{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,1]],"date-time":"2026-09-01T20:51:11Z","timestamp":1788295871610,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":28,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,30]],"date-time":"2026-06-30T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1782777600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>A recent study by Thomas et al. (2022) showed that 8.5- to 10-month-olds use saliva sharing as an indicator of relationship closeness: infants expect that someone who previously shared saliva with a partner will also comfort that partner during times of distress. The current paper offers a mechanistic explanation for this finding. We propose that through everyday experiences, saliva sharing and comforting become integrated into an enriched representation that contains information about both events. Across five simulations, we show that when this proposal is implemented in a connectionist computational model, the model reproduces infants' looking behaviors in the study by Thomas et al. (2022) (Simulation 1), captures the finding that infants' responses were specific to comfort (Simulation 2), predicts bidirectional expectations about saliva sharing and comforting (Simulation 3), and shows that these expectations strengthen with experience and can shift in response to changes in environmental statistics (Simulations 4 and 5). Taken together, our findings suggest that domain-general associative learning can explain how infants come to understand the social meaning of saliva sharing.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/chidev\/aacag119","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,11]],"date-time":"2026-06-11T11:45:30Z","timestamp":1781178330000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["An associative learning account of how saliva becomes\u00a0a\u00a0cue for comfort"],"prefix":"10.1093","author":[{"given":"Deon T","family":"Benton","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, TN ,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Justine E","family":"Hoch","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, TN ,","place":["United States"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,6,30]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026063008010237100_aacag119-B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"99","DOI":"10.4324\/9780203753873-4","volume-title":"The integration of a child into a social world","author":"Ainsworth","year":"1974"},{"key":"2026063008010237100_aacag119-B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e2355","DOI":"10.1002\/icd.2355","article-title":"But what is the mechanism?\u2019: Demystifying the ever elusive \u2018developmental mechanism\u2019","volume":"32","author":"Benton","year":"2023","journal-title":"Infant and Child Development"},{"key":"2026063008010237100_aacag119-B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"497","DOI":"10.1037\/xge0001656","article-title":"An associative-learning account of how infants learn about causal action in animates and inanimates: A critical reexamination of four classic studies","volume":"154","author":"Benton","year":"2025","journal-title":"Journal of Experimental Psychology: General"},{"key":"2026063008010237100_aacag119-B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e13464","DOI":"10.1111\/desc.13464","article-title":"Don\u2019t throw the associative baby out with the Bayesian bathwater: Children are more associative when reasoning \u00adretrospectively under information processing demands","volume":"27","author":"Benton","year":"2024","journal-title":"Developmental Science"},{"key":"2026063008010237100_aacag119-B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"Article e101164","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cogdev.2022.101164","article-title":"Moral masters or moral apprentices? 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