S. Desrochers et al., DEVELOPMENTAL SYNCHRONY BETWEEN SOCIAL REFERENCING AND PIAGETIAN SENSORIMOTOR CAUSALITY, Infant behavior & development, 17(3), 1994, pp. 303-309
The role of the Piagetian notion of causality in the development of so
cial referencing was investigated in a longitudinal study of 25 infant
s aged 6 to 18 months. Social referencing was elicited by an object pl
aced in an ambiguous context; it was operationalized as a look directe
d toward the mother following a look to the object accompanied by a st
ate of wariness (a perplexed or surprised facial expression or a look
at the object for more than 3 s without moving). The Piagetian stage o
f sensorimotor causality was assessed using tasks structured by Goulet
(1972, 1974), Mehrabian & Williams (1971), and Uzgiris & Hunt (1975).
Results showed that the number of subjects seeking information increa
sed significantly only between the ages of 9 and 12 months. During the
same period, the understanding of causality in the group as a whole a
lso increased significantly. There are clear, developmental changes in
social cognition between the ages of 9 and 12 months. The changes in
social referencing appear to be closely related to the fact that every
infant had reached Stage V of causality by the 12-month session. Thes
e results are discussed in terms of the infants' beginning of a theory
of mind.