Researchers and theorists have stressed the importance of self-produced locomotion for the development of more distal forms of communication such as social referencing but this notion has not been specifically tested. Social referencing research has also been conducted exclusively in the university laboratory. Three studies examined the influence of self-produced locomotion on the development of social referencing and compared social referencing behaviour in familiar and unfamiliar settings. Social referencing was defined as occurring when, following a novel event, infants looked to a familiar adult and used the information provided by the adult to adjust their behaviour towards the event appropriately. In the first study, forty infants, half locomoting and half non-locomoting, were seen in their own homes at either 7-months (10 crawling, l0 not crawling) or 9-months (10 crawling, l0 not crawling). Testing was repeated on all infants 2 months later. Infants were videotaped in each of three maternal availability conditions (mother available; not available; or not interactive) before a remote control toy car moved toward them. Mothers were instructed to give either a positive or negative facial signal when their infant looked at them during this final phase. The infants were responsive to the availability of the mother on a number of dependent measures. Locomoting infants approached their mothers more, played with the toys less, and differed in some aspects of looking behaviour during the availability phases. During the final social referencing phase neither group consistently used the information provided by the mother to change their behaviour. A second study examined a further ten, 9-month-old infants using an identical procedure. The infants were delayed in the onset of self-produced locomotion due to surgical and immobilization procedures prescribed for club foot. This group did not differ from the normal non-crawling 9-month-olds in the availability phases of the study but did look to their mothers more quickly and vocalized less during the social referencing phase. The third study used a similar procedure and identical novel stimulus to examine 20, 11-month-old infants' social referencing behaviour in a laboratory situation. There was a significant difference between the infants who received a positive versus negative message for the contact with the car measures. When they received a negative message, infants tested in the laboratory were less likely to touch the stimulus car and touched it for a shorter time than infants of the same age and tested at home. Mothers of all infants participating in this study completed the Infant Characteristics Questionnaire. None of the infant characteristics predicted which infants would use the social referencing strategy. It is concluded that social referencing is not a strategy used extensively by 7-and 9-month old infants although social looking is common at these ages in response to new events. Locomotion experience has little effect on social referencing. Infants use information from a variety of sources to assess a new situation and 11-month-old infants are more likely to use social referencing as a strategy in an unfamiliar setting. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed in relation to the cognitive requirements of preverbal and emotional communication and the relative importance of social influences for interpreting novel events.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:AUCKLAND/oai:researchspace.auckland.ac.nz:2292/2050 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | McComas, Katherine Joan |
| Contributors | Dr. Jeff Field |
| Publisher | ResearchSpace@Auckland |
| Source Sets | University of Auckland |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Scanned from print thesis |
| Rights | Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated., http://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm, Copyright: The author |
| Relation | PhD Thesis - University of Auckland, UoA114448 |
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