Abstract
Research employing single-choice paradigms in which an infant is asked to make a single choice between two puppets suggest that infants show a preference for prosocial others and those who are similar to themselves. However, the extent to which infants’ preference for similar others is stable is unknown, as are other factors within the paradigm that may influence infants’ choices. The purpose of this study (two experiments, N = 44 infants, aged 8–15 months) was to replicate and extend previous work by including (1) within-subject repeated measures and (2) an experimental manipulation of a plausible demand characteristic. Results for the first-choice trial indicated a majority of the infants did not choose the similar puppet. Results from the within-subject repeated trials also indicated that a majority of the infants did not choose the similar puppet but a majority did choose a puppet from the same side. The experimental manipulation of the demand characteristic showed no effect on infant puppet choices. These results suggest that a closer examination of the single-choice puppet paradigm for assessing infants’ social evaluation is warranted. These findings also support recommendations made by others, including publishing null findings, standardizing data collection and reporting methods, and examining individual differences by employing within-subject designs with repeated measures.
Highlights
IntroductionInfants as young as 5 months (Hamlin et al, 2007, 2010, 2011; Hamlin and Wynn, 2011, 2012) and older infants and toddlers (Geraci and Surian, 2011; Buon et al, 2014; Scola et al, 2015; Woo et al, 2017; Chae and Song, 2018) seem capable of socially evaluating the behavior of others and appear to show a preference for prosocial others (for reviews, see Martin and Olson, 2015; Holvoet et al, 2016; Van de Vondervoort and Hamlin, 2018) as well as those who are similar to themselves along some dimension (e.g., Hamlin and Wynn, 2012; Mahajan and Wynn, 2012; Hamlin et al, 2013; Burns and Sommerville, 2014; Gerson et al, 2017)
We hypothesized this might serve as a relevant, accessible, and salient informational piece, as the website is available to all parents considering participation in studies conducted by the Yale Infant Cognition Lab, and may unintentionally influence parents’ behavior, which in turn may affect infant behavior. After parents indicated they finished reading the document, E1 asked parents to rate three statements as true or false. These statements served as a manipulation check to identify whether parents read the document and were: (1) one purpose of research such as this is to learn more about how babies think and reason about their surrounding environment; (2) the purpose of this study is to determine if infants, like adults, prefer those who are more similar to themselves; and (3) babies who chose puppets who showed the same traits may be showing their preference toward puppets who are more like them
Because green beans were always presented on infants’ right side, we examined whether side preference correlated with food choice
Summary
Infants as young as 5 months (Hamlin et al, 2007, 2010, 2011; Hamlin and Wynn, 2011, 2012) and older infants and toddlers (Geraci and Surian, 2011; Buon et al, 2014; Scola et al, 2015; Woo et al, 2017; Chae and Song, 2018) seem capable of socially evaluating the behavior of others and appear to show a preference for prosocial others (for reviews, see Martin and Olson, 2015; Holvoet et al, 2016; Van de Vondervoort and Hamlin, 2018) as well as those who are similar to themselves along some dimension (e.g., Hamlin and Wynn, 2012; Mahajan and Wynn, 2012; Hamlin et al, 2013; Burns and Sommerville, 2014; Gerson et al, 2017). The authors offered these results as evidence that “Like older children and adults, even a minuscule non-arbitrary difference is sufficient to trigger a similarity bias” (p. 231) in preverbal infants
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