Lecture 8: Chapter 9 - Emotion in Relationships and Society Flashcards
Babies can recognize mothers’ voice over other women ____ after birth, and their mothers’ faces __________
Hours after birth, within a few days
- Still not very selective about the people they interact with, as long as they are warm, comfortable, well-fed, content
At 6 - 9 months, infants develop ______. What does this entail?
Attachment: the capacity to form more intense and selective emotional bonds with a few special people
- Produces desire to be near that person, an impulse
to turn to that person when threatened, and a sense
of security and confidence in exploring new things
What does attachment produce?
Stranger anxiety: fear of unfamiliar people
- Changes from being calm in stranger’s arms to being hysterical when mother leaves room
- Will check with parents to see if they are around, instead of freely playing with objects/people
Describe Bowlby’s perspective on infant attachment
- Skeptical of infants only needing food, protection from disease, and safety to develop normally
- Disagreed with psychoanalytical theory suggesting that anxiety was caused from sexual and aggressive drives
How did the work of Konrad Lorenz on imprinting in bird species support Bowlby’s theory?
- Newly hatched chicks would fixate on the first moving thing they saw, and follow it closely throughout their youth
- Target would usually be mother, but could be even
Lorenz himself - Bowlby believed human children undergo a similar process, instinctively identifying their parents and remaining close to them for care and protection
How did Harry Harlow’s baby monkey experiments prove Bowlby’s theory?
- Baby rhesus macaques were allowed to move freely around a cage containing “wire mother” and “cloth mother” doll, with only one having bottle of food
- Monkey spend most time clinging to cloth mother,
regardless of which monkey had bottle of food - Reinforcing the idea that it’s not just basic necessities
(ex: food and shelter) that people need but it’s this
feeling of connection as well
- Monkey spend most time clinging to cloth mother,
What is the strange situation (developed by Ainsworth and colleagues)?
Series of events to elicit attachment behaviour and measure it
Describe the 6 steps the experimenter will do and orchestrate to try and test the level of attachment the baby has to their caregiver (strange situation)
- An infant and parent enter an unfamiliar, toy-filled room and the infant is allowed to play
- A stranger enters the room, talks with the parent, and engages the infant for a few minutes
- The parent leaves, is gone for 3 minutes while the stranger remains in the room (test baby to see how they will react → control condition), and then parent returns for a few minutes
- Both the stranger and parent leave the room
- Stranger returns alone and tries to comfort and play with the infant
- The parent returns to the room
How does an infant between 6 months to 2 years of age behave through such stages?
- Play freely during first stage
- Will explore room while making sure parent is still
there and watching
- Will explore room while making sure parent is still
- As soon as parent leaves the room, most infants protest and cry loudly, sometimes trying to follow
- Stranger can provide some comfort but cannot fully alleviate distress
- Only full smoothed when parent returns, is able to
return to play
- Only full smoothed when parent returns, is able to
Bowlby and Ainsworth argued attachment was an ____
Instinct
Bowlby and Ainsworth argued that humans and likely most other mammals have an evolved neural attachment program that kicks in at a particular stage of development, activated by particular situations. At what specific timeframe does such activate?
Around 6 months - 2 years
What is the first theory as to why attachment emerges after 6 months?
- Infants’ vision improves substantially over the first 6 months
- Gives infants opportunity to recognize
caregivers/parents well enough to know if they have
come and gone
What is the second theory as to why attachment emerges after 6 months?
- Cognitive maturation at 9 months is enough to gain object permeance: understanding objects still exist even if they are out of view
- The tendency of very young infants to respond mainly to what they can see at the moment would decrease their response to someone leaving the room
- Would not be able to tell that parent has left the
room, away from them but out of sight, would not
call for parent with crying - If you know that the parent is away, crying has an
adaptive purpose because you could actually bring
the parent that you know is away into your site
- Would not be able to tell that parent has left the
What is the third theory as to why attachment emerges after 6 months?
- Between 6-9 months of age, most babies learn to crawl
- Begin exploring new environment, increased chance to also get lost, injure themselves, eating something poisonous, interacting with aggressive animals
- Attachment helps regulate need to explore with need for protection- As soon as caregiver is out of sight, child does
something to repair the breach - Protest is mechanism to keep parent close when
needed, distant enough to allow independent
exploring- Protests after 2 years become less intense as child becomes more capable and self-confident
- As soon as caregiver is out of sight, child does
What is the first behavioural mechanism of attachment?
- Synchrony between two individuals’ behaviour as a possible trigger for attachment system
- Newborns experience alternating periods of alertness and withdrawal- Mothers will try to interact with babies when alert, let
them rest at other times → develop instinctively a
level of synchrony in your behaviour w/ the child’s
behaviour - Newborns are attuned to this contingent responding,
particularly interested in mothers who are sensitive
to their cues for play vs. quiet
- Mothers will try to interact with babies when alert, let
By the time infants are _ months old, they contribute to behavioural synchrony, matching facial expressions and turn-taking with vocalizations
3
Greater behavioural synchrony between infant and its ____ predicted more secure attachment, albeit not also seen for ______
Father, mothers
What is the second biological mechanism of attachment?
- Oxytocin released in mothers while nursing to facilitate maternal behaviours, makes its way into breastmilk into infant, facilitating bonding and attachment
- Baby rats injected with chemical interfering with
oxytocin fail to develop preference for their
mother’s smell (Nelson & Panksepp, 1996)
What were the results of a father interacting with 5 month old babies after oxytocin nasal spray (compared to controls)?
- Touched their babies for longer periods of time (which in itself would increase oxytocin)
- Showed more reciprocity (father’s behaviour is closely responsive to baby’s)
- Babies showed more oxytocin in saliva in father’s given oxytocin spray, showing bonding effect of oxytocin
What is the third biological mechanism of attachment?
- Separation distress: emotional distress experienced/displayed when one is away from an attachment figure
- Associated with sudden decrease in endorphins (drop in the feel-good hormones)
- Kalin, Shelton, and Barksdale (1988) found that giving young rhesus monkeys separated from mothers morphine (endorphins) reduced their cries, and naloxone (block opiod receptors) increases their cries
Moles, Kieffer, & D’Amato (2004) found that mice that lack gene for the μ (mu) - type endorphin receptor - made far fewer cries when they were separated from their mothers. Why?
- Less receptors, less sensitive to endorphin and the strengths of endorphin to bond you
- If you lack receptors you are less dependent on this endorphin for bonding and so you have just general weaker bonding w/ your caregiver
Barr et al. (2008) found rhesus with allele of μ - type for more efficient vs. normal receptor genes. What were their specific findings?
- Cried more persistently when separated from their mothers
- Spent more time with their mothers when other monkeys were present
- Strong preference for the mother’s company
Human fMRI studies have found that brain areas associated with physical pain (eg. anterior cingulate cortex) activated during ____ _____
Social rejection
High dose of Tylenol reduced participant’s hurt feelings after social exclusion in both lab task and their real lives. What does this show a correlation between?
Psychological pain and physical pain