The dribble test: How toddlers spot social ties

The dribble test: How toddlers spot social ties

WASHINGTON: The thought of sharing an ice cream cone with a stranger can trigger feelings of disgust – however that’s often not the case with someone close to us, such as a romantic partner or child. A new study in the journal Science shows that children are aware of this dynamic from a very young age, and see saliva exchange – through activities like kissing, sharing food, or wiping away dribble – as a cue to tell whether two people have a special bond.

“We know from a lot of research that infants are super attuned to that social aspect of their world,” Ashley Thomas, a researcher at Harvard and MIT, told AFP. “But one thing that we didn’t know before this study is whether they really pay attention to different types of relationships.” In particular, Thomas and colleagues wanted to know whether children can distinguish special relationships referred to as “thick”, a term first coined by the philosopher Avishai Margalit. To test whether children make the same distinctions as adults, the team devised a series of experiments.

First they presented a group of more than 100 children aged five to seven with cartoons featuring characters in interactions with each other. The