Chapter 2: Infancy

Module 2.3

Social and Personality Development in Infancy

Basic Familiar Expressions

• Remarkably similar across the most diverse cultures

• Nonverbal encoding - nonverbal expression of emotion, fairly consistent among people of all ages

• Facial Expressions - Important nonverbal communication tool used in everyday social interactions

Stranger Anxiety

– Caution and wariness displayed by infants when encountering an unfamiliar person. Such anxiety typically appears in the second half of the first year.

– Memory developsability to recognize familiar people emergesabililty to anticipate and predict events increasesappearance of unknown person causes fear

– Common around 6 months– Significant difference among infants and situations

Separation AnxietyWhat happened when the father left? Could you tell why the child was crying?

Did the child respond to the efforts of the other person in the room? Why do you think the child acted this way? What happened when the father returned?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6QtuU1L_A8

Separation Anxiety

• Distress displayed by infants when a customary care provider departs

Separation Anxiety

• Universal across cultures

• Begins about 7-8 months; peaks around 14 months

• Largely attributable to same reasons as stranger anxiety

Stranger Anxiety

Stranger and Separation Anxiety

• Stranger anxiety and separation anxiety represent important social progress. They reflect both cognitive advances and the growing emotional and social bonds between infants and their caregiver.

Smiling

• Earliest smiles: little meaning• 6 to 9 weeks:

– Begin reliable smiling– Smile first relatively indiscriminate then selective

• 18 months:– Social smiling more frequent toward humans than

nonhuman objects

• End of 2nd year: – Use smiling purposefully– Show sensitivity to emotional expressions of others

Facial and Vocal Expressions

• Infants seem to be able to discriminate vocal expressions of emotion at a slightly earlier age than they discriminate facial expressions.

• Infants interpret others’ facial and vocal expressions that carry meaning– In first 6 to 8 weeks: little attention paid to facial

expressions due to limited visual precision – By 4 months: understand underlying emotions tied to

facial and vocal expressions of others– By 5 months: discriminate happy and sad vocal

expressions– By 7 months: respond to appropriately matched

vocal and facial expressions

Social Referencing

• Social referencing - is the intentional search for information about others’ feelings to help explain the meaning of uncertain circumstances and events.

• It is a fairly sophisticated social ability: Infants need it not only to understand the significance of others’ behavior, by using such cues as their facial expressions, but also understand the meaning of those behaviors within the context of a specific situation.

– First occurs around 8-9 months– Intentional search for cues– Aids in understanding others’ behavior in context

Development of Self-Awareness

• Roots of self-awareness – Begin to grow around 12 months– Influenced by cultural upbringing

• Research:– Rouge spot

• Average awareness begins 17 to 24 months• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJFo3trMuD8

– Complicated tasks requests• Awareness of inabilities around 23-24 months

Theory of Mind

• Theory of mind– Knowledge and beliefs how mind works and

influences behavior– Child explanations used to explain how others

think– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbQJms8F

3x8– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MapnGqrY

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Theory of Mind• Young children begin to understand that others’ behaviors

have some meaning and that the behaviors they see people enacting are designed to accomplish particular goals, in contrast to the “behaviors” of inanimate objects.

• By the age of 2, infants begin to demonstrate the rudiments of empathy. At 24 months of age, infants sometimes comfort others or show concern for them. In order to do this, they need to be aware of the emotional states of others.

• During their second year, infants begin to use deception, both

in games of “pretend” and in outright attempts to fool others. A child who plays “pretend” and who uses falsehoods must be aware that others hold beliefs about the world—beliefs that can be manipulated.

Attachment• Harry Harlow gave infant monkeys the choice of cuddling a

wire “monkey” that provided food or a soft, terry cloth monkey that was warm but did not provide food. Their preference was clear: Baby monkeys spent most of their time clinging to the cloth monkey, although they made occasional expeditions to the wire monkey to nurse. Harlow suggested that the preference for the warm cloth monkey provided contact comfort.

• Harlow’s work illustrates that food alone is not the basis for attachment. Given that the monkeys’ preference for the soft cloth “mothers” developed some time after birth, these findings are consistent with the research showing little support for the existence of a critical period for bonding between human mothers and infants immediately following birth.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsA5Sec6dAI

Attachment

Earliest human research suggests attachment based on needs for safety and security

• Bowlby: – Attachment provides home base through qualitatively unique

relationship with individual who best provides safety– As children become more independent, they progressively roam

further away from their secure base– In Bowlby’s view, attachment is based primarily on infants’

needs for safety and security—their genetically determined motivation to avoid predators. As they develop, infants come to learn that their safety is best provided by a particular individual.

Attachment

• Ainsworth Strange Situation– Widely used experimental technique to measure

attachment – Sequence of staged episodes that illustrate strength

of attachment between child and (typically) mother

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTsewNrHUHU

– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6725Sw_4Cs

Attachment

Does the quality of attachment have significant consequences for later life

relationships?Yes• Securely attached 1- year-old

males show fewer psychological difficulties at older ages

• Securely attached infants are more socially and emotionally competent later and more positively viewed

• Adult romantic relationships are associated with attachment style

developed during infancy

But• Children who do not have a

secure attachment style during infancy do not invariably experience difficulties later in life

• Children with a secure attachment at age 1 do not always have good adjustment later in life

What roles do parents play in producing attachment?

Mothers• Sensitivity to their infants’ needs and desires is

hallmark of mothers of securely attached infants– Aware of moods and feelings– Responsive in face-to-face interactions– Feeds “on demand”– Demonstrates warmth and affection– Responds rapidly and positively to cues

Fathers• Expressions of nurturance, warmth, affection,

support, and concern are extremely important to infant emotional and social well-being

Feldman’s Conclusions

• Attachment should be viewed as a general tendency, that varies in way it is expressed according to how actively caregivers in a society seek to instill independence in their children

• Secure attachment, as defined by the Western-oriented Strange Situation, is seen earliest in cultures that promote independence, but may be delayed in societies in which independence is less important cultural value

Social Interaction with Peers

• Babies react positively to presence of peers from early in life and engage in rudimentary forms of social interaction

• Infants’ sociability is expressed in several ways:– Earliest months of life - they smile, laugh, and

vocalize while looking at their peers.– Nine- to twelve-month-olds - mutually present and

accept toys, particularly to familiar others and play social games, such as peek-a-boo or crawl-and-chase.

Social Interaction and Brain Development

• Mirror neurons– Fire not only when an individual enacts

particular behavior, but also when individual simply observes another organism carrying out same behavior

– Help infants understand others’ actions and to develop theory of mind

– Dysfunction may be related to some developmental disorders such as autism

Personality

• Sum total of enduring characteristics differentiating one individual from another

• From birth onward, infants begin to show unique, stable traits and behaviors that ultimately lead to their development as distinct, special individuals

Erikson: Psychosocial Development

Early experiences responsible for shaping key aspects of personalities

Each stage is viewed in terms of a crisis – the way this crisis is resolved is what is important

Continuum of each crisis (example):Trust Mistrust

Erikson: Psychosocial Development

• Stage 1: trust versus mistrust – Trust = sense of hope and success– Mistrust = sense of harsh, unfriendly world

• If infants are able to develop trust, they experience a sense of hope, which permits them to feel as if they can fulfill their needs successfully. On the other hand, feelings of mistrust lead infants to see the world as harsh and unfriendly, and they may have later difficulties in forming close bonds with others.

Erikson: Psychosocial Development• Stage 2: autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt stage

– Autonomy = sense of independence– Shame and doubt = sense of self-doubt and unhappiness

• During the end of infancy, children enter the autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt stage, which lasts from around 18 months to 3 years. During this period, children develop independence and autonomy if parents encourage exploration and freedom within safe boundaries. However, if children are restricted and overly protected, they feel shame, self-doubt, and unhappiness.

Temperament

– Temperament encompasses patterns of arousal and emotionality that are consistent and enduring characteristics of an individual

– Refers to how children behave, as opposed to what they do or why they do it

– Displays as differences in general disposition from birth, largely due initially to genetic factors

– Tends to be fairly stable well into adolescence– Is not fixed and unchangeable and can be modified by

childrearing practices

Dimensions of Temperament

Categorizing TemperamentBabies can be described according to one of several temperament profiles:

• Easy babies have a positive disposition. Their body functions operate regularly, and they are adaptable. They are generally positive, showing curiosity about new situations, and their emotions are moderate or low in intensity. This category applies to about 40 percent (the largest number) of infants.

• Difficult babies have more negative moods and are slow to adapt to new situations. When confronted with a new situation, they tend to withdraw. About 10 percent of infants belong in this category.

• Slow-to-warm babies are inactive, showing relatively calm reactions to their environment. Their moods are generally negative, and they withdraw from new situations, adapting slowly. Approximately 15 percent of infants are slow-to-warm.

• As for the remaining 35 percent, they cannot be consistently categorized. These children show a variety of combinations of characteristics. For instance, one infant may have relatively sunny moods, but react negatively to new situations, or another may show little stability of any sort in terms of general temperament.

Thomas and Chess, 1980

Temperament

Children’s long-term adjustment depends on the goodness-of-fit of their particular temperament and the nature and demands of the environment in which they find themselves. Certain temperaments are, in general, more adaptive than others. The key determinant seems to be the way parents react to their infants’ difficult behavior. Temperament seems to be at least weakly related to infants’ attachment to their adult caregivers. Cultural differences also have a major influence on the consequences of a particular temperament.

Gender Development

• Behavior exhibited by girls and boys is interpreted in very different ways by adults. How?– Parent-child play patterns– Different styles of activity and interaction from

parents– Parental gender-based interpretation of child

behavior

Gender Development

• Gender refers to our sense of being male or female.

• Most agree that boys and girls do experience at least partially different worlds based on gender.

• Some gender differences are fairly clear from the time of birth. For example, male infants tend to be more active and fussier than female infants.

• Boys’ sleep tends to be more disturbed than that of girls. Boys grimace more, although no gender difference exists in the overall amount of crying.

• There is also some evidence that male newborns are more irritable than female newborns, although the findings are inconsistent.

Gender Development

• All cultures prescribe gender roles for males and females

• These roles differ greatly between cultures• Considerable amount of disagreement over

extent and causes of gender differences• Differences between male and female infants,

are generally minor

Gender Roles

Gender differences emerge with age• By age 1:

– Able to distinguish between males and females– Girls prefer to play with dolls or stuffed animals, while

boys seek out blocks and trucks

• By age 2:– Boys behave more independently and less

compliantly than girls

• May be reinforced by parental choices or by levels hormonal levels

Gender Differences

• Differences in behavior between boys and girls begin in infancy and future continue throughout childhood (and beyond)

• Although gender differences have complex causes, representing some combination of innate, biologically related factors and environmental factors

• These differences play profound role in social and emotional development of infants

Family Life in 21st Century

• Number of single-parent families has increased dramatically in last two decades

• Average size of families is shrinking

• Despite overall decline, half million births to teenage women, the vast majority of whom are unmarried

• Close to 50 percent of children under age of 3 are cared for by other adults while their parents work, and more than half of mothers of infants work outside home

• One in three US children lives in low income households

Child Care

Child Care

• Good news: research finds little or no difference in the strength or nature of parental attachment bonds of infants who have been in high quality child care compared with infants raised solely by their parents.

• Ballooning body of research finds that the effects of participation in group child care are neither unambiguously positive or unambiguously negative. What is clear, though, is that the quality of child care is critical.

Child Care

Good news: Direct benefits

• High-quality child care outside home produces only minor differences

Good news: Indirect benefits

• Children in lower income households and those whose mothers are single may benefit

Bad news:• Infants less secure when

in low-quality child care

• Children who spend long hours lower have ability to work independently

• Children who spend ten or more hours a week in group child care for a year or more have an increased probability of being disruptive in class

Choosing the Right Infant Care Provider The American Psychological Association suggests

that parents consider these questions in choosing a program:

• Are there enough providers? • Are group sizes manageable? • Has the center complied with all governmental

regulations, and is it licensed?• Do the people providing the care seem to like what they

are doing?• What do the caregivers do during the day? • Are the children safe and clean? • What training do the providers have in caring for

children? • Is the environment happy and cheerful?