Infancy and Childhood
Social Development
Stranger Anxiety
Attachment
• An emotional tie with another person;
shown in young children by their
seeking closeness to the caregiver and
showing distress in separation.
Factors of Attachment
• Body Contact
• Familiarity
• Responsive Parenting
Body Contact
• It was first assumed that infants
became attached to those who
satisfied their need for nourishment.
Then this guy
came along……..
Harry Harlow and his
Discovered that
monkeys preferred the
soft body contact of a
cloth mother, over the
nourishment of a
hard/wirily mother.
Familiarity
• Attachments based on familiarity are formed
during our critical periods.
Critical Periods: the optimal
period shortly after birth when an
organism’s exposure to certain
stimuli or experiences produce
proper development.
Imprinting
• The process by
which certain
animals form
attachments
during a critical
period very early
in life.
Do human’s imprint?
Secure Attachment Predicts
Social Competence
Deprivation of Attachment
• Often withdrawn, frightened and in extreme
cases speechless.
•Harlow’s monkeys would either cower in
fright or act extremely aggressive. Many
could not mate and if they could, the mothers
were unresponsive parents.
•Is there a connection between crime and lack
of childhood attachment?
Daycare
• High Quality daycare has shown no
detrimental effects on children over the
age of two.
•The studies go both ways for children under
the age of two- no clear answer yet.
Self - Concept
• A sense of one’s identity and self-worth.
When does self-awareness start?
Child Attachment Styles
based on Mary Ainsworth’s (1971) “The Strange
Situation” studies:
• put a baby and mother into a room. Observe.
• Take mother away. Observe.
• Send mother back in. Observe.
Ainsworth’s attachment styles
• Secure Attachment(66%) – use mother as
base to explore; distressed when mother
leaves;
• happy when she returns
• Most common
Ainsworth’s attachment styles
• Insecure-avoidant (20%) – not distressed at
mother leaving; cool response when mother
returns
• Probably caused by distant mothers
• Maybe they don’t get love from anywhere else so they force it
from their child in a controlling way.
Ainsworth’s attachment styles
• insecure- resistant (12%) – clingy to mother;
traumatized by every stage of the experiment;
distrustful of their mothers
• Caused by over-bearing, controlling mothers
General Parenting Styles
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Based on Diana Baumrind’s studies
They are:
Permissive
Authoritarian
Authoritative
Permissive Parents
• Parents submit to
their children’s
desires, make few
demands and use
little punishment.
Authoritarian Parents
• Impose rules and
expect obedience.
•“Why, because I said
so!!!!”
Authoritative Parents
• Parents are both
demanding and
responsive.
• Exert control by
setting rules, but
explain reasoning
behind the rules.
• Encourage open
discussion.