Social cognition during infancy
It is well established that humans are sociable beings and need to be affiliated with or belong in social groups. Also we recognise social structures and relations as well as the importance of society. However, it is not clear at what stage during development we begin to understand these concepts. To delineate the perception of social relationships early in development, the EU-funded 'Infants' understanding of social relationships' (IUSR) project designed a series of experiments designed for infants aged between 9 to 15 months. These observational approaches will reveal how infants perceive social interactions and structures. Infants were shown specific animations that portrayed social dominance and were monitored for their behavioural and eye-based responses. Only 15-month old but not younger babies were capable of understanding this type of relationship. They expected such social dominance to remain stable in different instances of dispute but only in the relationships they had observed. Also, they were unable to comprehend how physical competence or individual strength could contribute to this type of social interaction. Additionally, 15-month-old infants were capable of perceiving the organisation of social dominance relationships especially in transitive structures. Testing the infant's representation of joint actions to achieve a certain goal will show us how early on in life we form social groups or affiliations. Overall, the IUSR-collected data provided strong evidence for the early emergence of mechanisms dedicated to represent social entities. They showed that pre-verbal infants go beyond representing their social partners, and also represent social relations and social structures from a third party viewpoint. This information opens up new avenues in social sciences in terms of the origins and theories that humans use to interpret society.
Keywords
Social, perception, structures, , infants, dominance, relationship, transitive, affiliations
