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Emotional behaviour during the learning of a contingency in early infancy
Author(s) -
Lewis Michael,
Sullivan Margaret Wolan,
BrooksGunn Jeanne
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-835x.1985.tb00982.x
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , audiology , fixation time , stimulus (psychology) , cognitive psychology , medicine
Sixty infants divided equally among three age groups (10, 16 and 24 weeks) participated in a contingency learning task. After an initial baseline period, half of the subjects received an audio‐visual stimulus contingent upon arm movement while the remaining infants, matched for age and sex, served as a control group. Session length was controlled by the infant and served as an index of task involvement. Amount of visual fixation per minute, fussing and frequency of smiling were also examined. There were consistent condition effects for each of the arm movement measures analysed but age and age × condition effects were obtained only for average rate and peak rate of response. With respect to affective measures, subjects in the contingent condition spent more time in the experiment irrespective of age and fussed proportionally less compared with control subjects. These subjects at 16 and 24 weeks also smiled more than non‐contingent controls at the same ages, although the overall rate of smiling was low.