STRANGER WARINESS AND SOCIABILITY IN THE EARLY YEARS

Thirty-one infants aged 10 to 13 months were observed in two different situations of stranger encounter, one more conducive to affiliative responses (sociability situation) and the other more to fear/wariness responses (stronger-wariness situation). The stranger-wariness situation was performed with mother present and absent. Responses were evaluated by behavioral observations and in the wariness situation also by heart-rate recordings. At 27 to 28 months, the children were again observed in the sociability situation and in a situation when left alone with the stranger. The results showed concordance between behavioral and heart-rate responses in the wariness situation and a significant relationship between sociability and wariness measured at the same age. Predictive relationships showed that, whereas sociability and stranger wariness at 1 year both significantly predicted sociability a year later, reaction to being left alone at age 2 years was related only to early wariness. These results were interpreted as suggesting that infants' responses to unfamiliar adults may be determined by two different dimensions of individual differences related to the behavioral systems of fear and affiliation.