1. Infancy: Social and Emotional Development
CHAPTER 6
Infancy: Social and Emotional Development

2. Attachment: Bonds That Endure

3. Attachment: Bonds that Endure
Enduring emotional bond between one animal or person and another (Ainsworth, 1989)
Essential to the survival of the infant (Bowlby, 1988)
Infants try to maintain contact with caregivers to whom they are attached.
Make eye contact
Pull and tug at them
Asked to be picked up
Separation anxiety
Behaviors such as thrashing about, fussing, crying, screeching, or whining when contact with the caregiver is lost

4. Patterns of Attachment
“Strange situation” method
Infant exposed to a series of separations and reunions with a caregiver (usually the mother) and a stranger who is a confederate of the researchers
Developed by Ainsworth et al.
Secure attachment (most infants in the US)
Mildly protest mother’s departure
Seek interaction when reunited
Are readily comforted by mother
Are happier, more sociable, and more cooperative with caregivers
Get along better with peers and are better adjusted at school at 5 and 6 years old

5. Figure 6.1: The Strange Situation.
These historic photos show a 12-month-old child in the Strange Situation. In (a), the child plays with toys, glancing occasionally at mother. In (b), the stranger approaches with a toy. While the child is distracted, mother leaves the room. In (c), mother returns after a brief absence. The child crawls to her quickly and clings to her when picked up. In (d), the child cries when mother again leaves the room.
Fig. 6-1, p. 114

6. Patterns of Attachment (cont’d)
Avoidant attachment
Infants least distressed by mother’s departure
Play without fuss when alone and ignore mothers when they return
Ambivalent/resistant attachment
Infants are most emotional
Show severe signs of distress when mothers leave and are ambivalent upon their return
Alternate clinging to mother with pushing her away
Disorganized/disoriented attachment
Babies seem dazed, confused, disoriented; behaviors are contradictory

7. Establishing Attachment
Attachment related to quality of care
Secure infants have parents who are more affectionate, cooperative, and predictable than parents of insecure infants.
Parents respond more favorably to infant’s smiles and cries.
Security is related to the infant’s temperament
Mothers of “difficult” children are less responsive to them.
Mothers report feeling more distant from infant

8. Figure 6.2: Development of Attachment.
During the first 6 months, infants tend to show indiscriminate attachment, which then wanes as specific attachments intensify.
Fig. 6-2, p. 116

9. Involvement of Fathers
The number of diapers a father changes per week indicates his involvement in childrearing.
Fathers more likely to play with children than to feed or clean them
Fathers engage in rough-and-tumble play.
The more affectionate the interaction between father and infant is, the stronger the attachment.

10. Stability of Attachment
Attachment can change due to family dynamics.
Adopted children of various ages show secure attachment to adoptive family.
Early attachment patterns endure into middle childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood.

11. Stages of Attachment
Ainsworth study on Ugandan infants identified three phases of attachment
1) Initial-preattachment phase
Birth to 3 months of age
Characterized by indiscriminate attachment
2) Attachment-in-the-making phase
3 to 4 months of age
Characterized by preference for familiar figures
3) Clear-cut attachment phase
6 to 7 months of age
Characterized by intensified dependence on the primary caregiver, usually the mother
Most infants form multiple attachments to father, day-care providers, grandparents, etc.

12. Theories of Attachment
Cognitive view
Infant must develop the concept of object permanence before specific attachment becomes possible.
Behavioral view
Attachment behaviors are conditioned due to infant’s needs being met by caregiver; caregiver associated with gratification
Psychoanalytic view
Caregiver or “mother” becomes a love object who forms basis for all later attachments (Freud)
Sense of trust has to be established in first year of life (Erikson)
Freud believed that the infant becomes emotionally attached to the mother during this time because she is the primary satisfier of the infant’s needs for food and sucking.
Erikson believed the mother’s general sensitivity to the child’s needs, not just the need for food, fosters the development of trust and attachment.

13. Theories of Attachment (cont’d)
Caregiver as source of contact comfort
Study by Harlow and Harlow on rhesus monkey infants
Indicated that humans may have a need for contact comfort that is as basic as need for food
Ethological view
Attachment is an inborn or instinctive response to a specific stimulus
Social smiles help infant to survive by eliciting affection from the family social structure
Attachment in nonhumans occurs during critical period of life
First object seen is imprinted on the young animal (Lorenz, 1962, 1981)
Bowlby and Ainsworth maintain that if critical period exists in humans, it can extend for months or years

14. When Attachment Fails

15. When Attachment Fails
Children deprived of social stimulation have difficulty attaching.
Harlow and Harlow study
Found that rhesus infants reared in isolation cowered in the presence of other monkeys; they did not defend themselves
Instead, they sat in a corner, clutching themselves and rocking back and forth
Older deprived infant monkeys became more social when placed with younger monkeys.
Same was found to be true with socially withdrawn 4- and 5-year-old children

16. Studies with Children Spitz (1965) study of institutionalized children
Found children to show withdrawal and depression
Some infants showed the same rocking back and forth as the rhesus monkeys
The age of the child contributes to how well the child can overcome social deprivation.
Study on Guatemalan children by Kagan and Klein (1973) indicates children may be able to recover from 13 or 14 months of deprivation.
Study by Skeels (1966) found 19-month-old retarded children when placed in care of older institutionalized girls made dramatic gains in IQ scores, whereas the other children remaining in the orphanage declined in IQ.

17. Child Abuse and Neglect
90% of parents have engaged in some sort of psychological or emotional abuse ranging from pushing to using a knife or a gun on a child (by age 2).
3 million American children
Neglected or abused each year by parents or caregivers
150,000 of 3 million children
Sexually abused
Girls make up the majority of sexually abused
Boys make up one-third to one-fourth of the sexually abused
50-60% of cases of child abuse and neglect go unreported (estimated).

18. Effects of Child Abuse
Abused children show high incidence of personal and
social problems as well as psychological disorders.
Less securely attached to parents
Less intimate with peers and more aggressive, angry, and noncompliant than other children
Reduced self-esteem and school performance
Greater risk of delinquency, risky sexual behavior, and substance abuse
Adults abused as children more likely to act aggressively toward their partners

19. Causes of Child Abuse Stress
History of child abuse in at least one parent’s family of origin
Lack of adequate coping and childrearing skills
Unrealistic expectations of children
Substance abuse
Infants in pain and more difficult to soothe more likely to be abused
Cries of the infant found to be aversive to abusive parents
Disobedient, inappropriate, or unresponsive children more likely to be abused

20. Table 6-1, p. 119

21. What to Do Report abuse to the authorities.
Provide parenting training to the general population.
Target high-risk groups such as poor, single teen mothers and provide parenting programs or home visitors for them.
Present information about abuse and provide support for families.
Have child abuse hotlines for private citizens who suspect child abuse to get advice.
Parents who are having difficulty with aggressive impulses are also encouraged to call

22. Autism Spectrum Disorders
Impairment in communication skills and social interactions, and by repetitive, stereotyped behavior; evident by age 3; 1 in 152 American children have disorder
Asperger’s disorder
Social deficits and stereotyped behavior; no significant cognitive or language delays associated with autism
Rett’s disorder
Physical, behavioral, motor, and cognitive abnormalities that begin after a few months of apparent normal development
Childhood disintegrative disorder
Abnormal functioning and loss of previously acquired skills that begins after about 2 years of apparent normal development

23. Table 6-2, p. 121

24. Autism Autism is 4 to 5 times more prevalent in boys.
Attachment to others is often weak or nonexistent
Show ritualistic behavior and intolerance to change
Development of speech lags
Show mutism, echolalia, and pronoun reversal
(Referring to self as “you” or “he”)
Some may mutilate themselves

25. Causes of Autism
Concordance rates for autism are about 60% among pairs of MZ twins.
No correlations between the development of autism and deficiencies in child rearing.
Biological factors play a key role.
LBW
Advanced maternal age
Neurological abnormalities
Brain-wave patterns
Neurotransmitter sensitivity
Unusual activity in motor region of cerebral cortex

26. Treatment of Autism
Treatment of autism is based on principles of learning, including behavior modification programs.
Intensive individual instruction has been found to be most effective.
Research on medications and their treatment of autism are under study.
SSRI’s can apparently help prevent self-injury, aggressive outbursts, depression, anxiety, and repetitive behavior.
“Major tranquilizers” used for schizophrenia are helpful with stereotyped behavior, hyperactivity, and self-injury, but not with cognitive and language problems.

27. Day Care

28. Daycare’s Positive Effects
Most infants (whether cared for at home or in daycare) are generally securely attached.
More prosocial than children who are not in daycare
Better academic performance in elementary school
Get scores on tests of cognitive skills that rival or exceed those of children reared in the home by their mothers
Research on negative effects of day care are inconclusive.

29. Limitations of the NICHD study
Differences were small between groups
Study implied causation, yet there was no control group
Did not take into account the stress level of the parents who put their children in daycare
No research on whether the disruptive children become less productive and successful adults
Possibly these children grew up to become “assertive and entrepreneurial”

30. Emotional Development

31. Emotional Development
A state of feeling with physiological, situational, and cognitive components
Unclear how many emotions a baby has
Facial expressions appear to be universal.
Emotions
Infants show only a few emotions during the first few months.
Emotions are more apparent at end of first year of life.
Infants have a positive attraction to pleasant stimulation and withdrawal from aversive stimulation.
Emotional development is linked to cognitive development and social experience.

32. Emotional Development and Patterns of Attachment
One study (Kochanska, 2001) assessed patterns of attachment using the “strange situation”.
Found that differences in emotional development were first related to attachment at the age of 14 months
Securely attached infants were less likely to show fear and anger even when exposed to situations designed to elicit these emotions (at 33 months).
Insecurely attached infants showed increase in negative emotions
Avoidant children grew more fearful
Resistant children became less joyful

33. Fear of Strangers Stranger anxiety
Is the development of the fear of strangers
Is normal and most infants develop it
Appears at 6 to 9 months of age
Older infants will display crying, whimpering, gazing fearfully, and crawling away
Peaks at 9 and 12 months of age
Declines in second year
Children who have developed fear of strangers show less distress in response to strangers when their mothers are present
show less fear when in familiar settings

34. Social Referencing Social referencing Social referencing requires
Seeking out another person’s perception of a situation to help us form our own view of it
Infants display it as early as 6 months
Infants use caregiver’s facial expressions or tone of voice as clues on how to respond.
Social referencing requires
1) looking at another, usually older, individual in a novel, ambiguous situation
2) associating that individual’s emotional response with the unfamiliar situation
3) regulating our own emotional response in accord with the response of the older individual

35. Emotional Regulation Emotional regulation
Ways in which young children control their own emotions
Caregivers help infants learn to regulate their emotions
Children of secure mothers are
more likely to be secure themselves
more likely to regulate their own emotions in a positive manner
Adolescents who were secure as infants were most capable of regulating their emotions to interact cooperatively with their friends.

36. Personality Development

37. Personality Development
Self-concept has been measured using mirror technique, nose-touching technique
At 18 months, infants begin to touch their own noses upon looking into the mirror.
Self-awareness affects the infant’s social and emotional development.
Knowledge of self permits the infant and child to develop notions of sharing and cooperation with other children.
Self-awareness contributes to the development of the “self-conscious” emotions.
Embarrassment, envy, pride, guilt, and shame
Mirror technique-involves the use of a mirror and a dot of rouge.

38. Temperament Temperament
Stable way of reacting and adapting to the world that is present early in life
Believed to have a strong genetic component
Includes activity level, smiling and laughter, regularity in eating and sleep habits, approach and withdrawal, adaptability to new situations, intensity of responsiveness, general cheerfulness or unpleasantness, distractibility or persistence, soothability

39. Types of Temperament
Thomas and Chess (1989) identified three types of temperament
Easy child (40%)
regular sleep and feeding schedules, approaches new situations with enthusiasm, and is generally cheerful
Difficult child (10%)
irregular sleep and feeding schedules, is slow to accept new people, takes a long time adapting to new routines, and is prone to emotional outbursts
Slow-to-warm-up child (15%)
falls between the two categories
Temperament is related to emotional adjustment and psychological disorders later in life.

40. Goodness of Fit
Temperament may be strengthened or weakened by the parents’ reaction to the child.
Difficult child may become more difficult due to rigidity of the parents
This would be an example of a poor fit between parent and child
Parents can positively modify difficult temperament child to achieve a goodness of fit.

41. Gender Differences
Girls tend to advance more rapidly in motor development in infancy than boys.
Girls and boys are similar in social behaviors.
Differentiation between “boy” and “girl” toys is made as early as 12 months old.
At 24 months old, boys and girls are aware of gender-appropriate and -inappropriate behavior.

42. Adults’ Behavior toward Infants
Parents try to shape their children’s behavior during infancy and lay the foundation for development in early childhood.
Adults are more likely to offer girl babies a doll and offer a boy baby a hammer or football even when sex of baby is disguised.
Fathers are more likely to encourage rough-and-tumble-play with their sons.
Parents talk more to daughters than to sons.
Parents smile more at daughters and are more emotionally expressive with them.
Parents tend to use gender specific colors.
Girls in pink, boys in blue
Fathers show negative reactions when son plays with girls’ toys.