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Question 1

The Function of Emotions

Answer 1

Modern theories emphasize the functional value of emotion.

According to the functional approach, emotions are useful because they help people adapt to their environment
- Take fear as an example. Most of us would rather not be afraid, but there are instances in which feeling fearful is very adaptive. Fear is adaptive because it organizes your behavior around an important goal-avoiding danger
- Similarly, other emotions are adaptive. Happiness, for example, is adaptive in contributing to stronger interpersonal relationships: When people are happy with another person, they smile, and this often causes the other person to feel happy too, strengthening their relationship
- Disgust is adaptive in keeping people away from substances that might make them ill: As we discover that the milk in a glass is sour, we experience disgust and push the glass away.

Thus, in the functional approach, most emotions developed over the course of human history to meet unique life challenges and help humans to survive.

Question 2

Basic emotions

Answer 2

Joy, anger, surprise, interest, disgust, distress, sadness, and fear

Basic emotions are experienced by people worldwide, and each consists of three elements: a subjective feeling, a physiological change, and an overt behavior

Question 3

Measuring emotions

Answer 3

Although babies show certain facial expressions, does that mean they are experiencing those emotions? Not necessarily. Facial expressions are only one component of emotion - the behavioral manifestation.

Emotion also involves physiological responses and subjective feelings.
- babies do not talk so we do not know about their subjective feelings
- BUT, some of the physiological responses that accompany facial expressions are the same in infants and adults. For example, when infants and adults smile - which suggests they’re happy - the left frontal cortex of the brain tends to have more electrical activity than the right frontal cortex

Research has revealed other reasons to believe that facial expressions are an accurate barometer of an infant’s emotional state:

1. Infants (and adults) worldwide express basic emotions in much the same way
   - For example, the universal signs of fear are eyes are open wide, eyebrows raised, and mouth relaxed but slightly open.
   - The universality of emotional expression suggests that humans are biologically programmed to express basic emotions in a specific way.
2. By 5 to 6 months, infants’ facial expressions change predictably and meaningfully in response to events.
   - When a happy mother greets her baby, the baby usually smiles in return; when a tired, distracted mother picks up her baby roughly, the baby usually frowns at her
3. When adults are really happy or amused, they smile differently than when they smile to greet an acquaintance or to hide hurt feelings.
   - In “joyful” smiles, the muscles around the eyes contract, which lifts the cheeks.
   - Similarly, infants smile both at mothers and interesting objects, but are more likely to raise their cheeks during smiling when looking at Mom
   - The close parallel between the details of infants’ and adults’ smiles suggests that smiling has the same meaning, emotionally, for infants and adults.

Collectively, these findings make it reasonable to assume that facial expressions reflect an infant’s underlying emotional state.

Question 4

DEVELOPMENT OF BASIC EMOTIONS

Answer 4

According to one influential theory (Lewis, 2000), newborns experience only 2 general emotions: pleasure and distress.
- But soon, more discrete emotions emerge, and by 8 or 9 months of age, infants are thought to experience all basic emotions.

Joy emerges at about 2 or 3 months.
- At this age, social smiles first appear: Infants smile when they see another human face.
- Sometimes social smiling is accompanied by cooing, the early form of vocalization.
- Smiling and cooing seem to be the infant’s way of expressing pleasure at seeing another person.

Sadness is also observed at about 2 or 3 months: Infants look sad, for example, when their mothers stop playing with them

Anger emerges between 4 and 6 months.
- Infants will become angry if a favorite food or toy is taken away and infants also become angry when their attempts to achieve a goal are frustrated.
- For example, if a parent restrains an infant trying to pick up a toy, the result is a very angry baby.

Fear emerges later in the first year.
- At about 6 months, infants become wary in the presence of an unfamiliar adult, a reaction known as stranger wariness.
- When a stranger approaches, a 6-month-old typically looks away and begins to fuss. The baby will cry, look frightened, and reaches with their arms outstretched in the direction of someone familiar.

How wary an infant feels around strangers depends on a number of factors.
- First, infants tend to be less fearful of strangers when the environment is familiar and more fearful when it is not.
- Many parents know this firsthand from traveling with their infants: Enter a friend’s house for the first time and the baby clings tightly to its mother.
- Second, the amount of anxiety depends on the stranger’s behavior.
- A stranger should talk with other adults and, in a while, perhaps offer the baby a toy. Handled this way, many infants will soon be curious about the stranger instead of afraid.

Wariness of strangers is adaptive because it emerges at the same time that children begin to master creeping and crawling
- babies are inquisitive and want to use their new locomotor skills to explore their worlds.
- Being wary of strangers provides a natural restraint against the tendency to wander away from familiar caregivers.
- However, as youngsters learn to interpret facial expressions and recognize when a person is friendly, their wariness of strangers declines.

Question 5

EMERGENCE OF COMPLEX EMOTIONS.

Answer 5

People feel complex emotions such as pride, guilt, and embarrassment.

Sometimes known as the self-conscious emotions, they involve feelings of success when one’s standards or expectations are met and feelings of failure when they aren’t.

Most scientists (e.g., Lewis, 2000; Mascolo, Fischer, & Li, 2003) believe that complex emotions don’t surface until 18 to 24 months of age, because they depend on the child having some understanding of the self, which typically occurs between 15 and 18 months.

Children feel guilty or embarrassed, for example, when they’ve done something they know they shouldn’t have done

Similarly, children feel pride when they accomplish a challenging task for the first time.

Children’s growing understanding of themselves allows them to experience complex emotions like pride and guilt (Lewis, 2000).

Question 6

Basic vs complex emotions

Answer 6

Basic
- Experienced by people worldwide and include a subjective feeling, a physiological response, and an overt behavior
- emerges at birth to 9 months
- Joy, anger, fear

Complex (self conscious)
- Responses to meeting or failing to meet expectations or standards
- emerges at 18 to 24 months
- Pride, guilt, embarrassment

Question 7

LATER DEVELOPMENTS

Answer 7

As children grow, their emotions continues to expand.

For example, think about regret and relief, emotions that adults experience when they compare their actions with alternatives.
- by 7 years of age children experience feelings of regret, but they’re less likely to experience feelings of relief (Guttentag & Ferrell, 2004).

Older children experience basic and complex emotions in response to different situations or events.
- In the case of complex emotions, cognitive growth means that elementary-school children experience shame and guilt in situations where they would not have when they were younger
- For example, unlike preschool children, many school-age children would be ashamed if they neglected to defend a classmate who had been wrongly accused of a theft.

Fear is another emotion that can be elicited in different ways, depending on a child’s age.
- Many preschool children are afraid of the dark and of imaginary creatures. These fears typically diminish during the elementary-school years as children grow cognitively and better understand the difference between appearance and reality.
- Replacing these fears are concerns about school, health, and personal harm. Such worries are common and not cause for concern in most children. In some youngsters, however, they become so extreme they overwhelm the child. For example, a 7-year-old’s worries about school would not be unusual unless her concern grew to the point that she refused to go to school.
- An overwhelming fear of going to school and active resistance to attending school constitutes school phobia. Children may develop school phobia because they are overanxious generally and school is full of situations that can cause anxiety, such as reading aloud, taking tests, or learning new activities with competitive classmates. School-phobic children can be helped with systematic desensitization, a technique that associates deep relaxation with progressively more anxiety-provoking situations

Question 8

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION

Answer 8

Children worldwide express many of the same basic and complex emotions.
- However, cultures differ in the extent to which emotional expression is encouraged

In many Asian countries, outward displays of emotion are discouraged in favor of emotional restraint.
- Consistent with these differences, in one study (Camras et al., 1998), European American 11-month-olds cried and smiled more often than Chinese ll-month-olds.
- In another study (Zahn-Waxler et al., 1996), U.S. preschoolers were more likely than Japanese preschoolers to express anger in interpersonal conflicts.

Cultures also differ in the events that trigger emotions, particularly complex emotions.
- Situations that evoke pride in one culture may evoke embarrassment or shame in another.
- For example, American elementary- school children often show pride at personal achievement, such as getting the highest grade on a test or, being chosen student of the month.
- In contrast, Asian elementary-school children are embarrassed by a public display of individual achievement but show great pride when their entire class is honored for an achievement

Expression of anger also varies around the world.
- Imagine that one child has just completed a detailed drawing when a classmate spills a drink, ruining the drawing. Most American children would respond with anger.
- In contrast, children growing up in east Asian countries that practice Buddhism (e.g., Mongolia, Thailand, Nepal) rarely respond with anger because this goes against the Buddhist tenet to extend loving kindness to all people, even those whose actions hurt others.
- Instead, they would probably remain quiet and experience shame that they had left the drawing in a vulnerable position (Cole, Tamang, & Shrestha, 2006).

Question 9

Recognizing and Using Others’ Emotions

Answer 9

When can infants first identify emotions in others?
- Perhaps as early as 4 months and definitely by 6 months, infants begin to distinguish facial expressions associated with different emotions.
- They can distinguish a happy, smiling face from a sad, frowning face

Fearful, happy, and neutral faces elicit different patterns of electrical activity in the infant’s brain (Leppanen et al., 2007), which also shows the ability to differentiate facial expressions of emotion.

And infants notice if an angry-looking face produces a happy-sounding voice

Of course, infants might be able to distinguish an angry face from a happy one but not know the emotional significance of the two faces. How can we tell whether infants understand the emotions expressed in a face?
- The best evidence is that infants often match their own emotions to other people’s emotions.
- When happy mothers smile and talk in a pleasant voice, infants express happiness themselves. If mothers are angry or sad, infants become distressed, too

Also like adults, infants use others’ emotions to direct their behavior.
- Infants in an unfamiliar or ambiguous environment often look at their mother or father, as if searching for cues to help them interpret the situation, a phenomenon known as social referencing.
- If a parent looks afraid when shown a novel object, 12-month- olds are less likely to play with the toy than if a parent looks happy
- Furthermore, an infant can use parents’ facial expressions or their vocal expressions alone to decide whether they want to explore an unfamiliar object
- And infants’ use of parents’ cues is precise. If two unfamiliar toys are shown to a parent, who expresses disgust at one toy but not the other, 12-month-olds will avoid the toy that elicited the disgust but not the other toy
- And by 14 months, infants remember this information: They avoid a toy that elicited disgust an hour earlier
- By 18 months, they’re even more sophisticated: When one adult demonstrates an unfamiliar toy and a second adult comments, in an angry tone, “That’s really annoying! That’s so irritating!” 18-month-olds play less with the toy, compared to when the second adult makes neutral remarks in a mild manner.
- These youngsters apparently decided that it wasn’t such a good idea to play with the toy if it might upset the second adult again.
- Thus, social referencing shows that infants are remarkably skilled in using their parents’ emotions to help them direct their own behavior.

Although infants and toddlers are remarkably adept at recognizing others’ emotions, their skills are far from mature.
- Adults are much more skilled than infants-and school-aged children, for that matter-in recognizing the subtle signals of an emotion (Thomas et aI., 2007), and adults are better able to tell when others are “faking”
emotions; they can distinguish the face of a person who’s really happy from the face of a person who’s faking happiness

Thus, facial expressions of emotion are recognized with steadily greater skill throughout childhood and into adolescence.

Question 10

UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONS

Answer 10

As their cognitive skills grow, children begin to understand why people feel as they do.
- By kindergarten, children know that undesirable or unpleasant events often make a person feel angry or sad (Levine, 1995).
- Children even know that they more often feel sad when they think about the undesirable event itself but feel angry when they think about the person who caused the undesirable event
- Kindergarten children also understand that remembering past sad events can make a person unhappy again (Lagattuta, Wellman, & Flavell, 1997) and that people worry when faced with the possibility that an unpleasant event may recur

During the elementary-school years, children begin to comprehend that people sometimes experience “mixed feelings.”
- They understand that some situations may lead people, for example, to feel happy and sad at the same time (Larsen, To, & Fire- man, 2007).
- The increased ability to see multiple, differing emotions coincides with the freedom from centered thinking that characterizes the concrete operational stage

Question 11

Display rules - UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONS

Answer 11

As children develop, they also begin to learn display rules, culturally specific standards for appropriate expressions of emotion in a particular setting or with a particular person or persons.
- Adults know, for example, that expressing sadness is appropriate at funerals but expressing joy is not.
- Similarly, expressing sadness is appropriate with relatives and close friends but less so with strangers.

Preschool children’s understanding of display rules is shown by the fact that they control their anger more when provoked by peers they like than when provoked by peers they don’t like
- Also, school-age children and adolescents are more willing to express anger than sadness and, more willing to express both anger and sadness to parents than to peers

Question 12

What experiences contribute to children’s understanding of emotions? - understanding emotions

Answer 12

What experiences contribute to children’s understanding of emotions?

Parents and children frequently talk about past emotions and why people felt as they did; this is particularly true for negative emotions such as fear and anger (Lagattuta & Wellman, 2002).
- Not surprisingly, children learn about emotions by hearing parents talk about feelings, explaining how they differ and the situations that elicit them (Brown & Dunn, 1996; Cervantes & Callanan, 1998).

Also, a positive, rewarding relationship with parents and siblings is related to children’s understanding of emotions
- The nature of this connection is still a mystery.
- One possibility is that within positive parent-child and sibling relationships, people express a fuller range of emotions (and do so more
often) and are more willing to talk about why they feel as they do, providing children more opportunities to learn about emotions.

Children’s growing understanding of emotions in others contributes in turn to a growing ability to help others.
- They are more likely to recognize the emotions that signal a person’s need.
- Better understanding of emotions in others also contributes to children’s growing ability to play easily with peers because they can see the impact of their behavior on others.

Recognizing emotions in others is an important prerequisite for successful, satisfying interactions.

Question 13

Regulating emotions - infants

Answer 13

People often regulate emotions; for example, we routinely try to suppress fear (because we know there’s no real need to be afraid of the dark), anger (because we don’t want to let a friend know just how upset we are), and joy (because we don’t want to seem like we’re gloating over our good fortune).

Regulating emotions skillfully depends on cognitive processes
- Attention is an important part of emotion regulation: We can control emotions such as fear by diverting attention to other less emotional stimuli, thoughts, or feelings
- And we can use strategies to reappraise the meaning of an event (or offeelings or thoughts), so that it provokes less emotion

Even infants can regulate their emotions and school-age children have mastered several techniques for regulating emotion
- successful regulation develops gradually through childhood and adolescence and that at any age some children will be more skilled than others are at regulating emotions

Emotion regulation clearly begins in infancy. By 4 to 6 months, infants use simple strategies to regulate their emotions
- When something frightens or confuses an infant - for example, a stranger or a mother who suddenly stops responding - he or she often looks away (just as older children and even adults often turn away or close their eyes to block out disturbing stimuli).
- Frightened infants also move closer to a parent, another effective way of helping to control their fear (Parritz, 1996).

By 24 months, a distressed toddler’s face typically expresses sadness instead of fear or anger; apparently by this age toddlers have learned that a sad facial expression is the best way to get a mother’s attention and support

Not all children regulate their emotions well, and those who don’t tend to have problems interacting with peers and have adjustment problems
- When children can’t control their anger, worry, or sadness, they often have difficulty resolving the conflicts that inevitably surface in peer relationships
- Ineffective regulation of emotions leads to more frequent conflicts with peers, and, consequently, less satisfying peer relationships and less adaptive adjustment to school

Question 14

Regulating emotions - Older children and adolescents

Answer 14

Older children and adolescents encounter a wider range of emotional situations, so it’s fortunate they develop a number of related new ways to regulate emotion

1. Children begin to regulate their own emotions and rely less on others to do this for them.
   - A fearful child no longer runs to a parent but instead devises her own methods for dealing with fear.
   - For example, she might reassure herself by saying, “I know the thunderstorm won’t last long and I’m safe inside the house”
2. Children more often rely on mental strategies to regulate emotions.
   - For example, a child might reduce his disappointment at not receiving a much-expected gift by telling himself that he didn’t really want the gift in the first place.
3. Children more accurately match the strategies for regulating emotion with the particular setting.
   - For example, when faced with emotional situations that are unavoidable, such as going to the dentist to have a cavity filled, children adjust to the situation (for instance, by thinking of the positive consequences of treating the tooth) instead of trying to avoid the situation.

Question 15

Temperament

Answer 15

Temperament refers to biologically based differences in infants’ and children’s emotional reactivity and emotional self-regulation.
- However, scientists disagree on the number and nature of the dimensions that make up temperament.

Some infants respond warmly to strangers and others are very shy.
- Such behavioral styles, which are fairly stable across situations and are biologically based, make up an infant’s temperament.

For example, all babies become upset occasionally and cry.
- However, some recover quickly and others are very hard to console.
- These differences in emotion and style of behavior are evident in the first few weeks after birth and are important throughout life.

Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess (Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968; Thomas & Chess, 1977) pioneered the study of temperament with the New York Longitudinal Study, in which they traced the lives of 141 individuals from infancy through adulthood.
- Thomas and Chess gathered their initial data by interviewing the babies’ parents and asking individuals unfamiliar with the children to observe them at home.
- Based on these interviews and observations, Thomas and Chess suggested that infants’ behavior varied along nine temperamental dimensions.

One dimension was activity, which referred to an infant’s typical level of motor activity.
- A second was persistence, which referred to the amount of time that an infant devoted to an activity, particularly when obstacles were present.

Using these and other dimensions, Thomas and Chess identified three patterns of temperament.
- Most common were “easy” babies, who were usually happy and cheerful, tended to adjust well to new situations, and had regular routines for eating, sleeping, and toileting.
- A second, less common group were “difficult” babies, who tended to be unhappy, were irregular in their eating and sleeping, and often responded intensely to unfamiliar situations.
- Another less common group were “slow- to-warm-up” babies. Like difficult babies, slow-to-warm-up babies were often unhappy; but unlike difficult babies, slow-to-warm-up babies were not upset by unfamiliar situations.

The New York Longitudinal Study launched research on infant temperament, but today’s researchers no longer emphasize creating different categories of infants, such as “easy” or “slow to warm up.”
- Instead, researchers want to determine the different dimensions that underlie temperament.

Question 16

A Theory of the Structure of Temperament in Infancy

Answer 16

Mary K. Rothbart (2004; Rothbart & Hwang, 2005) has devised a theory of temperament that includes three different dimensions:

1. Surgency / extraversion refers to the extent to which a child is generally happy, active, vocal, and regularly seeks interesting stimulation.
2. Negative affect refers to the extent to which a child is angry, fearful, frustrated, shy, and not easily soothed.
3. Effortful control refers to the extent to which a child can focus attention, is not readily distracted, and can inhibit responses.

Rothbart claims that these dimensions of temperament are evident in infancy, continue into childhood, and are related to dimensions of personality that are found in adolescence and adulthood.
- However, the dimensions are not independent: Specifically, infants who are high on effortful control tend to be high on surgency/extraversion and low on negative affect. In other words, babies who can control their attention and inhibit responses tend to be happy and active but not angry or fearful.

Hypothesis: If temperament is biologically based and includes the three dimensions of Rothbart’s theory, then those dimensions of temperament should be observed in children around the world. That is, cross-cultural studies of temperament should consistently reveal the dimensions of surgency/extraversion, negative affect, and effortful control.

Conclusion: As predicted, the structure of temperament was the same in two cultures. This supports Rothbart’s claim that the dimensions of her theory of temperament are biologically rooted and, consequently, should be evident regardless of the specific environment or culture in which a child develops.

Application: An important theme of temperament research-one that began with Thomas and Chess (1977) and has been picked up by other temperament researchers-is that children’s development proceeds best when there is a good fit between their temperament and the environment in which they grow up. That is, because temperament is rooted in biological factors, parents should accept their baby’s unique temperamental characteristics and adjust their parenting accordingly.
- parent-child interactions represent a two-way street in which interactions are most successful when both parties - child and parent - adjust to the needs of the other.

Question 17

Hereditary and Environmental Contributions to Temperament

Answer 17

Most theories agree that temperament reflects both heredity and experience (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005).

The influence of heredity is shown in twin studies: Identical twins are more alike in most aspects of temperament than fraternal twins.

For example, Goldsmith, Buss, and Lemery (1997) found that the correlation for identical twins’ activity level was .72, but the correlation for fraternal twins was only .38.

However, the impact of heredity also depends on the temperamental dimension and the child’s age.
- For example, negative affect is more influenced by heredity than the other dimensions; and temperament in childhood is more influenced by heredity than is temperament in infancy

The environment also contributes to children’s temperament.
- Positive emotionality-laughing often, being generally happy, and often expressing pleasure- seems to reflect environmental influences (Goldsmith et al., 1997).
- And infants are less emotional when parents are responsive
- Conversely, infants more often develop intense, difficult temperaments when mothers are abrupt in dealing with them and lack confidence

Heredity and environment both contribute to children’s temperament.
- In fact, one view is that
temperament may make some children particularly susceptible to environmental influences - either beneficial or harmful
- For example, in one
study (Kochanska, Aksan, & Joy, 2007), emotionally fearful children
were more likely to cheat in a game when their parents’ discipline emphasized asserting power (e.g., “Do this now and don’t argue!”). Yet these children were the least likely to cheat when parents were nurturing and supportive.
- In other words, temperamentally fearful preschoolers can become dishonest or scrupulously honest, depending on their parents’ disciplinary style.

DRD4 gene on chromosome 11
- This gene is linked to brain systems that regulate attention, motivation, and re-ward, and one allele for this gene is associated with novelty-seeking in adults
- In one study (Bakermans-Kranenburg et aI., 2008), preschool children with this allele were more likely (than children without the allele) to be overactive, aggressive, and oppositional with others.
- However, when mothers participated in an intervention program designed to improve discipline by making parents more sensitive to their children’s needs, preschoolers with this allele were less likely to be overactive, aggressive, and oppositional.
- Thus, children with this particularly variant of the DRD4 gene are particularly susceptible to quality of parenting, be it sensitive or insensitive.

DRD4 is NOT a temperament gene, but it is linked to behaviors that make up temperament (e.g., novelty seeking, fearlessness).
- Consequently, these findings, along with work on fearful preschoolers (Kochanska et aI., 2007), shows that temperamental features may make some children particularly sensitive to environmental influences.

Question 18

Stability of Temperament

Answer 18

Do babies keep the same temperament as they grow up?

The first answers to these questions came from the Fels longitudinal project, a study of many aspects of physical and psychological development from infancy.
- Although not a study of temperament per se, Jerome Kagan and his collaborators (Kagan, 1989; Kagan & Moss, 1962) found that fearful preschoolers in the Fels project tended to be inhibited as older children and adolescents.

Temperament is moderately stable throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence (Wachs & Bates, 2001).
- For example, newborns who cry under moderate stress tend, as 5-month-olds, to cry when they are placed in stressful situations
- In addition, when inhibited toddlers are adults, they respond more strongly to unfamiliar stimuli.
- when adults who had been inhibited as toddlers viewed novel faces, they had significantly more activity in the amygdala, a brain region that regulates perception of fearful stimuli. Thus, the same individuals who avoided strangers as 2-year-olds had, as adults, the strongest response to novel faces.

The finding of modest stability in temperament means that Sam, an inhibited l-year-old, is more likely to be shy as a 12-year-old than Dave, an outgoing l-year-old.
- However, it’s not a “sure thing” that Sam will still be shy as a 12-year-old. Instead, think of temperament as a predisposition.
- Some infants are naturally pre-disposed to be sociable, emotional, or active; others CAN act in these ways, too, but only if the behaviors are nurtured by parents and others.

In many respects, temperament resembles personality, so it’s not surprising that many child-development researchers have speculated about potential connections between the two.
- In fact, personality in adulthood includes many of the same dimensions observed for temperament in infancy and childhood
- For example, extroversion is a dimension of personality that refers to a person’s warmth, gregariousness, and activity level. Extroverted individuals tend to be affectionate, prefer the company of others, and like being active; introverted people tend to be more reserved, enjoy solitude, and prefer a more sedate pace (Costa & McCrae, 2001).

Extroversion looks like a blend of the temperamental dimensions of positive affect and activity level; and longitudinal studies find that inhibited children are more likely as adults to be introverted than extroverted (Caspi et aI., 2005).
- However, research of this sort also reveals many instances in which temperament is poorly related to personality in adulthood (Wachs & Bates, 2001).
- This may seem surprising, but remember that temperament changes as children develop, depending on their experiences.
- An inhibited child who finds herself in a school group with children with similar interests may “open up” and become much more outgoing over time; her early inhibited temperament is not related to her later outgoing personality.
- Thus, we should not expect children’s temperament to be consistently related to their personality as adults.

Question 19

Temperament and Other Aspects of Development

Answer 19

One of the goals of Thomas and Chess’s New York Longitudinal Study was to discover temperamental features of infants that would predict later psychological adjustment.

In fact, Thomas and Chess discovered that about two-thirds of the preschoolers with difficult temperaments had developed behavioral problems by the time they entered school.
- In contrast, fewer than one-fifth of the children with easy temperaments had behavioral problems

Other scientists have followed the lead of the New York Longitudinal Study in looking for links between temperament and outcomes ofdevelopment, and they’ve found that temperament is an important influence on development. Temperament is linked to school success, good peer relations, compliance with parents’ requests, and to depression. Consider these examples:

• Persistent children are likely to succeed in school, whereas active and distractible children are less likely to succeed (Martin, Ole- jnik, & Gaddis, 1994).
• Shy, inhibited children often have difficulty interacting with their peers and often do not cope effectively with problems (Eisenberg et ai., 1998
• Anxious, fearful children are more likely to comply with a parent’s rules and requests, even when the parent is not present (Kochanska et aI., 2007).
• Children who are frequently angry or fearful are more prone to depression (Lengua,2006).
• Children who are capable of greater effortful control, as 3- and 4-year-olds, have higher scores on measures of working memory (Wolfe & Bell, 2007) and, as school- age children, are less likely to be diagnosed with ADHD (Martel & Nigg, 2006).
• temperament is also related to children’s tendency to help people in distress.
• A young child’s temperament helps determine whether that child will help.
• When mothers and experimenters feigned injury, both shy and outgoing children noticed and were disturbed by their distress.
• Outgoing children typically translated this concern into action, helping both mothers and experimenters.
• In contrast, shy youngsters helped mothers but could not overcome their reticence to help an unfamiliar adult who did not specifically ask for help.
• Even though shy children see that a person is suffering, their apprehensiveness in unfamiliar social settings often prevents them from helping.

Temperament rarely is the sole determining factor. Instead, the influence of temperament often depends on the environment in which children develop

Let’s consider the link between temperament and behavior problems.
- Infants and toddlers who temperamentally resist control-those who are difficult to manage, who are often unresponsive, and who are sometimes impulsive- tend to be prone to behavior problems, particularly aggression, when they are older.
- However, more careful analysis shows that resistant temperament leads to behavior problems primarily when mothers do not exert much control over their children.
- Among mothers who do exert control-those who prohibit, warn, and scold their children when necessary-resistant temperament is not linked to behavior problems

Similarly, young adolescents are more likely to drink, smoke, and use drugs when they experience many life stressors and their parents themselves smoke and drink.
- But this is less true for young adolescents with temperaments marked by positive affect (Wills et ai., 2001). That is, young adolescents who are temperamentally cheerful apparently are less affected by life stressors and consequently are less likely to drink, smoke, or use drugs

Question 20

The Growth of Attachment

Answer 20

Today’s parents are encouraged to shower their babies with hugs and kisses; the more affection young children receive, the better! This advice may seem obvious, but actually it’s a relatively recent recommendation after the wars

Soon after, studies of monkeys that were reared in isolation confirmed this idea.
- Although the monkeys received excellent physical care, they stayed huddled in a corner of their cages, clutching themselves, and rocking constantly; when placed with other monkeys, they avoided them as much as they could (Harlow & Harlow, 1965).
- Clearly, in the absence of regular social interactions with caring adults, normal development is thrown way off course.

According to evolutionary psychology, many human behaviors represent successful adaptation to the environment.
- That is, over human history, some behaviors have made it more likely that people will reproduce and pass on their genes to following generations.
- For example, we take it for granted that most people enjoy being with other people. But evolutionary psychologists argue that our “social nature” is a product of evolution: For early humans, being in a group offered protection from predators and made it easier to locate food.
- Thus, early humans who were social were more likely than their asocial peers to live long enough to reproduce, passing on their social orientation to their offspring (Gaulin & McBurney, 2001).
- Over many, many generations, “being social” had such a survival advantage that nearly all people are socially oriented

Applied to child development, evolutionary psychology highlights the adaptive value of children’s behavior at different points in development (Bjorklund & Pelle- grini, 2000).
- For example, think about the time and energy that parents invest in child rearing.
- Without such effort, infants and young children would die before they were sexually mature, which means that a parent’s genes could not be passed along to grandchildren (Geary, 2002).
- Here, too, parenting just seems “natural” but really represents an adaptation to the problem of guaranteeing that one’s helpless offspring can survive until they’re sexually mature.

Question 21

Bowlby described four phases in the growth of attachment

Answer 21

According to Bowlby, children who form an attachment to an adult-that is, an enduring social-emotional relationship-are more likely to survive. This person is usually the mother but need not be

Bowlby described four phases in the growth of attachment:

1. Preattachment (birth to 6-8 weeks).
   - During prenatal development and soon after birth, infants rapidly learn to recognize their mothers by smell and sound, which sets the stage for forging an attachment relationship (Hofer, 2006).
   - What’s more, evolution
   has endowed infants with many behaviors that elicit caregiving
   from an adult.
   - When babies cry, smile, or gaze intently at a parent’s face, parents usually smile back or hold the baby.
   - The infant’s behaviors and the responses they evoke in adults create an interactive system that is the first step in the formation of attachment relationships.
2. Attachment in the making (6-8 weeks to 6-8 months).
   - During these months, babies begin to behave differently in the presence of familiar caregivers and unfamiliar adults.
   - Babies now smile and laugh more often with the primary care- giver.
   - And when babies are upset, they’re more easily consoled by the primary caregiver.
   - Babies are gradually identifying the primary caregiver as the person they can depend on when they’re anxious or distressed.
3. True attachment (6-8 months to 18 months).
   - By approximately 7 or 8 months, most infants have singled out the attachment figure-usually the mother-as a special individual.
   - The attachment figure is now the infant’s stable social- emotional base.
   - For example, a 7-month-old will explore a novel environment but periodically look toward his mother, as if seeking reassurance that all is well.
   - The behavior suggests the infant trusts his mother and indicates the attachment relationship has been established.
   - In addition, this behavior reflects important cognitive growth: It means that the infant has a mental representation of the mother, an understanding that she will be there to meet the infant’s needs (Lewis et aI., 1997).
   - And infants are distressed when they’re separated from the attachment figure because they’ve lost their secure base.
4. Reciprocal relationships (18 months on).
   - Infants’ growing cognitive and language skills and their accumulated experience with their primary caregiver make infants better able to act as true partners in the attachment relationship.
   - They often take the initiative in interactions and negotiate with parents (“Please read me another story!”).
   - They begin to understand parents’ feelings and goals and sometimes use this knowledge to guide their own behavior (e.g., social referencing).
   - And they cope with separation more effectively because they can anticipate that parents will return.

Question 22

THE ROLE OF FATHERS

Answer 22

Attachment typically first develops between infants and their mothers because mothers are usually the primary caregivers of American infants.
- Babies soon become attached to fathers, too, despite some consistent differences in the ways that American mothers and fathers interact with infants.

In a typical two-parent family, fathers spend far less time than mothers with infants and are far less likely than mothers to be responsible for childcare tasks.
- For example, in a nationally representative sample of mothers and fathers of infants and toddlers, fathers spent an average of 32 minutes each day in caregiving tasks (e.g., feeding, bathing) compared to 70 minutes for mothers (Yeung et al., 2001).

Over the past 40 years, child care has shifted some from being “women’s work” to a responsibility that can be shared equally by mothers and fathers.
- But women are still far more likely to be involved in direct care of infants and toddlers, despite no evidence that they provide better care than fathers do

Another difference between mothers and fathers is HOW they interact with young children.
- Fathers typically spend much more time playing with their babies than taking care of them. And even their style of play differs. Physical play is the norm for fathers
- whereas mothers spend more time reading and talking to babies, showing them toys, and playing games like patty-cake (Parke, 2002).
- Given the opportunity to play with mothers or fathers, infants more often choose their fathers. However, when infants are distressed, mothers are preferred (Field, 1990).
- Thus, although most infants become attached to both parents, mothers and fathers typically have distinctive roles in their children’s early social development

Question 23

The Quality of Attachment

Answer 23

Attachment between infant and mother usually occurs by 8 or 9 months of age, but the attachment can take on different forms.

Mary Ainsworth (1978, 1993) pioneered the study of attachment relationships using a procedure that has come to be known as the Strange Situation.
- Strange Situation involves a series of episodes, each about 3 minutes long.
- The mother and infant enter an unfamiliar room filled with interesting toys. The mother leaves briefly, then mother and baby are reunited.
- Meanwhile, the experimenter observes the baby, recording its response to both events.

Based on how the infant reacts to separation from the mother and then reunion, Ainsworth (1993) and other researchers (Main & Cassidy, 1988) have identified four primary types of attachment relationships.

One is a secure attachment and three are insecure attachments (avoidant, resistant, disorganized)

The Strange Situation is an important tool for studying attachment, but
some scientists have criticized its emphasis on separation and reunion as the primary means for assessing quality of attachment.
- They suggest that what is considered an appropriate response to separation may not be the same in all cultures (Rothbaum et aI., 2000).
- Consequently, investigators now use other methods to complement the Strange Situation.

One of them, the Attachment Q-Set, can be used with young children as well as infants and toddlers.
- In this method, trained observers watch mothers and children interact at home; then the observer rates the interaction on many attachment-related behaviors (e.g., “Child greets mother with a big smile when she enters the room”).
- The ratings are totaled to provide a measure of the security of the child’s attachment.
- Scores obtained with the Q-set converge with assessments derived from the Strange Situation (van IJzeendorn et aI., 2004).

Question 24

4 types of attachment relationships

Answer 24

1. Secure attachment: The baby may or may not cry when the mother leaves, but when she returns, the baby wants to be with her and if the baby is crying, it stops.
   - Babies in this group seem to be saying, “I missed you terribly, but now that you’re back, I’m okay.”
   - Approximately 60 to 65% of American babies have secure attachment relationships.
2. Avoidant attachment: The baby is not visibly upset when the mother leaves and, when she returns, may ignore her by looking or turning away.
   - Infants with an avoidant attachment look as if they’re saying, “You left me again. I always have to take care of myself!”
   - About 20% of American infants have avoidant attachment relationships, which is one of the three forms of insecure attachment.
3. Resistant attachment: The baby is upset when the mother leaves and remains upset or even angry when she returns, and is difficult to console.
   - These babies seem to be telling the mother, “Why do you do this? I need you desperately and yet you just leave me without warning. I get so angry when you’re like this.”
   - About 10 to 15% of American babies have this resistant attachment relationship, which is another form of insecure attachment.
4. Disorganized (disoriented) attachment: The baby seems confused when the mother leaves and, when she returns, seems not to really understand what’s happening.
   - The baby often has a dazed look on its face as if wondering, “What’s going on here? I want you to be here, but you left and now you’re back. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!”
   - About 5 to 10% of American babies have this disorganized attachment relationship, the last of the three kinds of insecure attachment.

Question 25

STABILITY OF ATTACHMENT

Answer 25

The quality of attachment during infancy predicts parent-child relations during childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.

Infants with secure attachment relationships tend to report, as adolescents and young adults, that they depend on their parents for care and support.

In contrast, infants with insecure attachment relationships often report, as adolescents and young adults, being angry with their parents or deny being close to them.

However, consistency is far from perfect.
- Stressful life events-death of a parent, divorce, life-threatening ill- ness, poverty-help to determine stability and change in attachment.
- Stressful life events are associated with insecure attachments during adolescence and young adulthood.

Consequently, when infants with insecure attachments experience stressful life events, their attachment tends to remain insecure; when infants with secure attachment experience these same events, their attachment often becomes insecure, perhaps because stress makes parents less available and less responsive to their children (Hamilton, 2000; Moss et aI., 2005; Waters et aI., 2000).

Question 26

CONSEQUENCES OF QUALITY OF ATTACHMENT

Answer 26

Erikson, Bowlby, and other theorists (Waters & Cummings, 2000) believe that attachment, as the first social relationship, provides the basis for all of an infant’s later social relationships.
- Infants who experience the trust and compassion of a secure attachment should develop into preschool children who interact confidently and successfully with their peers.
- In contrast, infants who do not experience a successful, satisfying first relationship should be more prone to problems in their social interactions as preschoolers.

Many findings are consistent with these predictions.
- For example, children with secure attachment relationships have higher-quality friendships and fewer conflicts in their friendships than children with insecure attachment relationships (Lieberman, Doyle, & Markiewicz, 1999).
- And, school-age children are less likely to have behavior problems if they have secure attachment relationships and more likely if they have insecure attachment relationships

However, the most compelling evidence comes from a meta-analysis of 63 studies that examined possible links between parent-child attachment and children’s peer relations (Schneider, Atkinson, & Tardif, 2001).
- As predicted, children with secure attachments tended to have better relations with their peers and, in particular, had higher-quality friendships.
- And, although some theorists (Thompson, 1998) have argued that an insecure attachment is particularly detrimental to peer relations in children who are exposed to other risk factors (e.g., if they have a history of maltreatment or if one of their parents has a psychiatric disorder), the positive relation between attachment and peer relations was evident in children from high- and low-risk groups.

The conclusion seems inescapable: As infants who have secure attachment relationships develop, their social interactions tend to be more satisfying.
- Why? Secure attachment evidently promotes trust and confidence in other humans, which leads to more skilled social interactions later in childhood.
- Of course, attachment is only one step along the long road of social development.
- Infants with insecure attachments are not doomed, but this initial misstep can interfere with their social development.

Question 27

FACTORS DETERMINING QUALITY OF ATTACHMENT

Answer 27

Because secure attachment is so important to a child’s later development, researchers have tried to identify the factors involved.
- Undoubtedly the most important is the interaction between parents and their babies.
- A secure attachment is most likely when parents respond to infants predictably and appropriately (De Wolff & van Uzendoorn, 1997;
Tomlinson, Cooper, & Murray, 2005).
- For example, the mother has promptly responded to her baby’s crying and is trying to reassure the baby. The mother’s behavior evidently conveys that social interactions are predictable and satisfying, and apparently this behavior instills in infants the trust and confidence that are the hallmark of secure attachment.

Why does predictable and responsive parenting promote secure
attachment relationships?
- To answer this question, think about your own friendships and romantic relationships. These relationships are
usually most satisfying when we believe we can trust the other people
and depend on them in times of need. The same formula seems to hold
for infants.
- Infants develop an internal working model, a set of expectations about parents’ availability and responsiveness, generally
and in times of stress. When parents are dependable and caring, babies
come to trust them, knowing they can be relied upon for comfort. That is, babies develop an internal working model in which they believe their parents are concerned about their needs and will try to meet them

In a particularly clever demonstration of infants’ working models of attach- ment (Johnson, Dweck, & Chen, 2007), 13-month-olds were shown animated videos depicting a large ellipse (mother) paired with a small ellipse (child).
- The video began with the mother and child ellipses together, then the mother moved away from the child, who began to cry.
- On some trials, the mother ellipse returned to the child ellipse; on other trials, she continued to move away.
- Securely attached 13-month-olds looked longer at the trials depicting an unresponsive mother but insecurely attached infants looked longer at the trials when the mother returned.
- Evidently, each group has a working model of how parents respond-securely attached infants expect parents to respond but insecurely attached infants do not-and they look longer at the trials that violated their expectations of maternal behavior.

In a study conducted in Israel, infants were less likely to develop secure attachment when they slept in dormitories with other children, where they received inconsistent (if any) attention when they became upset overnight

Infants living in orphanages in Romania were more likely to be attached to their institutional caregiver when the caregivers were emotionally involved and responsive to them

Question 28

Why are some parents more responsive (and thus more likely to foster secure attachment) than others?

Answer 28

According to modern attachment theory (e.g., Cassidy, 1994), parents have internal working models of the attachment relationship with their own parents, and these working models guide interactions with their own infants.
- When questioned about attachment relationships with the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985), adults can be classified into one of three groups, one corresponding to the secure attachment of childhood and the other two corresponding to insecure attachments:

1. Secure adults describe childhood experiences objectively and value the impact of their parent-child relationship on their development.

.2 Dismissive adults sometimes deny the value of childhood experiences and sometimes are unable to recall those experiences precisely, yet they often idealize their parents.

3. Preoccupied adults describe childhood experiences emotionally and often express anger or confusion regarding relationships with their parents.

According to attachment theory, only parents with secure attachment representations are likely to provide the sensitive caregiving that promotes secure attachment relationships.
- In fact, many studies show that parents’ secure attachment representations are associated with sensitive caregiving, and, in turn, with secure attachment in their infants (Pederson et al., 1998; Tarabulsy et al., 2005; van IJzen- doorn, 1995).
- Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, infants with secure attachment relations often become young adults with secure attachment representations, completing the circle.

The sensitive and responsive caregiving that is essential for secure attachments is often taxing, particularly for babies with difficult temperaments.
- That is, babies who fuss often and are difficult to console are more prone to insecure attachment (Goldsmith & Harman, 1994; Seifer et al., 1996).
- Insecure attachment may also be more likely when a difficult, emotional infant has a mother whose personality is rigid and traditional than when the mother is accepting and flexible (Mangelsdorf et al., 1990).
- Rigid mothers do not adjust well to the often erratic demands of their difficult babies; instead, they want the baby to adjust to them. This means that rigid mothers less often provide the responsive, sensitive care that leads to secure attachment.

Fortunately, even brief training for mothers of newborns can help them respond to their babies more effectively (Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, & Juffer, 2003).
- Mothers can be taught how to interact more sensitively, affectionately, and responsively, paving the way for secure attachment and the lifelong benefits associated with a positive internal working model of interpersonal relationships.

Question 29

WORK, ATTACHMENT, AND CHILD CARE.

Answer 29

When parents respond appropriately and predictably, secure attachments usually result, regardless of the amount of time that children spend in child care.

Since the 1970s, more women in the workforce and more single-parent households have made
child care a fact of life for many American families.

What happens to mother-infant attachment when other people care for the infant much of the time?
- Parents and policymakers alike have been concerned about the impact of such care.

Question 30

Experiencing & Expressing Emotions

Answer 30

What is an emotion?

A feeling state that includes:
distinctive physiological responses,
can be expressed to others,
involves a cognitive appraisal
can motivate action

There are several distinct components to emotions, both internal (physiological and mental), and external (our outward expressions and behaviours). First, emotions are accompanied by distinct changes in heart rate and blood pressure. Second, emotions can be outwardly expressed in several ways: with facial expressions, body language, or verbally. Third, our prefrontal cortex influences the conscious experience of emotion – for example, whether we interpret someone’s joke as funny or mean-spirited; or whether we find a ride on a roller-coaster to be exhilarating or terrifying. The prefrontal cortex plays a role in the perception of others’ emotions as well. Finally, our emotions also motivate us to engage in different types of behaviours. Feeling very happy or very sad might motivate us to give someone a hug; feeling angry might prompt us to throw something across the room.

Question 31

Emotions are Universal

Answer 31

Basic Emotions:
Joy
Fear
Anger
Surprise
Sadness
Disgust

The emotions listed above have been found to be universal in humans and other primates; they have a long evolutionary history of promoting survival, and can be directly inferred from other people’s facial expressions. These expressions ensure that an infant’s basic needs are met, and promote making connections with caregivers, and others in the community.

Question 32

Happiness

Answer 32

Expressed first in smiles, then through exuberant laughter

“social smile” emerges at 6-10 weeks

Reciprocal

Laughter at 3-4 months

The social smile is a broad grin that occurs in response to parents’ smiles. It begins to emerge at about six to ten weeks, which is at the time when infants can start making out features of the human face; recall that before this time, faces look blurry to an infant. Smiles encourage caregivers to be affectionate and stimulating, which in turn cause an infant to smile even more. These social smiles are highly rewarding to sleep-deprived parents, who have been treated to a near-constant stream of their infants’ scowls and loud crying over the first six weeks.

A child’s first laughs (around three to four months of age) occur in response to very active stimuli, like adults playfully kissing the baby’s tummy, being the “tickle monster,” or talking in silly voices. A few months later, infants start laughing at events that have an element of surprise, like a game of peek-a-boo.

Question 33

Anger

Answer 33

Increases in intensity & frequency from 4-6 months into 2nd year

Situations:
Desirable object removed
Arms restrained
Put down for nap
Frustrated when goals thwarted

Newborns typically respond with generalized distress to bodily needs, such as being hungry, too cold or too hot, having too much or too little stimulation. As a result of their cognitive and motor development, older infants react with anger in a wider range of situations. As infants become capable of intentional behaviour, they want to control their own actions; they also become more persistent about obtaining desired objects (such as when my daughter Keira would go right for the shoe rack and want to pull off and lick every single shoe!!!), and less easily distracted from these goals. Therefore, young children get angry when someone blocks them from achieving a desired goal. They are also better able to identify the person who is blocking their goals (e.g., “Keira mad at Daddy for not letting her eat shoes!”)

Question 34

Fear

Answer 34

Also rises during second half of first year

Stranger anxiety

Depends on temperament

An infant’s most frequent expression of fear is to unfamiliar adults, much to the chagrin of parents who have waited in line for an hour to get a picture of their baby sitting on Santa’s knee! This fear reaction tends to be stronger if an unfamiliar adult picks up an infant in a new setting. If a stranger does things like smiling, approaching slowly, and holding an attractive toy, this reduces the baby’s fear, especially if one of his or her parents is nearby. Most infants tend to use their parents as a secure base from which to explore, then look back to for reassurance. Some children are generally more fearful than others. When I was two, I had a debilitating fear of… wait for it………… the moon! My parents told me that I would cover my face in fear as I ran from our house to the car if the moon happened to be out.

Question 35

Self-Conscious Emotions

Answer 35

E.g., guilt, pride, shame

Appear around 18-24 mo’s (time at which self-awareness emerges)

Require adult instruction

Vary by culture

Emotions such as guilt, pride, shame, and embarrassment are called self-conscious, because each involves injury to or enhancement of our sense of self. For example, feeling guilt when we know we have harmed someone, and want to relieve the other person’s suffering and atone for our misdeeds. Or feeling pride when taking delight in the self’s achievements. These emotions appear around the same time that children first start becoming self-aware (about 18 to 24 months of age).

Toddlers typically show shame and embarrassment by lowering their eyes, hanging their heads, and covering their face with their hands. The context in which self-conscious emotions are experienced is often dependent on one’s culture. In more individualistic cultures, like ours in Canada, children are taught to feel pride over their personal accomplishments, such as winning a game, kicking the ball far, and later, getting a good grade on a test. In countries with more collectivistic cultures like China and Japan, children are taught not to call attention to their personal successes, and take more pride in group achievements.

Question 36

Self-Conscious Emotions

Answer 36

Within our society, guilt more adaptive than shame

Motivates children to apologize and behave more considerately

In individualistic cultures, shame is associated with feelings of personal inadequacy (e.g., thinking “I’m such a horrible person,”) and continued anger. Guilt, on the other hand, is related to better adjustment, as it helps children resist harmful impulses, motivates a misbehaving child to repair the damage they’ve done, and behave more considerately.

Shame is used more in collectivistic cultures to teach right from wrong – Chinese children add the word for shame to their vocabularies by age three, much earlier than North American children. So to promote guilt, rather than shame, parents should say “You did a bad thing” rather than “You’re a bad boy or a bad girl,” and help children understand that their negative actions have consequences for others.

Question 37

Recognizing & Using Other’s Emotions

Answer 37

Infants can identify others’ emotions by 4-6 mo’s (happiness, surprise, anger)

Social referencing: use of parent’s facial expression or vocal cues to decide how to deal with unfamiliar situations

When it comes to identifying other people’s emotions, infants are first able to distinguish between facial expressions of happiness, surprise, and anger, at around four to six months. This has been established by use of the habituation paradigm, discussed in a previous chapter. If you show an infant pictures of several happy faces in a row, they get bored with them, but when the streak of happy faces is broken by a surprised face, the infant will show renewed interest by looking longer at the new picture. Fear, sadness, and interest are distinguishable from other emotions at about seven months. At this age, an infant will exhibit different brain wave patterns when looking at a fearful face than when looking at an angry face, suggesting that they recognize them as distinct emotions.

When infants are unsure how to react to a new stimulus or a new person, they will often look at one of their parent’s faces to see how they are reacting, a process known as social referencing.

Recognizing & Using Other’s Emotions
- Begins at 8-10 mo’s
- Caregiver’s emotional expression influences whether child will be wary of strangers, play with unfamiliar toy
- Voice cues more effective than facial cues

The typical social referencing research paradigm involves exposing infants to novel toys or people while in the lab with their caregiver. The caregiver is instructed by the experimenter to make either a happy, fearful or neutral facial expression, and the caregiver’s expression has a strong effect on how their child will react. Twelve-month-olds will stay near their caregiver if s/he shows fear, and will move toward a new toy or person if the caregiver expresses a positive emotion; and tentatively approach a new object or person if their caregiver shows no emotion. Eventually, young children learn to rely on their parents’ vocal cues, rather than their facial expressions to determine if a new object or person is safe to approach. The voice conveys both emotional and verbal information, and the baby need not turn toward their parent but, instead, can focus on evaluating the stranger or event.

Question 38

Display rules

Answer 38

Display rules: culture-specific norms that dictate the appropriate expression of emotions

E.g., simulation of emotion
Develops with age

Display rules sometimes require that children outwardly express an emotion that doesn’t match their felt emotion. For example, it’s expected that you should react with gratitude when receiving a present, which can be difficult to do if it’s something that you didn’t want, like yet another tacky sweater that your great aunt knitted for you! But you have to pretend that you like the gift or her feelings will be hurt. The majority of four-year-olds can’t mask their disappointment (as evidenced in a hilarious segment on Jimmy Kimmel, when he has parents videotape their kids opening terrible Christmas presents, like a half-eaten sandwich!); the majority of eight-year-olds, however, are able to do this more successfully.

Question 39

Regulating Emotions

Answer 39

1. Ways of acting to modulate and control emotions

Regulating our emotions involves strategies that we use to adjust the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions to a comfortable level. This ability requires attention focus and shifting, the ability to inhibit thoughts and behaviour, and planning (e.g., actively taking steps to relieve a stressful situation).

Some examples of emotion regulation include telling yourself that a stressful event (like exam time) will soon be over; deciding not to tell off your ex even though you’re upset with them; or suppressing your delight that something bad has happened to someone you don’t really like.

2. Requires voluntary, effortful management of emotions

Improves gradually, as result of brain development and assistance of caregivers

During early childhood, caregivers help children manage the intense emotions they feel, teaching them strategies for doing so.

3. Infants have limited ability to regulate

Infants can be easily overwhelmed by things going on around them! They can calm themselves somewhat with a pacifier, or clinging to a soft teddy bear. But babies depend mostly on the soothing interventions of their caregivers – being lifted to a shoulder, rocked back and forth, and talked to softly.

4. 4-6 mo’s: ability to shift attention and engage in self-soothing helps infants control emotion

12 mo’s: can crawl or walk away from source of distress

When faced with a highly stimulating novel event (e.g., seeing a toy fire truck with a siren wailing, and lights flashing), babies who more readily turn away, or suck their fingers are less prone to distress. Once an infant is mobile, it’s easier to escape a frightening situation!

5. Also depends on caregivers’ response:

Contingently & sympathetically = less fussy child

Impatiently or angrily = intensified fussiness

haps the most important attribute of being a parent is patience! When a parent responds quickly and sympathetically to their infant’s distress, the infant tends to be less fussy, express more positive emotions, more interested in exploring, and easier to soothe.

On the other hand, parents who respond with anger or impatience can exacerbate their child’s fussiness. This makes it harder for parents to soothe the baby in the future, and for the baby to learn to calm herself. If caregivers don’t regulate stressful experiences for their infants, brain structures that buffer stress may fail to develop properly. When this happens, an infant is likely to be emotionally reactive, and have trouble regulating their emotions throughout childhood.

6. 2-6 y.-o.’s develop strategies
   E.g., closing eyes; turning away; putting hands over ears

Question 40

Temperament

Answer 40

The characteristics of infants that indicate a consistent style or pattern to their behaviour

Vary on several dimensions:

A) negative affect
- Irritable distress (fussiness / anger when desires are frustrated)
- Fearful distress (wariness in new situations / in response to new stimuli)

B) surgency / extraversion (frequency of smiling, laughing, and willingness to approach & cooperate with others)

C) Attention span / effortful control (length of time child focuses on objects & events of interest)

When talking with other new parents about their babies, you soon come to realize that there is a great deal of variation in behavioural traits: fussy versus content; good sleeper versus “zombie baby”; rowdy versus laid-back. Many researchers believe that an infant’s temperament is a precursor to the type of personality they will develop as older children and adults, although this doesn’t mean that an overly fussy baby is predestined to be an anxious adult. Mary Rothbart’s theory of temperament highlights three basic dimensions of personality on which infants vary – negative affect, surgency / extraversion, and effortful control. Some researchers have made a further distinction between two subtypes of negative affect: irritable distress, and fearful distress. Fearful distress doesn’t appear until about age six or seven months, the time when most infants first become anxious in the presence of strangers.

Rothbart created a scale known as the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ) to measure where an infant falls on each dimension. The IBQ requires parents or other caregivers to rate the extent to which several statements characterize their infant. A sample item for measuring fearful distress reads as follows: “How often during the last week did the baby startle to a sudden or loud noise?” Take a moment to think about what type of question might be a valid measure of irritable distress or extraversion.

In addition to the dimensions listed above and on the previous slide, some researchers also acknowledge the dimensions of activity level (an infant’s amount of gross motor activity, such as kicking and crawling), and rhythmicity (an infant’s regularity of bodily functions such as eating and sleeping). Variations on some of these dimensions take some time to appear, and are influenced by both biological maturation and an infant’s experiences in their environment (e.g., warmth and sensitivity of parents and other caregivers). Children with “difficult” temperaments (i.e., scoring higher on the dimensions of irritability and fear, lower on surgency) are more likely to retain this type of temperament throughout childhood if parents are impatient and forceful with them.

Question 41

Stability of Temperament

Answer 41

Temperament styles in early childhood often persist into middle childhood

Can lead to problems with adjustment
E.g., shyness leading to loneliness, negative views of peer relations

One of the reasons for researchers’ interest in infants’ temperament is that it plays an important role in determining children’s social adjustment in school. Consider a boy in kindergarten who is prone to anger and has difficulty controlling this emotion. Compared with other children, he is more likely to sulk, yell at others, and be defiant with adults and aggressive with peers. Without intervention, these types of behaviours often lead to long-term adjustment problems. One longitudinal study found that individuals who were angrier and more unregulated as young children tended to have more problems with getting along with others as adolescents and young adults; they were also more likely to have been in trouble with the law, and have difficulty finding and keeping a job.

A recent study of Canadian children showed that shy children reported they felt lonelier, experienced more peer victimization, and had more negative views of peer relations compared to children who are less shy. Being shy in early childhood was also associated with being more likely to experience problems with anxiety and depression during adolescence.

gene X environment interaction

E.g., DRD4 gene makes children susceptible to quality of environment

Harsh parents: high behaviour problems
Positive family environment: low behavioural problems

It’s been found that some children’s temperaments make them highly reactive to both positive and negative family environments. For instance, the same reactive temperament (associated with a specific allele pattern in the DRD4 gene) that predisposes children toward high risk for negative outcomes when exposed to a harsh home environment also causes them to thrive / blossom when home environments are positive. Many children with difficult temperaments will exhibit low levels of behaviour problems when raised by compassionate parents. So again we see here that a genetic predisposition can put children at risk for problems, but the child’s outcome is going to depend to a large extent on their environmental surroundings.

Question 42

The Infant-Caregiver Emotional Relationship

Answer 42

Attachment:
An emotional bond between children and their caregivers.

Develops around 7 to 9 months

Attachment refers to the special emotional bond between two persons, characterized by mutual affection and a desire to maintain proximity. The first attachments that we form as infants are with our closest caregivers, usually one’s parents. During infancy, attachment is based on having one’s needs for comfort and security met.

Question 43

Attachment: Bowlby’s Ethological Explanation

Answer 43

Explanation:
Attachment provides a sense of security and safe base from which to explore the world

Strongly supported by research

John Bowlby’s research in the 1950s focused on children who had been separated from their parents as part of evacuation efforts during World War 2. Often, British citizens were evacuated when there was a risk of German air raids, and in many cases children were separated from their parents. Those who were separated from their parents had worse emotional and behavioral outcomes compared to children who maintained contact with their parents, suggesting the need for support and care by parents at a young age to develop healthily and feel confident in exploring the environment.

Harlow’s research with infant monkeys provided corroborating evidence
- monkeys preferred warm cloth mother to wire mother

In the 1960s, Harry Harlow removed infant monkeys from their mothers at birth and had them “raised” by surrogate mothers. Half received their nourishment from a mother made of wire; half received their nourishment from a mother made of cloth. When given free time to spend with which “mother” they wanted, all monkeys preferred to stay close to the warm, fuzzy, cloth mother, even if it wasn’t their source of food. Furthermore, when monkeys were frightened, those raised by the cloth mother ran to her for support, recognizing her as a safe haven. Monkeys raised by the wire mother responded with distress, having not had much experience with safety and security.

These results provided evidence that infants of any species require comfort and security – that attachment to the primary caregiver will form based on whether the caregiver is seen as a safe haven.

Question 44

Phases of Attachment

Answer 44

Bowlby (1969) described 4 phases:
1. Preattachment
2. “Attachment-in-the-making”
3. “Clear-cut attachment”
Secure base
Separation anxiety: become upset when caregiver leaves
Stranger anxiety
Social referencing
4. Reciprocal relationship

Bowlby later developed a theory of attachment, proposing that attachment between an infant and his/her primary caregiver(s) forms gradually. During the pre-attachment phase (from birth to six weeks), infants remain in close contact with their caregivers, but they don’t get too upset if left with an unfamiliar caregiver (e.g., their grandparents). By the end of the “attachment-in-the-making” phase (from six weeks to six to eight months), infants start to show a clear preference for familiar caregivers over strangers. During the “clear-cut attachment” phase (six to eight months to 18 months), infants use their primary caregiver as a secure base (a point from which to explore, then look back to for reassurance). A child in this phase becomes visibly upset when their caregiver, on whom they have come to rely, leaves; this occurs at the time that infants have developed a clear understanding that their caregiver continues to exist when not in view (related to Piaget’s concept of acquiring object permanence).

During the reciprocal relationship phase (18 months to two years and on) separation protest declines. A child understands some of the factors that influence a parent’s coming and going (e.g., Mommy’s going to the store to buy some groceries, and then she’ll come back). During this stage, a child begins to negotiate with his caregiver – for example, asking Daddy to play one more game before leaving him with his aunt and uncle for a few hours. This transitional phase lasts several years.

Question 45

Internal working model

Answer 45

Internal working model:
-A mental model that children construct as a result of their experiences

-use to guide interactions with caregivers and others

Bowlby proposed that children develop an internal working model of attachment based on their experiences during these four phases. This schema includes a set of expectations about the availability of attachment figures, and their likelihood of providing support when the child is distressed. If a child’s interactions with early attachment figures are positive, they learn that people can be trusted. If, however, their experiences with attachment figures are largely negative (i.e., their caregivers are frequently unresponsive to their needs), they learn that people aren’t trustworthy, that they need to be wary of others. These critical early experiences are believed to serve as a guide for a child’s future close relationships with friends, and eventually, their intimate partners.

Question 46

Patterns of Attachment

Answer 46

Mary Ainsworth
Developed the “Strange Situation” to test the security of the mother-child relationship

Observe how babies
- Use mother as a secure base
- Respond to separation from mother
- Respond to a stranger

In the late 1960s, Mary Ainsworth (a former colleague of Bowlby’s) extended Bowlby’s research by creating an experiment designed to test the strength of an infant’s attachment to his primary caregiver. The “Strange Situation” test takes an infant through eight short episodes in which brief separations from and reunions with her caregiver occur, and also assesses the child’s reaction to an unfamiliar adult.

Watch a video clip of a child in the Strange Situation test at the link above, taking note of the eight stages as they’re listed.

Ainsworth reasoned that if the development of attachment has gone well, infants should use their mother as a secure base from which to explore the playroom; also, an unfamiliar adult should be less comforting than the parent.

Question 47

Attachment Styles

Answer 47

Secure (60%): use parent as secure base; upset when separated; happy when reunited

Resistant (10%): cling to mother; upset when separated; ambivalent when reunited

Avoidant (15%): not upset when separated; indifferent when reunited

Disorganized (10%): responses unpredictable; often seem confused

Different combinations of the components of the working model result in four different attachment styles. (The percentages listed refer to the typical proportion of children from middle- and high-SES homes who are classified as having a particular attachment style after undergoing the Strange Situation test. A higher proportion of insecure attachments occur in low-SES families.) Secure attachment is the only positive form of attachment, resulting when the caregiver provides consistent, reliable support and when the baby is a confident, assured infant. In the Strange Situation test, securely attached infants are curious about the stranger when their mother is also present, but don’t like it when their mother leaves them alone with the stranger. If there’s a strong child-caregiver bond, the child should protest when separated from caregiver.

The other three forms are labeled as insecure forms of attachment. Resistantly attached children usually won’t explore the toys in the room, and are fearful of the stranger, even when their mother is present. These children desire comfort, but resent having been left with the stranger, so they pout and act angry with their mother when she returns. A resistant attachment style is often associated with inconsistent parenting (perhaps because a caregiver is depressed).

Children with an avoidant attachment style show relatively little emotion; they don’t seem to mind being left alone with the stranger, and often ignore their mother when she returns (perhaps because they have come to expect that she won’t be responsive to them). This type of attachment is associated with emotionally unavailable or rejecting parents.

Disorganized infants tend to be the most distressed of all children during the Strange Situation test. This attachment style appears to be a hybrid of resistant and avoidant styles that reflect confusion about whether a caregiver can be trusted. When the reunion with the mother occurs, disorganized infants may act dazed, or they might approach the mother then abruptly pull away. A disorganized attachment style is associated with parents who are frightened (overwhelmed) or frightening (angry and abusive).

Question 48

Fathers and Infant Attachment

Answer 48

Predictors of secure infant attachment to father at 1 year:
positive attitudes,
positive interaction,
physical affection
time spent with infants at 3 mo’s

Most of the early studies of the Strange Situation test examined the bond between mothers and their children. More recently, the Strange Situation test has been used to test a child’s attachment to their father, finding that the same attachment styles can occur, and a child’s attachment to one parent is not always the same style as their attachment to another.

One study observed fathers’ interactions with infants and measured their attitudes toward the role of father, and then employed the Strange Situation test at one year to measure infant attachment. A secure father-infant attachment was associated with positive father attitudes such as delight in having the baby, acceptance of the baby despite intrusions on independence, sensitivity to the baby’s communications, and investment in their father role over investing in other roles. Other research has found that fathers in gratifying marriages spend more time with and interact more effectively with infants.

Question 49

Parental Roles

Answer 49

Mothers: more time devoted to physical care, expressing affection

Fathers: playful interaction; physical play

Mothers who work outside home: more playful

Stay-at-home fathers: playful, less gender-stereotyped beliefs

Observations of parents with their children in natural settings suggest that mothers more often provide toys, talk to infants, and play games like pat-a-cake. Fathers more often tend to engage in physical play, with bursts of excitement that increase as play progresses.

In recent years, this strict division of parental roles (mother as caregiver, father as playmate) has changed in response to several factors, including more women entering the workforce, cultural valuing of gender equality, and an increase in the number of same-sex couples and non-married individuals who have or adopt children. It’s been found that mothers in dual-earner families tend to spend more time engaging in playful stimulation than mothers who stay at home full-time. Stay-at-home dads, however, tend to retain their arousing play style – they tend to be less gender-stereotyped in beliefs, and often had fathers who were more involved in rearing them.

Question 50

Attachment & Alternate Caregiving

Answer 50

research suggests low-quality day care can contribute to attachment insecurity

high-quality, cognitively enriched daycare has beneficial effects on children’s cognitive development

especially for children from low-SES families

Over half of Canadian children aged six months to five years receive some form of child care. Does being away from one’s primary caregivers have a negative effect on a child’s attachments with their caregivers at home? The answer depends on the quality of the child care. Longitudinal research by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) suggests that low-quality daycare contributes to insecurity only if a child spends long hours in daycare and receives insensitive care at home. On the flip side, high-quality child care has many benefits for young children, especially those who come from families whose home environments are less stimulating. Children from low-SES households placed in high-quality daycare show significant and lasting gains in IQ, and later, school performance. The closure of most daycare centres during lockdown periods of the COVID pandemic was thus more likely to have had a negative effect on children from lower income families and/or children with inattentive or abusive parents.

Question 51

Signs of Quality Child-Care

Answer 51

Low ratio of children to caregivers
Well-trained and experienced staff
Positive interactions
Appropriate toys & equipment
Ample educational and social stimulation

What makes for high-quality daycare? For starters, the ratio of children to caregivers should be no greater than 3 to 1 for infants, and 6 to 1 for toddlers. If child care is provided within a family, the caregiver should be responsible for no more than six children, no more than two of whom are infants or toddlers.

The staff at an accredited daycare should have a background in child development; in Ontario, at least one member of the staff needs to hold a degree in Early Childhood Education. Training in first-aid and safety is important as well. Childcare workers should respond promptly to a child’s distress; talk, sing, and read to children; interact with them in a manner that respects an individual child’s interests and temperament.

A childcare centre should have both indoor and outdoor equipment, within easy reach for children; cribs, high-chairs, child-sized tables and chairs, etc.; and the physical setting should be clean, well-lit, and well-ventilated.

It’s important that the staff provide a variety of activities for the children, including some free-play time. Finally, it’s important that the staff foster positive relationships with parents, talking frequently with them about their children’s behaviour and development.

Question 52

Cultural Differences in Attachment

Answer 52

Germany – mothers discourage physical contact, encourage independence

Dogon mothers carry
infants almost constantly
during first year

Israeli kibbutz – children spend only a few hours a day in care of parents

Different cultures vary in the amount of time caregivers spend with infants, and an infant’s exposure to other significant caregivers. When children in Germany are given the Strange Situation test, a higher proportion are classified as avoidant than in North America. This may not reflect true insecurity, rather, being a reflection of what is valued in German culture.

Mothers among the Dogon ethnic group (in the country of Mali) hold their infants close almost 24 hours a day, nursing them promptly in response to hunger and distress. When the Strange Situation test was administered to a sample of Dogon mothers and children, none of the children displayed avoidant attachment.

In Israeli kibbutzes, infants are raised communally, sleeping in dormitories with other infants, rather than in a room with their parents. A higher proportion of infants from kibbutzes display resistant attachment, as might be expected when children don’t get prompt individual attention. Again, what is defined as sensitive caregiving in the kibbutz reflects the values, beliefs, and socialization goals of that culture.

Question 53

Orphanages

Answer 53

Squalid conditions in Romanian orphanages in 1990s

Many children experienced ongoing emotional problems (even after being adopted into families)

Main problem: lack of consistent caregiver

Usually, the younger a child gets out, the better outcome

Throughout history, orphanages have never been known for providing high-quality care for children, and were often seen as a last resort for children whose parents were dead and there were no other family members (e.g., aunts, uncles, grandparents) able to raise them. In the 1990s, it was discovered that many Romanian orphanages had particularly squalid conditions, even by the usual standards of orphanages. They were providing the most basic physical care, with very little social or intellectual stimulation. Many of these children were studied after later being adopted into North American families. Unfortunately, the majority of them experienced a combination of emotional problems, cognitive impairments, peer rejection, hyperactivity, and disruptive behavior.

Even in orphanages with better environments (e.g., lots of stimulating toys and books), the lack of a consistent caregiver can be a problem, especially if there’s a lot of staff turnover. A study of children in one orphanage found that they had had 50 different caregivers by age 4!

Generally, the younger a child gets out of an orphanage (and is adopted into a loving family) the better. For children placed in an orphanage at birth, the age of six months seems to be a critical threshold for forming secure attachments. One study found that children adopted at four months were found to have the same quality of attachments with their adoptive parents as children raised with their biological parents. Those adopted at eight months, however, showed some signs of insecurity in the Strange Situation test, and often exhibited an excessive desire for adult attention.

Question 54

Attachment Patterns and Later Development

Answer 54

Continuity of attachment status from infancy to adulthood

Securely attached infants tend to be more socially skilled, empathetic, emotionally mature through adolescence and adulthood

On an earlier slide, we looked at the development of an internal working model of attachment, whereby children use the pattern of attachment with their primary caregiver(s) to guide interactions with others as they get older. Longitudinal research suggests that secure attachment as an infant predicts many positive outcomes in terms of social interactions and relationships through one’s entire lifespan. One’s attachment style with their parents as a young child also affects one’s own parenting behaviours: people who had secure attachments with their parents are more likely to have secure attachments with their children. Fortunately, even people who had insecure attachments with their parents can learn to have more secure attachments to their intimate relationship partners and their children.