Chapter 6: Exam 1 Flashcards
Attachment
An affection bond is characterized by seeking closeness with another and distress upon separation.
*Mary Ainsworth defines as an enduring emotional bond between one animal or person and another
*John Bowdly adds that attachment is essential to the survival of the infant
Separation Anxiety
Fear of separation from a target of attachment
Secure Attachment
A type of attachment characterized by mild distress at leave-takings and being readily soothed by reunion.
Insecure Attachment
Attachment behavior is characterized by avoiding the caregiver, excessive clinging, or inconsistency
Strange Situation Method
Developed by Mary Ainsworth to measure the development of attachment
*Infant is exposed to a series of separations and reunions with a caregiver (usually the mother) and a stranger who is a confederate of the researchers.
Two Major types of Insecure Attachment
*Avoidant Attachment
*Ambivalent/resistant attachment
Avoidant Attachment
A type of insecure attachment characterized by the apparent indifference to leave-takings by and reunions with an attachment figure.
*Least distressed by their mother’s departures
*Play without fuss when alone and ignore their mothers upon return
They are happier, more sociable, and more cooperative with caregivers
Ambivalent/resistant Attachment
A type of insecure attachment characterized by severe distress at leave-takings and ambivalent behavior at reunions.
*Most emotional, showing severe signs of distress when their mothers leave and show ambivalence upon reunion by alternately clinging to their mothers and pushing them away.
Disorganized-disoriented attachment
A type of insecure attachment characterized by dazed and contradictory behaviors toward an attachment figure. (category of insecure attachment)
*Babies showing this pattern seem dazed, confused, and disoriented. They may show contradictory behaviors such as moving toward the mother while looking away from her.
Involvement of Mother
Engage in more interactions with the infant
* Feeding and cleaning them
* Play games involving toys, and patty-cake, and peek-a-boo.
Involvement of Father
*More often than mothers engage in rough-and-tumble play
The more sensitive the father is to the infant’s needs, the stronger the attachment
Mary Ainsworth Phases of Attachment
- Initial-preattachment
- Attachment-in-the-making
- Clear-cut-attachment
Initial Preattachment Phase
Lasts from birth to about three months and is characterized by indiscriminate attachment
Attachment-in-the-making Phase
It occurs at about four months and is characterized by a preference for familiar figures
Clear-cut-attachment
Occurs at about six or seven months and is characterized by intensified dependence on the primary caregiver, usually the mother
Indiscriminate Attachment
The display of attachment behaviors toward any person
Theories of Attachment
*Cognitive View of Attachment
*Behavioral View of Attachment
* Psychoanalytical Views of Attachment
*The Caregiver as a source of contact comfort
*Ethological View of Attachment
Cognitive View of Attachment
Suggests that an infant must develop the concept of object permanence before a specific attachment becomes possible.
If caregivers are to be missed when absent, the infant must perceive that they continue to exist (seen developed specific attachments at about the age of six to seven months)
Behavioral View of Attachment
Behaviorists argue that attachment behaviors are conditioned.
*Caregiver feeds them and tends to their psychological needs
*Thus, they associate their caregivers with gratification and learn to approach them to meet their needs.
Psychoanalytic Views of Attachment
Caregiver becomes not just the “reinforcer” but also a love object who forms the basis for all later attachments.
The Caregiver as the source of contact comfort
Margaret Harlow experiment that feeding is not as critical to the attachment process
- Infant monkeys in cage with two surrogate mothers
*One surrogate mother was made with a wire mesh with an extended baby bottle
*The other was made of soft, cuddly terry cloth
Infant monkeys spent most of their time clinging to the cloth mother, even tough she did not offer any food.
Contact Comfort
The pleasure derived from physical contact with another
Ethological View of Attachment
*Ethologists view that for many animals, attachment is an inborn or instinctive response to a specific stimulus.
Theorized as a baby’s cry stimulates caregiving in women
Mothers social response to her infant’s face can reliably produce infant smiling by eight months producing a pattern contributing to mutual attachment.
Social Smile
A smile that occurs in response to a human voice or face (by two or three months of age)
Critical Period
A period during which imprinting can occur
Imprinting
The process by which waterfowl become attached to the first moving object they follow
U.S. Dept of Health & Human Services typed of maltreatment of children
*Physical Abuse: actions causing pain & physical injury
*Sexual Abuse: Sexual molestation, exploitation, and intercourse
*Emotional Abuse: actions that impair the child’s emotional, social, or intellectual functioning
*Physical Neglect: Failure to provide adequate food, shelter, clothing, or medical care
*Emotional Neglect: Failure to provide adequate nurturance and emotional support
*Educational Neglect: for example, permitting or forcing child to be truant
Effects of Child Abuse
High incidence of personal and social problems and psychological disorders
Causes of Child Abuse
Factors:
*Stress (divorce, loss of job, moving, or the birth of a new family member)
*History of child abuse in at least one parent’s family origin
*lack of adequate coping and child-rearing skills
* unrealistic expectations of children
*American culture “It is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a ‘good hard spanking.’
*substance abuse
Techniques to help prevent child abuse
- Strengthening parenting skills among the general population
*Home visitors helping new parents develop skills in caregiving and home management (poor, single, teen mothers) - Presenting information on abuse and providing support to families.
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs)
Development disorders characterized by impairment in communication and social skills, and by repetitive, stereotyped behavior.
Variations of ASDs
*Aspergers Disorder
* Rett’s Disorder
*Childhood Disintegrative Disorder
Aspergers Disorder
Characterized by social deficits and stereotyped behavior but without the significant cognitive or language delays associated with autism.
Rett’s Disorder
Characterized by a range of physical, behavioral, motor, and cognitive abnormalities that begin after a few months of normal development.
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder
Abnormal functioning and loss of previously acquired skills that begins after about two years of apparently normal development.
Autism
A disorder characterized by extreme aloneness, communication problems, preservation of sameness, and ritualistic behavior.
*4 to 5 times more common among boys than girls.
*Autistic children do not show interest in social interaction and may avoid eye contact
* Attachment to others is weak or absent
Mutism
Refusal to speak
Selective mutism can be treated with behavior therapy (stems for anxiety)
Echolalia
Automatic repetition of sounds or words
Causes of Autism
*Key role of biological factors in autism
*Prenatal factors: exposure to lead, alcohol, mercury, misoprostol, and maternal rubella.
*Very low birth weight and advanced maternal age
*Genetic mechanism: rates for autism are 60% among pairs of identical twins compared to 10% for pairs of fraternal twins
*Biological Factors: based on neurological involvement (many children with autism have abnormal brain wave patterns or seizures, abnormal sensitivities to neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, and norepinephrine, & unusual activity in the motor region of the cerebral cortex and less activity in some other areas of the brain.
No connection between the development of autism and the use of vaccines
Truth or Fiction
Autistic children may respond to people as though they were pieces of furniture.
True
They may ignore other people - for example, walking around them as if they are objects and not persons.
Truth or Fiction
Autism can be caused by vaccines
There is no scientific evidence to support this claim
Treatment of Autism
*Behavior Modification
Day Care Studies
Report that infants with daycare experience are more peer-oriented and play at higher developmental levels than do home-reared infants.
Truth or Fiction
Children placed in daycare are more aggressive than children who are cared for in the home
True
Professional observers place their higher level of aggressive behavior as being “within normal limits.”
Emotion
State of feeling with physiological, situational, and cognitive components.
Physiologically - when emotions are strong, our hearts may beat more rapidly, and our muscles may tense.
Situationally - we may feel anger when frustrated or pleasure or relief when we are being held by a loved one.
Cognitively - anger may be triggered by the idea that someone is purposefully withholding something we need.
Infant’s initial emotional expressions appear to compromise two basic states of emotional arousal.
*Positive attraction to pleasant stimulation, such as the caregiver’s voice or being
*Withdrawal from aversive stimulation, such as sudden loud noise.
Stanger Anxiety
*Appears at about 6 to 9 months of age
*Fear of strangers often peaks at 9 to 12 months and declines in the second year
Truth or Fiction
Fear of strangers is abnormal among infants
Fiction
Most infants develop some form of stranger anxiety at around six and nine months of age.
Social Referencing
Using another person’s reaction to a situation to form one’s own response
(as early as 6 months)
Three components of required for social referencing
- Looking at another, usually older individual in a novel, ambiguous situation
- Associating that individual’s emotional response with the unfamiliar situation
- Regulating their own emotional response in accord with the response of the older individual.
Emotional Regulation
Techniques for controlling one’s emotional states
*Caregivers help infants learn to regulate their emotions
*A two-way communication system develops in which the infant signals the caregiver that help is needed, and the caregiver responds.
Development of Self-Concept
Mirror technique - Psychologists observe infants for baseline data on how frequently the infant touches his or her nose. Then the mother places a rouge on the infant’s nose and the infant is placed before a mirror.
Not until about the age of 18 months fo infants begin to touch their own noses upon looking in the mirror.
Self-Awareness
*in one study, two-year-olds with a better-developed sense of self were more likely to cooperate with other children.
- Also facilitates the development of “self-conscious” emotions such as embarrassment, envy, empathy, pride, guilt, and shame.
Temperament
Individual differences in style of reaction that is present early in life.
*Many researchers believe that temperament involves a genetic component
*Other factors may be: activity level, smiling and laughter, regularity in eating and sleep habits, approach or withdrawal, adaptability to new situations, the intensity of responsiveness, general cheerfulness or unpleasantness, distractibility or persistence, and soothability.
Types of Temperament
Thomas and Chess (1989) found that from the first days of life, many of the children in their study (65%) could be classified into one of the three temperament groups:
- “Easy” (40% of sample)
- “Difficult (10% of sample)
- “Slow to warm up” (15% of sample)
Detailed types of temperament
- Easy child - Has a regular sleep, and feeding schedule, approaches new situations with enthusiasm and adapts to them easily, and is generally cheerful
- Difficult child - Has irregular sleep and feeding schedule, is slow to accept new people and situations, takes a long time to adjust to new routines, and responds to frustrations with tantrums and crying.
(Greater risk for developing psychological disorders and adjustment problems later in life) - The Slow-to-warm-up child - Falls between the other two
Truth or Fiction
All children are born with the same temperament. Treatment by caregiving determines whether they are difficult or easygoing.
Fiction
Tendencies to be easygoing, difficult, or slow to warm up can apparently be inborn, although they can be modified by experience.
Goodness of fit
Agreement between the parent’s expectations of a child and the child’s temperament.
*Realization that their youngster’s behavior does not mean that the child is weak or deliberately disobedient or that they are bad parents. Parents modify their attitudes and behavior toward their child, whose behavior may then improve.
Gender Differences
- By 12 to 18 months, girls prefer to play with dolls, doll furniture, dishes, and toy animals.
*By 9 to 18 months, boys prefer transportation toys (trucks, cars, airplanes), tools and sports equipment. - By 24 months, both girls and boys appear to be aware of which behaviors are considered appropriate or inappropriate for their gender, according to cultural stereotypes.
Truth or Fiction
Girls may prefer dolls and toy animals, and boy may prefer toy trucks and sports equipment, but these preferences emerge only after they have become aware of the gender roles assigned to them by society.
Fiction
Recent research suggests that children may show a preference for gender-stereotypical toys before they have been socialized, and possibly even before they understand which gender they are.
