9-month-old babies also guess who you are with

(Back to top) - Backed babies show their ability to tell who they are and who they are against each other.

Even before babies have language skills or more information about social structures, they can surmise whether someone seems to be a friend by observing what they like or not. likes, a new study of their cognitive abilities found.

The research results open a new window in the earliest human awareness of the social world around. Research shows that even 9-month-olds can pay attention to whether the people they are observing are friends.

'This is the first evidence that babies are following other people's social relationships,' said Amanda L. Woodward, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and a co-author. of the study said. Research named '"Friends or Foes: Infants Use Shared Evaluations to Infer Others' Social Relationships' (Friends or enemies: Children use the evaluation to deduce the social relationships of people around ) was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

In this study, 64 9-month-old babies were randomly divided into groups and then watched videos about two adults. Each adult has eaten two foods and reacted positively or negatively to each type of food they eat. In some videos adults share the same reaction, while others have different reactions.

'We have described food assessments because food can provide exceptional social information especially', the study's co-author, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Katherine D.Kinzler noted. 'Eating with family and friends is inherently social, and so children may have a tendency to specifically use eating behaviors to infer and conjecture about social relationships.' .

To see if babies link reactions to food to social relationships, tests have tested how babies react to the next video, videos showing activities. Adult's are positive or negative together. In the video shows a positive interaction, the adults greet each other with smiles and say 'Hello!' in a friendly voice. In the other video, the adults turned their backs to each other, folded their arms and said 'Hmp' in an unfriendly voice.

The team evaluated their responses to videos by assessing the amount of time the children focused on the screen paused at the end of each video. Previous researchers have found that a child's eye time is related to a similar or unexpected situation.'When children see something unexpected, they watch longer,' Woodward explained. 'The situation is not suitable for them and they must learn it'.

The reactions of the children to the videos suggested that they were surprised when the adults in the video, who liked the same food, reacted negatively to the other. They were also surprised when adults who did not have the same love of food behaved like friends.

The significance of the study is that even at a very young age of 9 months, children know that adults who agree with each other tend to act friendly in other contexts. The children in the study predicted that adults who had similar reactions to food were likely to be friends and kept vigilant when videos showed differences.

'This study fosters questions about how children think about who gets along with who and who doesn't,' said the lead author, Zoe Liberman. 'Parents will enjoy finding out what babies are watching over the world around them and what they are thinking about social interactions that we have not been aware of before this study. '.

'I was surprised to find that babies of this age have shown such strong reactions,' said Woodlward.

The results of the study provide the first evidence that the roots of an important aspect of social awareness, inference about other people's social interaction based on human preferences and dislikes, are may have been traced back to childhood, the study authors said. Researchers plan to conduct future studies to see what different types of signals help children make social inferences.