From social expectations to social cognition in early infancy

The end of the first year marks an important social-cognitive transition for human infants. Around this time, they start to engage in a new variety of joint attentional behaviors not clearly present in the preceding months. These new social behaviors are thought to index infants' understanding of intentions in others-an understanding that ultimately gives way to an active participation in human culture. Given the importance of such understanding, the question is from where infants' new social-cognitive repertoire may originate. Well before the emergence of joint attention, infants are sophisticated social beings, readily able to form expectations about others and inclined to relate differentially to them. The author focuses on the potential connection between social expectations developing in the context of early face-to-face interactions and the social-cognitive changes taking place by the end of the first year of life.