Chapter 7 Flashcards
Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
Quality of caregiving has significant implications
- Relieving discomfort
- Sensitivity
- Holding the infant gently
- Patience
- Weaning at appropriate time
- Responsiveness
Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt
“No. Do it myself!”
Parents must give children guidance and reasonable choices
DO NOT:
• Criticize
• Attack
• Over-control
Emotional Development
Emotions play powerful roles in social relationships, exploration of environment, and discovery of self:
• Energize development
• Become more varied & complex with age
In children, FACIAL EXPRESSIONS provide the best indicators of emotion
But they must also attend to other cues
Basic Emotions
Happiness Interest Surprise Fear Anger Sadness Disgust
Universal in humans and other primates
Contingent Caregiving
Parents selectively mirror aspects of baby’s emotional behavior
Still-Face Situation
Toda & Fogel, 1993
Mothers freeze their face and stop talking to their infant
The infants
• Increase gazing away
• Changes in heart rate
• Decrease in smiling
Happiness
Blissful smiles —>
exuberant laughter
New skill = happiness
Early weeks:
• Full
• REM
• Gentle touches & sounds
1-2 months:
• Eye-catching sights
• Parents’ elicit –> social smile
3-4 months:
• Laughter (requires faster processing of info)
• Response to active stimuli
6 months:
• Smile & laugh more often
10 to 12 months:
• Different types of smiles emerge
Anger and Sadness
From birth, distress to a variety of unpleasant experiences: • Hunger • Pain • Changes in body temperature • Stimulation
4 to 6 months: anger increases
in intensity
• Caregiver
• Survival
Sadness
• Less common than anger
• Deprivation of loving caregiver
Fear
Rises at 6 months of age
Stranger anxiety
• Most frequent; wariness of strangers
• Dependent on temperament, experiences, situation
How do you decrease social anxiety?
• Efe hunters & gatherers: “collective caring system”
Secure Base: point from which to explore
• Approach or Avoidance
Understanding & Responding to Other’s Emotions
Why?
Emotional contagion vs. operant conditioning
3 months: infants become sensitive to the structure and
timing of face-to-face interactions; “like me”
4 -5 months: distinguish positive from negative emotion in voices and (soon after) in facial expressions
8 months: Social referencing
18-months recognize what others prefer
Emergence of Self-Conscious Emotions
Higher-order set of feelings, including guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, and pride
Involve injury or enhancement to our sense of self
Appears in the middle of the 2nd year
How do adults help with self-conscious emotions?
Beginning of Emotional Self-Regulation
Emotion regulation: strategies used to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goals
Requires effortful control: voluntary, effortful management of emotions
Contribute greatly to autonomy and mastery of cognitive and social skills
Effortful Control
Improves gradually with the development of the prefrontal cortex
• Young infants rely on caregivers to soothe them
• 4–6 months: ability to shift attention away from unpleasant events and to engage in self-soothing helps infants control emotion
2nd year brings enhanced:
• Communication
• Motor skills
• Attention
Caregivers contribute to child’s self-regulation style
Parental Role
If the parent... • Contingent responding • Encouragement • Emotionally sympathetic • Distractions • Sensitive parenting • Discuss emotions
The child is more likely to... • Emotional self-regulation • Less fussy, more pleasurable emotions • Gender differences • More effective anger management • Talk more about emotions
Temperament
Children vary in their innate dispositions
Temperament = early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation
reactivity
Quickness and intensity of emotion
self-regulation
Strategies that modify reactivity
What the experts say about Temperament…
…stable individual differences in the quality & intensity of
emotional reactions. (Goldsmith)
…relatively stable, primarily biologically based individual differences in reactivity & self- regulation. (Rothbart & Derryberry)
…early-emerging, constitutionally based behavioral tendencies that mediate the influence of the environment on the child. (Thomas & Chess)
…a set of inherited personality traits that appear early in life. (Buss & Plomin)
What is Temperament?
What do researchers agree upon about temperament?
• individual differences in behavioral functioning
• emerge early
• biologically based
• somewhat stable over time
Dimensions of Temperament
- Mood
- Approach/Withdrawal
- Adaptability
- Intensity
- Rhythm
- Persistence
- Threshold
- Activity
- Distractibility
Mood
- predominant quality
* positive or negative
Approach/Withdrawal
Response to novelty
Bold vs. Shy
Adaptability
response to environmental
changes
roll with the punches vs. slow to acclimate
Intensity
strength of emotional reactions
extreme highs and lows vs. mellow
Rhythm
regularity of biological cycles
predictable vs. unpredictable
Persistence
response to challenges and obstacles
gives up vs. keeps at it
Threshold
sensitivity to stimulation
notice vs. doesnt notice small changes
Activity
proportion of time active vs.
inactive
can’t sit still vs. lethargic
Distractibility
ability to focus attention
notice every distraction vs. extreme concentration
New York Longitudinal Study
first major study of temperament
141 participants
(infancy —> adulthood)
parental interviews
New York Longitudinal Study
Temperament Types:
Easy (40%) • positive mood • regular/rhythmic in body functions • adaptable • reactions mild ---> moderate in intensity
Difficult (10%) • negative mood • active • irregular/arhythmic • unadaptable • withdraw from novelty • very intense emotional reactions
Slow-to-Warm-Up (15%) • shy • withdraw from novelty • slow to adapt • reactions mild ---> moderate in intensity • low in activity
Average (remaining 35%)
• not particularly high or low on any dimensions
Measuring Temperament
parent questionnaires
• e.g., Careys ITQ; BatesITQ
physiological measures
• heart rate, cortisol measures
laboratory/observational measures
• look at individual differences in kids reactions to staged situations
Bates Infant Temperament Questionnaire
How easy or difficult is it for you to calm your baby when s/he is upset?
1 = very easy… 4 = about average… 7 = difficult
How does your baby typically respond to a new person?
1 = favorably… 4 = sometimes favorably… 7 = negatively
How active is your baby?
1 = calm & quiet… 4 = average… 7 = very active
Is Temperament Stable Over Time?
modest stability –> debatable
• WHY: Temperament develops with age
• PARENTING
Nature & Nurture • goodness of fit (Thomas & Chess) • good fit ---> positive child outcomes • bad fit ---> negative child outcomes
Genetic & Environmental Influences on Temperament
Differential Susceptibility Hypothesis
Belsky, 1997a, 1997b, 2005
Children’s varying susceptibility to both adverse and beneficial effects of the environment is attributable to their genetic composition
Toddlers high in negative affectivity are at a heightened risk for adverse developmental outcomes, especially in a poor care-taking environment
• They also might be affected by positive parenting experiences to a higher degree than other children (Belsky, 2005)
No study has examined whether the differential susceptibility hypothesis can be used to explain relationships between coparenting and child adjustment
Differential Susceptibility
….
Differential Susceptibility Experiment
Altenburger et al.
Primary Research Questions:
1) Does coparenting predict toddler dysregulation behavior beyond the influence of negative affectivity?
2) Is there support for the differential susceptibility hypothesis, such that infants high in negative affectivity are more susceptible to the effects of coparenting on social-emotional adjustment?
Participants & Procedure: 182 dual-earner male-female couples from the U.S. • Married or cohabiting • Dual-earner • Expecting first child • ≥ 18 years of age
Assessed during the 3rd trimester of pregnancy and again at 3, 6, 9 months postpartum AND 27 month follow-up survey
• Focus was on 9 and 27 month postpartum
Regressions testing child negative affectivity as a moderator of the associations between coparenting and child dysregulation
Measures – 9 mo
Coparenting
• Observations from Mother-Father-Infant episodes adapted from Cowan & Cowan (1996)
Support:
# Pleasure (P, J) m = .81, .84; f = .86, . 86
# Cooperation (P, J) = .88, .80
Undermining:
# Displeasure (P, J) = m = .83, .86; f = .91, .86
# Competition (P, J) = = .68, .64
Temperament
• Revised Infant Behavior Questionnaire– Very Short Form (IBQVSF; Rothbart & Garstein, 2000)
• Negative Affectivity: m = .99
Why do infants become attached?
Feeding?
Psychoanalytic Theory
• oral needs
• first relationship as model
Behaviorism
• relief from hunger
• Positive associations —> attachment
BUT…Harlow & Zimmerman study (1950s)
• warm/fuzzy surrogate
• wire mesh surrogate
• when stressed…
Ethology (Lorenz)
• animal behavior & adaptive functions
• Imprinting
Bowlbys ethological theory
• Ethology + Psychoanalysis
• Most influential theory of attachment!
Harlow & Zimmerman study (1950s)
In a set of classic studies in the 1950s and 1960s, Harry Harlow and others investigated the nature of attachment in young rhesus monkeys.
The researchers exposed young monkeys to 2 artificial mothers, one wrapped in toweling cloth, and another made of bare wire, but with a feeding bottle attached to it.
The experiment showed that the infants clung to the mother with the toweling cloth for most of the time, and would only approach the other mother when in need of food.
This showed that close, warm contact is an important part of bonding with a mother.
Bowlby-Ainsworth Attachment Theory
Internal Working Models
• sets of expectations about attachment figures and roles of self & other in relationships – both general & specific
• developed based on early experiences with one or more primary caregivers
• links cognition (thinking, mental representations) with emotional experience
• models are stable, but also open to change
Typical Signs of Attachment
separation anxiety:
• don’t want caregiver to leave!
• peaks at 14-20 mos.
stranger anxiety:
• fear of unfamiliar adults
• peaks at 8-10 mos.
greetings
• of caregiver when he/she returns
secure base behavior
• using caregiver as “base of operations”
social referencing
• looking to others when unsure
How is attachment assessed in children?
Strange Situation (1-2 yrs) – Mary Ainsworth • series of separations and reunions • stranger introduced
Episodes: • Researcher intro • parent and child • parent, child, & stranger • stranger and child alone • parent and child* • child alone • stranger and child • parent and child*
Classifications:
Secure (65%)
• explore freely in caregivers presence
• often visibly upset when caregiver leaves
• greet caregiver warmly at reunion
Insecure-Avoidant (20%)
• show little or no distress upon separation
• avoid contact with caregiver upon reunion
• may show more positive behavior w/stranger
Insecure-Resistant (10-15%)
• thoroughly distressed by separations
• don’t settle easily upon reunions
• mix proximity-seeking and angry behaviors
Disorganized/Disoriented (15%)
• confused, contradictory behaviors
• dazed, fearful facial expressions
• frozen postures
Secure
(65%)
• explore freely in caregivers presence
• often visibly upset when caregiver leaves
• greet caregiver warmly at reunion
Insecure-Avoidant
(20%)
• show little or no distress upon separation
• avoid contact with caregiver upon reunion
• may show more positive behavior w/stranger
Insecure-Resistant
(10-15%)
• thoroughly distressed by separations
• don’t settle easily upon reunions
• mix proximity-seeking and angry behaviors
Disorganized/Disoriented
(15%)
• confused, contradictory behaviors
• dazed, fearful facial expressions
• frozen postures
Stability of Attachment
Usually secure and stable for middle-SES babies experiencing favorable life conditions
Low SES families
• Attachment might move from one insecure pattern to another
• Child maltreatment, maternal depression, poor family functioning
Cultural Variations:
• N. Germany
• Japan
Quality of Attachment –> internal working model
• result of quality of care
• Sensitivity
• Infant characteristics
Benefits of secure attachment
• secure attachment –> preschool competence • Continuity of caregiving
What about fathers?
Infants typically become attached to their fathers as well as to their mothers
Fathers are clearly capable of being as sensitive as mothers are (e.g., feeding; Parke & Sawin, 1977)
But, some research indicates that on average, fathers are less sensitive than are mothers: why?
Fathers may have a special role in playing with their infants
Fathers’ sensitive and challenging behavior during play in toddlerhood linked to more secure internal working models by adolescence
When does self-awareness emerge?
Birth:
Intermodal perception
Sense of self-world differentiation
Explicit self-awareness
• More conscious of physical features at 18-20 months
Age 2 yrs –> self-recognition (use of “I,” “me”)
• Make scale errors
Age 2 yrs –> Empathy
Categorizing the Self
Categorical self (18–30 months): classifying self and others on basis of
• age (“baby,” “boy,” “man”).
• sex (“boy,” “girl”).
• physical characteristics (“big,” “strong”).
• goodness and badness (“I good girl”).
Toddlers use their limited categorical understanding to organize their own behavior.
Self-Control
Effortful control: ability to inhibit impulses and manage negative emotion
Compliance (12–18 months):
• Toddlers show clear awareness of caregivers’ wishes & expectations.
• Assertiveness & opposition occur alongside eager, willing compliance.
Delay of gratification: influenced by temperament and quality of caregiving.
Suggestions for Helping Toddlers Develop Compliance and Self-Control
- Respond with sensitivity and encouragement.
- Give advance notice of change inactivity.
- Offer many prompts and reminders.
- Positively reinforce self-controlled behavior.
- Encourage selective and sustained attention.
- Support language development.
- Increase rules gradually.
