Quantifying social preference in young children using two tasks on a mobile platform

Children typically prefer social stimuli (e.g. faces, smiles) over non-social stimuli (e.g. natural scene, household objects). This social preference is believed to be an essential building block for later social skills and healthy social development. Measuring social reward responsiveness poses an empirical challenge, as it encompasses multiple underlying processes. In this study, we use a preferential looking task and an instrumental choice task to capture different potential processes underlying social preference, in over 100 typically developing 3-9 year old children. Children spent longer looking at social stimuli in the preferential looking task but did not show a similar preference for social rewards on the instrumental choice task. This study highlights the importance of choice of paradigms when evaluating social preference and their potential impact on understanding social reward responsivity.