Early Socio-Emotional Development: Contingency Perception and the Social-Biofeedback Model

The past century of theory about human development has placed much responsibility for normal socio-emotional development on the social interactions experienced in infancy (e.g., Bandura, 1992; Bowlby, 1969; Bruner, 1990; Freud, 1949; Skinner, 1948; Stern, 1985; Trevarthen, 1979; Watson, 1930). The reliance on nurture over nature in each of these theories may need to be tempered in light of some recent proposals about a variety of richly structured innate mechanisms to interpret social stimulation [e.g., Leslie's (1987, 1994) theory of mind module; Baron-Cohen's (1995) detectors for perceiving another person's intention and eye direction; Meltzoff's (Meltzoff & Gopnik, 1993; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977, 1989) neonatal imitation mechanism; or Gergely and Csibra's (1996, 1997; Csibra & Gergely, in press) teleological stance for interpreting another's action]. Even if incorporating one or more of these specific interpretive mechanisms, however, these diverse theories will surely continue to rely heavily on an assumption they share, at least implicitly, to the effect that human infants are sensitive to the existence of contingencies between their behavior and environmental events. The capacity to accurately interpret stimulation as contingent or not could well be viewed as the most fundamental of an infant's arsenal of innate modules for interpreting early sensory stimulation. Whether as a means to establish a basis of conditioning (e.g., Bandura, Skinner) or a basis for building representations of social relations (e.g., Bowlby, Bruner, Trevarthen), an infant's capacity to detect contingency is taken for granted.