Chapter 12 - Social Development Flashcards
What was Harlow’s procedure for studying attachment in infant monkeys, and what did he find?
Harlow raised infant monkeys with two substitute mothers, one wire and one cloth. He found that all the infant monkeys treated the cloth-covered surrogate as a mother and thus demonstrated the role of contact comfort in the development of attachment bonds.
According to Bowlby, what infant behaviors indicate strong attachment, and why would they have come about in natural selection?
Behaviors –> Distress when their mother leaves or when a stranger approaches and the mother doesn’t comfort/reassure them. Pleasure when they are reunited with their mother. More likely to explore when mother is present.
Natural selection –> Infants who stayed close to caregivers or away from unfamiliar objects when caregivers weren’t nearby survived to adulthood.
From an evolutionary perspective, why does attachment strengthen at about 6 to 8 months of age?
This is the age that infants start to move around and thus it’s important that they stay close to their caregivers to be protected against dangers.
How does the strange-situation test asses the security of attachment?
Mother and child are chilling in a room. A stranger enters the room and joins them. Then, the mother leaves the room for a little while and the child’s reactions during her absence and return are observed; these behaviors explain their security of attachment.
What are the 4 attachment classifications that resulted from the strange-situation test?
1) Secure; infants are calm in presence of their mothers, but become upset when she leaves. They greet their mothers warmly once she returns.
2) Insecure-resistant; infants are anxious in presence of their mothers, and become very distressed when she leaves, but are ambivalent/angry when she returns.
3) Insecure-avoidant; infants are little distressed when their mothers leave and avoid contact with her when she returns.
4) Disorganized/disoriented; infants show no coherent strategy for dealing with stress during separation and reunion with their mothers
What evidence suggests that sensitive parenting correlates with secure attachment and subsequent emotional and social development?
Studies that used home visits and the strange-situation test to asses parenting style, reported that children with secure attachment in infancy had been found to be more confident, better at solving problems, emotionally healthier, and more sociable later in life than children with insecure attachment in infancy.
How did Ainsworth interpret correlations of sensitive parenting with secure attachment and emotional/social development, and how else might they be interpreted?
Ainsworth predicted that secure attachment would lead to positive effects later in life, such as a general sense of trust in other people and oneself.
What experimental evidence supports the theory that sensitive care promotes secure attachments?
Several training studies, in which mothers were either given parental training (to be more perceptant of their babies’ signals of distress) or not. Results showed that parental training led to more sensitive parenting and reduced physiological evidence of distress in the children.
What evidence suggests that some infants are relatively invulnerable to negative effects of insensitive parenting?
An experiment that used children who had a greater uptake (‘ll’) of serotonin or a lower uptake (‘ls’ or ‘ss’) of serotonin; it showed that children with the ‘ll’ genotype were less sensitive to parenting styles than children with either the ‘sl’ or ‘ss’ genotype.
What are some differences in the way cultures care for young infants?
Western, Euro-American cultures are less indulgent of infants’ desires than are other cultures, like, for example, the few hunter-gatherer cultures that have survived into recet times.
What observations suggest that hunter-gatherers are highly indulgent toward infants?
They usually start to comfort the infant before crying even begins and keep infants in direct contact with caregivers.
What parenting styles distinguish the !Kung, Efe, and Aka?
!Kung -> mothers give infants constantly direct contact and access to breastmilk.
Efe -> mothers keep infants in direct contact for half the day, other caregivers keep them in direct contact during the other half of the day.
Aka -> fathers give more direct care to infants, compared to other cultures.
According to Hoffman, how does empathy develop during infancy and early childhood?
The response to another’s expressed discomfort is a foundation for the development of empathy; over time, this response becomes gradually less reflexive and more thoughtul. At an age of 15 monthes, infants try to comfort others and at an age of 2 years they start to become successful at comforting others.
What evidence suggests that young children naturally enjoy giving?
Infants and young children all over the world delight in games of give-and-take with adults or older children.
What evidence suggests that humans have evolved prosocial drives?
The action of giving and helping seems to stem from the child’s own wishes.
At about what age and under what conditions do children share?
From the age of 2 years, children share when an adult vocalizes such a wish. From the age of 4-5 years, most children who are in control of the resources will share; the older they get, the more equally do they share their resources.
What is overimitation, who engages in it, and why might it be adaptive?
Overimitation = children repeat both usefull and irrelevant actions of a role model; happens because they belief those models are trustworthy and each action has purpose.
It starts at the age of 3 years, and is a human trait, which continues on (though in lesser degree) into adulthood.
It is adaptive to humans, because social learning provides great efficiency (which compensates the few ‘useless’ movements learned during overimitation).
What evidence is there that children learn new skills from watching other children?
A study, in which one child in a class was taught how to get a treat from the panpipes, found that by watching more and more children learned how to get the treat and they taught their new skill to operate the panpipes to other children (both verbally as by showing).
What are the four general parenting styles psychologists have identified, and how do they affect children’s psychological development?
- Authoritarian (low warmth, high control); correlates with children who perform poorly in school, have low self-esteem, and are more likely to be rejected by peers.
- Authorative (high warmth, high control); correlates with children who are most happy and cooperative.
- Permissive (high warmth, low control); correlates with children who are impulsive and aggressive.
- Uninvolved (low warmth, low control); correlates with children who show a broad range of problem behaviors and internalizing problems.
How do observations of two Mexican villages illustrate the role of play in transmitting cultural skills and values from one generation to the next?
One village had peaceful residents, the other had quite violent ones. Children in the more violent village engaged in three times as much play fighting as the children in the peaceful village.
