Lifespan development 2 - social & emotional development (chapter 13) Flashcards
What are babies born with regarding emotions?
Although infants cannot describe their feelings, research illustrates that their facial expressions, vocalisations and other behaviours provide a window into their emotional life.
We can perceive a number of emotions in young infants. For example, crying, watching their face after its been fed for contentment, when we see a baby focusing their gaze and staring at objects this gives a palpable sense that they are interested in the focus of their attention. As infants get older and turn into children, these more basic emotions branch out and divide into more fine-grained distinctions. About 6 months after birth, infants begin to show joy and surprise, and distress branches out into the separate emotions of disgust, anger, fear and sadness
When does a sense of self emerge?
A sense of self emerges but develops gradually over the first years of life, beginning with infants’ ability to perceive their own bodies and limbs. One important milestone in understanding the self occurs around 18 months of age, when infants start to respond appropriately to seeing themselves in a mirror. This growing self-awareness sets the stage for envy, embarrassment and empathy to emerge. After age 2, toddlers lean about performance standards and rules that they are supposed to follow, they begin to display pride and shame. Around the same age, they also display guilt - as evidenced by avoiding eye contact, shrugging shoulders and making facial expressions
What is emotional regulation?
The processes by which we evaluate and modify our emotional reactions
How does emotional regulation become more diverse with age?
Young infants may suck their thumb or pacifier, turn their head away from something unpleasant or cling to a parent or caregiver to soothe themselves. To reduce distress, toddlers may seek out a caretaker, cling to a doll or teddy bear, fling unpleasant objects away, and learn to smile, pout or throw a tantrum to get what they want. Once they acquire language, children can reduce distress by talking to themselves and other people.
As children age, their emotional expressiveness and ability to regulate their emotions become part of their overall emotional competence, which in turn influences their social behaviour and how well their peers and other people like them. Children who frequently display sadness or who cannot control their anger are less likely to be popular, and emotional competence remains important for well-being as children develop
Can newborns recognise emotions in others?
Research by Field, Woodson, Greenberg and Cohen (1982) has shown that newborn babies will imitate the emotional expressions they see in others, indicating that they are at least able to distinguish between these facial expressions. It is difficult to know if they feel these emotions themselves, though.
Social referencing is a behaviour in which infants or children use the emotions of another person (often the caregiver) to guide their actions. Sorce et al. (1985) undertook an experiment on social referencing using the ‘visual cliff’. In this study the infants were placed in front of the cliff, and a parents was positioned on the other side of the cliff and adopted either a happy encouraging expression or a fearful expression. If the mother adopted a happy face, the infants were fairly likely to cross over. Almost none of the infants whose mother adopted a fearful face attempted to. Their actions were guided by their parents emotions
Increased social interactions with a wider group of people influences children’s emotional development, as parents, teachers and peers serve as models and reinforce children for some types of emotional responses. But as we now explore, heredity makes a very important contribution to children’s basic emotional-behavioural style
What is social referencing?
A behaviour in which infants or children use the emotions of another person (often the caregiver) to guide their actions.
What is temperament?
A biologically based general style of reacting emotionally and behaviourally to the environment.
Some infants are calm and happy; others are irritable and fussy. Some are outgoing and active; others are shy and inactive. Within any age group, people differ in temperament
In a study by Thomas and Chess (1977), what was done and found?
They asked parents to describe their babies’ behaviour. They found that most infants could be classified into 3 groups:
- ‘Easy infants’ ate and slept on schedule, were playful and accepted new situations with little fuss
- ‘Difficult infants’ were irritable, fussy eater and sleepers, and reacted negatively to new situations
- ‘Slow-to-warm-up infants’ were the ;east active, had mildly negative responses to new situations but slowly adapted over time.
Subsequently, the difficult infants were most likely to develop emotional and behaviour problems during childhood.
This study was admired but also criticised for relying on parents’ reports of their infants’ behaviour. Other researchers directly observed infants and identified temperamental styles that differed from those described above. Moreover, researchers often found that temperament is only weakly to moderately stable during infancy. Some infants maintain a consistent temperament during their first 2 years of life, whereas others change.
To what general temperament style does shyness form part of?
Behavioural inhibition. Inhibited infants are quiet and timid; they cry and withdraw when exposed to unfamiliar people, places, objects and sounds. Uninhibited infants are more sociable, verbal and spontaneous.
Research by Kagan et al. (1988) found that about 20-25% of infants displayed this inhibited, which remained moderately stable during infancy. They also studied these infants until age age 7.5 years. For the vast majority - those who were only mildly to moderately inhibited or uninhibited between the ages of 1 and 2 years - their temperament did not predict how shy or outgoing they would be as children. But for infants who were highly uninhibited or inhibited, the findings were different. Highly uninhibited infants tended to become sociable and talkative 7-year-olds, whereas highly imhibited infants developed into quiet, cautious and shy 7-year-olds
How does childhood personality continue into adulthood?
E.g. in America and Swedne, shy, behaviourally inhibited 8-12-year-old boys are more likely than other non-shy peers to delay marriage and fatherhood when they grow up, possibly reflecting their reluctance to enter new social relationships. Shy American girls are more likely as adults to leave work after marriage and become housewives, whereas shy Swedish girls are less likely to complete university than non-shy girls.
What is personality in adulthood argued to be?
A continuation of temperament in early childhood. Newman et al (1997) found that compared to 3-year-olds with a ‘well-adjusted temperament’, those who were ‘uncontrolled’ (i.e. irritable, impulsive & inattentive) reported more antisocial behaviour in adulthood and greater conflict in family and romantic relationships, and they were more likely to have been fired from a job. In contrast, children with an ‘inhibited temperament’ (i.e. socially shy and fearful) reported less overall companionship in adulthood
What individual differences are there in personality in the first year of life? (summary)
Most young children are well adjusted and display only mild to moderately strong temperamental traits. Differences in temperament among these children only weakly predict how they will function as adults. But for the remaining children, their strong temperamental traits can provide better insight into adulthood functioning, Still, predicting how any individual child will turn out as an adult is difficult. Many factors influence development and even during childhood, strong temperaments often mellow.
What are psychosocial stages?
Psychoanalytic psychologist Erik Erikson (196) believed that personality develops through confronting a series of 8 major psychosocial stages, each of which involves a different ‘crisis’ (i.e. conflict) over how we view ourselves in relation to other people and the world. Each crisis is present throughout life but takes on special importance during a particular age period.
What are Erikson’s psychosocial stages?
- Infancy (first year): Basic trust vs basic mistrust
- Toddlerhood (1-2): Autonomy vs shame and doubt
- Early childhood (3-5): Initiative vs guilt
- Middle childhood (6-12): Industry vs inferiority
- Adolescence (12-19): Identity vs role confusion
- Early adulthood (20-30): Intimacy vs isolation
- Middle adulthood (40-64): Generativity vs stagnation
- Late adulthood (65+): Integrity vs despair
What 4 of the psychosocial stages occur in infancy and childhood?
1) Basic trust vs basic mistrust: depending on how well our needs are met and how mcuh love and attention we receive during the first year of life, we develop a basic trust or basic mistrust of the world
2) Autonomy vs shame and doubt: during the next 2 years, children become ready to exercise their individuality. If parents unduly restrict children or make harsh demands during toilet training, children develop shame and doubt about their abilities and later lack the courage to be independent
3) Initiative vs guilt: from age 3 to 5, children display great curiosity about the world. If they are allowed freedom to explore and receive answers to their questions, they develop a sense of initiative. If they are held back or punished, they develop guilt about their desires and suppress their curiosity
4) Industry vs inferiority:from age 6 until puberty, the child’s life expands into school and peer activities. Children who experience pride and encouragement in mastering tasks develop industry - a striving to achieve. Repeated failure and lack of praise for trying leads to a sense of inferiority
What can be concluded about Erikson’s model?
Although critics argue that Erikson’s model lacks detail and question its stage approach, the model captures several major issues that developing children confront. As Erikson proposed and as some research supports, successfully resolving each crisis helps prepare us to meet the next. Because each stage of life creates new opportunities, possibilities for change are ever present. Yet, like the early chapters of a novel, themes that emerge in childhood help set the stage for the unfolding story of our lives
What social skills do newborns bring into the world with them?
Some of the most obvious communicative skills already discussed are smiling and crying. these let the observer know what emotional state the infant is in. Smiling occurs in the womb. After birth, newborns smile spontaneously, without reference to any specific environmental stimulus. However, by as early as 3 weeks of age infants begin smiling in specific situations (e.g. on eye contact). Crying is a vocal communication of distress, and often happens a few moments after arriving into the outside world. Crying is an effective communicative signal and, being very difficult for adults to ignore, frequently elicits response in the caregiver
What does the preference of looking at faces over other environmental stimuli by newborns suggest?
This preferential orienting behaviour directs infants’ attention towards people and, consequently, social situations. Research by Farroni et al. (2002) has demonstrated that newborn infants also prefer to look at faces making direct eye contact with them, as opposed to faces with averted gaze. So newborn infants are not just predisposed to look at people, but also to situations in which another person is communicating with (looking at) them. Csibra and Gergely (2006) have thus argued that these kinds of preferences represent an innate predisposition to learn about the world from others. An ethologist, has also argued that as adults we are programmed to encourage this learning with universal behaviours such as the ‘eyebrow flash’
How do young infants also demonstrate the origins of conversation in their behaviour?
Young infants’ vocalisations and motor behaviours are often described as showing ‘periodicity’or ‘burst-pause’ patterns. This means that they will vocalise or move a number of times in quick succession, stop for a period and then produce another burst of activity. A particularly early example of this can be seen in the context of breast-feeding. Rather than sucking continually throughout a feeding session, the infant will typically suck a number of times in quick succession, and then pause. This kind of periodicity in behaviour gives other people the chance to communicate back to the infant during the pauses, thus producing prelinguistic social interactions like these are initiated and controlled by the infant, or whether the parent or caregiver plays a more important role in scaffolding early conversations and interactions
How can early social interaction be seen in newborns?
Imitation behaviour. Meltzoff et al have presented evidence, alongside the imitation of adult faces by newborns, that newborns will imitate a range of non-emotional facial gestures. Researchers are divided about why infants should do this. Some suggest that it helps newborns understand others’ perspectives, while some argue that imitation helps us to learn new skills from others. More recently, a number of concerns have been raised about demonstrations of early imitation. Some have found it difficult to repeat all of Meltzoff and Moore’s (1997) original findings, and others argue that findings on early imitation indicate that this ability is learned rather than innate
What social abilities do newborn babies have? (summarise)
While there is some controversy at present over the extent to which newborn infants arrive in the world with innate social behaviours, it is clear that even if this is not the case infants quickly learn a wide repertoire of social behaviours. It it likely that the earliest of these interactions will be with their parents or caregivers, at least partly because these people are in closest proximity. However, as they age, infants begin to demonstrate strong preferences for interacting with particular individuals. These social bonds which are formed between infant and adult are referred to as attachment relationships
What is imprinting?
A sudden, biologically primed form of attachment (happens in some bird species e.g. ducks)
What is attachment?
The strong emotional bond that develops between children and their primary caregivers
What did John Bowlby propose about attachment?
he was influenced by ethological observations of imprinting to propose that a similar biologically programmed process occurs in humans. He argued that infants seek proximity with a caregiver, and that this is develops into an attachment relationship. Attachment refers to the strong emotional bond that develops between children and their primary caregivers. There are some differences with imprinting in geese, however, as human infants do not automatically imprint on a caregiver, and there is not an immediate post-birth critical period during which contact is required for infant-caregiver bonding. Instead, the first few years of life seem to be a sensitive period when we can most easily form a secure bond with caregivers that enhances our adjustment later in life. Although it may be more difficult to form strong first attachments to caregivers later in childhood or later in adulthood, it is still possible
What was assumed that infant-caregiver bonding was a result of and who tested this?
From the mother’s role in satisfying the infant’s need for nourishment. Harry Harlow (1958) tested this notion by separating infant rhesus monkeys from their biological mothers shortly after birth. Each infant was raised in a cage with 2 artificial ‘surrogate mothers’. One was a bare-wire cylinder with a feeding bottle attached to its ‘chest’. The other was a wire cylinder covered with soft terry cloth without a feeding bottle.
Faced with this choice, the infant monkeys became attached to the cloth mother. When exposed to frightening situations, the infants ran to the cloth figure and clung tightly to it. They even maintained contact with the cloth mother while feeding from the wire mother’s bottle. Thus Harlow showed that contact comfort - body contact with a comforting object - is more important in fostering attachment than the provision of nourishment.
Based on work by Harlow, what did Bowlby (1969) propose concerning maternal deprivation?
Proposed that attachment in infancy emerges not in response to a need for nourishment, but rather as a biologically programmed need for a secure base from which to explore and learn about the environment, and yet return t for protection should something frightening occur. Bowlby proposed that attachment develops in 5 phases:
1) Indiscriminate attachment behaviour: newborns cry, vocalise and smile towards everyone, and these behaviours evoke care-giving from adults
2) Discriminating attachment behaviour: around 3 months of age, infants direct their attachment behaviours more towards familiar caregivers than towards strangers
3) Specific attachment behaviour: by 7 or 8 months of age, infants develop a meaningful attachment to specific caregivers. The caregiver becomes a secure base from which the infant can explore his or her environment
4) Goal-corrected attachment behaviour: by 3 years of age the child can now take account for the caregiver’s needs when expressing attachment. E.g. they begin to be able to wait alone until the return off the caregiver to allow the mother to achieve something independently. In this sense the attachment relationship becomes more of a ‘partnership’.
5) Lessening of attachment: at school age, children become happy to spend significant amounts of time further away from the caregiver. At this point Bowlby suggested that the relationship becomes more based upon abstract conceptions of attachment, including trust and affection
What are Bowlby’s 5 phases of development?
1) Indiscriminate attachment behaviour
2) Discriminating attachment behaviour
3) Specific attachment behaviour
4) Goal-corrected attachment behaviour
5) Lessening of attachment
According to Bowlby, what 2 types of anxiety occur as an infant’s attachment becomes more focused?
Stranger anxiety, distress over contact with unfamiliar people, often emerges around age 6 or 7 months and ends by age 18 months. When approached by, touched by or handed over to a stranger, the infant becomes afraid, cries and reaches for the caregiver.
Separation anxiety, distress over being separated from a primary caregiver, typically begins a little later, peaks around age 12 to 16 months and disappears between 2 and 3 years of age. Here the infant becomes anxious and cries when the caregiver is out of sight.
How might separation and stranger anxiety be adaptive?
These responses, which coincide with infants’ increasing cognitive and physical abilities, may be adaptive reactions shaped through evolution. At an age when infants master crawling and then learn to walk, fear of strangers and of separation may help prevent them from wandering beyond the sight of caretakers, especially in unfamiliar situations.
Around age 3 to 4 years, as children’s cognitive and verbal skills grow, they develop a better understanding of their attachment relationships. According to Bowlby, a stage of goal-corrected partnership emerges, in which children and caregivers can describe their feelings to each other and maintain their relationship whether they are together or apart
Who developed the strange situation and what did it do?
To measure the attachment relationship, Mary Ainsworth and colleagues (1978) developed the strange situation, a standardised procedure for examining infant attachment. Ainsworth focused on the forms of anxiety which Bowlby described in attachment: stranger and separation anxiety. The strange situation was thus specifically a method for examining infants’ reactions to strangers and to separation from their attachment figure.
In the strange situation, a series of events occur while an infant is being covertly observed. The infant’s reactions to the various events are used to classify them into one of several different attachment types
What 3 types of attachment did Ainsworth describe?
- ‘Securely attached’ show the best use of the mother as a secure base for learning - they explore the playroom and react positively to the stranger. They are distressed when the mother leaves and happily greet her when she returns.
In contrast, there are 3 types of ‘insecurely attached’ infants whose relationships with their parent allow for less optimal exploration of the environment: - ‘Anxious resistant’: infants are fearful when the mother is present, demand her attention and are distressed when she leaves. They are not soothed when she returns and may angrily resist her attempts at contact.
- ‘Anxious avoidant’: infants show few signs of attachment, seldom cry when the mother leaves and do not seek contact when she returns
- ‘Disorganised attachment’: (provided through later research) Infants seem disoriented and uncertain of what to do in the strange situation, especially when the caregiver figure returns.
Attachment types are also apparent later in childhood.
What is thought to be the cause of these differences in attachment?
Across most cultures studied, about one-half to three-quarters of infants are securely attached.
Mothers who are more sensitive to their babies’ needs at home tend to have infants who are more securely attached in the strange situation. When we talk about attachment, we are not just considering the child’s behaviour in the relationship, but rather a bidirectional attachment relationship as a whole, including the mother’s attachment to the child. Nonetheless behavioural genetics studies indicate only a modest genetic heretability of attachment type, suggesting that environmental influences are the more important in the formation of attachment relationships
How is attachment altered by environmental influences?
One thing we can say quite confidently not is that the precursors of attachment styles are present in early infancy. A number of studies have shown that certain behaviours observed in infants as young as 3 months of age predicting attachment type at 1 year of age. The behaviours observed at 3 months of age were infants’ responses to what is known as the still face paradigm. In the still face paradigm, the infants is presented with another ‘strange’ situation in which a parent becomes unresponsive and maintains a neutral facial expression. Studies have shown that the more an infant cries to elicit responses from the parents and shows positive emotions during the still face episode, the more likely they will have a secure attachment at 12 months
What is the still face paradigm?
An infants is presented with a situation in which their parent looks at them without moving their face
What are the environmental influences which give rise to attachment types?
While parental sensitivity (i.e.the parent’s responsiveness) as put forward as a candidate by Ainsworth et al. (1978), and has been found to be related to both attachment style and infants’ still face responses, researchers have more recently suggested that parents’ ability to consider the children’s internal emotional state is as important as their responsiveness to the infants’ behaviour
What are the consequences of attachment?
Whether raised by their biological or adoptive parents, securely attached infants seem to be better adjusted socially during childhood. Establishing a secure attachment early in life also may help foster a capacity for compassion and altruism that carries forward into adulthood. This lends credence to Erikson’s view that entering a stable, trusting relationship with a caregiver is an important component of early social development.
If infants and young children are deprived of a stable attachment with a caregiver, how do they fare in the long run?
Bowlby’s (1944) study of the 44 thieves was influential in making the argument that such early deprivation is harmful to social development. Harlow studied attachment deprivation under controlled conditions with monkeys. After rearing ‘isolate’ monkeys either alone or with artificial surrogate mothers, Harlow returned them to the monkey colony at 6 months of age. Exposed to other monkeys, the isolated were indifferent, terrified or aggressive. When they became adults, some female isolates were artificially inseminated and gave birth, and they were highly abusive towards their firstborns. Harlow concluded that being raised without a secure attachment to a real, interactive caregiver produced long-term social impairment
How can the stage at which attachment is deprived be influential?
Studies of adopted children, who are thought to experience attachment deprivation to a greater extent than children growing up with their biological parents, are one source of information about this. In one relatively recent study van den Dries et al. (2009) found in a meta-analytic review that groups of adopted and non-adopted children were as securely attached as each other, so long as they had been adopted before 12 months of age. The sensitive period for attachment seems to be from one year onwards
What problems are there in drawing conclusions about the effects of parental deprivations from studies mentioned so far (e.g. Harlow)?
As well as being deprived of parental care, all the children and monkeys mentioned were being deprived of a number of other important stimuli. Harlow and Suomi’s monkeys were placed in situations of general social and sensory deprivation. Although many of the Romanian orphans grew up in the proximity of other children, their malnutrition may have prevented them from benefiting from this social input.
However, Bowlby’s ideas, and research like that of Tizard and Hodges (1978) have had an important beneficial effect on the standard of institutional care, such that the vast majority of adopted children are nowadays normally adjusted and differ little from children raised by their biological parents
Summary: describe types of attachment, how they are measured and how attachment deprivation affects development —
In sum, infancy appears to be a sensitive, though not critical, period during which an initial attachment to caregivers forms most easily and facilitates subsequent development. Prolonged attachment deprivation created developmental risks, but when deprived children are placed into a nurturing environment at a young age , many if not most children become attached to their caretakers and grow into well-adjusted adults. Bowlby’s ethological theory of attachment has been particularly influential in our understanding of how the attachment process arises, arguing that attachment relationships are mutual in nature in that both caregiver and child become attached to one another. Perhaps the most controversial of his claims concern the idea that attachment behaviours are pre-programmed into the infant. It seems reasonable to consider the possibility that at least some of the ways in which we try to form attachments could be learned from our social environments
How do different child-rearing practices affect children’s development?
After studying how parents interacted with their pre-school children, Baumrind (1967) identified 2 key dimensions of parental behaviour. The first is warmth vs hostility. Warm parents communicate love and care for the child. Hostile parents express rejection and behave as if they do not care about the child. The second dimension is restrictiveness vs permissiveness. Parents differ in the extend to which they make and enforce rules. Combining these dimensions yields four parenting styles that are associated with different patterns of child development: authoritative parents, authoritarian parents, indulgent parents, neglectful parents.
