Development of infants' contingency detection: influences of maternal behavior and effects on cognitive abilities

早期的自我认识产生于婴儿意识到自我行为与外部变化之间的关系或偶然性。婴儿最容易获得的感知变化的来源取决于他们的行为，发生在与他们的母亲的互动中。母亲倾向于以夸张和感知突出的方式反映婴儿的行为，使婴儿能够很容易地认识到他们行为的外部影响。母亲对婴儿行为的反应是有选择性的，主要是对被认为含有情感内容的行为做出反应。母亲对婴儿情绪行为的反映有助于婴儿调节自己的情绪。然而，母亲向婴儿提供的应急反应水平各不相同。婴儿对母亲经历的特定应急水平很敏感，在新的情况下更喜欢这种水平的应急，这使得他们对这种水平的经验很容易保持下去。因此，婴儿母体偶然性经历的个体差异会影响他们正在形成的认知和情感自我知识。理论家认为，婴儿在母亲互动中的偶然性经验也促进了婴儿后来的认知能力，即将他人的行为解释为故意的。从九个月大的婴儿开始，他们会表现出共同的注意力，因为他们会用承认伴侣参与的物体进行活动。共同关注表明，正在形成一种对他人的理解，认为他人的行动是有目的的。该研究项目通过检测(1)婴儿在面对面互动中发现自己行为的效果并调节自己的情绪的能力，以及(2)婴儿后来作为意向存在者对他人做出反应的能力，来调查母亲偶然性的个体差异对婴儿对自我和他人正在形成的理解的影响。这项研究进一步加深了对婴儿感知和认知发展的理解，特别是当它们与早期的自我知识及其后果有关时。在实践层面上，这项研究可以为有风险的儿童提供干预计划，帮助他们通过残疾或家庭环境发展对自我和他人的早期认识。

Early self knowledge arises with infants' awareness of the relation or contingency between self actions and external changes. Infants' most accessible source of perceiving change contingent on their behavior occurs in interactions with their mothers. Mothers tend to reflect infants' behavior in exaggerated and perceptually salient ways, allowing infants to easily recognize the external effect of their behavior. Mothers are selective in their responsiveness to infants' actions, responding primarily to behavior perceived to have emotional content. Maternal mirroring of infants' emotional behavior facilitates infants' ability to regulate their own emotions. Yet mothers vary in the level of contingent responsiveness they provide to infants. Infants are sensitive to the particular levels of contingency experienced with their mothers and prefer those levels of contingency in novel situations, which allows their experience with such levels to be easily perpetuated. Thus, individual differences in the maternal contingency infants experience affect their emerging cognitive and emotional self knowledge. Theorists propose that infants' experience with contingency in maternal interaction also facilitates infants' later cognitive ability to interpret the actions of others as intentional. Beginning around nine months of age, infants display joint attention, in that they engage in activities with objects that acknowledge the participation of a partner. Joint attention indicates an emerging understanding of others as intentional beings whose actions are purposeful. The research program investigates the influence of individual differences in maternal contingency on infants' emerging understanding of self and other by examining (1) infants' ability to detect the effect of their behavior and to regulate their emotions during face-to-face interactions, and (2) infants' later capacities to respond to others as intentional beings. The research furthers the understanding of infants' perceptual and cognitive developments, particularly as they relate to early self knowledge and its consequences. At a practical level, the research can inform intervention programs for children at risk in their development of early knowledge of self and others, either through disability or family circumstances.