Beginning social relationships

Question 1

The first hour

Answer 1

• Infant is alert and gazing
• Follows the mother’s face
• The mother’s receptivity is intensified by high hormone levels
• Most mothers follow a similar pattern in getting to know their infants

Question 2

Bonding

Answer 2

Bonding refers to the establishment of an increasingly coordinated mutually helpful interaction between newborns and their parents.

Question 3

When bondings work properly

Answer 3

• Adults become attuned to the infants
• Infants give cues to the adults about their needs
• The adults minister to the infants
• The infants’ show if content serves as positive feedback to the adults
• The infants develop trust in the adults
• The adults acquire confidence in their abilities as parents and good feelings towards the infants

Question 4

The importance of early contact

Answer 4

• Sensitive period –> rooming procedure
• Early contact sometimes affects mother’s feelings toward their infants
• Early contact may start the bonds forming earlier
• Human mothers differ from mothers of many other species in that they form bonds with their infants even if the early sensitive period is missed or disrupted

Question 5

Factors that contribute to successful bonding

Answer 5

• Innate factors
• Response behaviours
• Appetitive and aversive interactions
• Interactive play
• Individual differences in infants
• Individual differences in parents
• Developmental progress

Question 6

Innate factors to successful bonding

Answer 6

• Optimal period
• Baby features: Large and prominent forehead, large eyes and cheeks, small nose, mouth and chin, the head is disproportionately big for the body, small shoulders, rounded and protruding stomach.

Question 7

Response behaviors

Answer 7

• Innate tendencies that seem to initiate and facilitate early interaction with adults
• Behaviours eliciting caring responses from adults
• Reflex behaviours: sucking, grasping
• Crying
• Body contact
• Smiling and cooing
• Visual response: form, contour, contrast, movement, eye contact.

Question 8

Appetitive and aversive interactions (Bell, 1974)

Answer 8

• Aversive type of interaction: adults do just enough to avoid or to end trouble
• Appetitive type of interaction: adults interact with their children because they desire to and results are pleasing

Question 9

Interactive play

Answer 9

• Initially, when the child is receiving care, pattern of expectations, reciprocal responses, mutual sensitivities develop in parent and infant
• Watson (1974): infants tend to be innately attracted by contingency relationships because they are born with capacity for analysing such relationships which gives an understand and control over ones’ environment.

Question 10

Individual differences in infants

Answer 10

• Frequency and duration of crying
• Ability to be soothed
• Sensory response threshold
• Visual alertness
• Wakefulness and sleep

Question 11

Individual differences in parents

Answer 11

• Skilled and unskilled mothers
• Parents who are under constant stress
• Quality of marriage
• Social class
• Social support

Question 12

Similarities between mothers and fathers

Answer 12

• Fathers like to hold and touch, gaze and smile, talk and stroke their new baby just as much as new mothers do
• They are no less sensitive to their baby’s cries, sneezes and coughs than mothers are
• They may stop a feeding to soothe
• They are likely to feed a baby just as much milk as new mothers do

Question 13

Differences between mothers and fathers

Answer 13

• On the average they do not spend as much time actively “on duty” with their infants as mothers do
• Middle-class Boston families (1976): ¾ of fathers did not regularly take part in the physical care of their infants; nearly half had never changed diapers

Question 14

Factors that may contribute to bonding problems

Answer 14

• Excessive crying
• Unusual behaviors and unusual states
• Unusual appearance
• Emotional rejection
• Interference in father-infant bonding
• Early separation of high-risk infants
• Misconceptions about the high-risk infant’s condition
• Slow developmental progress

Question 15

Excessive crying

Answer 15

• How much crying can parents tolerate –> excessive crying may threaten their relationship with their infants.
• Bell, Ainsworth (1972): infants seem to cry more when their mothers ignored the crying; when infants cried excessively, mothers seemed to give up and ignore them –> a vicious cycle

Question 16

Transaction 1

Answer 16

• Baby cries easily and is not easily comforted -> Mother views crying as “out of control” ->
  Baby cries more frequently and intensely -> Mother stops trying to comfort baby and responds to crying less frequently and less quickly

Question 17

Transaction 2

Answer 17

• Baby cries easily and is not easily comforted -> Mother views crying as controllable; decides she has simply not found the best way to stop it -> Baby eventually cries less intensely. Trusts mum to come. Mum finds a method that works -> Mother continues to respond immediately, believing that “if I let him go too long, it’ll be harder to stop him”; tries various ways (rocking, singing, walking)

Question 18

Emotional rejection

Answer 18

• For a variety of reasons (clear or not) parents may reject infants -> One child may develop behavioural problems and resentment, another may compensate by initiating a strong relationship with the other parent

Question 19

Interference in father-infant bonding

Answer 19

• Some mothers like to be central in their infants’ lives, the only person who can satisfy their needs and comfort them, and fail to consider the effect on the father-infant relationship -> the father may come to consider himself and outsider with little influence on the infant

Question 20

Early separation of high-risk infants

Answer 20

• Prematurity, disease, brain damage, physical handicaps
• Depending on its severity and parents’ reactions to it, any of these conditions may contribute to a breakdown in the bonding process
• High-risk infants are often separated from their parents at birth for medical treatment (the separation may last for weeks or months) -> they are isolated from social stimulation and interaction with their parents.

Question 21

Slow developmental progress

Answer 21

Misconception about the high-risk infant’ condition slow developmental progress
- Parents often perceive their high-risk babies as fragile, feel anxious about handling them and caring for them
- When parents perceive their infants as abnormal, they may feel unable to guess their needs from their behaviour -> this can hinder spontaneous response to their immediate cues.
Slow developmental progress
- With many types of handicaps, developmental progress may prove slow in one or several areas
- The parents may not see that their efforts help

Question 22

attachment theory definition

Answer 22

• Attachment is an affectional tie of one person to specific other person
• The tie is enduring and persists even during separations
• John Bowlby is the “father” of attachment theory (1969, a full-scale theory of development of attachment)
• Attachment is as basic and as important in human life as food and sex are (Bowlby)

Question 23

Special tie (attachment theory)

Answer 23

• The infant does not treat everyone equally
• The infant develops a special relationship with at most a few people
• Bowlby: There is but one primary attachment; all the other relationships are secondary
• For the babies, this primary attachment figure (AF) usually is the mother

Question 24

Attachment theory focus

Answer 24

• The focus is on affective development in terms of
  
  • the ‘causes’ of attachment
  • the behaviours involved in attachment
  • and the importance of attachment

Question 25

Harlow experiment

Answer 25

In this study, Harlow took infant monkeys from their biological mothers and gave them two inanimate surrogate mothers: one was a simple construction of wire and wood, and the second was covered in foam rubber and soft terry cloth. The infants were assigned to one of two conditions. In the first, the wire mother had a milk bottle and the cloth mother did not; in the second, the cloth mother had the food while the wire mother had none.

In both conditions, Harlow found that the infant monkeys spent significantly more time with the terry cloth mother than they did with the wire mother. When only the wire mother had food, the babies came to the wire mother to feed and immediately returned to cling to the cloth surrogate. Harlow’s work showed that infants also turned to inanimate surrogate mothers for comfort when they were faced with new and scary situations.

When placed in a novel environment with a surrogate mother, infant monkeys would explore the area, run back to the surrogate mother when startled, and then venture out to explore again. Without a surrogate mother, the infants were paralyzed with fear, huddled in a ball sucking their thumbs. If an alarming noise-making toy was placed in the cage, an infant with a surrogate mother present would explore and attack the toy; without a surrogate mother, the infant would cower in fear.

Question 26

Harlow: in a series of studies with rhesus monkeys, the found that monkeys raised without mothers showed a variety of behavioural problems:

Answer 26

• self-mutilation
  
  • lack of exploratory behaviour
  • excessive aggressiveness
  • inability to function in heterosexual or parental roles
  • missing the affectional contact of the mother-infant relationship

Question 27

Conditions activating attachment behaviour

Answer 27

External:

• strangeness
• frightening stimuli or events
• cold
• distance or separation from the AF
• a lapse of time since contact with the AF
• rebuff from children or adults
• the AF’s departing
• the AF’s being absent
• the AF’s discouraging the infant from coming close

Internal:

• fatigue
• illness
• pain

Question 28

A representational model

Answer 28

• On the basis of experiences in their first relationships, individuals develop representational model – a set of:
  
  • believes about themselves
  • expectations about others
  • conscious and/or unconscious rules for organising and accessing information about feelings, experiences and ideas related to attachment.
• Once formed, the representational model tends to maintain its coherence and pattern of organisation:
  
  • new social partners are selected
  • and/or are assimilated to the old model

Individual’s representation models:

• set the stage for interactions with new social patterns
• have long-lasting consequences for personality development and for the nature of close relationships
• The pattern of attachment behavior and the associated representational models of attachment relationships are adaptive for the environment in which the young child develops them:

Question 29

Assimilation

Answer 29

the process of incorporating a new object into an existing mental representation.

Question 30

Four sequential stages in the development of infant-to-mother attachment

Answer 30

1. Undiscriminating social responsiveness
   - It lasts for the first 2 or 3 months
   
   • The baby does not show differential interaction patterns with adults
   • The baby has a variety of behaviours that encourage and maintain interactions with adults
2. Discriminating social responsiveness
   - Lasts until the baby is about 6 months of age
   
   • The baby distinguishes familiar people from unfamiliar people and reacts to them differently
3. Clear-cut attachment
   - At about 7 months of age the baby actively works to gain and keep closeness (proximity) with the AF
   
   • The repertoire of attachment behaviours now includes not only crying, smiling and reaching, but also following, approaching, and clinging to the AF, and protesting separations.
   • The degree of proximity or contact the baby seeks varies with the situation
4. Goal-corrected partnership
   - At about 2-3 years of age
   - It is an elaboration of the previous stages
   
   • instead of being guided by immediate feedback, the child can anticipate and correct for maternal behaviour
   • He increasingly understands the mother’s goals and plans

Question 31

Patterns of attachment

Answer 31

• Assessing attachment – Strange Situation Test (Ainsworth, 1978)
• 3 broad categories of infant-parent attachment:
  
  • Anxious-avoidant (insecure-avoidant) 15-20%
  • Secure 65%
  • Anxious-ambivalent (insecure-resistant) 15-20%

Question 32

Strange situation test

Answer 32

SST take place in a laboratory playroom

• It consists of 8 episodes increasingly stressful to the infant:
  1. A warm-up time (the mother and infant are introduced to the room)
  2. A 3-minute free-play period
  3. The stranger enters the room, after 3 minutes the mother leaves the room
  4. The first separation period (the mother is gone, the stranger tries to interact with the baby) – max. 3 minutes
  5. The first reunion (the stranger leaves, the mother re-enters the room) – min. 3 min
  6. The second separation (the mother leaves the baby alone) – max. 3 min
  7. The second separation continues (the stranger enters the room and tries to interact with the baby)
  8. Second reunion (the mother re-enters the room, the stranger leaves quietly).

Question 33

Anxious-avoidant attachment

Answer 33

• They do not seek proximity, contact or interaction with their mothers when they are reunited following a brief separation
• They struggle to avoid interaction; turn away from their mothers upon reunion
• Strangers are not treated very differently from the mother

Question 34

Secure attachment

Answer 34

• They actively seek proximity and contact with the mother upon reunion (especially if they were very distressed during separation)
• The mother’s return is met with more than a casual greeting
• There is marked preference for the mother over stranger

Question 35

Anxious-ambivalent attachment (aka resistant attachment)

Answer 35

• They seek contact and proximity with the mother yet then resist the contact once it is made, especially following the separation
• They are often reluctant to explore the environment (do not seem able to use the mother as a secure base for exploration).

Question 36

Anxious-disorganised-disoriented attachment

Answer 36

• Main and Solomon, 1986 – a 4th category
• Freezing for 10 seconds or longer in a posture that requires active resistance to gravity
• Directly showing fear or apprehension of caregiver
• Responding to caregiver’s return by directing attachment behaviour to the stranger
• Showing dazed, disoriented, affectless, or depressed facial expression

Question 37

Secure group mothers

Answer 37

• In the behaviour relevant to feeding were more sensitive to:
  
  • infant’s signals with regard to timing of initiation and termination
  • dealing with the baby’s food preferences
  • adjusting the rate of feeding to the baby’s rate of intake
• When the babies were 6 to 15 weeks old, they showed skill in pacing and modifying their social behaviour in response to baby’s cues
• They used a routine manner less than other mothers
• They were more likely to greet the baby when entering the room
• They were:
  
  • tender and careful for a much higher percentage of time when holding their babies
  • inept for a much lower percentage of time than the other group mothers were

The caregiver’s sensitive responding helps the baby achieve her goals and so helps her experience and develop a sense of confidence, both about the trustworthiness of others and about her own effectiveness

Question 38

Disorganised group mothers

Answer 38

• They more likely have psychological problems
• They react with hostility to attachment behaviour
• They are likely to be intrusive and abusive

Question 39

Avoidant group mothers

Answer 39

• They appeared to have rigid, compulsive personalities
• They were especially rejecting toward their infants
• They were more likely to pick up the baby in an abrupt, interfering manner
• When holding the baby, they were:
  
  • less likely to behave affectively
  • more likely to behave ineptly
• They chronically gave frustrating responses when their babies sought proximity and contact
• In the first 3 months they:
  
  • showed more aversion to physical contact
  • provided the baby with a greater number of unpleasant, even painful, experiences associated with close contact
• However, they did not hold their babies significantly less than other mothers did, they were likely to refuse contact when the baby most needed it.
  The infant defends himself from rebuff by diverging his attention away from anything that might activate his attachment behaviour, including the AF herself

Question 40

Anxious-ambivalent/resistant group mothers

Answer 40

• They were at times psychologically inaccessible and other times intrusive, interfering with the baby’s activity
• They were:
  
  • Less affectionate when picking the baby up
  • less tender and careful when holding
  • More inept when handling
  • less responsive to crying
  • less sensitive to infant signals
  • less cooperative and accepting
    Bids for proximity and contact are often frustrated, so attachment behaviour persists and anger mingles with it

Question 41

Material tools

Answer 41

• Physical objects
• Observable patterns of behaviour such as family routines (for example how children are put to bed) and social practices (eg, how children are educated).
• The environment of every child is full of material tools, which vary from culture to culture

Question 42

Symbolic tools

Answer 42

• Abstract knowledge, beliefs and values (for eg, about gender expectations, religion).

Question 43

Mediation

Answer 43

• Material and symbolic tools of a culture organise children’s activities and the way they relate to their environment.
• This organisation is called “Mediation”
• How these tools mediate children’s behaviour and affect their development is at the heart of debates like whether violent video game promote aggressive behaviour and barbie dolls promote poor body image

Question 44

Social processes of cultural inheritance

Answer 44

• Children inherit culture through several social processes
• Social enhancement: The most basic social process of learning to use cultural resources, in which resources are used simply because others’ activities have made them available in the immediate environment
• Imitation: The social process through which children learn to use their culture’s resources by observing and copying the behaviours of others
• Explicit instruction: The social process in which children are purposefully taught to use the resources of their culture

Question 45

Cumulative cultural evolution

Answer 45

The dynamic ongoing process of cultural change that is a consequence of variation that individuals have produced in the cultural tools they use. For example, material tools are today more digital, and symbolic are more progressive with for example equality between genders.