Infants’ expectations about third-party affiliations based on infant-directed speech : a pupil-size study
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Date
2023
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Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2023.
Abstract
Various cues are used by infants to infer others’ social preferences. This thesis aims to ask whether infants use infant-directed communication to make such inferences. Three experiments, using a VoE (Violation of expectation) paradigm and eye tracking, investigating 14- to 18-month-olds’ expectations about affiliative decisions based on speech registers. Experiment 1 and 2 presented infants videos where an adult character responded to a crying baby either using infant- directed speech (IDS) or adult-directed speech (ADS). In the silent test trials infant character approached the adult character who previously used IDS (congruent) or the adult character who previously used ADS. Infants showed equal looking time at congruent or incongruent events. Experiment 3 presented videos where an adult character responded to a babbling baby either using IDS or ADS to 14- to 18-month-olds. In the silent test trials infant character was seen either next to the adult character who previously used IDS (congruent) or next to the adult character who previously used ADS. Again, infants showed equal looking time at congruent or incongruent events., however they showed greater pupil dilation during incongruent events. According to these findings, infants may infer third parties’ affiliative relationships from their speech registers, however, these expectations seem to be only evident in their pupil reactions and not in their looking times. These results provide insight into the different methodologies used to examine infants’ third-party inference.