INFANT BEHAVIOR AND DEVELOPMENT 8, 2533 (1985)

Social Referencing as a Function of Information Source: Mothers Versus

Strangers*

LYNNE ZARBATANY AND MICHAEL E. LAMB University of Utah

This study tested the notion that infonts selectively reference (i.e., seek and utilize information from) their mothers rather than strongers when faced with a novel event. Fourteen-month-old infants were exposed to an uncertainty-provok- ing stimulus (a toy spider). The infants’ mothers or a female stranger then con- veyed a joyful or fearful facial expression to help define the event. Consistent with prior research, infants responded differently to the spider in the two condi- tions. However, differential responding occurred only in the presence of mothers, supporting the notion that infont social referencing is selective. Furthermore, in- fants who initially expressed fear of the spider waited longer to look at the adults’ affective display and were less influenced by the display than were infants who expressed uncertainty. This confirmed that uncertainty promotes referenc- ing.

social referencing communication selectivity emotional expressions

Recently, much attention has been given to social referencing, a process where- by individuals utilize others’ appraisals of events to formulate their own inter- pretations of those events (Campos & Stenberg, 1981; Feinman, 1982; Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983). Though debate continues regarding the types of informational exchanges which constitute social referencing (Cam- pos, 1983; Feinman, 1982, 1983) several areas of consensus have emerged. First, social referencing is heightened when there is ambiguity or uncertainty which others’ evaluations help to reduce (Feinman, 1982; Gunnar & Stone, in press; Klinnert et al., 1983). Second, social referencing is one of the primary methods of information gathering in human infancy (Campos & Stenberg, 1981; Feinman, 1982, in press; Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983). When exposed to ambiguous events (e.g., novel toys, the modified visual cliff) infants as young as 12 months of age search for information from others to help define the event and behave toward that event in a manner consistent with

* This research was supported in part by a grant to Michael E. Lamb from the National Science Foundation, The authors wish to express their appreciation to the mothers and infants who graciously served as subjects. Thanks are also extended to Susan Dolan, Nanette Benjamin, and Allison Zumbrunnen who acted as research assistants, and to Theresa Brown, Deanne Foxley, Perry Garso, and Joel Knuth who served as raters. Special appreciation is expressed to Donald P. Hartmann for his invaluable statistical consultation. Portions of the results were presented to the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit, April 1983. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Lynne Zarbatany, who is now in the Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A X2, Canada.

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26 ZARBATANY AND LAMB

the information they receive (Klinnert, 1981; Sorce, Emde, Klinnert, & Cam- pos, in press). Finally, much of social referencing in infancy involves emotional exchanges between infants and adults. In ambiguous situations, infant behav- ior can be regulated by adult affective expressions (e.g., fear, joy), whether facial (Klinnert, 1981; Sorce et al., in press), vocal (Svejda & Campos, in press), or some combination of the two (Boccia & Campos, 1983; Feinman & Lewis, 1983; Gunnar & Stone, in press).

A further postulate of social referencing theory is that infants are selective regarding whom they reference, preferring familiar adults such as caretakers whose trustworthiness can be assumed (Campos & Stenberg, 1981; Feinman, 1982; Klinnert et al., 1983). However, despite its importance, this “selectivity postulate” (Feinman, 1982) has never been verified empirically. In an initial attempt to assess infant responsivity to stranger signals, Klinnert, Emde, and Butterfield (1983) reported that infants used a stranger’s affective displays to interpret an “unusual” toy robot, approaching their mothers more during the stranger’s fearful display than during her happy display. However, a substan- tial number of children in the fear condition also approached the robot, a re- sponse which is inconsistent with the social referencing hypothesis. Because mothers’ affective responses (neutral, puzzled) differed from the strangers’ responses and many of the children referenced their mothers as well as the strangers prior to taking action, it is possible that the mothers’ responses miti- gated the effects of the strangers’ (i.e., failed to corroborate the stranger’s signal). A direct test of the selectivity postulate would involve comparing the effectiveness of maternal and stranger’s signals in situations in which only one adult is available for referencing.

The goal of the present study was to test the notion that mothers and “habituated” female strangers (Cohen, 1974) would elicit different levels of information seeking and information utilization in identical novel contexts. Infants were exposed to an uncertainty-provoking event (a toy spider) in the presence of an adult (either mother or habituated stranger) who posed a facial expression that was either happy or fearful. On the basis of the selectivity postulate, we predicted that children would seek and rely on information pro- vided by their mothers more than on information provided by strangers. Spe- cifically, we expected infants to approach the toy more during a maternal than a stranger’s expression of joy, and to approach the mother more than the stranger in response to expressions of fear.

METHOD

Seventy-nine infants and their mothers served as subjects. Infants ranged in age from 13.23 to 15.03 months, with a mean age of 14.13 months. Forty-three percent of the children were firstborns, and 48% were girls.

Infants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: mother-happy, mother-fearful, stranger-happy, and stranger-fearful. Approximately equal

SOCIAL REFERENCING: MOTHERS VS. STRANGERS 27

numbers of boys and girls were represented in each condition. All of the chil- dren had a lo-min (approximately) warm-up period in a brightly decorated, toy-filled waiting room with one of two female research assistants-the “strang- ers”-before initiation of the test session. During the warm-up period, all of the mothers were escorted to the experimental playroom where the testing pro- cedure was fully explained, a brief interview was conducted, and mothers in the “mother” conditions were taught and practiced posing the fearful or joy- ful facial expression.

Immediately following the warm-up period, each child was brought into the playroom by mother or stranger and seated among several immovable toys in the “infant corner” of the room. After introducing the infant to the toys, the adult encouraged the child to continue playing while she sat reading a magazine on a chair in the opposite corner. The adult was instructed and coached during the session by means of a “bug-in-the-ear” device. The trial began when a previously concealed, remote-controlled, black felt spider (the uncertainty-provoking stimulus) entered the room, moved in a figure-of-eight pattern across the floor for 30 s, and then stopped 1 m from the infant, at a 90’ angle from the direct path between infant and mother. The adult assumed and held the appropriate facial expression, glancing alternately at the spider and the infant without talking or gesturing, until 60 s had elapsed from the in- fant’s first look to her after seeing the spider. Thereafter, the adult assumed a neutral expression and resumed reading. Throughout the trial, the adult was instructed not to initiate interaction with the infant, but to respond if the in- fant made a request or exhibited extreme distress. The session was terminated 150 s after the infant’s first look at the spider. Any baby expressing fear at the termination of the session was given the opportunity to play with the spider in the presence of his or her mother. All sessions were videotaped through a one- way mirror.

Two extensively trained raters coded nine infant behaviors from the videotapes.’ These behaviors comprised two general response classes: (a) in- formation-seeking, including latency of initial look to adult, number of looks during the happy/fearful display, and total length of time spent looking at this display; and (b) approach behaviors, including farthest distance moved toward the adult and toward the spider, latency to approach the adult and the spider, duration of time in physical contact with the adult, and activity level during the session. Interrater reliabilities (product-moment correlations) for ratings of each behavior ranged from .87 to .99.

I The behavioral codes were those employed by Klinnert (1981). Infant affective responses were also coded from the videotapes. Since these ratings were unreliable, the analyses of affectivity data are not presented here. (This information is available from the authors upon request). How- ever, these affectivity ratings were used to eliminate subjects who displayed affective responses prior to the first look at the adult. Because the ratings were unreliable, we adopted a conservative approach, eliminating infants when either rater perceived an affective response.

28 ZARBATANY AND LAMB

Manipulation Check

To ascertain whether the adults expressed the appropriate affect, two experi- mentally naive coders rated the presence and intensity (on a 6-point scale rang- ing from “barely detectable” to “could not imagine a greater show of the emotion”) of seven emotions (surprise, enjoyment, disgust, anger, fear, inter- est, and sadness) in the adult’s face during all infant looks at the display. In- fants were excluded from the analyses if the adult’s signal was inappropriate during more than one half of the looks. Interrater agreement regarding the proportion of sequences during which the correct.emotion was displayed was relatively low (r= .39), and thus the authors reviewed all sequences for which there were either disagreements between the raters or agreements to exclude in- fants. Agreement among the raters to exclude infants (N=3) occurred when adults displayed a blend of surprise and joy. We decided to retain these infants in the study because the affective display was primarily positive. A second rating of the tapes involving disagreement (N= 11) resulted in the elimination of five infants and the retention of six who received the correct emotion either by itself or in combination with another emotion (usually surprise). Interrater agreement regarding the intensity of the fearful or joyful expressions was .63 (product-moment correlation, Spearman-Brown corrected). The two raters’ intensity ratings were averaged and subjected to a 2 (source of information) x

2 (quality of emotion) ANOVA. A significant main effect for source of infor- mation was found, with the strangers’ signals rated as more intense than mothers’, F( 1,60) = 5.84, p c .002.

RESULTS

Forty-three of the 79 children (20 girls and 23 boys) were excluded from the data analysis for one of five reasons: (a) they expressed a noticeable emotional reaction to the spider before looking at the adult’s facial expression as rated immediately by the first author (n = 12) or from the videotapes by experimen- tally naive raters (n = 14) (24 displayed fear, and 2 displayed happiness); (b) they cried incessantly upon separation from their mothers (n = 8); (c) they failed to reference (n = 1); (d) the adult expressed inappropriate affect during the facial display (n = 5); or (e) the equipment failed (n = 3). The final sample in- cluded 36 infants, with 7 to 11 in each experimental condition. The mean age and proportion of firstborns in this subsample did not differ appreciably from that of the total sample. Preliminary analyses revealed no significant effects for sex of infant, amount of daycare experience, or identity of stranger; thus these variables were not included in subsequent analyses.

Analysis of Behaviors

In view of the small subject to variable ratio, composite scores were formed prior to analysis. Standard scores on variables were combined if their correla- tions exceeded + .61 and their correlations with variables not included in the

SOCIAL REFERENCING: MOTHERS VS. STRANGERS 29

composite were less than + .31 .2 Interrater reliabilities for the resulting com- posite scores, computed using a procedure described by Nunnally (1978), ranged from .87 to .98. The variables were: (a) latency of initial look; (b) look- ing to facial display (formed by summing number of looks to facial display and total time spent looking at facial display); (c) approach to adult (formed by summing farthest distance moved toward adult and duration of time in physical contact with adult, and subtracting latency to approach adult); (d) approach to spider (formed by subtracting latency to approach spider from farthest distance moved toward spider); and (e) activity level.

To assess the hypothesis that infants would behave more favorably to the spider in the happy condition than in the fear condition, a 2 (source of infor- mation: mother, stranger) x 2 (quality of emotion: happy, fear) ANOVA was

performed on the approach to spider variable. Infants in the happy condition tended to approach the spider more than infants in the fear condition [MS = + .42, - S3, respectively, F(1,32) = 1.78, p < . lo]. Furthermore, infants tended to approach the spider more when mothers conveyed happy expressions than when they conveyed fear, but showed no such differential responding to the strangers’ affective displays, interaction F( 1,32) = 1.78, p < .10 (see Table 1).

The five behavioral variables were then subjected to a 2 (source of infor- mation) x 2 (quality of emotion) MANOVA. Source of information and qual- ity of emotion produced significant overall main effects, F’s(5,28) = 2.80 and 2.82, p’s c .04, so univariate ANOVAs were performed on each of the variables. No differences with respect to source of information were found in latency of initial look or amount of looking. However, infants were more likely to ap-

TABLE 1 Effects of Adult Facial Expression on Infant Behavior

Experimental Conditions

Behavior Composites Mother-Happy Mother-Fearful Stranger-Happy Stranger-Fearful

Latency of Initial Look -0.011 -0.195 +0.220 -0.063

Looking at

Facial Display -0.913 +0.675 -0.509 +1.099

Approach to Adult +2.188 - 0.696 -1.138 -0.995

Approach to Spider + 1.487 -0.063 -0.885 -0.884

Activity Level +0.882 -0.173 -0.541 -0.403

N 11 7 9 9

* Correlations between activity level and several other variables were greater than .61, but this variable was not used in the formation of composite scores for conceptual reasons.

30 ZARBATANY AND LAMB

preach the spider and the adult, and be more active in the presence of their mothers than in the presence of the stranger, F’s(l,32) > 5.16, p’s < .03. Infants looked more at the fearful than at the joyful face, F(1,33) = 8.10, pc .Ol, but no other significant main effects due to quality of emotion were found.

Because the interaction effects involving source of information and quality of emotion were of primary importance in evaluating the selectivity postulate, univariate tests of this interaction were conducted despite a nonsignificant multivariate interaction effect, F(5,28) = 1.27, p < .3 1. Significant interactions were found for approach to adult and activity level, qualifying the source of information main effects for these variables, F’s(l,32) > 3.60, p’s < .07. Tests of simple main effects indicated that these interactions were accounted for by infants in the mother-happy group who approached the adult more and were more active overall than infants in the three remaining conditions (see Table 1).

Analysis of Fear Group

Since many infants in our original sample (n = 24) reacted with fear upon en- trance of the spider and prior to their first look to the adult, an opportunity was provided to contrast the effects of context (certainty vs. ambiguity) on social referencing. Initially-fearful children should be less influenced by the adults’ affective communications than were those who expressed uncertainty (Campos dc Stenberg, 1981; Feinman, 1982, in press). This prediction was confirmed by a 2(level of certainty: uncertain, certain) x Z(emotion conveyed: happy, fear) MANOVA on the composite behavioral variables, excluding activity level for which there were no clear predictions.” An overall multivariate main effect was found for level of certainty, F(4,53) = 5.40, p < .OOl. Univariate ANOVAs in- dicated that infants who responded fearfully prior to the first look to the adult waited longer before looking at the adult’s affective display, F(1.56) = 10.75, p< .002, were more likely to approach the adult, F(1,56) = 6.40, pc .02, and were less likely to approach the spider, F(1,56) = 3.10, p < .09, than were in- fants who were initially uncertain. Moreover, infants responded differentially to the two affective displays as a function of their level of certainty regarding’ the spider’s interpretation, multivariate interaction, F(4,53) = 2.38, p < .07 (see Table 2). Uncertain infants studied the fear face longer than the happy face, whereas certain infants’ looks at the two affective displays did not differ sig- nificantly, interaction F(1,56) = 4.69, p < .04. Uncertain infants were less likely to approach the adult and certain children were more likely to approach the adult in the fear condition, whereas certain and uncertain infants’ approaches to the adult in the happy condition did not differ significantly, F( 1,56) = 3.8 1, p< .06. Finally, uncertain infants were somewhat more likely to approach the spider in the happy condition than were infants in the three remaining groups, F(1,56)= 1.90, p<.18.

’ Only infants whose certain response was fearful were included, because only two re- sponded with certain joy.

SOCIAL REFERENUNG: MOTHERS VS. STRANGERS 31

TABLE 2 Effects of Certainty of Initial Approisal on Infant Response

to Adult Facial Expression

Behovior

Composites

Latency of

Initial Look

Looking at

Facial Display

Approach to

Adult

Approach to

Spider

N

Uncertain

HIPPY

- .25

- .81

--.ll

+.84

20

Experimental Conditions

Uncertain Certain

Fear Happy

- .41 + .55

+ .93 +.20

- 1.36 + .29

- .21 - .73

16 12

Certain

Fear

+ .41

- .08

+1.71

- .40

12

To assess the interaction between selectivity and level of certainty, source of information (mother or stranger) was added as a factor in additional analyses. The three-way interaction was significant only for approach to adult, F(1,52) = 3.94, p< .06, and thus qualifies the level of certainty by emotion conveyed interaction reported earlier. “Certain” children in the mother-fearful condi- tion were more likely to approach the adult (M= + 2.79) than were “certain” children in the mother-happy (M= + .Ol), stranger-fearful (M= + .63), and stranger-happy (M= + .49) conditions, or “uncertain” children in the mother- happy condition (M= + 1.12), and the latter groups were more likely to approach the adult than were “uncertain” children in the mother-fearful (M= - 1.27), stranger-fearful (M = - .144), and stranger-happy (M= - 1.65) conditions.

DISCUSSION

As in previous studies (e.g., Klinnert, 1981; Sorce et al., 1981), we found that when faced with an uncertainty-provoking event, infants sought and used infor- mation provided by mothers to help interpret the event. When mothers posed fear, infants were less likely to approach the spider than when the mothers por- trayed joy. Although infants sought information from both strangers and mothers, and the strangers’ signals were more intense than those of mothers, they did not use information from the strangers to regulate their behavior toward the spider in this fashion. This finding is consistent with research indi- cating that for older children, familiar and significant others (i.e., those who control positive reinforcement, who are competent, and who are trusted) exert more powerful influence on behavior than do unfamiliar individuals (see Mussen, 1968, for a review), and that infants’ behavior is more strongly influ- enced by relationships with primary than with secondary caretakers (Main & Weston, 1981). Overall, therefore, we obtained qualified support for the “selec- tivity postulate..”

32 ZARBATANY AND LAMB

However, our findings were inconsistent with those reported by Klinnert et al. (1983), whose infant subjects did show some responsiveness to the affec- tive signals of strangers. Perhaps the infant subjects in our “stranger” condi- tions experienced fear or uncertainty following unexpected separations from their mothers and care by an unfamiliar (albeit friendly) stranger who then took them into a strange room in which a strange, noisy, moving toy suddenly appeared. This fear or uncertainty might have trivialized the effects of the strangers’ facial expressions. In future tests of the selectivity postulate, it may be helpful to assess referencing to strangers in familiar contexts (e.g., home) with mothers momentarily inaccessible.

Contrary to our expectations, infants approached their mothers more and were more active in response to happy rather than fearful expressions, as if the fearful expressions immobilized them rather than potentiating retreat to the “haven of safety” (Ainsworth, 1974). One possible interpretation might be that the adult’s affective displays altered the children’s general moods (in- hibiting activity in the fear condition and potentiating activity in the happy group) rather than conveying specific information about the spider (Boccia & Campos, 1983; Feinman, 1982, in press). Unfortunately, the design of this study precluded evaluation of this interpretation, which was supported by Boccia and Campos (1983) but not by Feinman and Lewis (1983) or Klinnert, Emde, and Butterfield (198313). Further research designed to compare the social referencing and mood modification interpretations (Feinman, 1982) is clearly needed.

Although this study was not designed to evaluate the effect of context (certainty vs. ambiguity) on social referencing, the fact that many infants ini- tially considered the spider fearful rather than ambiguous made it possible to do so. Consistent with past research (Gunnar & Stone, in press; Sorce et al., in press), initially certain infants differed from uncertain infants with respect to both information seeking and information usage. Fearful infants waited longer before looking at the adult, as if they needed this information simply for confirmation rather than disambiguation. When the adults (particularly mothers) displayed fear, approach to the adults by initially fearful infants was accelerated, as if the adults’ reaction substantiated the infants’ appraisal, a response predicted by Campos and Stenberg (1981). On the other hand, happy facial displays did not potentiate approach to the spider by fearful children, suggesting that stronger messages are necessary to reverse the infants’ initial evaluation than to either consolidate or form evaluations. Further research on this important point should be designed to identify the types of information needed to overcome initial interpretations.

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SOCIAL REFERENCING: MOTHERS VS. STRANGERS 33

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10 August 1983; Revised 23 May 1984 W