Infant Social Development
Reciprocity
Social Smiling
Development of Emotions
Emotional Regulation
Bases of Attachment
Harlow’s Monkey Studies
Attachment and the Strange Situation
Attachment and later development
Sensitive Period
Cultural Differences in Attachment
Temperament
The Newborn as Preadapted to
Social Exchanges
Predispositions of newborns:
 Built-in ability to signal needs in ways
adults can interpret and respond to.
 Capacity to detect contingencies in the
environment.
 Built-in attraction to social stimuli.
 Inclination to fall in step with the
caregiver’s behavior.
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The Origins of Reciprocity
Reciprocity:
True social interactions involving mutual exchanges between partners.
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Reciprocity in social interaction develops gradually.
At first caregivers orchestrate social dialogues, ideally providing
sensitive care.
Infants’ involvement in social encounters becomes increasingly
complex until they are full partners in social interactions.
Remember circular reactions.
Attunement:
Caregivers’ adjustment of the stimulation they provide in response to
signs from the infant.
Sensitive care:
A caregiving style in which the caregiver attends to the infant’s needs
and responds to them promptly and effectively.
Development of social smiling follows a
predictable timetable:
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Newborns smile because of activity in lower brain regions.
By 8-10 weeks, babies smile as a result of recognitory
assimilation.
By 4-5 months, babies produce truly social smiles in response
to people they know.
Recognitory assimilation:
A form of visual mastery in which the infant recognizes a familiar
stimulus and assimilates it to an established scheme.
Emotion: A state of feeling that arises when a person
evaluates an event in a particular way.
Newborns’ physiological responses to stimulation develop
into forerunners of specific basic emotions, but differ
from these emotions in several ways:
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They often require time to build up.
Meanings attached to events involved are very
general.
They are not well differentiated.
Infants differ in their ability to moderate their
arrousal
Capacity to cope with emotionally arousing situations
begins to develop in first 6 months.
Early techniques are global and involuntary and
interrupt contact with the environment.
Development from 6 mo. To 1 year
During this time, emotional responses change in several
fundamental ways:
 Clearly differentiated specific emotions emerge.
 Emotional responses become increasingly immediate.
 All the classic facial expressions of emotion begin to
appear regularly.
Emotional Reactions to the Unfamiliar
Stranger Anxiety
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A stranger staring can cause a 5-month-old infant to cry
after about 30 seconds.
At 7-10 months, babies begin to react negatively to
strangers even without prolonged stares.
This stranger distress usually continues for 2-3 months.
Degree of stranger distress varies greatly from baby to
baby.
Emotional Reactions to the Unfamiliar
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At the same time they show stranger distress, infants
show fear in other situations, such as high places or
impending collisions.
This is not just wariness toward unfamiliarity in
general, though.
Novel stimuli can make babies squeal with delight, if
the baby feels secure in the particular context.
Mother putting on mask can amuse baby, while
stranger with a mask can invoke fear.
Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Emotional Regulation and Coping
In the second 6 months, babies develop more
flexible skills for coping with emotionally
arousing situations, such as:
 signaling the caregiver
 moving near the caregiver
Pestisides in the Salinas Valley and Brain
development
Attachment and the Strange Situation
Attachment and later development
Sensitive Period
Cultural Differences in Attachment
Temperament
Inner Working Models
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Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
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“Salinas and Watsonville … had higher yearly average
(pesticide) concentrations in 2013 compared to both
2011 and 2012.” One of the monitoring sites was
Ohlone Elementary in Watsonville.
More on how pesticides affect children's developing
brains from the CHAMACOS study in
Salinas: http://www.thenation.com/article/178804/war
ning-signs-how-pesticides-harm-young-brain#
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Attachments: An enduring emotional tie between
infant and caregiver.
A major development in the second 6 months is
the formation of specific infant-caregiver
attachments.
Hallmarks of Attachment
Separation distress: Negative reactions of infants when
the caregiver temporarily leaves.
Greeting reactions: Positive reactions of infants when
the caregiver appears.
Secure-base behavior: Behavior in which the infant
uses the caregiver as a base for exploration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU
The Bases of Attachment
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Attachment is 2-way
between parent & child.
Bonding is 1-way,
parent toward child.
Infants adopted in the
1st year are just as likely
as other infants to
develop healthy
attachments.
Infants often become
attached to more than
one person.
Harlow & Harlow 1966
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNB
Ehzjg8I
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The Attachment Framework
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John Bowlby
All that is required
for an attachment to
form is that an adult
be present to engage
the infant; food need
not be involved.
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Harlow
Baby monkeys
preferred a soft,
terry cloth “mother”
over a wire “mother”
who fed the monkey.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Attachment Framework
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In all but the most extreme cases, infants
become attached to a caregiver.
When infants experience sensitive care, they
become confident the caregiver will be
responsive, giving the infant a secure base for
exploration.
This is what Erikson meant by trust and
Bowlby meant by secure attachment.
The negative result is mistrust (Erikson) or
insecure/anxious attachment (Bowlby).
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Patterns of Attachment
The Strange Situation Test:
Mary Ainsworth’s technique for assessing attachments.
Secure
Infant is confident of caregiver’s availability and
responsiveness, and can use caregiver as secure base
for exploration. Most (60-70%) infants show this.
Anxiousresistant
Infant separates form the caregiver reluctantly but
shows ambivalence toward caregiver after a
separation.
Anxiousavoidant
Infant readily separates from caregiver and avoids
contact after a brief separation.
Main added another attachment style:
Disorganized Infant shows contradictory features of several
-disoriented patterns of anxious attachment or appears dazed and
disoriented.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Quality of Care & Security of Attachment
Attachment
Pattern
Associated Caregiver
Behavior
secure
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anxious-resistant
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anxious-avoidant
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disorganizeddisoriented
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sensitive care
inconsistent care
exaggerated maternal behaviors
ineffective soothing
indifference
emotional unavailability or
active rejection
maltreatment or
frightening or confusing behavior
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Sensitive care & encouragement of Exploration
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Bernier, A., et al. (2014). Taking stock
of two decades of attachment
transmission gap: Broadening the
assessment of maternal behavior. Child
Development, Vol. 85 (5), 1771-2105.
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Sensitive care explains less than half of
the explained variance.
Encouragement of exploration explains
more.
Two together are best.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Infant Attachment and Later Development
Internal working model =
An infant’s generalized expectations about the social
world, including
• caregiver responsiveness
• infant’s own ability to obtain care
• the nature of social relationships
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Temperament Framework
Temperament:
An individual infant’s general style of behavior across contexts.
Infant Temperament Characteristics
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activity
rhythmicity
approach-withdrawal
adaptability
intensity
threshold
mood
distractibility
persistence of attention
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Stability of Temperament
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Newborn behavior does not predict later
temperament very well.
But by the end of the 1st year,
temperament becomes more stable and
predictive of later behavior.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGjO
1KwltOw
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Biology of Temperament
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Infants wary in new situations have higher or
more variable heart rates and blood pressure.
They show less symmetrical brain activity.
Associations have been found between
hormone levels and baby’s emotions.
Whether these factors influence the emotions
or the emotions influence these factors is
unclear.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Genetics of Temperament
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Some characteristics, like reactivity to
stimulation, seem to have a genetic
component.
Others, like tendency to be nurturant,
appear to be based more on experience.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Temperament and Attachment
How Temperament May Relate to Attachment:
1.
Temperament may help determine sensitive
care.
2.
Characteristics of a particular infant may be
at odds with those of a particular caregiver
(match-mismatch hypothesis).
3.
Early infant characteristics may feed into the
quality of care parents provide.
4.
An infant’s characteristics may tax
caregivers’ ability to cope.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
The Sensitive Period Hypothesis:
The idea that certain kinds of experience
are especially important at particular
points in development.
• The quality of attachments in infancy sets the stage
for later relationships.
• Later attachment formation may be more difficult.
Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.
Although cultures around the world vary in
specific child-rearing goals and practices, there
is a consistent recognition of the need to provide
responsive care.
Early experience has special significance for
development because basic expectations about
oneself and the social world are laid down in
infancy.
However, it does not determine the rest of
development, and later change is
generally possible.