Social Cognition and Social Responsiveness in 10-month-old Infants

In this study, we investigated relations between infants ’ understanding of intentional actions and measures of social responsiveness during a transitional period, 9- to 11-months. Infants (N = 52) were tested in visual habituation paradigms tapping their understanding of the relation between a person and the object of her attention. Mea-sures of social responsiveness included orienting to the target of another’s attention, point production, and supported joint attention in parent–child play. Infants ’ re-sponses to the habituation events were related to their social responsiveness. Distinct factors for understanding actions and social responsiveness as relational were re-vealed. Infants who produced object-directed points were more likely to understand pointing as relational, and infants who engaged in high amounts of shared attention were more likely to understand gaze. Infants ’ tendency to orient in response to an adult’s gaze shifts and points was unrelated to their understanding of gaze and point-ing. These findings elucidate the ways in which social cognition and social respon-siveness, although distinct, are related in development. Between 9 and 12 months of age, infants begin to participate in increasingly rich triadic interactions. During this period, the shift in complexity of infants ’ social behavior is so dramatic that Tomasello (1995) dubbed it the “social-cognitive revo-lution”. This term implies that changes in infants ’ social responsiveness are accompanied by changes in their understanding of others ’ actions. Although this assumption provides the foundation for many theories of social-cognitive develop-ment, until now it has not been empirically tested. Tomasello and colleagues