Abstract
Infant researchers have defined social referencing in a number of ways. Feinman (1982), who approaches the field from a sociological perspective, uses a very broad definition. Any situation in which infants rely on another person’s cognitive and/or emotional appraisal to form their own understanding of a situation qualifies as social referencing. The information can be actively solicited, casually observed, or actively imparted by another person, and referencing can be affective (whether to feel positively or negatively about a situation), instrumental (how to behave in or cope with a situation), or both. Feinman’s broad definition of social referencing is based on the concept of reference group, which has a venerable history in sociology and social psychology. A reference group is a “set of significant others with whom the individual may compare his attitudes, beliefs and behaviors” (Webster, 1975, p. 446). By contrast, Campos and his colleagues (Campos, 1983; Klinnert, Campos, Sorce, Emde, & Svejda, 1983) restrict the term social referencing to those situations in which an infant actively seeks an adult’s emotional expression to help interpret an ambiguous situation, thus excluding situations in which the relevant information is instrumental, and not actively solicited. The differences between the broad and narrow definitions of social referencing are important, but should not obscure what both have in common: the astounding claim that infants as young as 10 months can make deliberate and specific use of another person’s judgment to form their own appraisal of a situation.
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Bretherton, I. (1992). Social Referencing, Intentional Communication, and the Interfacing of Minds in Infancy. In: Feinman, S. (eds) Social Referencing and the Social Construction of Reality in Infancy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-2462-9_3
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