PSYC 255: CH. 4 - SOCIOEMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY

Emotion

A feeling, or affect, that occurs when a person is in a state or an interaction that is important to them and their well-being.

Emotions have important roles in what?

• Communication with others.

• Behavioral organization.

Psychologists classify the broad range of emotions as either what?

Positive (pleasant) or negative (unpleasant).

Emotions are influenced by?

Biological foundations, cognitive processes, and experiences.

Display rules

Govern when, where, and how emotions should be expressed are not universal.

Emotions that infants express in the first six months of life include what?

• Surprise.

• Interest.

• Joy.

• Anger.

• Sadness.

• Fear.

• Disgust.

In the second half of the first year or during the second year, infants express?

Self-conscious or other-conscious emotions, which involve the emotional reactions of others.

What are some examples of self-conscious emotions?

• Jealousy.

• Empathy.

• Embarrassment.

• Pride.

• Shame.

• Guilt.

Parent-infant interactions are?

Mutually regulated in the way that parents change their emotional expression in response to those of their infants, but infants also modify their emotional expressions in response to those of their parents.

• These types of interactions are also referred to as reciprocal or synchronous interactions.

Crying

The most important mechanism newborns have for communicating with their world.

Babies have at least three types of cries, which are?

• Basic cry.

• Anger cry.

• Pain cry.

What is one of the conditions that will elicit the basic cry?

Hunger.

The pain cry can be stimulated by?

Physical pain or by any high-intensity stimulus.

Two types of smiling can be distinguished in infants, which are?

• Reflexive smile

• Social smile

Reflexive smile

A smile that does not occur in response to external stimuli and appears during the first month after birth, usually during sleep.

Social smile

A smile that occurs in response to an external stimulus as early as 2 months of age.

Fear appears at?

About 6 months of age, and peaks at 10 months of age, but abused and neglected infants can show fear as early as 3 months.

The most frequent expression of an infant’s fear involves?

Stranger anxiety, in which an infant shows fear and wariness of strangers.

Infants experience fear when separated from their caregivers and will show what?

Separation protest.

Stranger anxiety is particularly intense at?

9 months of age and continues to escalate until 1 year of age.

Separation protest peaks at?

About 13-15 months of age.

Social referencing

Involves “reading” emotional cues in others to help determine how to act in a particular situation.

During the first year of life, infants gradually develop an ability to?

Inhibit, or minimize the intensity and duration of emotional reactions.

Contexts

Can influence emotional regulation.

Temperament

Refers to individual differences in behavioral styles, emotions, and characteristic ways of responding, including:

• How quickly is the emotion shown?

• How strong is the emotion?

• How long does the emotion last?

• How quickly does the emotion fade away?

Temperament includes?

Emotional reactivity and self-regulation.

Reactivity

Involves variations in the speed and intensity with which an individual responds to situations with positive or negative emotions.

Self-regulation

Involves variations in the extent or effectiveness of an individual’s control over emotions.

Psychiatrists Alexander Chess and Stella Thomas identified three basic types, or clusters, of temperament, which are?

• Easy child

• Difficult child

• Slow-to-warm-up child

Easy child

Generally in a positive mood, quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, and adapts easily to new experiences.

Difficult child

Reacts negatively and cries frequently, engages in irregular daily routines, and is slow to accept change.

Slow-to-warm-up child

Low activity level, is somewhat negative, and displays a low intensity of mood.

Jerome Kagan thought of shyness with strangers as one feature of broad temperament category know as?

Inhibition to the unfamiliar.

Mary Rothbart and John Bates stress that?

Effortful control or self-regulation is an important dimension of temperament.

Infants who are high in effortful control show?

An ability to keep their arousal from getting too intense and have strategies for soothing themselves.

Infants who are low in effortful control are?

Often unable to control their arousal, becoming easily agitated and intensely emotional.

Goodness of fit

Refers to the match between a child’s temperament and the environmental demands the child must cope with.

Caregivers should?

• Be sensitive to the individual characteristics of the child.

• Be flexible in responding to these characteristics.

• Avoid applying negative labels to the child.

Emotions and temperament are key aspects to?

Personality, or the enduring characteristics of individuals.

Other characteristics that are thought to be central to personality development are?

• Trust.

• Sense of self.

• Progress toward independence.

According to Erik Erikson, the first year of life is characterized by?

The trust-versus-mistrust stage of development.

• Infants learn to trust when they are cared for in a consistently nurturant manner.

• If the infant is not well fed and kept warm on a consistent basis, a sense of mistrust is likely to develop.

A rudimentary form of self-recognition is being?

Attentive and positive toward one’s image in a mirror, which appears as early as 3 months of age.

A more complete form of self-recognition is the ability to?

Recognize one’s physical features which emerges during the second year.

Infants begin to develop a self-understanding called?

Self-recognition at 18 months of age.

Mirror recognition, the use of the personal pronoun “me,” and self-recognition in photos are all indications that infants can understand the?

Mental state of “me,” or that they are object in their own mental representations of the world.

Erikson stressed that?

Independence is an important issue in the second year of life when infants are in their second stage of development, which he called autonomy vs. shame and doubt.

Autonomy

Builds as the infant’s mental and motor abilities develop.

When caregivers become impatient and do for toddlers what they are capable of doing themselves, what happens?

Shame and doubt develop.

Ross Thompson views infants as?

Socioemotional beings who show a strong interest in their social world and are motivated to orient themselves toward it and to understand it.

From the very early on, infants are captivated by the social world, or?

Socially oriented.

Infants learn about their social world through?

• Face-to-face play.

• Interaction with peers.

Face-to-face play begins to characterize caregiver-infant interactions when the infant is about?

2-3 months of age.

Infants show interest in interacting with their peers as young as?

6 months of age, which increases in the latter half of the second year.

Between 18 and 24 months of age, children increase their?

Imitative (imitating nonverbal actions like jumping and running) and reciprocal play (active cooperation to reach a goal in a simple task).

Imitative play

Imitating nonverbal actions, like jumping and running.

Reciprocal play

Active cooperation to reach a goal in a simple task.

Locomotor skills

Allow the infant to independently initiate social interchanges more often.

The ability to perceive people as engaging in intentional and goal-directed behavior is?

An important social-cognitive accomplishment that occurs toward the end of the first year.

What helps the infant understand that other people have intentions?

Joint attention and gaze-following.

The ability to understand and respond to others’ what?

Meaningful intentions is a critical cognitive foundation for effective social engagement.

Part of the ability to understand and respond to others’ meaningful intentions is the capacity to?

Process social information quickly in order to make an appropriate social response.

Besides speed of processing social information, other important contributors to social engagement include?

• Motivation to interact with someone.

• Interactive history with an individual.

• Interactive partner’s social membership.

• Culture-specific aspects of interaction.

Advancements in social-cognitive skills may influence their understanding and awareness of?

Attachment to a caregiver.

Attachment

A close emotional bond between two people.

Three theorists proposed influential views of attachment, which are?

• Freud.

• Erikson.

• Bowlby.

Freud theorized that infants become attached to the person or object that provides them with?

Oral satisfaction.

Harry Harlow

Conducted a study to see if feeding is as important to attachment as Freud thought.

Harry Harlow’s study demonstrated that feeding is not the crucial element in the attachment process and?

That contact comfort is important.

Erik Erikson thought that?

Physical comfort and sensitive care are key to establishing a basic level of trust during infancy, which he believed is the foundation for attachment.

John Bowlby, from an ethological perspective, believed that both the infant and its primary caregiver are?

Biologically predisposed to form attachments.

• He also thought that infants develop an internal working model of attachment, which is a simple mental model of the caregiver, their relationship to him or her, and the self as deserving of nurturant care.

Attachment does not emerge suddenly, but rather develops in a series of phases, moving from a baby’s?

General preference for human figures to a partnership with primary caregivers.

Four phases of the development of attachment based on Bowlby’s conceptualization of attachment are?

• Phase 1 (birth to 2 months)

• Phase 2 (2-7 months)

• Phase 3 (7 to 24 months)

• Phase 4 (24 months on)

Phase 1 (birth to 2 months)

Infants instinctively direct their attachment to human figures.

• Strangers, siblings, and parents are equally likely to elicit smiling or crying from the infant.

Phase 2 (2-7 months)

Attachment becomes focused on one figure, usually the primary caregiver, as the baby gradually learns to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people.

Phase 3 (7 to 24 months)

Specific attachments develop.

• With increased locomotor skills, babies actively seek contact with regular caregivers such as the mother or father.

Phase 4 (24 months on)

Children become aware of other people’s feelings, goals, and plans and begin to take these into account in directing their own actions.

Mary Ainsworth created the?

Strange Situation to assess individual differences in attachment, which is an observational measure of infant attachment in which the infant experiences a series of introductions, separations, and reunions with the caregiver and an adult stranger in a prescribed order.

• In this measure, researchers are looking for information about the infant’s motivation to be near the caregiver and the degree to which the caregiver’s presence provides the infant with security and confidence.

Based on how babies respond in the Strange Situation, they are described as being securely attached or insecurely attached, in one of three ways, to the caregiver?

• Securely attached babies.

• Insecure avoidant babies.

• Insecure resistant babies.

• Insecure disorganized babies.

Secure attachment

In the first year of life provides an important foundation for psychological development later in life.

Securely attached babies?

• Use the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore the environment.

• When they are in the presence of their caregiver, they explore the room and examine toys that have been placed in it.

• When the caregiver departs, they might protest mildly.

• When the caregiver returns, they reestablish positive interaction with them (maybe smiling, crawling into lap). Then, they resume playing with toys in the room.

Insecure avoidant babies?

• Show insecurity by avoiding the caregiver.

• Little interaction with the caregiver.

• No distress when they leave.

• Do not reestablish contact with them upon return and may even turn their back on caregiver.

• If contact is established, the infant usually leans away or looks away.

Insecure resistant babies?

• Often cling to the caregiver and then resist them by fighting against the closeness, perhaps by kicking or pushing away.

• Often cling anxiously to the caregiver and don’t explore the playroom.

• When the caregiver leaves, they often cry loudly.

• Push away if the caregiver tries to comfort them upon return.

Insecure disorganized babies?

• Disorganized and disoriented.

• Might appear dazed, confused, and fearful.

• Strong patterns of avoidance and resistance.

• Display certain specified behaviors, such as extreme fearfulness around the caregiver.