Emotional and Social Development in Infants & Toddlers

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts in emotional and social development of infants and toddlers.

Attachment

A lasting emotional tie between two people who each strive to maintain closeness to the other and act to ensure that the relationship continues.

Maternal reinforcing stimulus

Behaviorist perspective minimizing human attachment need, relating attachment to food.

Konrad Lorenz

Ethologist who researched imprinting with goslings, believing in a biologically programmed attachment response.

Harry Harlow (1958)

Experimented with monkeys, finding that contact comfort was important to bonding.

John Bowlby (late 1960s)

Promoted the idea that a primary attachment figure is crucial to healthy development; proximity-seeking behavior occurs with survival threat.

Critical Period (Attachment)

During the first year when the attachment response is programmed to emerge, according to Bowlby's Ethological Perspective.

Pre-attachment Phase

Birth to 2 months, characterized by reflex-dominated time and indiscriminate social responsiveness.

Social Smile

An automatic reflex (example) that occurs around 2 months, not in response to a particular attachment figure, and evokes care and love.

Discriminating Sociability

Attachment in the making, occurring at 4 to 7 months.

Specific Attachments

Occurs between 7 to 24 months, involves proximity-seeking, stranger-anxiety, separation anxiety and social referencing.

Social Referencing

Seeking information about how to react to an unfamiliar or ambiguous object or event by observing someone else’s expressions and reactions.

Secure Base

Foundation to return to when frightened.

Internal Working Model

A set of expectations about one’s worthiness of love and the availability of attachment figures during times of distress.

Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth's method to measure individual variations in attachment response during the 'clear-cut' stage through planned separations and reunions.

Secure Attachment

Infants display stranger anxiety, separation protest, enthusiastic greeting, seeks comfort during reunion and is able to return to play; uses the mother as a secure base to play and explore (66% of infants).

Insecure-Avoidant Attachment

Infants display minimal interest in the mother, busily explores the room, little distress, not enthusiastic upon reuniting with the mother, ignores or avoids the mother on return, resists attempts to be comforted (20% of infants).

Insecure-Resistant Attachment

Infants display ambivalence, preoccupied with the mother and clingy, reunions show resistance and signs of anger and distress, mingle proximity seeking and contact maintaining behaviors with resistance, minimal exploration, difficulty settling down and inconsolable (15% of infants).

Disorganized-Disoriented Attachment

Infants display inconsistent, contradictory behaviors and is a reliable predictor of social and emotional maladjustment from childhood into adulthood; often a result of abuse.

Caregiver Sensitivity

The most important determinant of infant attachment; the caregiver’s ability to consistently and sensitively respond to the child’s signals.

Temperament

Characteristic behavioral style of reacting to people and situations, influenced by genetic predispositions, maturation, and experience.

Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

Erikson's second developmental task; infants must develop a feeling that one can make choices and direct oneself.

Self-Concept

Awareness of self; some researchers believe infants are born with a capacity to distinguish the self from the surrounding environment.

Self-Recognition

The ability to recognize or identify the self, assessed by the 'rouge test'.

Self-Control

The ability to comply with requests and modify behavior in accordance with caregivers’ demands.

Self-Conscious Emotions

Empathy, embarrassment, shame, and guilt; emerge at 15 to 18 months and depend on cognitive development and an awareness of self.

Emotion Regulation

The ability to control emotions; infants demonstrate this by sucking on objects (self-soothing), turning their bodies away from distressing stimuli (gaze aversion), smiling and distraction.

Socialization

The process by which children are taught to obey the norms of society and to behave in socially appropriate ways.