7
C H A P T E R
The First Two Years:
Psychosocial Development
Chapter Preview
Chapter 7 notes that psychosocial development includes not only the characteristics of the
individual, such as self-awareness and personality, but also the relationships between the
child and parents and the child and his or her culture. It begins by exploring the infant’s
emerging emotions and how they reflect increasing cognitive abilities. Newborns are
innately predisposed to be sociable, and they are capable of expressing distress, sadness,
contentment, and many other emotions as well as responding to the emotions of other people. As self-awareness develops, many new emotions emerge, including pride, shame,
embarrassment, and guilt.
The second section describes the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Erikson along
with behaviorist, cognitive, and sociocultural theories, which help us understand how the
infant’s emotional and behavioral responses begin to take on the various patterns that
form personality.
In the next section, emotions and relationships are examined from a different
perspective—that of infant–caregiver interaction, which is the focus of both humanism and
evolutionary theory. Active, synchronous infant–caregiver interaction based on secure
attachment and a nurturing environment is recognized as a central factor in the child’s
psychosocial development. Videotaped studies of caregivers and infants, combined with
laboratory studies of attachment, have greatly expanded our understanding of psychosocial
development. By referencing their caregivers’ signals, infants learn when and how to
express their emotions. This section also explores the impact of day care on infants.
What Have You Learned?
The “What Have You Learned?” questions at the end of the text chapter are reprinted here
for your convenience in checking students' understanding of the chapter contents.
1. What are the first emotions to appear in very young infants?
2. What are 1-year-olds afraid of?
3. How do the emotions of the second year of life differ from those of the first year?
4. How does stress during infancy affect brain development?
5. Why does synesthesia seem to be more common in infants than in adults?
6. Why are temperamental traits more apparent in some people than others?
7. What are the similarities and differences between the oral stage and the trust-versusmistrust stage?
8. What are the similarities and differences between the anal stage and the autonomyversus-shame-and-doubt stage?
9. How would behaviorists explain family and cultural patterns of personality traits?
10. Why does the idea of a “working model” arise from cognitive theory instead of the
other theories?
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Chapter 7
The First Two Years: Psychosocial Development
11. What would be the beliefs of an ethnotheory that supports proximal parenting?
12. What would be the beliefs of an ethnotheory that supports distal parenting?
13. How does synchrony help infants learn about emotions?
14. Is it possible to overemphasize the importance of secure attachment? Why or why not?
15. In what circumstances would an infant develop type A attachment?
16. In what circumstances would an infant develop type C attachment?
17. In what circumstances would an infant develop type D attachment?
18. For infants, how is father care different from, and similar to, mother care?
19. Why are most infants, in most nations, cared for exclusively by their mothers?
20. What are the differences among grandmother care, family day care, and center day
care?
21. For which infants does early day care correlate with aggression in kindergarten?
22. Why is it difficult to draw definite conclusions about infant day care?
Chapter Guide
➤ “On Your Own” Activities: Developmental Fact or Myth? Revising a Textbook; Portfolio
Assignment
➤ AV: The Journey Through the Life Span, Program 3: Infants and Toddlers; Transitions
Throughout the Life Span, Program 7: Getting to Know You; The Child: Part III; Infancy:
Self and Social World; The Child at Twenty-One Months; The Child at Twenty-Four
Months; Individual Differences
➤ Teaching Tip: Helping Students Do Well in Your Course
➤ Classroom Activity: Analysis of Videotaped Infant Development
I.
Introduction and Emotional Development
Instructional Objective: To provide students with a sense of the development of basic
emotions during the first two years.
➤ AV: Emotional Development of Children; The Stress of Separation; From Here to Self-Esteem:
A Roadmap for Parents of Young Children
➤ Classroom Activities: Separation Anxiety, Stranger Wariness, and the Ethological Perspective;
The Impact of the Cultural Macrosystem on Social and Emotional Development (may also
work well with a discussion of the sociocultural theory of emotional development); The
Dunedin Study: Childhood Temperament Predicts Adolescent and Adult Personality and
Behavior Problems
➤ Critical Thinking Activity: Early Temperament Style and Later Adjustment Problems
1. The first emotions that can be reliably discerned in infants are pleasure and pain.
Other early infant emotions include curiosity and happiness. Smiles of pleasure
appear during the first days of life; social smiles begin to appear at about 6 weeks
and laughter begins between 2 and 4 months.
2. Anger becomes evident at about 6 months. During infancy, anger is a healthy reaction
and usually occurs in response to frustration. In contrast, sadness indicates withdrawal and is accompanied by an increase in the stress hormone cortisol.
3. Fully formed fear emerges at about 9 months. One expression of this new emotion is
stranger wariness; another is separation anxiety, or fear of abandonment, which is
normal at age 1, intensifies by age 2, and usually subsides after that. During the second year, anger and fear typically decrease and become more targeted toward specific
things.
4. Toward the end of the second year, the new emotions of pride, shame, embarrassment,
and guilt become apparent. Because these emotions require an awareness of other
people, they emerge from the family setting, which is itself influenced by the culture.
5. The infant’s emerging self-awareness leads to a new consciousness of others. That
consciousness fosters the ability to experience emotions about and express them
toward other people.
Chapter 7
The First Two Years: Psychosocial Development
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6. In the classic self-awareness experiment, 9- to 24-month-old babies look in a mirror
after a dot of rouge is put on their nose. If the babies react to the mirror image by
touching their nose, it is clear they know they are seeing their own face. Most babies
demonstrate this self-awareness between 15 and 24 months of age.
7. Emotional development depends partly on maturation of the developing brain, along
with having varied experiences and good nutrition.
8. Chronic early stress can impair the hypothalamus, which regulates various bodily
functions and hormone production. Helpful behaviors such as kangaroo care demonstrate the crucial role fathers can play in helping new mothers.
9. Synesthesia (the stimulation of one sensory stimulus to the brain by another) is partly
genetic and more common in infants than it is among older children.
10. Temperament refers to “constitutionally based” individual differences in emotions,
activity, and self-regulation.
11. Infants are born with distinct temperaments that are genetic in origin and affect personality. Temperament may overlap with personality. However, personality traits are
generally considered to be primarily learned; temperamental traits are considered to
be primarily genetic.
12. According to the New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS), infants can be described as
possessing one of four temperaments: easy (40 percent), slow to warm up (15 percent),
difficult (10 percent), and hard to classify (35 percent). An important factor in healthy
psychosocial development is the goodness of fit between the developing child and the
caregiving context.
II.
Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development
Instructional Objective: To explain the major personality theories regarding development
during the first two years.
➤ AV: Erik Erikson: A Life’s Work
➤ Teaching Tip: Understanding Freudian Theory
1. Psychoanalytic theory connects biosocial and psychosocial development, emphasizing
the need for responsive maternal care.
2. According to Freud, during the first year infants are in the oral stage of psychosexual
development, when the mouth is the infant’s prime source of gratification and the
mother’s attitudes regarding feeding and weaning are critical factors in the infant’s
psychological development. An oral fixation later in life may occur if a child becomes
distressed at this stage. During the second year, infants are in the anal stage, when
toilet training becomes the focal point. A fixation at this stage may result in an anal
personality.
3. Erikson maintains that development occurs through a series of basic crises. He
describes the basic crises of infancy and toddlerhood as those of trust versus mistrust and autonomy versus shame and doubt, respectively. In Erikson’s view,
parental guidance and protection are the keys to the child’s gaining a healthy sense of
autonomy. Infants who fail to develop trust or achieve autonomy may become adults
who are suspicious and pessimistic or who are burdened by shame. Cultural norms
and expectations affect views on autonomy and shame.
➤ “Classroom Activity: Social Cognitive Theory and the Self-Regulated Learner
➤ “On Your Own” Activity: The Big Five Personality Trait Inventory
4. According to early behaviorism, personality is molded through the processes of reinforcement and punishment of the child’s spontaneous behaviors. A strong proponent of
this position was John Watson. Later theorists, such as Albert Bandura, incorporated
the role of social learning, that is, infants’ tendency to imitate the personality traits
of their parents.
5. According to cognitive theory, a person’s thoughts and values determine his or her
perspective on the world. Thus, it is the child’s interpretation of the experience, not
the experience itself, that is crucial. More specifically, infants use their early relationships to build a working model that becomes a frame of reference for organizing perceptions and experiences.
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Chapter 7
The First Two Years: Psychosocial Development
➤ AV: Social Development of Children
6. The sociocultural perspective emphasizes the impact of the entire social context.
Ethnotheories are culture- and ethnic-group specific theories that are not usually
apparent to the people. One ethnotheory involves ideas about child-rearing.
Researchers have found considerable cultural variation in the use of proximal (close,
physical) parenting and distal (distant, more intellectually focused) parenting.
Proximal parenting predicts toddlers who later will be more compliant and less selfaware than toddlers who experienced more distal parenting and became more selfaware but less obedient.
III.
The Development of Social Bonds
Instructional Objective: To provide students with a sense of the importance of the social
context in which infants’ emotions develop, including the significance of infant–caregiver
interaction, in psychosocial development and the impact of day care.
➤ AV: How Relationships Are Formed; And Baby Makes Three; Welcome to Parenthood; Babies
Are People Too; Developing the Sense of Family; Right from the Start; Mother–Infant
Bonding: One More Way to Mislead Women; Life with Baby: How Do the Parents Feel?
Benjamin
1. Researchers have found an impressive synchrony between infant and caregiver.
Synchrony helps an infant learn to read other people’s emotions and to develop some
of the basic skills of social interaction, such as taking turns and paying attention.
2. Researchers use the still-face technique to study synchrony between infant and
caregiver in order to determine whether synchrony is needed for normal development.
➤ AV: First Feelings; Attachment Theory: The Baby/Caregiver Bond; John Bowlby: Attachment
and Loss; Attachment; First Person: Impressions of Being a Baby
➤ Classroom Activities: Singing to Infants; Temperament, Security of Attachment, and
Behavioral Inhibition; Mary Salter Ainsworth; The Legacy of Childhood Attachment; Adult
Attachment Styles, Personality, and Family Functioning; Maternal Sensitivity, Infant
Irritability, and the Enduring Effects of Intervention
➤ Observational Activity: Attachment
3. Approaching and following their caregivers are signs of proximity-seeking behaviors,
while holding and cuddling are signs of contact-maintaining behaviors. Both types of
behavior are clear signs of attachment.
4. A secure attachment (type B) is one in which the infant derives comfort and confidence from the caregiver, as evidenced by attempts to be close to the caregiver and by
readiness to explore the environment. In this type of attachment, the caregiver acts as
a base for exploration.
5. Infants who display insecure attachment may engage in little interaction with their
mothers and show no apparent distress when they leave (insecure-avoidant attachment or type A) or they may show an inconsistent mixture of behavior toward their
mothers, such as both resisting and seeking contact (insecure-resistant/ambivalent
attachment or type C). Type D is disorganized attachment and may be found in
the most troubled infants.
6. Mary Ainsworth has developed a laboratory procedure for measuring the security of
attachment. In this procedure, called the Strange Situation, infants’ reactions to the
comings and goings of their mothers and to friendly strangers are monitored.
7. Although secure attachment predicts both personality and social development, attachment status can change, either for the better or for the worse.
➤ AV: Fathers
➤ Classroom Activities: Infant Social Referencing, “Joint-Attention” Behaviors, and Emerging
Theory of Mind; Social Referencing in Chimpanzees
8. The emotional expressions of others begin to assume new meaning because infants
begin to engage in social referencing; that is, they look to others for emotional cues
in uncertain situations. This becomes important as crawling and walking increase
infants’ mobility.
9. Researchers have found that although fathers provide less basic care than mothers,
they play more, and they can teach infants appropriate expressions of emotion, espe-
Chapter 7
The First Two Years: Psychosocial Development
39
cially anger. Consequently, infants tend to look to fathers for fun and to mothers for
comfort.
➤ AV: Infant Development in the Kibbutz
➤ Classroom Activities: Child Care, Home Care, and the Quality of Infant–Caregiver Interaction;
Classroom Debate: “Resolved: Attending Day-Care Centers During the First Three Years of
Life Is Psychologically Damaging to Children”; Communal Child Care, Emotional Availability,
and Attachment
10. Infant day-care programs include family day care, when children of various ages are
cared for in a paid caregiver’s home, and center day care, in which children are
cared for by several paid caregivers in a place designed for that purpose. Nonmaternal
care tends to vary in quality and availability.
11. (Table 7.4) Researchers have identified five factors that seem essential to high-quality
day care: (a) adequate attention to each infant; (b) encouragement of sensorimotor and
language development; (c) attention to health and safety; (d) well-trained and professional caregivers; (e) warm and responsive caregivers.
12. According to the NICHD Early Child Care Network, day care is detrimental only
when (a) mothers are insensitive; (b) the day-care quality is poor, and (c) the infant is
in poor-quality day care for more than 20 hours per week with too many children per
group.