The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of social encouragement on infants' hand movements, in particular on manual preference. Thirty-six infants were observed at 5.5 months. In a first step, their spontaneous manual preference was recorded with an object placed at the midline position. The second step consisted in encouraging infants to use their non-preferred hand by putting the object near that hand and congratulating them. The third step was similar to the first one (object placed at the midline position) except that the infant continued to be congratulated when (s)he used the non-preferred hand for reaching the object. Results showed that half of the infants exhibited a spontaneous manual preference and that a majority of these infants could use their non-preferred hand when verbally encouraged. Moreover, infants showing a left hand preference modified their hand-use more easily than infants showing a right hand preference. Although our findings reveal only a temporary and short-term influence of the social context, results are discussed in light of a socio-cognitive perspective whereby social encouragement can model manual preference, in particular its strength and stability. Highlights • At 5.5 months, a manual preference was observed in 47.2% of the infants. • The preference for the left hand was observed in 35.3% of the infants who presented a manual preference. • Left-handers change more easily their hand-use than right handers.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 05 November 2014.
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#6,917,649
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#168
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Altmetric has tracked 24,821,035 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 72nd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 33,482 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.0. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 70% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 378 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 55% of its contemporaries.
