Social referencing and the Pedagogical Stance: Interpreting objectreferential attitude expressions i

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Social referencing and the Pedagogical Stance
Interpreting objectreferential attitude
expressions in 14-month-olds

• György Gergely
• Institute for Psychological Research,
• Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest

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• In cooperation with
• Gergely Csibra
• CBCD, Birkbeck College, London
• Katalin Egyed
• Ildikó Király
• Eszter Somogyi
• Nora Szedlák
• Institute for Psychological Research, Hungarian
  Academy of Sciences, Budapest

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New Look at Old PhenomenaThe nature of early
Social Referencing

• By 12 months
• infants seek out and rely on object-referential
  attitude expressions of adults
• to modulate their own (approach-avoidance)
  behaviour towards novel objects

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• The (standard) person-centered mentalistic
  interpretation of others referential attitude
  expressions
• Infants attribute internal mental states to
  others
• (such as object-related dispositions)
• (Bretherton, 1992 Moses et al., 2001 Stern,
  1985 Tomasello, 1999)

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I think my Mum likes it.
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• 2. Infants use the attributed mental state to
  predict the others behaviour
• in social referencing infants
• recognize the central role that such internal
  states play in others behavior
• (Moses et al., 2001)

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I think she would approach it.
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• But
• Referential attitude expressions (such as
  liking vs. disgust) are inherently ambiguous
  they can convey information both about
• person-specific mental dispositional attitudes of
  others towards the referent
• (e. g., preference vs. dislike)
• or about
• valence qualities of the referent
• (likeability vs. dislikability)

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The Informant
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• 1) Externalist object-centered interpretation
  in terms of object valence
• Situation Anna, the Informer, is eating cheese
  with gusto at 22 months of age.
• George (father of Anna, attributes her the
  mental disposition of liking)
• So you really like cheese, dont you?
• Anna I dont like it, its good

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• 2) Person-centered interpretation in terms of
• person-specific mental dispositions
• Anna (30 months old)
• Papa, I really like cheese, but is it good?

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• Q1 Do infants encode both types of information
  when others object-referential attitude
  expressions
• are ostensively manifested to them?
• Q2 Which of the two types of information do
  infants use to predict (or justify) others
  subsequent object-directed actions?

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• I shall argue that
• The Pedagogical Stance
• (triggered by ostensive-communicative cues)
• plays an important developmental role by
  providing constraints to guide young infants
  interpretation of object-referential attitude
  expressions of others.

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• Interpreting social referencing in terms of the
  pedagogical stance
• Infants are predisposed to interpret ostensive
  framing cues (e.g., eye-contact, eyebrow flash)
  as indicating that the other has a communicative
  intention to manifest relevant and new
  information for them to be acquired about the
  referent object.

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• B) The object-centered externalist
  interpretation of
• social referencing
• (based on the Pedagogical Stance)
• Ostensive-communicative cues will constrain
  infants interpretation of object-referential
  attitude expressions as
• pedagogical teaching events
• Infants will interpret such others expressions
  in an object-centered, externalist manner as
  conveying new and relevant information about the
  valence properties of the referenced object
• They will not attribute to the other
  person-specific mental states (such as
  object-related dispositions)

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• (3) Infants will predict or justify the others
  subsequent object-directed actions on the basis
  of object valence
• (4) And not on the basis of person-specific
  mental dispositions they could have attributed to
  the other (but did not).

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Experiment (Violation-of-expectation paradigm)

• Familiarization phase (12 events)
• 2. Test phase (4 events)
• Stimuli Videotaped events
• Dependent measure Looking Time

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Subjects

• Experimental group Asymmetric condition
• 32 14-month-old infants
• Control group Symmetric condition
• 32 14-month-old infants

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Video stimulus events

• 2 unfamiliar referent objects
• (no initial infant preference for either)
• Yellow Cube and Red Ball
• 2 female demonstrators
• Frequent Lady vs. Infrequent Lady
• Brunette vs. Blond

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Familiarization phase

• Each of the 12 events started by the
  demonstrator first addressing the infant by
  producing ostensive communicative cues (looking
  and smiling at the infant, while raising her
  eye-brows a couple of times)

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• This was followed by two referential orientation
  cues
• head-turn and gaze-shift first to object A, then
  to object B
• each accompanied by a different (positive vs.
  negative) attitude expression/valence
  manifestation
• (facial expression of interest/liking vs.
  disgust).

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Familiarization events negative
positive
Frequent person (9 times out of 12)
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positive negative
Infrequent person (3 times out of 12)
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9 x (-) 9 x () 3 x ()
3 x (-)
object
object
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Test events (4)

• Action No attitude expression presented while
  choosing one or the other object to play with
• Choice of object is either
• Attitude Consistent or Attitude Inconsistent
• Chosen object has either
• Positive Valence or Negative Valence

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4 Test events(order counterbalanced across
subjects)

• 1. Negative Object Attitude Inconsistent
  Action
• 2. Positive Object Attitude Consistent Action

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• 3. Negative Object Attitude Consistent Action
• 4. Positive Object Attitude Inconsistent Action

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The contrasted hypotheses and predictions

• A) The mentalistic person-centered
  interpretation hypothesis
• Infants will look longer at Attitude-Inconsistent
  Action test displays than at Attitude-Consistent
  Action test displays.

• B) The non-mentalistic object-centered
  interpretation hypothesis
• Infants will expect both persons to choose and
  act on the object with more positive valence,
  irrespective of attitude consistency
• They will look longer at Actions on the Negative
  Object.

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Results of the Asymmetric condition

• Significant main effect of Object Valence
• (F 6.151 p 0.019)
• No main effect of Consistency
• No interaction

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inconsistent
consistent
negative
positive

Experimental group
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Control Group Symmetric condition

• 32 14-month-olds
• The same design EXCEPT FOR
• Both demonstrators present their respective
  object-referential attitudes with equal frequency
  (3 times each)

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Therefore 3 x (-) 3 x ()
3 x () 3 x (-)

• There is no valence difference between the two
  objects.
• Object choice is either
• attitude consistent or attitude inconsistent.

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inconsistent
consistent
yoyo
cube
Contol group
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Conclusions

• In an ostensive-communicative cuing context
• 14-month-olds do NOT encode object-referential
  attitude expressions of others in terms of
  person-specific intentional mental states
• such as dispositional attitudes towards objects

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• 14-month-olds interpret the object-referential
  attitude manifestations of others as conveying
  valence information about the referent object
  (which they learn) and
• Predict the subsequent object-directed actions of
  others on the basis of the valence qualities
  attributed to the objects
• And not on the basis of person-specific mental
  states (e.g., object-directed dispositions) that
  are consistent with the attitude expressions
  observed.

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• Thank you!

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• The hypothesis of human Pedagogy
• (Csibra Gergely, in press Gergely Csibra,
  in press)
• a species-specific cognitive adaptation of mutual
  design to ensure fast and efficient learning of
  relevant cultural knowledge in humans.
• Humans are predisposed to teach and to learn
  new and relevant cultural information to (and
  from) conspecifics.

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• Knowledgeable humans are naturally inclined not
  only to use, but also to ostensively manifest
  their knowledge to (and for the benefit of) naive
  conspecifics
• Naive conspecifics are naturally motivated to
  acquire such knowledge by actively seeking out,
  attending to, and being specially receptive to
  ostensive-communicative manifestations of
  cultural information by knowledgeable others.

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Ostensive-Communicative Cues, Referent
identification, and Manifestation of relevant
information in pedagogical knowledge transfer

• 1) OSTENSION
• Special sensitivity to Ostensive-Communicative
  cues
• (eye-contact, eye-brow flash, turn-taking
  contingency, motherese, own name)
• Function Conveying Communicative Intention to
  Manifest New and
• Relevant information for
  the addressee to learn
• 2) REFERENCE
• Special sensitivity to Referential cues
• (shifting eye-gaze to, head turn to, pointing at
  the referent object)
• Function Identifying the Referent about which
  New and Relevant
• information is going to be
  Manifested

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• Types of cultural knowledge transmitted by
  pedagogy
• Words
• Non-linguistic symbols (e.g., gestures)
• Artifact functions
• Standard use of tools
• VALENCE INFORMATION about objects, animals,
  situations, etc.
• Cultural conventions (Customs, rituals, display
  rules, etc.)