TY - JOUR A1 - Patzwald, Christiane A1 - Curley, Charlotte A. A1 - Hauf, Petra A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - Differential effects of others' emotional cues on 18-month-olds' preferential reproduction of observed actions JF - Infant behavior & development : an international and interdisciplinary journal N2 - Infants use others' emotional signals to regulate their own object-directed behavior and action reproduction, and they typically produce more actions after having observed positive as compared to negative emotional cues. This study explored infants' understanding of the referential specificity of others' emotional cues when being confronted with two actions that are accompanied by different emotional displays. Selective action reproduction was measured after 18-month-olds (N = 42) had observed two actions directed at the same object, one of which was modeled with a positive emotional expression and the other with a negative emotional expression. Across four trials with different objects, infants' first actions matched the positively-emoted actions more often than the negatively-emoted actions. In comparison with baseline-level, infants' initial performance changed only for the positively-emoted actions, in that it increased during test. Latencies to first object-touch during test did not differ when infants reproduced the positively- or negatively-emoted actions, respectively, indicating that infants related the cues to the respective actions rather than to the object. During demonstration, infants looked relatively longer at the object than at the model's face, with no difference in positive or negative displays. Infants during their second year of life thus capture the action-related referential specificity of others' emotional cues and seem to follow positive signals more readily when actively selecting which of two actions to reproduce preferentially. KW - Emotion KW - Action KW - Infancy KW - Social cues KW - Social learning Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.04.002 SN - 0163-6383 SN - 1879-0453 VL - 51 SP - 60 EP - 70 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Patzwald, Christiane A1 - Elsner, Birgit T1 - Do as I say - or as I do?! BT - How 18-and 24-month-olds integrate words and actions to infer intentions in situations of match or mismatch JF - Infant behavior & development : an international and interdisciplinary journal N2 - Infants use behavioral and verbal cues to infer another person’s action intention. However, it is still unclear how infants integrate these often co-occurring cues depending on the cues’ coherence (i.e., the degree to which the cues provide coherent information about another’s intention). This study investigated how 18- and 24-month-olds’ (N = 88 per age group) action selection was influenced by varying the coherence of a model’s verbal and behavioral cues. Using a between-subjects design, infants received six trials with different stimulus objects. In the conditions Congruent, Incongruent, and Failed-attempt, the model uttered a telic verb particle that was followed by a matching or contradicting goal-directed action demonstration, or by a non goal-directed slipping motion, respectively. In the condition Pseudo-word, a nonsense word was combined with a goal-directed action demonstration. Infants’ action selection indicated an adherence to the verbal cue in Congruent, Incongruent, and Failed-attempt, and this was stronger in 24- than 18-month-olds. Additionally, in Incongruent and Failed-attempt, patterns of cue integration across the six trials varied in the two age groups. Regarding the behavioral cue, infants in Congruent and Pseudo-word preferentially followed this cue in both age groups, which also suggested a rather unspecific effect of the verbal cue in Congruent. Relatively longer first action-latencies in Incongruent and Failed-attempt implied that these types of coherence elicited higher cognitive demands than in Congruent and Pseudo-word. Results are discussed in light of infants’ flexibility in using social cues, depending on the cue’s coherence and on age-related social-cognitive differences. KW - Social cues KW - Social learning KW - Infancy KW - Action KW - Verbs KW - Imitation Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2019.03.004 SN - 0163-6383 SN - 1879-0453 VL - 55 SP - 46 EP - 57 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER -