the study add to our understanding of infants’ memory for emotion and its processes suggesting a relationship encoding and subsequent retrieval behaviors. Key words: memory, infants, emotion, social referencing

The current study assessed the importance of infant detection of contingency and head and eye gaze direction in the emergence of social referencing. Five- to six-month-old infants’ detection of affect-object relations and subsequent manual preferences for objects paired with positive expressions were assessed. In particular, the role of contingency between toys’ movements and an actress’s emotional expressions as well as the role of gaze direction toward the toys’ location were examined. Infants were habituated to alternating films of two toys each paired with an actress’s affective expression (happy and fearful) under contingent or noncontingent and gaze congruent or gaze incongruent conditions. Results indicated that gaze congruence and contingency between toys’ movements and a person’s affective expressions were important for infant perception of affect-object relations. Furthermore, infant perception of the relation between affective expressions and toys translated to their manual preferences for the 3-dimensional toys. Infants who received contingent affective responses to the movements of the toys spent more time touching the toy that was previously paired with the positive expression. These findings demonstrate the role of contingency and gaze direction in the emergence of social referencing in the first half year of life.