Faculty Advisor
Michelle Ramos
Faculty Advisor
Bethany C. Reeb-Sutherland
Location
FIU Wellness & Recreation Center
Start Date
8-4-2019 2:00 PM
End Date
8-4-2019 4:00 PM
Session
Poster Session 3
Abstract
Contingency is an important feature of social functioning, constituting a core component of social-emotional development (Tarabulsy et al., 1996; Gergely & Watson, 1996;Reeb-Sutherland et al., 2012). The present study examined how positive social reward from a stranger can fundamentally impact social responsiveness within a solitary session by expanding vocalizations, positive/negative affect, and positive affect quality (smiling). The previous research being followed up is a social contingency paradigm which consisted of three 3-minute phases examined in 73 5-month-old infants. Results revealed a significant phase effect with vocalizations and positive affect significantly increasing during the Contingency phase compared to Habituation and Extinction. This previous research was conducted by examining behaviors on a macro-level, and is now being explored to examine the time course of contingency on a more micro-level to determine how quickly infants learn contingency between theirs and their partner’s behaviors. Results indicate that, infants learn the relation between their vocal behaviors and smile quality and social reward quickly and that positive affect is learned more slowly in relation to negative affect. In addition, once the contingency is discontinued, infants’ behavior extinguishes quickly. The current results suggest that infants can learn social contingencies between themselves and strangers within a very short time span at an early age which reflects the importance that basic operant conditioning skills has on the development of social behavior.
File Type
Poster
Learned Social Contingency in 5-Month-Old Infants
FIU Wellness & Recreation Center
Contingency is an important feature of social functioning, constituting a core component of social-emotional development (Tarabulsy et al., 1996; Gergely & Watson, 1996;Reeb-Sutherland et al., 2012). The present study examined how positive social reward from a stranger can fundamentally impact social responsiveness within a solitary session by expanding vocalizations, positive/negative affect, and positive affect quality (smiling). The previous research being followed up is a social contingency paradigm which consisted of three 3-minute phases examined in 73 5-month-old infants. Results revealed a significant phase effect with vocalizations and positive affect significantly increasing during the Contingency phase compared to Habituation and Extinction. This previous research was conducted by examining behaviors on a macro-level, and is now being explored to examine the time course of contingency on a more micro-level to determine how quickly infants learn contingency between theirs and their partner’s behaviors. Results indicate that, infants learn the relation between their vocal behaviors and smile quality and social reward quickly and that positive affect is learned more slowly in relation to negative affect. In addition, once the contingency is discontinued, infants’ behavior extinguishes quickly. The current results suggest that infants can learn social contingencies between themselves and strangers within a very short time span at an early age which reflects the importance that basic operant conditioning skills has on the development of social behavior.
Rights Statement
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Comments
**Abstract Only**