INFANTS PREFERENCE FOR TOUCH STIMULATION IN FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTIONS

Infant preference for social stimulation that included touch during a face-to-face situation with an adult was investigated. Ten 1.5- to 3.5 -month-old infants (M = 2.6, SD = .6) participated in a within-subject s repeated-measures design. Two treatment conditions were compared in an alternated, counterbalanced order with each infant. Under the touch treatment, the infant eye-contact responses were followed by continuo us contingent adult smiling, cooing, and rubbing of the legs and feet. Under the no-touch treatment, the infant eye-contact responses were f ollowed by contingent adult smiling and cooing, but not by touching. T he results showed that, during the touch condition, infants emitted mo re eye contact and more smiles and vocalizations, and they spent less time crying and protesting compared with the no-touch condition. The r esults demonstrated that a social stimulus compound that included touc hing the infants functioned as a more effective reinforcer for infant eye-contact behavior than a stimulus compound that did not include tou ch.