Processes of Social Referencing

婴幼儿是活跃的信息处理者，他们寻求的信息可以用来决定在各种情况下如何表现，特别是那些新奇的或有压力的情况。即使是年幼的孩子也学会注意的一个信息来源是其他人的行为，特别是当事件发生时的情绪反应。也就是说，其他人的反应是关于世界上的危险和机会的重要信息来源。在生命的第一年结束时，婴儿注意到他们的行为，并在一定程度上基于其他人传达给他们的反应。这一系列研究将调查婴儿和幼儿的社会参照过程及其发展。社会参照是指使用他人对某一事件的解释作为形成自己对该事件含义的解释的基础，并作为随后对该事件作出反应的基础。具体地说，这个研究项目将跟进我在之前的工作中获得的发现，这些发现表明，一些儿童在父母情感交流的反应中没有表现出行为规范；而且这种影响与父母的偶然性有关，这是信息时间上的一个问题。偶然性的影响被认为是通过婴儿注意来实现的，非偶然性信息发生在非最佳的注意状态下，将信息与预期的指称对象联系起来。项目将1)调查婴儿注意力的发展，并将社交参照结果与在最佳和非最佳注意状态下收到的信息联系起来，2)通过实验操纵父母信息的发生，使其发生在最佳和非最佳注意状态，3)研究婴儿在收到父母信息之前和过程中的情感对社会参照结果的贡献。这些项目将有助于我们理解作为社会参照基础的过程，并促进或抑制社会影响的传播，即社会影响从一个人向另一个人的传播。因此，他们将增加我们的知识，了解这种重要的社会信息是如何传达给非常年幼的儿童并被他们在处理事件时使用的。

Infants and young children are active information processors and they seek information that they can use in deciding how to behave in a variety of situations, particularly those that are novel or stressful. One source of information to which even young children learn to pay attention is the behavior of other people, particularly emotional reactions to events as they occur. That is, other people's reactions are an important source of information about hazards and opportunities in the world. By the end of the first year of life infants notice and base their behavior partly on reactions communicated to them by other people. This series of studies will investigate processes of social referencing and their development in infants and young children. Social referencing refers to the use of another's interpretation of an event as basis for forming one's own interpretation of the meaning of that event and as a basis for subsequent responses to that event. Specifically, this program of research will follow-up findings obtained in my previous work which indicated that some children did not show behavior regulation in response to parental affective communications; and that this effect was associated with parental contingency, an issue in the timing of information. The effect of contingency is proposed to operate via infant attention, with noncontingent messages occurring in nonoptimal state of attention with regard to linking the message with the intended referent. Projects will 1) investigate the development of infant attention and link social referencing outcomes with messages received in optimal and nonoptimal state of attention, 2) experimentally manipulate the occurrence of parental messages to occur in optimal and nonoptimal state of attention, and 3) investigate the contribution of infant affect prior to and during receipt of parental messages to social referencing outcomes. These projects will contribute to our understanding of processes that underlie social referencing and facilitate or inhibit the transmission of social influence the transmission of social influence from one person to another. Thus, they will add to our knowledge of how this significant form of social information is communicated to and used by very young children in dealing with events.