Social & Emotional Development, Memory, and Attachment

Social & Emotional Development and Memory

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this lecture, we should be able to:

  • Describe the development and measurement of attachment relationships.
  • Use examples of atypical social/emotional experience to discuss critical vs. sensitive periods in development.
  • Discuss issues with measuring memory development in very young children.

Attachment Relationship

Attachment is the relationship that infants form with their primary caregiver, characterized by:

  • A desire to be close to caregivers.
  • Seeking security from caregivers.
  • Exhibiting distress when caregivers are absent.
Food or Comfort?

Harry Harlow's research with infant rhesus monkeys explored what makes the mother special. Monkeys were raised by inanimate mothers: a wire monkey with a bottle and a soft monkey with no bottle. The baby monkeys spent most of their time clinging to the soft mother, indicating contact comfort is a primary factor in attachment. This study was published in Science in 1959 (Harlow & Zimmerman).

Development of Attachment

  • Newborns recognize their mother’s voice.
  • Infants show face preference and recognize their mother’s face within the first few days.
  • Separation anxiety first appears around 6-7 months and peaks in the second year.

Attachment Theory (John Bowlby)

  • Attachment in humans is analogous to imprinting.
  • It is an adaptive bond.
  • Disruptions to attachment may have long-term impacts on emotional and cognitive development.

Measuring Attachment

Attachment Styles (Observed in the "Strange Situation" Procedure)

  • Secure attachment: Welcomes return, seeks closeness, is comforted.
  • Insecure-Avoidant attachment: Not phased by mother leaving, ignores mother on return.
  • Insecure-Anxious attachment: Very upset on leaving, angry/rejecting on return, desires closeness but is difficult to soothe.
  • Disorganized attachment: Behavior is contradictory (e.g., approach mother but look away).

Social/Emotional Deprivation

What happens when early social/emotional experience is not typical?

  • When caregiving is not consistent early in life?
  • Can you make up for early deprivation?

Critical vs. Sensitive Periods

  • Critical Period: A period of time during development when certain experiences are crucial for a particular feature of development to emerge.
  • Sensitive Period: A period of time during which experience is optimal for the development of a particular function, but it is not critical.

Ethical Considerations

  • It is not ethical to experimentally deprive children of quality caregiving. Therefore, studies often examine:
    • Maternal depression
    • Orphans raised in institutions

Institutionalization

  • High child : caregiver ratio
  • Some basic needs met (e.g., nutrition/clothing)
  • Little one-to-one attention (even for infants)
  • Lack of touch
  • Lack of responsiveness.
INSERT BEIP VIDEO

Consequences of Institutionalization

  • Psycho-social dwarfism, stunted growth
  • Intellectual delay
  • Behavior problems
  • Inattention/Hyperactivity
  • Autism-like symptoms
  • Disturbances of attachment

Indiscriminate Friendliness

Indiscriminate Behaviors in Previously Institutionalized Young Children

A study by Gleason et al. (2014) examined indiscriminate social behaviors in 54-month-old children with a history of institutional care.

Key aspects:
  • Objective: Examine differences in indiscriminate social behaviors in children with a history of institutional care
  • Groups:
    • Care as usual group (CAUG), N=31N = 31
    • Foster care group (FCG), N=29N = 29
    • Never institutionalized group (NIG), N=29N = 29
  • Examined attachment & indiscriminate social behaviors
Stranger at the Door Task
  • Measure of attachment (DV): Percentage of children who left with the stranger.
  • Graph depicting % leaving with stranger for EIG (Ever-Institutionalized Group) and NIG (Never Institutionalized Group).

EIG=CAUG+FCGEIG = CAUG + FCG

Results

Graph showing percentage of children leaving with the stranger in CAUG, FCG, and NIG groups.

Conclusion: Differences between children who had/had not been institutionalized in terms of indiscriminate behavior. Intervention (foster care) may have reduced indiscriminate behavior (though differences were not significant).

Take-Home Message

  • Attachment relationships develop early in life due to experience with consistent caregiving.
  • Psychosocial deprivation can disrupt the attachment relationship.
  • Interventions (i.e., foster care) may ameliorate the effects of deprivation.

Memory Development

Continuity vs. Discontinuity

What is the nature of developmental change?
(a) Starfish: developmental continuity
(b) Dragonfly: developmental discontinuity

Do Infants Remember?

  • Infants can't tell us directly what they remember.
  • Can they show us?

Problem and Solution

  • Problem: Infants of different ages are often tested on different tasks.
  • Solution: Operant conditioning tasks such as the mobile task and train task.

Measures of Infant Memory

  • Operant conditioning: Learning contingencies between actions and consequences.
    • Mobile conjugate reinforcement task: Infants learn that their kicks produce movement in an overhead mobile. Carolyn Rovee-Collier, Rutgers University. Focuses on learning contigencies between actions and consequences. Infants kicking causes an overhead mobile to move and they learn this contigency.
    • Train task: Infants learn that their lever presses produce movement in a train around a track. Focuses on learning contigencies between actions and consequences. Infants pressing a lever causes a train to move and they learn this contigency.

Conclusion….

Revision

The Stranger at the door experiment showed that children in the previously-institutionalized group were more likely to leave with the stranger than children in the never-institutionalized group.