Sensitivity to Confidence Cues Increases during the Second Year of Life

We investigated the emergence in infancy of a preference to imitate individuals who display confidence over lack of confidence. Eighteen‐ and 24‐month‐olds (N = 70) were presented with an experimenter who demonstrated the use of several objects accompanied by either nonverbal expressions of confiden...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Infancy 2014-09, Vol.19 (5), p.461-475
Main Authors: Brosseau-Liard, Patricia E., Poulin-Dubois, Diane
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Babies
Behavior
Learning
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We investigated the emergence in infancy of a preference to imitate individuals who display confidence over lack of confidence. Eighteen‐ and 24‐month‐olds (N = 70) were presented with an experimenter who demonstrated the use of several objects accompanied by either nonverbal expressions of confidence or lack of confidence. At 24 months, infants were more likely to imitate the actions when demonstrated by a confident experimenter than by an unconfident experimenter; 18‐month‐olds showed no such preference. The experimenter then presented an additional imitation trial and a word‐learning trial while displaying a neutral expression. Twenty‐four‐month‐olds persisted in preferentially imitating a previously confident experimenter, but prior confidence had no effect on their word learning. These findings demonstrate a developmental increase in infants’ use of confidence cues toward the end of the second year of life.
ISSN:1525-0008
1532-7078
DOI:10.1111/infa.12056