Development
Lecture 15
4/5/04
Plan
 Attachment & bonding
 Familiarity--Lorenz
 Comfort-- Harlow
 Responsiveness to needs- Attachment styles
 Cognitive Development
 Piaget’s stages
Imprinting
 Any moving, honking stimulus
 Decoys, rubber balls, wooden blocks, striped
metal pipe
 Critical period ~ within first day...
 In humans, attachment is less automatic,
mother plays more active role
What is attachment?
 A strong, innate emotional connection
persisting over time and circumstances
 Attachment = adaptive
 Infant attachment behaviors motivate
adult attention
 Infants exhibiting attachment behaviors
have a higher chance of survival
Remember Watson?
 Dangers of too much mother love
 Treat children like young adults; objectively, not
sentimentally; never hug or kiss– shake their
hands
 Love is conditioned, not instinctive
 Hunger need // love
 Food – salivation; food + bell – salivation; bell…
 Food – good feeling; mother + food– good feeling;
 Mother -- love
Contact Comfort:
A theory of love
Harlow
 Strength of attachment is independent of
feeding…
 Love is conditioned, BUT, UR isn’t food,
it’s pleasant, tactile stimulation
 Monkey experiments




1. Influence of nursing vs. contact comfort
2. Fear response
3. Exploration
4. Separation
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy301/Niederhoffer/movies/Development/Harlo
w_interview_pt1.mpg
Harlow’s Contact Comfort Theory
 Harlow’s monkey studies
 Surrogate mothers
 Wire mesh “mother”
 Terrycloth “mother”
 Measures of “affection”

 Time spent
 Preference in time of stress
 “Contact” need is important in determining
behavior, esp. in bonding
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy301/Nieder
hoffer/movies/Development/Harlow's_monkeys.mov
Monkeys fed by cloth mothers
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Time spent with
cloth mother
Time spent with
wire mother
5
25
85
120
160
Monkeys fed by wire mothers
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Time spent with
cloth mother
Time spent with
wire mother
5
25
85
120
160
Do infants form attachment to
source of food?
1. Ate same amount,
gained weight same
rate, but:
•
Wire mothered-monkeys
didn’t digest milk
2. When frightened ran to
cloth mother
•
Regardless of whom
provided food
•
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Ps
y301/Niederhoffer/movies/Development/Harlow_inte
rview_pt3.mpg
Do infants form attachment to
source of food?
3. Open field experiments
•
•
•
Cloth: Rushed to cloth monkeys, clutched, rubbed
W/out mother: Froze w/ fear, cried, thumb-sucking,
crouching
Wire: Same as no mother
•
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/class/Psy301/Niederhoffer/movies/Development/Harlow_interview_pt2.mpg
4. Separation
•
When reunited with cloth, rushed to mother, climbed,
clutched tightly played
•
•
No exploration b/c need for contact comfort =greater
When reunited with wire…
Future Behavior
 Abnormal behavior from wire-mom raised:
 Sit and stare like autistic child
 Sexually disturbed…
 18 females mated voluntarily
 18 females involuntarily (held in place)
 Of 36, 20 produced infants
 Most males never able to mate
 Of 20 who produced infants:




5 showed adequate, but awkward behavior
7 Indifferent (failed to nurse)
8 Abusive- extreme physical cruelty
4 killed their babies (bit off fingers and toes)
Note!
 Of 20, only 5 showed adequate behavior!
 Also important: peer contact
 Of adequates: all had peer exposure
 Of indifferent & abusive, only 3 had peers
 Peers are perhaps more important than
tactile stimuli for determining later
behavior…
Human Attachment Styles
John Bowlby (1969)
 Clear sequence of 3 emotional reactions
upon separation (across species)
 Protest
 Despair
 Detachment
 Specific emotions & behaviors designed
to keep infants near primary caregivers
 EVOLUTIONARY SELECTED
The Strange Situation
Mary Ainsworth, 1978
 Parent brings baby to unfamiliar playroom
 Parent and stranger come & go (scripted)
 Child’s behavior observed in secret
 How do they react to separations &
reunions?
 Explore while “secure base” is there?
 Distress upon departure?
 Delight upon return?
Secure Attachment
 About 60% of children in normal conditions
 Secure base for exploration
 Safe Haven when distressed
Avoidant Attachment
 About 25% of children
 Don’t use parent as secure base
 Don’t use parent as safe haven
 Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment
 About 15% of children
 Ineffective secure base (clinging, nervous)
 Ineffective safe haven (emotional acting out, suspicious)
Mental Models
 Secure: Selves as friendly, good-natured,
likable;
 Others as well-intentioned, reliable & trustworthy
 Avoidant: Selves as suspicious, aloof &
skeptical;
 Others as unreliable, over-eager to commit
 Anxious: Selves as misunderstood,
unconfident, underappreciated;
 Others as Unreliable, unwilling/ unable to commit
to permanent relationship
Consequences of secure
attachment in adulthood
 More trusting in relationships
 Longer relationships
 More sexual satisfaction, esp. with long-term
partner
 Higher self-esteem and regard for others
 Seek social support when under stress
 Appropriate self-disclosure style
 Positive, optimistic, constructive interactions
with others
 Better a positive mood self-induction
Chemical basis of attachment
Oxytocin
 Hormone related to affiliative behaviors,
including infant-caregiver attachment
 Promotes maternal behaviors that
help ensure survival of infant
 Strengthens social memories
Cognitive Development
 Children are curious, active, constructive
thinkers who want to understand world
around them
 Children form schemas = mental
representations of the world
 Assimilation- fit new info into schema
 Accomodation- adjust schema to fit new info
Piaget’s stages of
cognitive development
Visual Preferences in Newborns
 Patterns vs. solids
 Drawing of a human
face
 Preference for
complexity vs.
adaptation?
Newborn Orientation to the Face
 Infants shown blank
shape, face, or scrambled
facial features.
 same complexity…
 Infants looked more
intensely at the actual
face.
1. Sensorimotor stage
 Understands self as agent of action
 Object permanence
 Understanding that an object continues to exist
even when it cannot be seen
2. Preoperational stage
 Beginning of symbolic thinking-- words
 Still egocentric & can’t yet think “operationally”
 Imagining logical consequences
Testing Conservation
 Ability to conserve
marks transition
from Preoperational
to concrete
operational stage
Piaget’s stages
3. Concrete operational stage
 Learn to think about operations
 Develop conservation
 Based on understanding the
operation of reversibility
4. Formal operational stage
 Develop abstract reasoning
 Hypothetic-deductive reasoning
 Ability to form and test hypotheses
Sensitivity to Number?
Can Infants Add and Subtract?
 “Illustration of addition
or subtraction”
 Correct vs. incorrect
outcome (2-1=2, for
example)
 Infant looks longer at
incorrect outcomes
Infants are remarkable…
 Adolescence and
adulthood bring about
fascinating capacities
more easily studied…
 SOCIAL
PSYCHOLOGY IS
ON THE HORIZON