Natural versus Trained Maternal Expression in a Social Referencing

Throughout the social referencing literature, mothers were used as emoters and trained to express prototypical expressions. The concern with using trained expressions is that this may not be how mothers naturally convey emotional information to their infants. Half of the mothers were trained to present prototypical vocal and emotional expressions of fear, happiness, and neutrality as they delivered a social referencing message to a toy and then allowed the infant time to interact with it. The other half were instructed to naturally convey these emotions to their infants. Untrained mothers used more affect and gestures when communicating compared to untrained mothers. Older infants touched the toy most when hearing happiness and least when hearing fear, while younger infants did the opposite. Maternal training did not have an effect on infant interaction with the toys, which suggests that training may not be a necessary component of social referencing paradigms.