Final Report Summary - IUSR (Infants' Understanding of Social Relationships)
1. Completed Work
1.1. Research component
The Marie Curie project on Infants’ Understanding of Social Relationships (IUSR) supported the recruitment of subjects, assistance to test participants, buying materials to set up studies, buying equipment to analyse and archive collected data. During the IUSR project, several hundreds human infants from 9- to 15-month-old participated in experiments probing their understanding of social entities. Representations of social dominance and affiliation were studied in three key domains :
1. Representation of social interactions
2. Representation of social relationships
3. Representation of social structures
Details about each of these subcomponents are given in the section on results below.
1.2 Training component
1.2.1 Technical and practical aspects of research on infants
During the IUSR project, the Marie Curie Fellow (Olivier Mascaro) designed several experiments and tested a large number of infants from 9- to 15-month-old. He was trained in using animation software (Adobe Flash) and video editing software (Final Cut). He also attended two courses organised by the Cognitive Development Center on novel infant’s methodologies: one on Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), and one on Event Related Potentials (ERP).
1.2.2 Presentation skills
The Marie Curie fellow presented his work at various conferences and in papers published in international peer-reviewed journals (see part on Dissemination below). He had the opportunity to teach one course on naïve sociology (3 hours) at CEU in the “social cognition” graduate seminar of the Cognitive Science Department.
1.2.3 Projects management and fund raising
Olivier Mascaro was a member of the scientific committee of the Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development in January 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. This conference, mostly organised by the Phd and post-doctoral students of the Cognitive Development Center, attracts about 150 participants from all over the world. With Gergely Csibra and György Gergely, the Marie Curie fellow also organised a workshop of the European Science Foundation on the “Cognitive Basis of Understanding Social Relations”. This workshop gathered 23 international researchers (see part on Dissemination below).
2. Results
General result: Research conducted during the project established that human infants recognize social relations and social structures. This project contributed to an emerging field of study that shows that young humans are equipped with an early developping naïve sociology involving conceptual representations of social entities. A more precise description of the results of each subsegment of the IUSR project is presented below:
2.1 Studies of social dominance
2.1.1 Sub-goal 1. Representation of social interactions
In a first series of studies, infants were presented with interactions between animated agents in conflict situations. Studies 1 and 2 targeted expectations of stability of social dominance. They revealed that 15-month-olds (and, to a lesser extent, 12-month-olds) expect an asymmetric relationship between two agents to remain stable from one conflict to another. To do so, infants need to infer that one of the agents (the dominant) will consistently prevail when her goals conflict with those of the other (the subordinate). In another series of four studies infants were remarkably oblivious to individual differences in physical competence, thus suggesting that the representation of social dominance that we observed in our studies were not supported by representations of individual physical strength.
2.1.2 Sub-goal 2. Representation of social relationships
Two additional studies targeted the format of infants’ representation of social dominance. In these studies, 12- and 15-month-olds did not extend their expectations of dominance to unobserved relationships, even when they could have been established by transitive inference. These results suggest that infants’ expectation of stability originates from their representation of social dominance as a relationship between two agents rather than as an individual property.
2.1.3 Sub-goal 3. Representation of social structures
A third sub-goal aimed at elucidating whether infants expect dominance relations to be organised in structures, and the extent to which they expect these structures to be hierarchical. In two studies, we found that 15-month-old human infants organise social dominance relationships in structures, and memorise better transitive than intransitive dominance structures. We are currently investigating the origins and consequences of this expectation of transitivity.
2.2 Studies of affiliation
2.2.1 Sub-goal 1. Representations of social interactions
In order to study infants’ representation of affiliation, we tested infants representation of joint actions, i.e. of situations in which two agents jointly act to achieve a common goal. We are currently completing a study in which we compare infants understanding of individual actions and of joint actions.
3. General conclusions and impact
This project established that human infants form representations of social relations and social structures from an early age. This data collected during the IUSR project provides strong evidence for the early emergence of mechanisms dedicated to represent social entities. To our knowledge, these studies are among the first to establish that pre-verbal infants go beyond representing their social partners, and also represent social relations and social structures from a third party viewpoint. Subsequently, these studies may contribute to open a new field of study focusing on human’s early representation of social entities. The data collected during the IUSR project indicated that human’s representations of social entities is based upon primitive that are partly shared with non-human primates. In the long term a better understanding of these conceptual primitives should have general consequences for social sciences, by uncovering some of the origins of the categories and theories that humans use to interpret society.
1.1. Research component
The Marie Curie project on Infants’ Understanding of Social Relationships (IUSR) supported the recruitment of subjects, assistance to test participants, buying materials to set up studies, buying equipment to analyse and archive collected data. During the IUSR project, several hundreds human infants from 9- to 15-month-old participated in experiments probing their understanding of social entities. Representations of social dominance and affiliation were studied in three key domains :
1. Representation of social interactions
2. Representation of social relationships
3. Representation of social structures
Details about each of these subcomponents are given in the section on results below.
1.2 Training component
1.2.1 Technical and practical aspects of research on infants
During the IUSR project, the Marie Curie Fellow (Olivier Mascaro) designed several experiments and tested a large number of infants from 9- to 15-month-old. He was trained in using animation software (Adobe Flash) and video editing software (Final Cut). He also attended two courses organised by the Cognitive Development Center on novel infant’s methodologies: one on Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS), and one on Event Related Potentials (ERP).
1.2.2 Presentation skills
The Marie Curie fellow presented his work at various conferences and in papers published in international peer-reviewed journals (see part on Dissemination below). He had the opportunity to teach one course on naïve sociology (3 hours) at CEU in the “social cognition” graduate seminar of the Cognitive Science Department.
1.2.3 Projects management and fund raising
Olivier Mascaro was a member of the scientific committee of the Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development in January 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. This conference, mostly organised by the Phd and post-doctoral students of the Cognitive Development Center, attracts about 150 participants from all over the world. With Gergely Csibra and György Gergely, the Marie Curie fellow also organised a workshop of the European Science Foundation on the “Cognitive Basis of Understanding Social Relations”. This workshop gathered 23 international researchers (see part on Dissemination below).
2. Results
General result: Research conducted during the project established that human infants recognize social relations and social structures. This project contributed to an emerging field of study that shows that young humans are equipped with an early developping naïve sociology involving conceptual representations of social entities. A more precise description of the results of each subsegment of the IUSR project is presented below:
2.1 Studies of social dominance
2.1.1 Sub-goal 1. Representation of social interactions
In a first series of studies, infants were presented with interactions between animated agents in conflict situations. Studies 1 and 2 targeted expectations of stability of social dominance. They revealed that 15-month-olds (and, to a lesser extent, 12-month-olds) expect an asymmetric relationship between two agents to remain stable from one conflict to another. To do so, infants need to infer that one of the agents (the dominant) will consistently prevail when her goals conflict with those of the other (the subordinate). In another series of four studies infants were remarkably oblivious to individual differences in physical competence, thus suggesting that the representation of social dominance that we observed in our studies were not supported by representations of individual physical strength.
2.1.2 Sub-goal 2. Representation of social relationships
Two additional studies targeted the format of infants’ representation of social dominance. In these studies, 12- and 15-month-olds did not extend their expectations of dominance to unobserved relationships, even when they could have been established by transitive inference. These results suggest that infants’ expectation of stability originates from their representation of social dominance as a relationship between two agents rather than as an individual property.
2.1.3 Sub-goal 3. Representation of social structures
A third sub-goal aimed at elucidating whether infants expect dominance relations to be organised in structures, and the extent to which they expect these structures to be hierarchical. In two studies, we found that 15-month-old human infants organise social dominance relationships in structures, and memorise better transitive than intransitive dominance structures. We are currently investigating the origins and consequences of this expectation of transitivity.
2.2 Studies of affiliation
2.2.1 Sub-goal 1. Representations of social interactions
In order to study infants’ representation of affiliation, we tested infants representation of joint actions, i.e. of situations in which two agents jointly act to achieve a common goal. We are currently completing a study in which we compare infants understanding of individual actions and of joint actions.
3. General conclusions and impact
This project established that human infants form representations of social relations and social structures from an early age. This data collected during the IUSR project provides strong evidence for the early emergence of mechanisms dedicated to represent social entities. To our knowledge, these studies are among the first to establish that pre-verbal infants go beyond representing their social partners, and also represent social relations and social structures from a third party viewpoint. Subsequently, these studies may contribute to open a new field of study focusing on human’s early representation of social entities. The data collected during the IUSR project indicated that human’s representations of social entities is based upon primitive that are partly shared with non-human primates. In the long term a better understanding of these conceptual primitives should have general consequences for social sciences, by uncovering some of the origins of the categories and theories that humans use to interpret society.