This is a doctoral research project by Claire Prendergast from the University of Oslo, Norway and is funded by the Norwegian Research Council in collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Spelke, Marshall L. Berkman Professor, at the Harvard Lab for Developmental Studies.
The aim of the project is to provide empirical evidence for how preverbal infants may understand and interpret explicit and implicit instances of social exclusion in different ways reflected in their systematic choices for one character over another in a reaching task as a function of the form of exclusion that they have been familiarized with (Experiment 1) and their anticipatory looking towards one character or another when a neutral agent moves on screen, again depending on the form of exclusion that they have been familiarized with (Experiment 2).
Infants are familiarized with acceptance and either explicit or implicit exclusion events as depicted in simple animations and infant gaze behavior is monitored throughout the viewing of these animations using a Tobii Eye-Tracker. Experiment 1 presents infants with a choice between the excluded agent or the group agent in a subsequent reaching task and Experiment 2 involves a test trial in which a neutral agent either approaches the excluded agent or the group.