{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/zuwpc","title":"Infants Infer Social Relationships between Individuals who Engage in Imitative Social Interactions","abstract":"Infants are born into rich social networks and are faced with the challenge of learning about them. Previous research shows that infants learn about the individuals in observed social interactions, but it is not clear whether they infer their individual dispositions or their relationships to one another. The current studies address this question in 12-month-old infants and 16- to 18-month-old toddlers who observe social interactions involving imitation. In Studies 1 and 3, infants and toddlers expected that imitators, compared to non-imitators, would respond to their social partners’ distress. Likewise, they expected the targets of imitation, compared to non-targets, to respond to their partner’s distress. In Study 2, these expectations did not generalize to interactions with a new partner, providing evidence for learning about the original individuals’ relationship. In Study 3, infants’ expectations did not generalize to responses to laughter, suggesting a focus on established social relationships. Together, these results provide evidence that infants and toddlers learn about the social relationships of unknown individuals by observing interactions involving imitation.","journal":"eScholarship (California Digital Library)","year":2023,"id":391210,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":7,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9561,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":268123,"name":"Elizabeth S. Spelke","orcid":"0000-0002-6925-3618","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":856577,"name":"Ashley J Thomas","orcid":"0000-0003-1239-883X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1163962,"name":"Vanessa Kudrnova","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":26,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:18:42.653719Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}