DEVELOPMENTAL SYNCHRONY BETWEEN SOCIAL REFERENCING AND PIAGETIAN SENSORIMOTOR CAUSALITY

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.