Abstract

Social skills are crucial for humans for being part of a social community. They help us to interact with our environment, to communicate with others in social interactions, but also to learn further abilities from others. However, babies need to develop them first. A large body of literature has emphasized the role of the social environment in infant’s development of social skills. Theoretical accounts have highlighted that the caregiver-child relationship serves as the cradle of learning in early childhood. The current thesis focused on maternal responsiveness as key aspect of caregiver–child interaction that support infant’s development of imitation, empathy, and prosociality. The stage of infancy is particularly interesting as experience with the caregivers settle the ground for children’s later interactions in their social environment. Despite a large body of research on children’s social skills in general, yet only few studies have investigated the relationship of the occurrence of specific social skills based on the influence of maternal behaviour within the first two years of life. To this end, three studies were conducted, two focusing longitudinally on the development of imitation and empathic responding and one investigating cross-sectionally the mechanism of action between maternal sensitivity and children emotional helping. The first study investigated the influence of maternal sensitivity and maternal imitation on children’s imitation behaviour. In particular, the study examined the influence of maternal sensitivity and maternal imitation behaviour on children’s spontaneous imitation behaviour and children’s imitation abilities at 18 months. To this end, mothers and their childrens natural imitation behaviour in a playing situation as well as maternal sensitivity were assessed. Beyond that, children’s imitative skills in several tasks at 18 months were measured. Results revealed that maternal sensitivity was related to children’s spontaneous imitation as well as children’s imitation abilities. Furthermore, the relation between maternal sensitivity and children’s imitation abilities was mediated by maternal imitation behaviour at 14 months, but not at 10 months. The study supports the notion that imitation is a learned ability and is impacted by mothers’ own imitation behaviour as well as maternal sensitivity. The second study investigated the onset of empathy as well as the influence of internal and external factors. In particular, the study examined children’s reactions to others’ emotion as well as maternal sensitivity, child’s negative emotionality, and children’s self-recognition within the first two years. To this end, mothers’ behavior was observed in play interactions and children’s empathic reactions to emotional displays were assessed at 6, 10, 14, and 18 months. Intraindividual changes models revealed that more sensitive maternal behavior at 6 months predicted changes in empathic reactions from 10 to 14 months positively. Before that maternal sensitivity had no effect on the empathic reactions, which were not clearly distinguishable from reactions towards a laughing person. The study supports the notion that maternal sensitive behavior plays a significant role in young children’s development of empathy. The third study investigated the relation of maternal sensitivity and emotional helping in toddlers. In particular, the study examined whether maternal sensitivity and children’s emotional helping was linked by children’s empathy or children’s compliance. To this end, mothers’ sensitivity was observed in play interactions and children’s behaviour regarding empathy, compliance, and emotional helping were assessed in three experimental tasks at 18 months. Mediation models revealed that empathy, but not compliance mediated the link between maternal sensitivity and children’s emotional helping. The study supports the notion that maternal behavior plays a significant role in young children’s ability to help others. Taken together, the current thesis offers notable insights into the specific relations of mother-child interaction and young children’s acquisition of social skills. Our results suggest that high-qualitative interactions with caregivers are crucial for children’s imitation abilities (Study 1) and for children’s empathic abilities (Study 2). Furthermore, through acquired empathic abilities, maternal behaviours influence new social skills as prosocial behaviour (Study 3). This speaks to the importance of maternal behaviour for the acquisition of social skills. While maternal sensitivity and maternal mirroring are important factors in infant’s acquisition of imitative abilities, maternal sensitivity plays additionally a crucial role for socio-emotional abilities like empathy and emotional helping. The current work has important implications for theories of child development by suggesting associative learning to be crucial for learning social skills such as imitation and empathy in mother-child interaction. In conclusion, the current thesis contributes to a better understanding of the role of mother-child interaction in young children’s acquisition of social skills and provides implications for research on infant’s and toddler’s social development.