Chapter 6
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages – Oral Stage (Birth to Age 2)
Infants derive satisfaction primarily through the mouth (e.g., sucking, biting).
Weaning should be balanced to avoid fixation.
Fixation Consequences: Can manifest in adulthood as oral behaviors like nail-biting, smoking, overeating, or excessive talking.
Stressed the mother-infant bond, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship.
Proper weaning fosters independence and secure attachment.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory – Trust vs. Mistrust (Birth to Age 2)
Built upon Freud’s ideas but emphasized social and emotional development beyond feeding.
Key to development: Responsive caregiving (talking, comforting, meeting needs).
Infants develop trust when caregivers are consistent and nurturing.
Neglect or inconsistent care may lead to mistrust and cynicism about the world.
Key Supporting Study: Harlow & Zimmerman (1959)
Method: Infant monkeys were given two surrogate mothers:
Wire Mother (provided food but no comfort).
Cloth Mother (provided comfort but no food).
Findings: Monkeys preferred the Cloth Mother, suggesting that attachment is based on comfort and security, not just food.
Implication: Supports Erikson’s view that social bonds are built through emotional security, not just physical needs.
Additional Research: Schaffer & Emerson (1964)
Studied infant attachment and maternal care.
Found that feeding practices correlated with infant adjustment.
Reinforced the idea that attachment is influenced by responsive and consistent caregiving, aligning with Erikson’s emphasis on trust development.
Highlighted the importance of emotional availability in caregiving, which fosters secure attachments.
Synchrony in Parent–Infant Relationships
Definition: Synchrony is like a conversation where caregivers and infants take turns initiating and responding.
Infant Signals: Babies communicate needs through crying, smiling, quieting, and snuggling.
Caregiver Responses: Caregivers reciprocate with attachment behaviors, strengthening the bond.
Father-Infant Bond
Fathers rely on synchrony, not immediate post-birth contact, to form attachments.
Early attachment behaviors in fathers are similar to those of mothers.
Over time, specialized parenting roles emerge:
Fathers tend to engage in physical play and roughhousing.
Mothers focus more on routine caregiving and social interactions.
Parenting roles are flexible—both parents can participate in physical play and caregiving regardless of family structure.
Biological Responses in Parenting
Hormonal influences:
Mothers: Oxytocin (bonding, nurturing).
Fathers: Vasopressin (protection, bonding).
Both parents exhibit caregiving-related hormonal responses influenced by interaction quality and quantity.
Cultural Considerations
Research primarily focuses on North American and European families, introducing potential bias.
In societies valuing gender equality, fathers are more involved in caregiving.
Studies on Latino immigrant families suggest traditional gender roles may evolve in new cultural settings.
A broader perspective is needed to understand father-infant relationships across diverse cultures.
Gradual Emergence of Attachment:
Baby’s attachment develops gradually, based on the ability to recognize parents.
Infants can recognize their mother’s voice before birth and her sight and smell within days after birth.
Four Phases of Attachment (Bowlby, 1969):
Phase 1: Non focused Orienting and Signaling (birth to 3 months):
Babies exhibit behaviors like crying, smiling, and making eye contact to draw attention and signal needs to everyone they encounter.
Phase 2: Focus on One or More Figures (3 to 6 months):
Babies direct their signals to fewer people, usually those they spend the most time with, and are less responsive to unfamiliar people.
Phase 3: Secure Base Behavior (6 to 24 months):
True attachment emerges. Babies show proximity-seeking behaviors, following and clinging to caregivers, especially when anxious or in need.
Phase 4: Internal Model (24 months and beyond):
The internal model influences later relationships with early caregivers and other significant relationships throughout life.
Stranger and Separation Anxiety:
Infants show stranger anxiety by clinging to caregivers when strangers are present.
Separation anxiety is demonstrated by crying or protesting when separated from caregivers.
Both behaviors appear around 5 to 6 months, peak at 12 to 16 months, and then decline.
Stranger anxiety typically emerges first, followed by separation anxiety, which lasts longer.
Cultural Observations:
These anxiety behaviors are observed in children from various cultures and in both home-reared and day care children in the U.S.
Social Referencing:
Infants use caregivers’ emotional expressions as a guide in novel or threatening situations.
Babies look at caregivers’ faces to gauge their emotional reactions and respond accordingly.
Social referencing helps infants regulate their own emotions, using caregivers’ expressions to transition to a more pleasant state or escalate their feelings based on the caregiver’s response.
Ainsworth’s Category System:
Developed in the late 1970s to describe variations in the quality of the first attachment relationship.
Distinguishes between secure attachment and two types of insecure attachment.
Strange Situation Test:
A procedure to assess attachment by observing infants’ responses to the presence and absence of other people.
Consists of eight episodes involving the child with the mother, a stranger, alone, and during reunions.
Attachment Classifications:
Secure Attachment:
Child separates easily from caregiver, explores readily, seeks contact when threatened, and is easily consoled.
Prefers mother over stranger and greets mother positively upon reunion.
Insecure/Avoidant Attachment:
Child avoids contact with mother, especially during reunions, and shows no preference for mother over stranger.
Insecure/Ambivalent Attachment:
Child shows little exploration, is wary of strangers, and is greatly upset when separated from mother.
Not reassured by mother’s return or efforts to comfort.
Consistency of Attachment:
The security or insecurity of a child’s attachment remains consistent if the family environment is stable.
Major changes, like divorce or moving, can alter the security of attachment.
Impact of Major Upheavals:
A study followed middle-class White children from age 1 to 21 and found that attachment classifications changed due to major upheavals (e.g., death of a parent, abuse, serious illness).
Domestic violence can also affect attachment stability, with securely attached infants at risk of becoming insecurely attached preschoolers if domestic violence increases.
Internal Model of Attachment:
Bowlby suggested that attachment patterns are specific to each relationship in the first 2-3 years.
Preschoolers can be securely attached to one parent and insecurely attached to the other.
The quality of each relationship determines attachment security, which can change if the relationship changes.
By age 4 or 5, the internal model of attachment becomes more a property of the child.This model influences how children perceive and interact with others, affecting their social and emotional development throughout childhood and into adulthood.
Three-Category System for ASD Severity:
Clinicians use a system to describe the severity of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in three levels.
Level 3 ASD:
Children have very limited or nonexistent language skills.
Display stereotypic behaviors like hand-flapping and rocking.
Have a severely limited range of interests and often have intellectual disabilities.
Stereotypic behaviors, such as head-banging, can cause serious injuries.
Level 2 ASD:
Capable of some verbal communication with mild cognitive impairment.
Difficulty understanding others’ perspectives and often repeat inappropriate words or phrases.
Limited capacity for normal conversations and social interactions.
Level 1 ASD:
Have age-appropriate language and cognitive skills.
Diagnosed later in childhood due to unusual behaviors.
Intense focus on meaningless details and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.
Difficulty forming friendships by school age.
Treatments:
Intensive social skills training and behavior modification can reduce ASD symptoms.
Most effective when implemented during the first 3 years of life.
Early intervention programs that focus on peer interaction can also enhance social functioning.
Inborn and Environmental Factors:
The predisposition to form attachment relationships may be inborn.
Environmental factors, such as caregiver characteristics, also contribute to attachment.
Emotional Responsiveness:
Emotional availability of caregivers is crucial for secure attachment.
Distressed parents may meet physical needs but struggle with emotional availability.
Contingent Responsiveness:
Caregivers who respond appropriately to a child’s cues (e.g., smiling, talking, picking up) foster secure attachment.
Infants with responsive parents are more likely to be securely attached by 12 months.
Complexity of Caregiver Responsiveness:
Low responsiveness is linked to insecure/resistant attachment, influenced by infant temperament.
Infants with negative emotionality are more likely to develop insecure/resistant attachment with low-responsive caregivers.
Lack of Consensus on Temperament Dimensions:
Psychologists have not agreed on a basic set of temperament dimensions.
Thomas and Chess’s Theory:
Proposed three temperament classifications for about 65% of infants:
Easy Children (40%): Positive approach to new events, predictable cycles, generally happy, and adjust easily to change.
Difficult Children (10%): Irregular cycles, emotional negativity, irritability, and resistance to change.
Slow-to-Warm-Up Children (15%): Few intense reactions, nonresponsive to unfamiliar people.
Trait Perspective on Temperament:
Some researchers view temperament as a combination of various characteristics.
Example: High physical activity combined with emotional irritability vs. high activity with an easygoing nature.
Ongoing Research:
Researchers are still defining key dimensions of temperament.
One widely used measure includes 15 dimensions.
Temperament Dimensions:
Activity Level: Tendency to move often and vigorously.
Approach/Positive Emotionality/Sociability: Tendency to move toward new people, situations, or objects.
Surgency/Exuberance: High levels of intensity, activity, and sensation-seeking.
Inhibition/Anxiety: Tendency to respond with fear or withdraw from new people, situations, or objects.
Negative Emotionality/Irritability/Anger/Emotionality: Tendency to respond with anger, fussiness, or irritability; low threshold of frustration.
Effortful Control/Task Persistence: Ability to stay focused and manage attention and effort.
Distractibility: Tendency to lose focus during effortful tasks.
Trait Approach:
Useful for examining associations between infant temperament and later personality traits.
High activity level in infants often leads to outgoing personalities in later childhood and adulthood.
Inhibited behavior in infants is linked to shyness later in life.
Nature and Nurture in Temperament:
Both genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual differences in temperament.
Temperamental differences appear early in life, even during the prenatal period.
Heredity:
Studies of twins show that identical twins are more alike in temperament than fraternal twins.
Classic twin studies indicate a strong genetic effect on temperament.
Long-Term Stability:
Longitudinal studies suggest that temperamental differences are stable from preschool years into adulthood.
Consistency is particularly noted in children with difficult temperaments and in levels of inhibition.
Frontal Lobe Asymmetry - Research indicates that frontal lobe asymmetry may play a role in emotional regulation and temperament, with greater left-sided activation often associated with positive affect and approach behaviors, while right-sided activation is linked to withdrawal and negative emotions.
Dopamine -
Serotonin -
Temperament-Environment Interactions:
These interactions tend to strengthen temperamental traits.
People choose environments that reflect their temperaments, a process called niche picking.
Example: Sociable children seek contact with others, while less active children prefer solitary activities.
Influence of Parents and Others:
Parents and others can increase or decrease the effects of an infant’s inborn temperament.
A study found that controlling parents led to more behavioral inhibition (shyness) in children over time.
Accepting a child’s temperament may help them overcome shyness more than trying to change it.
Variability in Temperamental Dimensions:
Interactions outside the family influence some temperamental dimensions more than others.
Surgency is more influenced by interactions than negative affectivity or effortful control.
Some dimensions of temperament may be more influenced by heredity than environment.
Development of Self:
During the same period when a baby is forming an internal model of attachment and expressing temperament, they are also developing an internal model of self.
Freud and Piaget emphasized the importance of separateness from the mother and understanding object permanence for self-development.
Subjective Self:
The child’s first task is to understand that they are separate from others and that this self endures over time and space.
This understanding begins in the first 2 to 3 months through interactions with objects and people.
Social smiles, directed at others to elicit a response, appear around this time.
Emergence of Subjective Self:
By 8-12 months, with a complete understanding of object permanence, the subjective self is fully emerged.
The child realizes that they exist separately and have some permanence, similar to understanding that parents continue to exist when out of sight.
Objective Self:
The toddler’s task is to understand that they are an object in the world with properties like gender, size, and personality traits.
This self-awareness is called the objective self or categorical self.
Mirror Self-Recognition Test:
Used to determine when a child develops initial self-awareness.
Involves placing a baby in front of a mirror and observing their reactions.
A mark is placed on the baby’s nose to see if they recognize themselves by touching the mark on their own nose rather than the mirror image.
Emotional Self:
Provides infants the ability to decipher emotional cues and relate others’ feelings to their own.
A well-developed emotional self at age 2 enables more meaningful interactions.
Development of Emotional Self:
Begins with identifying changes in emotion in voices and faces.
At birth, neonates can distinguish fearful, happy, and angry voices, attending longer to happy voices.
Facial Expression Recognition:
Infants notice changes in facial expressions at 2 to 3 months.
Detecting fearful faces is crucial for survival, with 3-month-olds better at detecting fear than happiness.
By 5 to 7 months, infants pay more attention to fearful expressions, similar to adults.
Using Emotional Cues:
Infants use vocal and facial expressions to understand others’ emotional states.
At 9 months, infants match facial expressions with the emotional tone of voices they hear.
Complexity of Nonparental and Parental Care:
Both types of care involve complex interactions among numerous variables.
Effects cannot be studied independently.
Variety of Nonparental Care Arrangements:
Includes care by grandparents, day-care centers, and other settings.
Infants enter care at different ages and for varying lengths of time.
Some have consistent caregivers, while others frequently change settings.
Parental Priorities in Child-Care Choices:
Parents prioritize cost, location, and availability over quality of care.
Statistics on Care Arrangements:
A study found that 81% of young children in Maryland moved from one care setting to another at least once over 15 months.
Physical Development:
Nonparental care is associated with a higher likelihood of overweight in infants and young children.
Critical period for developing lifelong obesity is between ages 4 and 6.
Importance of determining causes to implement changes in practices and educate parents on nutrition and exercise.
Cognitive Development:
High-quality day care can benefit children’s cognitive development, especially for children from poor families.
Some studies show significant gains in school performance after attending enriched day care.
However, research findings are inconsistent, with some studies showing no consistent cognitive effects.
Physical Development
Nonparental Care and Overweight Risk:
Associated with a higher likelihood of overweight in infants and young children.
Potential influences include differing meal practices and activity levels.
Critical Period for Lifelong Obesity:
Ages 4 to 6 are crucial for developing patterns that can lead to lifelong obesity.
Habits related to food intake and physical activity form during this period.
Importance of Understanding Causes:
Identifying underlying causes of weight gain in children is vital.
Knowledge can inform strategies, education for parents, and revisions to care practices.
Cognitive Development
Benefits of High-Quality Day Care:
Can significantly benefit cognitive development, especially in children from poor families.
Access to enriched learning environments enhances growth opportunities.
School Performance Gains:
Attending high-quality day care may lead to improved academic performance.
Early interventions can have lasting positive effects on education.
Inconsistent Research Findings:
Research on cognitive effects from day care can be inconsistent.
Some studies show minimal to no impact; outcomes may vary based on family dynamics, care quality, and socio-economic factors.