Preverbal infants' evaluation of sharing behaviors within a “taking turns” context is modulated by the perspectives they adopt

Introduction Socio-moral evaluations may differ depending on the perspectives adopted. In the field of early socio-moral development, it remains unclear whether preverbal infants evaluate interactions differently when they adopt the perspectives of different social agents. Methods Using a “taking turns” scenario involving one agent initially occupying a swing and a newcomer requesting a turn, this study investigates 11-month-old infants' evaluations of agents who shared the swing by taking turns and the agents who did not take turns. By manipulating both the roles of the agents (i.e., an agent requesting a turn versus an agent asked to yield a turn) and the test phase design, we conducted four eye-tracking experiments to examine whether infants' preferences for agents involved in sharing and non-sharing events vary depending on perspectives from which the interaction is evaluated. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we examined infants' predictions regarding an involved agent's preferences between the agents. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we examined infants' own preferences as a third-party observer. The total sample comprised 103 infants ( M = 10 months 29 days; 55 girls), distributed across Experiment 1a ( N = 30), Experiment 1b ( N = 30), Experiment 2a ( N = 21), and Experiment 2b ( N = 22). Results Anticipatory gaze metrics revealed that infants looked longer at an agent involved in the sharing event only when predicting the choices of a newcomer requesting a turn (Experiment 1a). Conversely, this preference was not observed when infants inferred the choices of the initial possessor of the swing who was asked to take a turn (Experiment 1b), nor in the third-party preference conditions (Experiments 2a and 2b). Discussion These findings suggest that infants' socio-moral evaluations may be context-dependent and modulated by perspectives. This variability further indicates that, rather than examining whether infants show prosocial preferences, research should focus on elaborating when and under what criteria these evaluations emerge.