Infant psych - Emotion in Infants

  • Functional approach: emotions are relational

  • Structural approach: emotions are universal

  • Emotional studies often take a structural approach

  • Commonly defined as:

    • feelings

    • expressions

    • action units(AU)

    • facial action coding (FACs)

      • Ekman & Friesen 1978: tried to find emotions and physiological measure/standard and failed

    • Physiological

      • heart rate

      • pupil dilation

      • nerve conduction

  • Functionalist: person’s attempt maintain change or terminate a relation between self and the environment on matters significant to the person

  • Functional approach is hard to study because you need to measure feelings, expressions, and physiology in conjunction and take in account subjective differences

  • Role of cognition in emotion

  • Emotion is generated by a cognitive or motivational or relational principle (Lazarus 1991)

  • Cognition by itself is NOT affectogenic

  • Neither is motivation (Frijda 1986)

  • Temperament: individual differences in susceptibility to emotional arousal

  • Threshold to cry, smile, laugh, get angry, be active

  • Intensity: how strong the emotional reaction

  • Duration: how long-lasting the emotional reaction

  • Personality is a learned product based on experiences,

  • Rene Spitz

  • homogenous changes in 6-8 months of age, same as 6 weeks; children who lose their mother at that age are more inclined to be sick and get depressed

  • Developmental quotient does not come back after 5 months of age

  • DQ: weight, height, IQ

  • Losing mother between 6-9 months → more depressed and sick

  • Libido: self-body pleasure

  • Aggressive energy toward the mother figure so without mother figure the energy has to be directed inward

  • basic universal emotions

  • blind vs sighted athletes still look the same

  • harder to analyze blended or social emotions like jealousy or love

  • Rock-A-Bye Baby: Deprivation of mother role (documentary)

    • Child experience first social interactions and emotions with its mother

    • English psychologist Jon 1944 Early separating leads to personality disorders marked by lack of affection or emotion towards others

    • Dr. Harry Harlow, monkey would prefer cloth mother substitute over wire mother substitute and spend as much as 15 hours with them

      • Isolation-reared monkey show:

      • rocking behavior

      • hypersensitivity

      • avoidance of touch

      • brain impairment

      • self-destructive behaviors (biting limbs, thumb. etc.

    • Human children deprived of mothering show the same behavior and typically also have brain damage/impairment

  • Friedburg studies the effect of blindness on early emotional social development

  • Premature infants that are rocked show better development than their unrocked counterparts

  • Emotion expression

  • Emotion perception

  • Emotion generations

  • Ethological Attachment Theory

    • Psychoanalysis

      • Focus on internal states and on defenses

    • Ethology: study of naturalistic animal behaviors

      • Parent is a haven of safety and a secure base for exploration

      • animals closer to humans seem to show the above behavior, whereas other animals have different kinds of behaviors that fit their situations

    • evolutionary bio

      • attachment linked to survival

      • attachment is evolutionarily adaptativw

    • cognitive science

    • we develop a set of expectations about what will happen in our interactions with our caregivers

  • Fundamental premises

    • natural selection behavior is important

    • proximity-seeking behavior has survival value

    • mutual responsiveness and sensitivity critical for attachment

    • indiv difference in attachment result from consistent appropriate responsiveness to the infants proximity-seeking signals

    • attachment is different from attachment behaviors

    • behaviors with very different characteristics are interchangeable b/c they serve similar ends

  • John Bowlby documentary

    • strong connection with nanny

    • psychiatry

    • medical training

    • psychoanalyst training

    • Melanie Klein - child psychologist; trained him

    • resistant to psychoanalytical approach? and

    • Attachment and Loss

      • cultural belief: the more losses the easier it is

      • Bowlby: there’s no evidence and believed the reversed

    • only wanted attachment theory to be a facet of psychology not a basis

  • Terminology

  • Attachment: a positive bond of affcetion between two people that endures over time and space. It’s indexed by proximity-seeking especially in times of fear/stress

  • Four systems in attachment:

  • Behavioral system

    • Function: proximity infant to mother

    • Signaling behavior: sm

  • Fear-warines system

  • Exploration system

    • Function: learning about environment; adaptation

  • Affiliation system

    • A revision of Bowlby’s view is concept of “felt securiy”

    • imagined not physical

  • Behavioral systems for survival

    • Threat → Distress → Behavioral system

  • Phases of attachment: “fall in love”

    • Phase 1 (0-3 mo): Indiscriminate responsiveness to humans

      • social smile: powerful attachment behavior

      • babbling, cry, holding, rooting, sucking, and reflexes

      • baby can form attach to/stay with anybody

    • Phase 2 (3-6 mo): Focusing on Familiar people

    • Phase 3 (6 mo- 3 years): Intense Attachment & Active Proximity seeking

      • separation anxiety

      • stranger danger

      • actively follow once crawling

      • secure base from which to explore

      • internal working model (Bowlby)

    • Phase 4 (3yrs - end of childhood): Partnership behavior

      • consider the caretaker’s plans or goal

      • parental substitutes

  • Importance of Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Paradigm

  • For general theory:

    • triumph of ethology

    • detects continuity in development

    • assesses quality of parent-child

  • Insecure-Avoidant Attachment

    • disengaged

    • does not visibly show emotion but physiologically stressed

  • Insecure-Resistant

    • Results from: inconsistent, hit or miss, chaotic parenting

    • Reaction: Extremely distressed when mother leaves; ambivalent upon return; resentful/resistant when the mother initiates

  • A - Avoidant

    • low proximity seeking - not trying to follow

    • low maintenance of contact

    • high proximity avoidance

    • low contact resistance

  • B - Secure

    • high proximity seeking

    • high maintenance of contact if distressed

    • low proximity avoidance

    • low contact resistance

    • stranger cannot comfort, only caregiver (secure base) can

  • C - Ambivalent

    • high proximity seeking

    • high maintenance of contact

    • low proximity avoidance

    • high contact resistance

  • D - disorganized

    • identified by Mary Maine et al.

    • no coherent method of organizing response to stress

    • “conflict” behavior: freezing all movements, following a stranger when stranger leaves, making circles, staying at the end of the room

    • “collapse”: lying down on the belly on the ground

    • Parent: the haven of safety also source of fear

    • 5% of population, 13% in high-risk samples (loss, trauma or maltreatment)

  • Criticisms

  • relation between maternal sensitivity ratings and strange situation classifications (Goldsmith & Alansky, 1987)

  • Metaanalysis correlation is .17 (highest possible is 1.0)

  • Conclusion — findings are positive but not robust

  • Attachment is multifacted theory with many influencing factors

  • Stability of Classification

  • B is most stable (doesn’t change)

  • other classification can change to B or other types

  • D is also very stable

  • toddlers are chosen over infants because younger infants have limited proximity seeking capabilities

  • Cross-national studies

  • US: most babies are secure

  • Japan: no avoidant types

  • Germany: most are avoidantly attached

  • Bowlby = combo of psychology, ethology, psychoanalysis,