Chapter 6: Social and Emotional
Development in Infancy
The Nature of Infant Emotions and
Emotional Expressions
 What is an emotion?
 A feeling state that involves distinct physiological responses
and cognitive evaluations that motivate action.
 Typically defined in terms of:
 Physiological aspect
 Communicative function
 Cognitive aspect
 Action aspect
Emotions
 Emotion Regulation:
 Ways of acting to
modulate and control
emotions
 Emotions are universal!
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Joy
Fear
Anger
Surprise
Sadness
Disgust
Infant Emotions and Social Life
 Primary Intersubjectivity:
 Organized, reciprocal face-to-face interaction between an infant
and caregiver with the interaction itself as the focus.
 Manipulating Intersubjectivity:
 Disrupting synchrony
 Evoke negative emotional responses
 Still-face method
 Delayed transmission
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0
Primary Intersubjectivity
 Maternal Depression
 Obstacle to intersubjectivity
 Mothers less responsive
 Infants disengage
 Still-face reaction:
 Infants’ reaction less strong
Emotion Regulation and Intersubjectivity
 Babies have deep need to connect emotionally
 Pouting (Oster)
 Muscles very different from crying
 “Directed” at social partner
 Serves to interrupt crying – evolutionary origin
The Infant-Caregiver Emotional Relationship
 Attachment: An emotional bond between
children and their caregivers.
 Develops ~ 7 to 9 months
 Signs of Attachment:
 Proximity – they want to be close to
caregiver
 Distress when separated from caregiver
 Happy when reunited with caregiver
 Orient actions to their caregiver
Why do children form attachments?
 Freud’s Drive-Reduction Explanation
 Humans are motivated by biological drives (e.g., hunger, thirst)
 Parent satisfies physiological need through feeding
 Doesn’t hold true with nonhuman primates…
 Bowlby’s Ethological Explanation
 Parent is a valuable and rewarding commodity
 Parent is a sensitive and responsive social partner that provides
emotional support – run back to parent when scared!
 Parent provides comfort and soothing tactile sensations
Harlow’s Monkeys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I&feature=related
Phases of Attachment
 Preattachment
 “Attachment-in-the-making”
 Clear-cut attachment
 Secure base: the person whose presence provides child with
security to explore
 Separation anxiety
 Reciprocal relationship phase
 Internal working model: mental model that children construct
as a result of their experiences and that they use to guide their
interaction with caregivers and others
Attachment Security
 Work by Mary Ainsworth
 Developed the “Strange Situation”
 Test the security of the mother-child relationship
 Observe how babies
 Use mother as a secure base, respond to separation from
mother, respond to a stranger
 Types of Attachment
 Secure, avoidant, resistant, disorganized
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnFKaaOSPmk&feature=related
Secure Attachment
 Infant behavior: healthy balance between wanting close
contact with the mother and wanting to explore
 Upset when mother leaves
 Calm when mother returns
 Unlikely to be comforted by stranger
(65% of middle-class US 12-month-olds fall into this category)
 Mother behavior: sensitive and responsive to child’s needs,
positive attitude towards child, consistent
behavior/responding, provide stimulation and emotional
support
 Synchronized interactions with child
Insecure Attachment
•Avoidant (~20%)
-Infant: indifferent to mother, little distress upon separation, can be
sociable with (or ignore) strangers, child may look away or turn around
instead of re-establishing contact after separation (~20%)
-Mother: impatient/unresponsive/negative vs. over-stimulating child
•Resistant (~12%)
-Infant: anxious, close proximity, upset when mother leaves, not comforted
upon her return, simultaneously seek contact but resist efforts to comfort
-Mother: inconsistent parenting, occasional responsiveness
•Disorganized (~5%)
-Infant: lack coherent method of coping (common in abused/neglected)
-Mother: source of comfort and fear
Attachment and Later Development
 Children with secure attachments with mothers:
 Early years: more popular, initiate play more, show sensitivity
to needs/feelings of other children
 Childhood/adolescence: better social skills/peer relations,
more likely to have close friends
 Adulthood: higher quality of relationship with partners
 Continuity of attachment status from infancy to adulthood
 72% of 21 year-olds received same status as when they were
infants
 Internal working model
 Expectations of how to behave toward others
The Changing Nature of Communication
 Secondary
Intersubjectivity:
A form of interaction
between infant and
caregiver with
communication and
emotional sharing focused
not just on the interaction
but on the world beyond.
Forms of Communication
 Social Referencing
In which infants look to
their caregiver for an
indication of how to feel
and act on encountering
an unfamiliar object or
event
A Sense of Self
 By 6 months of age
 Experience interacting with objects and people
 Locomotion 
 Separation from caregivers
 New social relations
 Emerging use language
Sense of Self
 Self-Recognition
 Ability to recognize
oneself in a mirror
 Self as Agent
 Self exerts power and
control over
environment
 Two-word utterances
Implications
 Infancy is an important time
 Forging social and emotional ties
 Foundation for exploring and learning about the world
 Biological processes
 Sociocultural processes