Human beings need society and social interaction to survive. A person’s ability to participate in complex socio-cultural organizations is vital to that person’s well-being. Humans depend on social interaction with other humans for social and cultural learning, later for adaptation to various social situations, and ultimately for survival even in infancy. Several studies have shown that newborn infants adaptively modify their social behavior to fit their social situation rather than responding mechanically or reflexively to external input.
One such activity that newborns modify based on their environment is gazing. However, some studies have demonstrated that the gaze of newborns can occur regardless of their social setting. The study was published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Consequently, the empirical evidence explaining contextual modulation of infants’ social behavior is inconsistent. Therefore, there is a need for a theoretical framework that can effectively describe the mechanisms underlying such behavioral modifications.
To this end, a new study by Dr. Mitsuhiko Ishikawa, JSPS Research Fellow at Doshisha University’s Center for Baby Science—uses contextual modulation of gaze-following behavior as a model system to assess whether infants How to contextually modify your conversational behavior. Dr. Ishikawa explains, “We proposed that from infancy, humans integrate perceptual information, memories, and current physiological state to determine optimal behavior in any given social context through a process of value-driven decision-making.”
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This means that infants choose between different actions under each social context by assessing which action will result in the most rewarding outcome, such as receiving new information or social encouragement. Dr. Ishikawa, along with Professor Atsushi Senju of the Child Mental Development Research Center, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, also proposed that external cues do not directly determine infants’ social behavior.
To support these hypotheses, the two researchers built on their existing empirical research to design the `Action Value Calculator Model`, which describes the cognitive processes involved in making infants’ behavioral decisions during various social interactions . This model suggests that infants first encode social cues in each context.
These can include any type of social stimulus, including faces, gestures, and speech. Infants then process these social stimuli to represent the current social situation. Next, their brains calculate and compare the values of various alternative actions within a particular social situation.
Once these action values are compared, infants ultimately choose to perform the optimal action that has the highest action value, that is, the one that will result in the most appropriate response/outcome in that social situation. The whole process of action value computation and comparison can also be influenced by memory of past experiences and internal states, such as physical or psychological cues of the body.
Furthermore, these action values can be updated based on the feedback received on taking that action. Since social situations are often dynamic and may involve interactions, this process becomes iterative. Thus, once an action is performed, the social context is updated and processed from the beginning to perform another action.
But how do infants learn how to assign value to their actions based on their social status? According to the researchers, babies have a tendency to associate with social stimuli from birth. Then, with experience, they learn possible combinations of actions and their consequences to determine which actions work better in which social context. Additionally, individual differences in social experiences, such as family environment, may further shape how infants assign action values.
For example, deaf infants raised by deaf parents exhibit more gaze-following behavior than hearing infants raised by hearing parents. Essentially, this value-based model highlights the importance of internal value computation and decision-making processes in infants and supports studies that suggest that infants contextualize their social behaviors rather than follow external cues. modify formally.
Envisioning how this research can be taken forward, Dr. Ishikawa says, “Our cognitive model can inspire empirical research of infants’ social behavior, including gaze from a value-based decision-making perspective other than Social actions are also involved. These may also be linked to mechanisms shaping individual and cultural differences in social behavior, and perhaps improve our understanding of the fundamental question of how humans interact socially in their daily lives. Do it.