Space and rank: infants expect agents in higher position to be socially dominant
Space and rank: infants expect agents in higher position to be socially dominant
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DOI：
10.1098/rspb.2019.1674
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发表时间：
2019-10-02
影响因子：
4.7
通讯作者：
Moriguchi, Yusuke
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Meng, Xianwei;Nakawake, Yo;Moriguchi, Yusuke
社会等级制度存在于整个动物界，包括人类之间。我们的日常互动不可避免地与个体之间的社会支配关系联系在一起。我们如何在心理上表达这些概念？研究表明，成年人和学龄前儿童将社会主导地位表现为垂直空间（即高=主导），这表明社会认知中存在空间主导地位的表征联系。然而，人们对其早期发展知之甚少。在这里，我们提供了实验证据，表明 12 至 16 个月大的婴儿期望处于较高空间位置的智能体比处于较低空间位置的智能体更具社会主导性。当婴儿反复观看同时呈现的高级智能体和低级智能体后，当低级智能体随后在获得奖励对象方面胜过高级智能体时，他们看屏幕的时间会更长，这表明这一结果违反了他们的“高级是主导”的期望。我们首先通过将特工展示在讲台上来操纵特工的位置（实验 1）。然后，我们将代理放在双层支架上，使它们的空间位置直接位于彼此的上方或下方（实验 2），并复制结果（实验 3）。这项研究表明，婴儿期望空间上位置较高的个体在社会上占主导地位，这表明个体发育中空间优势联系的根深蒂固。
Social hierarchies exist throughout the animal kingdom, including among humans. Our daily interactions inevitably retied social dominance relationships between individuals. How do we mentally represent such concepts? Studies show that social dominance is represented as vertical space (i.e. high = dominant) by adults and preschool children, suggesting a space-dominance representational link in social cognition. However, little is known about its early development. Here, we present experimental evidence that 12- to 16-month-old infants expect agents presented in a higher spatial position to be more socially dominant than agents in a lower spatial position. After infants repeatedly watched the higher and lower agents being presented simultaneously, they looked longer at the screen when the lower agent subsequently outcompeted the higher agent in securing a reward object, suggesting that this outcome violated their higher-is-dominant expectation. We first manipulated agents' positions by presenting them on a podium (experiment 1). Then we presented the agents on a double-decker stand to make their spatial positions directly above or below each other (experiment 2), and we replicated the results (experiment 3). This research demonstrates that infants expect spatially higher-positioned agents to be socially dominant, suggesting deep roots of the space-dominance link in ontogeny.