Lecture 7: Attachment Flashcards
The influence of family in emotional development
- Family, especially parents, play a huge role in children’s emotional development
- Parent’s expression of emotions
- Indirect influence on emotional development - Parent’s reactions to children’s emotions
- Direct influence on emotional developmen
Parents’ Expression of Emotions
- Parents’ emotional expression serve as a model of when and how to express emotions
- Bobo doll study - ex of how kids copy their parents behaviour.
Parents’ lack of emotional expression
*Children who grow up with parents that tend to not show emotions tend to:
* Not express emotions themselves
* Learn to see emotions as “bad”
* Have trouble identifying and understanding emotions in self and others
* Struggle with regulating intense emotions (when they have them some of the time)
Parents’ Expressions of Positive Emotion
- Children that grow up with parents that express a high level of positive emotions tend to:
- Express more positive emotions themselves
- Be well-adjusted
- Be socially skilled (bc of ability to express + emotions)
Parents’ Expressions of Negative Emotions
- Children that grow up with parents that express a high level of negative emotions tend to:
- Have heightened awareness to emotional cues of conflict, if there is frequent conflict at home
- Experience and express more negative emotions themselves
- Have poorer emotion regulation skills
- Be less socially competent
Parents’ Reactions to Children’s Emotions
*Parents’ reactions to their children’s emotions directly influence children’s emotional development
- Mirroring
- Emotional coaching
Mirroring
- Behaviours in which a parent reflects the emotions of their child back to them
- Conveyed through verbal and non-verbal cues (ie: mimicking facial expression)
- Contingent responding: timely and appropriate reactions (rather than a later response, it needs to be pretty immediate)
- Characterized by warmth
Examples of Mirroring (depends on how old they are and what is their cognitive development)
- A baby looks upset. The parent also furrows their eyebrows and frown.
- A child is pouting. The parent says, “You have tears in your eyes. You look sad.”
- A child feels very anxious about an upcoming test. The parent says “You seem anxious about the test. I sometimes feel the same way when I have a big thing to do at work.
Mirroring
*Important because:
* Validates and normalizes the child’s emotions (what you are feeling is normal)
* Helps the child identify and understand their emotions
Still-Face Paradigm
- sits and plays with baby (1 year)
- engage with baby
- then asks mom not to engange with baby, now the baby is trying to get the mom to engage.
- uses everything they have to try and get the mom’s attention
- They become distressed and stressed.
Still-Face paradigm
- Lab procedure in which a parent repetitively alternates between being responsive to an infant and not reacting to them
- Infants quickly become distressed in reaction to still-face and this distress increases with each still-face “episode”
- Shows that infants are attuned to parents’ emotions and distress when a parent behaves contrary to expectation
Implications of Still-Face Paradigm
- Two real-world examples of “still-face”that may interfere with infant emotional development
- Depressed parents
- Tend to show less emotional expression when responding to their infants
- Depressed parents
- Parents’ frequent cell phone use
- May distract parents away from responding to infants’ emotional cues
Emotional Coaching
- The use of discussion and other forms of instruction to teach children how to cope with, regulate, and appropriately express emotions (display rules)
- What is seen as appropriate depends on culture
- E.g. in East Asian cultures, emotional restraint is more highly valued vs. in Latin American cultures, emotional expression is more highly valued
Examples of Emotional Coaching
- “You seem anxious about the test. Let’s take a breath and then work through some practice questions so that you feel more prepared.”
- “I know you’re frustrated that your sister took your toy without asking, but it’ not okay for you to pull her hair. That hurt her. Use your words instead to tell her that you’re frustrated. –> mirroring and coaching
Importance of Supportive Reaction (miroring + emotional coaching)
Supportive/sensitive reactions, characterized by mirroring + emotional coaching, is ideal way to react to children’s emotions:
* Validates child’s emotions
* Helps the child understand their emotions
* Fosters emotional regulation
* Associated with higher self-esteem
* Fosters empathy and social skills
* Associated with better performance in school
Parents’ Reactions to Children’s Emotions
Implications of lack of effective emotional reaction
- Children who grow up with parents that habitually provide little/no mirroring and/or little/no emotional coaching tend to be:
- Less socially competent
- Less emotionally competent
Why do parents react the way they do
-
Cultural differences
- Emotional expression is more encouraged in North America vs. East Asian cultures
- Reactions to specific emotions differ by culture (ie: asia use shame as a learning opportunity)
- E.g. reactions to shame in independent vs. collectivistic cultures - Generational differences in norms for emotional expression (expression emotions is becoming more pushed for with each generation)
-
Family reactions to emotions when parents themselves were children
- Intergenerational transmission of emotional reactions and regulation -
Mood and emotions in the moment
- Harder to be supportive if parent is having a bad day
- Current mood will impact their reaction
Summary
- Emotional development is shaped indirectly through the modelling that parents provide for how they react to their own emotions
- Parents influence children’s emotional development more directly through their use of mirroring and emotional coaching
- Still-face paradigm demonstrates that infants become very distressed when parents do not provide them with mirroring
- Sensitive reactions, characterized by mirroring and emotional coaching, from parents tend to foster good emotion regulation skills, social skills, and overall psychological well-being in children
- Many different social factors influence which emotions a parent displays and how they react to their children’s emotion
Attachment theory
John Bowlby
- Psychoanalyst who studied intense emotional distress of children orphaned during WWII
- humans have a bunch of physical needs but there were no concept of emotional needs.
- first to recognize these two things:
- Distress due to separation from parents and not having emotional needs met
- Behaviours observed (e.g., crying, clinging, searching) are adaptive responses to separation from an attachment figure (signal that they need to be soothed/co-regulation)
Bowlby’s Attachment Theory
- Children and their primary caregiver are biologically predisposed to develop a deep emotional bond (attachment)
- This bond forms the foundation for a child’s sense of security and thus shapes their emotional and social developme
Features of Attachment System
- Secure base
* Caregiver provides a child with a sense of security from which they can explore the environment
* Cannot explore the environment if attachment system is activated (because too distressed) - Proximity maintenance and seeking
* Children are biologically motivated to stay close to caregiver - Separation distress
* Children become distressed when separated from caregiver or when there is a threat in the environment
* Activates attachment system, motivating child to seek proximity to caregiver
* E.g. Looking for caregiver, seeking physical proximity, crying, clinging - Safe haven
* Caregiver helps manage arousal (and distress) through co-regulation
* Once proximity and reassurance have been achieved, attachment system deactivates
Attachment System
The Strange Situation
Attachment system
Parents of Avoidantly Attached Children
Parents’ behaviour:
* Unavailable and insensitive to the child’s cues
* Tends to ignore, dismiss, reject, or criticize
Child learns that:
* Proximity seeking is not a good strategy to soothe distress
Parents of Resistantly Attached Children
Parents’ behaviour:
* Response to child’s distress is inconsistent and unpredictable (sometimes they are sensitive and supportive and sometimes they aren’t…super unpredictable)
* Often anxious or overwhelmed with caregiving
Child learns that:
* Proximity is sometimes a good strategy to soothe distress
* “Hyperactivates” attachment system
* Hypervigilance to threat
* Cope with distress by heightening it and amplifying it (they learn that its not working but if they amp it out maybe it will work).
* Crying louder, throwing a tantrum, clinging
Reactions to The Strange Situation
E.g. Negativity and Childcare
- Children with more difficult/negative temperaments have:
- More behavioural problems if raised with low quality childcare
- BUT have the lowest levels of behavioural problems if raised with high quality childcare
answer: olivia
Genetic Differential Susceptibility (results)
Results: Children with at least one S allele (vs. 2 L alleles) showed:
* More attachment disorganization if raised in institution
* BUT less attachment disorganization if raised with family
* Suggests that genes related to environmental sensitivity and
parenting work together to affect vulnerability to insecure
attachment
One Secure Attachment is Enough
- Having at least one secure attachment seems to buffer against the negative effects of insecure attachment (can have different attachment styles with different parents)
- Children with insecure attachment to both parents had more behaviour problems than children with insecure attachment to just one parent
Model of others
Assessed against two dimensions. Crossing these 2 dimensions form 4 attachment styles.
