Longitudinal Study of Social Referencing

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9410573 Walden ABSTRACT Past research has revealed that infants are likely to reference the emotional and instrumental behavior of caregivers and other significant persons and to be influenced by their behavior. This phenomenon of social referencing will be examined in two overlapping short-term longitudinal studies which will follow the individual development of social referencing during the period of initial establishment during infancy (cohort 1) and during the subsequent development later in the toddler period (cohort 2); the studies overlap at the 12- and 18-month assessments. Each study includes four occasions of observation and at each occasion, each parent-child dyad is exposed to at least three different stimulus events that permit social referencing to occur. This design allows for examination of individual consistency in behavior across stimulus events at a single point in development and stability in behavior across development. In order to link the development of social referencing to other related developmental milestones, measures of physical development, communication development, and social development are obtained and links with social referencing are examined. People who are faced with situations of uncertainty, in which they don't know what to do, are influenced by other persons' interpretations of the situation. Recent research has provided evidence that even young infants, when confronted with uncertainty, engage in social referencing of others. When infants encounter situations that seem potentially threatening, they often check their parents' emotional reactions before deciding how to behave. The process of using the emotional expressions of other people to make sense of ambiguous situations is called social referencing. This important strategy for interpreting new or mystifying events and figuring out how to respond to them is an important process by which children and adults are socialized int o thinking and feeling in ways that are consensually accepted in a society. This project focuses on the very early development of social referencing in infants. Two overlapping short-term longitudinal studies will follow the individual development of social referencing during the period of initial establishment during infancy and during the subsequent development later in the toddler period. The research design allows for examination of individual consistency in social referencing behavior across stimulus events at a single point in development and stability in behavior across development. In order to link the development of social referencing to other related developmental milestones, its associations with physical development, communication development, and social development will be examined. This study will provide information about the early development of one important process of social influence by which young children are socialized to adopt the behavior and the affect of those in their environment. ***