Infants are born to be social, and the evidence for this can be seen in their affinity for human faces. In eye-tracking tests conducted just 9 minutes after birth, they are more likely to follow a moving object that has a schematic design resembling a face than they are something with the exact same shapes and colors that are arranged in a different order. (Milius, 2012; Morton & Johnson 1991) In study after study, babies will pay more attention to stimuli with the same structure as a human face (two eyes above a nose) than to other equally complex stimuli. (Geary, 2011)
Imitation is another skill hardwired from the very start. Within an hour of birth, babies will imitate an adult who is sticking their tongue out. Infants less than a month old will also routinely mimic other facial expressions: open your mouth in front of a baby, there’s a good chance she’ll open hers. This proclivity isn’t unique to humans; 3 day old Rhesus monkeys will also smack their lips and stick out their tongues if a human adult does it in front of them. (Milius, 2012) Yet babies won’t make faces at a gesturing human hand or a spinning disk, suggesting that there are specialized areas in the brain devoted to facial recognition and social interaction.
William Damon notes that “Young infants also show a desire to accomplish a number of social goals. These include a desire to maintain proximity with the caretaker, to maintain a sense of security, and to regulate their emotions. They show a need to succeed in social interaction – to discern the rules governing social life and to act appropriately – along with an intrinsic interest in the persons with whom they are interacting.” (1995, p. 137)
A baby’s social interaction with caregivers
In the very beginning, infants are socially responsive but seem to make few distinctions among people. (Goldberg, 1991) This rapidly changes. Not only do they learn to discern between those around them within the first few months, but by around 6 or 7 months, they’ll have already developed favorites among their caretakers.
William Damon notes that “Young infants also show a desire to accomplish a number of social goals. These include a desire to maintain proximity with the caretaker, to maintain a sense of security, and to regulate their emotions. They show a need to succeed in social interaction – to discern the rules governing social life and to act appropriately – along with an intrinsic interest in the persons with whom they are interacting.” (1995, p. 137)
A baby’s social interaction with caregivers
In the very beginning, infants are socially responsive but seem to make few distinctions among people. (Goldberg, 1991) This rapidly changes. Not only do they learn to discern between those around them within the first few months, but by around 6 or 7 months, they’ll have already developed favorites among their caretakers.
Between 6 and 9 months of age, babies begin to show an acute awareness of what goes on inside the mind of their caregivers. This milestone – a stage some psychologists have termed “the nine-month revolution” – seems to usher in an era of more complex social understanding. At around 8 months of age, there’s an increase in sophisticated behavior that coincides with changes in EEG patterns in a baby’s brain activity, suggesting increased power and coherence.
“If a mother and five-month-old baby are looking at each other and the mother suddenly looks to one side, the infant will not follow the mother’s gaze and look in the direction she is looking. At about eight months, babies follow the line of their mother’s gaze and engage in joint visual attention with her (Butterworth & Jarrett, 1991). They’ll start to actively search for hidden objects, begin imitating actions they saw several hours earlier, and start to become more wary of strangers and novel situations. (Cole, 2003)
Understanding the intentions of others
A study by researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center, published in the November 22, 2007 issue of the journal Nature, found that babies as young as 6 months can discern between helpful and hurtful intentions when it comes to others. (Borenstein, 2007) Babies were given a brief puppet show: In one scene, a googly-eyed toy appears to help his friend over the mountain. In the other, a “mean” toy pushes his comrade backwards down the mountain. Babies were then given the chance to play with one of the two toys. Nearly all the babies, aged 6- to 10-months, chose to play with the ‘nice’ toy over the naughty one. This shows that even babies can discern between helpful and hurtful behaviors by watching others, and that they have an inherent preference for prosocial behavior. Other tests have found that 3-month-olds will show eye aversion to the hinderer in puppet shows (Tucker, 2013), suggesting that even the smallest of babies already have a strategy for avoiding those with hurtful intentions.
Understanding the intentions of others
A study by researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center, published in the November 22, 2007 issue of the journal Nature, found that babies as young as 6 months can discern between helpful and hurtful intentions when it comes to others. (Borenstein, 2007) Babies were given a brief puppet show: In one scene, a googly-eyed toy appears to help his friend over the mountain. In the other, a “mean” toy pushes his comrade backwards down the mountain. Babies were then given the chance to play with one of the two toys. Nearly all the babies, aged 6- to 10-months, chose to play with the ‘nice’ toy over the naughty one. This shows that even babies can discern between helpful and hurtful behaviors by watching others, and that they have an inherent preference for prosocial behavior. Other tests have found that 3-month-olds will show eye aversion to the hinderer in puppet shows (Tucker, 2013), suggesting that even the smallest of babies already have a strategy for avoiding those with hurtful intentions.
In a similar study, infants as young as 10-months-old seemed to recognize that bigger things usually get their way. The researchers showed babies cartoon movies of two different-size blocks with an eye and mouth bouncing toward each other. They met in the middle and collided before backing up several times as if competing for the right to move forward. Then one block scooted out of the way. Infants stared longer at scenes in which the bigger object surrendered, indicating they were surprised by the outcome. (Weaver, 2011)
A baby’s understanding of hand gestures
Another milestone of social development is your baby’s comprehension and use of hand gestures. At around 9 months children will begin following their parent’s gaze or looking to where they point. (Stix, 2014) Following another’s gaze is a key human skill and one of the most basic underpinnings of social empathy.
As children grow, they’ll even begin to use their own hand signals to communicate. (One of the reasons baby sign language has been a popular trend among parents.) In one study, an experimenter put blocks on a plate that the child needed and was using to build a tower. At a certain junction, the tot ran out of objects, and so the baby started pointing to the now empty plate, indicating that she wanted more blocks. The children expected the adult would make the correct inference from this gesture – something that chimps cannot seem to figure out. Babies around this age will also understand gestures that pantomime an action, such as moving a hand to one’s mouth to represent hunger or the desire to eat. (Stix, 2014)
Self-awareness in infants
Though there’s quite a debate on when exactly children become self-aware (it depends on what type of test you are using and how you define the term), by the end of their first year of life, infants show awareness that they are distinct from others. (Damon, 1995, p. 140)