BCCCD22

Slack: https://bcccd.slack.com/archives/C02P9FU4GVD

Laura Carnevali, Letizia Della Longa, Teresa Farroni
Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padua, Italy

From the earliest ages, infants’ social environment is enriched by a variety of sensory rhythms that influence their attentional system helping them tuning to complex scenes. Of all the senses, affective touch directly connects the self with the others and vehiculates affective-motivational meanings, contributing to the acquisition of body awareness and fostering social learning. Crucially, when tactile stimulation is shared, the sense of affiliation and similarity among interacting children is enhanced, further influencing their social attitude. However, the developmental origin of this effect is poorly explored. In the present online study, we investigate whether 6- to 11-month-old (N=42) infants’ attention towards actions performed by a character is modulated by previous sharing of affective touch with the same character. Following a sequential familiarization with two characters respectively matched with tactile (affective or non-affective) and auditory stimulation, infants were presented with scenes in which the characters moved toward objects and, eventually, they underwent a visual preference test in which the two objects were displayed side by side.
Our results showed that infants looked longer to the character when sound is provided (t= -4.15, p < .001), whilst during scenes presentation infants that previously experienced affective (vs non affective) touch looked longer to the whole scene (t= -2.20, p = .034). These findings suggest infants’ attention to be differentially influenced by sound and touch. Specifically, sound seems to act as attention getter while the rhythm of caress-like touch might predispose the organism to explore a more complex environment presented after the stimulation itself.

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