Mothers’ communicative cues and the development of infants’ helping: Linking participation and problem solving in the first year of life

• Published in: Social development (Oxford, England) Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 1302 - 1317
• Main Authors: Edwards, Victoria L. L., Hammond, Stuart I.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.11.2023
• Subjects: Bystanders; Cues; Debates; First year; Gestures; Handover; helping; Infants; Mothers; Participation; Problem solving; Prosocial behavior; scaffolding; Socialization
• ISSN: 0961-205X; 1467-9507
• DOI: 10.1111/sode.12693

There is an ongoing debate on the role of socialization in the development of infants’ helping. Although opportunities for the socialization of early helping are rare in problem solving (bystander intervention), there are many opportunities for socialization in participation (working alongside others), and infants’ experiences of participation could socialize problem solving indirectly. The present study links participation and problem solving conceptually by drawing on a Hebbian concept of indirect learning and through a study examining mothers’ communicative cues in both forms of helping. Forty mother‐infant dyads engaged in two semi‐structured helping tasks, a participation task and a problem‐solving task at five, eight, and ten months of age. Mothers’ communicative cues and infants’ return of the object were examined using coding schemes adapted from prior research. Mothers used similar communicative cues (reaches, give‐me gestures, and verbal requests) in both tasks, and more maternal scaffolding contributed to greater object handover. Infants showed higher object handover in participation tasks. The findings, framed in Tomasello's neo‐Vygotskian account of prosocial development, offer a synthesis of the debate on the role of socialization where prosocial behavior emerges first between people, and then becomes individualized.