Lecture 6: Infancy: Emotional and Social Development

Question 1

What is Temperament?

Answer 1

Constitutionally-based individual differences in
emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity
and self-regulation

– Consistency across situations and stability over time

Question 2

What study did Thomas and Chess do (1977) ?

Answer 2

To explore differences among infants in temperament, Thomas and Chess (1977) extensively interviewed mothers of 3-month-olds about their infants’ reactions to novel people and situations, energy level, positive and negative emotions, adaptability to change, rhythmicity (how regular an infant was in sleeping, eating, etc.), general mood, and distractibility. Based on mothers’ responses, they identified three temperament profiles…

Question 3

What were the three identified temperament profiles?

Answer 3

1. Easy (40%): Positive mood, regular habits, adaptable
2. Difficult (10%): Active, irritable and irregular, react
   negatively to novelty (e.g., kicking or screaming)
3. Slow-to-warm-up (15%): Moody, inactive, slow but
   eventually adapt to novelty (e.g., look away)

Question 4

What are the Modern conceptions of temperament?

Answer 4

– Assess positive and negative emotion as separate
components of temperament
– Differentiate among types of negative emotionality
– Assess different types of regulatory capacity

Question 5

What are the Six Dimensions of Infant Temperament?

Rothbart & Bates (2006)

Answer 5

1. Activity
2. Positive affect
3. Fearful distress
4. Attention span
5. Distress to limitations
6. Soothability

Question 6

What are the Three Components of Temperament?

Answer 6

1. Surgency
2. Negative reactivity
3. Orienting regulation/Effortful control

Question 7

What is surgency?

Answer 7

– A measure of an infant’s activity level and intensity of
pleasure
– Displays of happiness (smiling, laughter)

Question 8

What is Negative reactivity?

Answer 8

– An infant’s fear, frustration, sadness, and low soothability
– Easily becoming distressed by unfamiliar events or people;
difficulty in controlling negative emotions

Question 9

What is Orienting regulation/Effortful control?

Answer 9

– An infant’s ability to regulate attention toward goals
– Infants high on orienting are better able to regulate their
emotions

Question 10

Is temperament stable?

Answer 10

Whereas emotions are fleeting, temperament can be stable from infancy through toddlerhood, childhood, and even adulthood

Example:
– Infants high in negative reactivity (behavioural inhibition)
– Associated with anxiety, depression, social withdrawal
later in childhood and adolescence

Question 11

Why is temperament stable?

Answer 11

Because of Evocative effects

– Gene-environment association in which a child’s
inherited characteristics evoke strong responses from others, which then reinforce the child’s
characteristics

Question 12

What is Goodness of Fit?

Answer 12

The extent to which a person’s temperament matches the requirements, expectations, and opportunities of the environment

Question 13

How does Culture affect infants?

Answer 13

Culture shapes expectations about infant behaviors and emotions.

Question 14

What is Attachment?

Answer 14

Special affective relationship between infant and caregiver characterized by mutual affection and desire to maintain proximity

Question 15

Does Attachment promote infant survival?

Answer 15

YES

Question 16

What is Psychoanalytic theory? and who founded it?

Answer 16

Freud thought that infants have the relation with the caregiver because they help reduce hunger

Question 17

What is the Learning theory?

Answer 17

Food is primary reinforcer, and mother becomes secondary reinforcer

Question 18

What was Harlow and Zimmerman’s “surrogate mother” research (1959)?

Answer 18

In 1959, they researched Does feeding or contact comfort drive the development of
attachment?

Question 19

What is Bowlby’s Ethological Theory of Attachment?

Answer 19

All species born with innate behavioural tendencies that
contribute to the survival of the species. These “built-in behaviours” promote attachment relationships. Attachment is an evolved response that promotes infant’s survival

Question 20

When do Attachment relationships start?

Answer 20

Attachment relationships develop from parent-
infant interactions over the 1st year of life

Question 21

What is Stranger anxiety?

Answer 21

Negative reactions of
infants to an unfamiliar person

Question 22

What is Separation anxiety?

Answer 22

Negative reactions of
infants when the caregiver
temporarily leaves

Question 23

When could Separation Anxiety begin?

Answer 23

Peaks around 13 months
of age

Question 24

What are Greeting reactions in infants?

Answer 24

Positive reactions from the infant when the caregiver returns

Question 25

What are Secure-base behaviors?

Answer 25

Infant uses the caregiver as a “home base” for exploration

Question 26

What is the Strange Situation?

Answer 26

In this procedure, an infant and mother visited a laboratory playroom, where after being introduced to the unfamiliar room, the infant experienced a series of separations from their caregiver and exposures to a stranger…From her observations, which she replicated in larger samples, Ainsworth and colleagues identified three groups of infant attachment…

Question 27

What are the three groups of infant attachment?

Answer 27

1. Secure
2. Insecure resistant
3. Insecure avoidant

Question 28

What is secure attachment?

Answer 28

Infant explores while mother is
present. They get upset when mother leaves, and greets mother warmly upon her
return, seeks her for comfort. And friendly to stranger when
mother present

Question 29

What is Insecure-Resistant attachment?

Answer 29

(Very small % babies )

Infant stays close to mother; upset when she leaves. Explores very little in mother’s presence. Mixed reactions when she returns, and wary of stranger at all times

Question 30

What is Insecure-Avoidant attachment?

Answer 30

Very little distress when mother leaves. Seems to ignore mother. May be sociable with or ignore stranger.

Question 31

What was the forth attachment style that didn’t fit in with the rest?

Answer 31

Disorganized, a very rare %

Infants with disorganized attachment displayed contradictory behaviors and emotions (such as fear followed by laughter) and disorganized movements, freezing, and apprehension toward the mother. usually from abuse.

Question 32

What are the Cultural Differences in Child-Care
Arrangements?

Answer 32

• Single-parent household
• Multiple-caregiver
  household
• Communal caregiving

Question 33

Provide an example of Infants from different cultures expressing different attachment?

Answer 33

– E.g., Ugandan infants displayed intense protests when separated from their mothers compared to infants in US

– E.g., U.S. infants tend to accompany their caregivers out of the home, whereas infants in Uganda tend to remain near
their homes