ABSTRACT
From prosocial behavior to cultural learning and belief understanding, social cognitive skills are important for engagement in social interactions and learning from others. In this chapter, we review some probable foundational skills of social cognitive development in human and non-human primate (NHP) infants. We selectively discuss capacities that are early-emerging and shared across species, with the goal of illustrating the value of a comparative developmental approach in advancing our understanding of early social cognitive development. While this field is still in its infancy and much remains unknown, we think such an approach is useful for uncovering the proximate and ultimate mechanisms of early social capacities. In particular, we review early emerging skills related to infants’ recognition of, and selective attention toward, social agents; infants’ affiliation toward conspecifics and similar others; and infants’ basic action understanding. Given the early ontological emergence and shared phylogeny of these skills, we suggest that they may make up some of the precursors upon which later, higher-order social cognitive abilities are built. Although these skills appear across species, and thus may be based in evolutionarily conserved systems, this does not imply that they are innate or impenetrable by experience. We review evidence suggesting that, in both human and NHP infants, a variety of experiences contribute to these early markers of social cognitive development, including face-to-face interactions, selfother comparisons, and motor experience. We also discuss how individual differences in early development, often overlooked in experimental work, provide a rich source of data for understanding variability across social-cognitive outcomes and how NHP studies are beginning to uncover some of the factors-e.g., experiential, epigenetic-that may underlie such differences. Finally, we outline future directions for the field. Though noting the challenges, we emphasize the important gains in understanding that can be accomplished by, for example, considering
Sarah A. Gerson et al. Drivers of Social Cognitive Development
the role of emotions in social cognitive development and anchors of social cognitive skills in physiology.
