THE ONTOGENY OF SOCIAL INFORMATION GATHERING

When facing the unknown, humans tend to consult others for guidance. T his propensity to treat others as information sources has wide-ranging implications, being in part responsible for the breadth and depth of our world knowledge. As yet, little is known concerning when and how y oung children acquire this important skill. Social referencing and com municative abilities in infancy have been interpreted by many as refle cting precocious social information-seeking ability, but the evidence is far from compelling and equally compatible with an attachment regul ation interpretation. While the evidence indicates that infants as you ng as 12 months are good consumers of social information, it falls wel l short of demonstrating that they are active seekers of that informat ion. Moreover, genuine social information seeking requires an implicit conception of the knowledge-ignorance distinction, and existing resea rch on children's theories of mind suggests that such a conception is most likely not available in infancy. For these reasons, we argue for a developmental account of social information-gathering ability, one t hat is consistent with the larger body of evidence concerning sociocog nitive abilities in infants and young children.