Chapter 7: Socioemotional Development in Infancy
Learning Goals
Learning Goal 1: Discuss emotional and personality development in infancy.
A. Define emotion.
B. Discuss the biological and environmental influences on emotion.
C. Distinguish between the three types of infant cries.
D. Describe the two types of infant smiles.
E. Discuss fear and the concepts of stranger anxiety and separation protest.
F. Define social referencing and discuss how it helps an infant interpret situations.
G. Explain emotional regulation and how it relates to coping.
H. Define temperament.
I. Define and discuss the different classifications of temperament.
J. Discuss how biology, gender, and culture impact temperament.
K. Define goodness of fit and discuss why it is important.
L. Discuss the implications of temperamental variations for parenting.
M. Describe Erikson’s first stage of psychosocial development.
N. Discuss the development of the self in infancy.
O. Describe Erikson’s second stage of psychosocial development and how it relates to the development of independence.
Learning Goal 2: Describe how attachment develops in infancy.
A. Compare and contrast the theories of infant attachment.
B. Describe the four phases of attachment based on John Bowlby’s work.
C. Discuss Mary Ainsworth’s strange situation and classifications of attachment.
D. Explain the importance of attachment.
E. Discuss how caregiving styles are linked to the quality of attachment.
Learning Goal 3: Explain how social contexts influence the infant’s development.
A. Describe the transition to parenthood.
B. Define reciprocal socialization and the use of scaffolding in infant socioemotional development.
C. Compare and contrast maternal and paternal caregiving.
D. Compare and contrast child care in the United States with that of other countries around the world.
E. Discuss the effects of child care on infants.
F. Describe some of the findings of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s longitudinal study of child-care experiences.
Overview of Resources
Chapter Outline / Resources You Can UseEmotional and Personality Development / Learning Goal 1: Discuss emotional and personality development in infancy.
Emotional Development
Temperament
Personality Development / Lecture Suggestion 1: Biological Basis of Shyness and Sociability
Lecture Suggestion 2: How Do Toddlers Regulate Their Emotions?
~Classroom Activity 1: Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory and Parenting
~Classroom Activity 2: Baby in a Box Personal Application 1: Don’t Be Such a Cry Baby!
LResearch Project 1: Development of Self in Infants
LResearch Project 2: Infant Crying: A Communicative Act
Attachment / Learning Goal 2: Describe how attachment develops in infancy.
What is Attachment?
Individual Differences in Attachment
Caregiving Styles and Attachment / Lecture Suggestion 3: The Influence of Caregiving on Attachment Classification
Lecture Suggestion 4: Infant Temperament, Attachment, and Criminal Behavior
LResearch Project 3: Attachment Behaviors
Video: Attachment Theory
Social Contexts / Learning Goal 3: Explain how social contexts influence the infant’s development.
The Family
Child Care / Lecture Suggestion 5: Father Love
~Classroom Activity 3: Assessment of Child Care in Your Community
~Classroom Activity 4: What Are the Child Care Laws in Your State?
Personal Application 2: The Big Debate
Personal Application 3: Remember When…
LResearch Project 4: Assessing Child Care Quality: Field Observations
Video: Quality Child Care Indicators
Review
/ ~Classroom Activity 5: Critical-Thinking Multiple-Choice Questions and Suggested Answers~Classroom Activity 6: Critical-Thinking Essay Questions and Suggestions for Helping Students Answer Essay Questions
Resources
Lecture Suggestions
Lecture Suggestion 1: Biological Basis of Shyness and Sociability
Learning Goal 1: Discuss emotional and personality development in infancy.
The purpose of this lecture is to examine the biological basis of shyness and sociability. Kagan (1998) found that about 20 percent of 4-month-olds are easily upset by novelty, whereas 40 percent thrive on novelty and new experiences. Approximately 30 percent of children in these extreme groups maintained their temperamental style as they grew older. That is, the ones who were easily upset as infants became fearful, inhibited toddlers and preschoolers. The ones who thrived on novelty developed into outgoing, uninhibited preschoolers. Kagan proposes that the arousal of the amygdala (inner brain structure that controls avoidance reactions) may be responsible for the individual differences seen in temperament styles. In some children—especially the shy, inhibited ones—minimal stimulation is necessary to excite the amygdala and its connections to the cerebral cortex. In contrast, the same level of stimulation evokes minimal excitation in the highly social, uninhibited children.
In addition, shy infants and preschoolers display greater right than left frontal brain activity. Sociable children show the opposite pattern. The left cortical hemisphere is specialized to respond to positive emotion, whereas the right hemisphere is associated with negative emotion (Calkins, Fox, & Marshall, 1996). Neural activity in the amygdala is transmitted to the frontal lobes and may influence temperament styles. There are other physiological differences between shy and sociable children:
· The heart rates of shy children are consistently higher and speed up further in response to novel events (Snidman & others, 1995).
· Cortisol, a stress hormone, tends to be higher in shy children (Gunnar & Nelson, 1994).
· Shy children show more pupil dilation and their blood pressure rises more during novel events (Kagan, 1994).
Sources:
Calkins, S. D., Fox, N. A., & Marshall, T. R. (1996). Behavioral and physiological antecedents of inhibited and uninhibited behavior. Child Development, 67, 523–540.
Gunnar, M. R., & Nelson, C. A. (1994). Event-related potentials in year-old infants: Relations with emotionality and cortisol. Child Development, 65, 80–94.
Kagan, J. (1994). Galen’s prophecy. New York: Basic Books.
Kagan, J. (1998). Biology and the child. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3, Social, emotional, and personality development (5th ed.). pp. 177–236. New York: Wiley.
Snidman, N., Kagan, J., Riordan, L., & Shannon, D. C. (1995). Cardiac function and behavioral reactivity. Psychophysiology, 32, 199–207.
Lecture Suggestion 2: How Do Toddlers Regulate Their Emotions?
Learning Goal 1: Discuss emotional and personality development in infancy.
The purpose of this lecture is to examine research that describes how toddlers regulate their emotions. Before you talk about the research findings, have students generate methods they have used or have seen others use to calm a distressed toddler. Did some work better than others? Were all toddlers calmed by the same techniques?
Grolnick, Bridges, and Connell (1996) studied four behaviors that toddlers typically use to regulate their negative affective responses. The modulating behaviors they examined included symbolic reassurance (repeating phrases such as “I’m a big girl” or “Mommy will be back later”), shifting attention (looking away, high involvement in toy play), self-soothing comfort (thumb-sucking, hair-stroking, seeking comfort contact from caregiver), and maintaining focus on the stressful situation (active searching for the mother). Grolnick et al. assessed these behaviors both during separation from the mother and when faced with a delay in receiving a desirable gift.
Individual differences were seen, in that some toddlers were very upset by both of the situations, whereas others were only mildly distressed. Active engagement with toys was a very effective method for coping with the distressed toddler and was used the most when an adult was present. The children who used active involvement in toy play as a regulatory event were the least distressed. The ones who maintained focus on the stressful situation continued to be the most upset. It is important to note that the researchers acknowledge that these findings do not elucidate the causal relations between coping strategy and emotional expressiveness.
Source:
Grolnick, W. S., Bridges, L. J., & Connell, J. P. (1996). Emotion regulation in two-year-olds: Strategies and emotional expression in four contexts. Child Development, 67, 928–941.
Lecture Suggestion 3: The Influence of Caregiving on Attachment Classification
Learning Goal 2: Describe how attachment develops in infancy.
Learning Goal 3: Explain how social contexts influence the infant’s development.
The purpose of this lecture is to examine influences on individual differences in attachment security. Rosen and Burke (1999) assessed attachment relationships within the context of two-parent families with two young children. With this approach, they could examine attachment relationships with the mother and father and make comparisons between the younger and older children. Given the interactive nature of families, it is important to examine relationships in this context. In this study, the mean age for the younger child was 1 year, 10 months, and the Strange Situation was used to assess attachment security. The older children had a mean age of 4 years, 8 months, and interpersonal interactions were used to assess attachment quality. Parental caregiving scores for both children were obtained as well.
Concordance in both younger and older children’s attachments to their mothers and fathers was found. Based on the caregiving scores, parents were consistent in their caregiving behavior toward their two children. Yet, the patterns of attachment to their two children were not necessarily the same. It was equally likely that there was congruence as incongruence. Caregiving and attachment were associated for younger children and their mothers, but the association was only moderate for other dyad combinations. Rosen and Burke hypothesize that characteristics of children and their parents differentially influence attachment at different ages. They propose that younger children place a greater demand on mothers for accommodation based on their individual behavioral styles. This difference may account for the stronger relationship between caregiving and attachment for mothers and younger children. The weaker association for the older children’s attachment and caregiving may be explained by the lessened significance of caregiving in determining attachment status for children in early childhood.
Rosen and Burke conclude that temperament and children’s cognitive representations of attachment interact with parental caregiving and parents’ cognitive representation of attachment to determine attachment security. While parental caregiving does influence attachment security, it appears to account for only a modest portion of the individual differences in attachment relationships.
Source:
Rosen, K. S., & Burke, P. B. (1999). Multiple attachment relationships within families: Mothers and fathers and two young children. Developmental Psychology, 35, 436–444.
Lecture Suggestion 4: Infant Temperament, Attachment, and Criminal Behavior
Learning Goal 2: Describe how attachment develops in infancy.
Attachment is not just an important part of infant and early childhood development. Our attachment relationship with our primary caregivers impacts later childhood and adolescent development in several domains.
Elaine Cassel and Douglas A. Bernstein study crime as a developmental event. They have written about connection between temperament and attachment and the development of criminal behavior (2006). They cite the following as support for the role of temperament and attachment in the development of later criminal behavior:
· Infants whose temperaments facilitate the development of secure attachment tend to become children who are socially and emotionally competent, cooperative, enthusiastic, good at problem-solving, compliant and controlled, popular and playful. .
· On the other hand, infants whose temperaments engender fussiness, overactivity, and a tendency not to respond to parents' attempts to comfort them are more likely to become children who conflict with, and are rejected by, their peers, thus leading to low self-esteem, truancy, and eventually delinquency.
· Inherited temperamental patterns that are associated with insecure attachment, and which are not altered by counteracting parental influences, appear to at least increase the probability of child behaviors that set off the chain of negative reactions and further misbehavior that so often leads to aggressiveness, violence, and crime.
· Connectedness to parents (defined as feelings of warmth, love, and caring from parents) is a significant factor in protecting adolescents from engaging in substance use and violence, according to conclusions based on surveys and interviews with 100,000 7th-12th graders.
The good news is that parents can be taught how to respond to their infants in order to make secure attachment more likely. Programs which provide such mentoring for mothers living in disadvantaged environments have been effective in preventing crime among potentially high risk children.
Sources:
Cassel, E., & Bernstein, D.A. (2006). Criminal behavior (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NY: Erlbaum.
Clarke-Stewart, K. A. (1988). Parents' effects on children's development: A decade of progress? Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 9, 41-84.
Elicker, J., & Sroufe, L. A. (1993). Predicting peer competence and peer relationships in childhood from early parent-child relationships. In R. Parke & G. Ladd (eds.). Family-peer relationships: Modes of linkage. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Resnick, M. D., Bearman, P. S., Blum, R. W., Bauman, K. E., Harris, K. M., Jones, J. (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health. Journal of the American Medical Association, 278, 10, 823-832.
Rubin, K. H., LeMare, L. J., & Lollis, S. (1990). Social withdrawal in children: Developmental pathways to peer rejection. In S. R. Asher & J. D. Coie (Eds.), Peer rejection in childhood (pp. 217-252).
Rutter, M. (1997). Nature-nurture integration: The example of antisocial behavior. American Psychologist, 52(4), 390-398.
Trembley, R., & Craig, W. (1995). Developmental crime prevention. In M. Tonry & D. P. Farrington (Eds.), Building a safer society: Crime and Justice (Vol. 19). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wartner, U., Grossman, K., Fremmer-Bombik, E., & Seuss, G. (1994). Attachment patterns at age six in south Germany: Predictability from infancy and implications for preschool behavior. Child Development, 65, 1014-1027.
Yoshikawa, H. (1994). Prevention as cumulative protection: Effects of early family support and education on chronic delinquency and its risks. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 28-54.
Lecture Suggestion 5: Father Love
Learning Goal 3: Explain how social contexts influence the infant’s development.
The purpose of this lecture is to examine the role of fathers in children’s development. The research reviewed illustrates that father love is influential in children’s psychological well-being and health and in an array of psychological and behavioral problems. Historically, the cultural construction of fatherhood had two main emphases. The first emphasis was that fathers were incapable of competent child rearing (they were biologically unsuited for the job). The second emphasis was that fathers’ influence was not important, or peripheral at best. These cultural views influenced the scientific community as well. Researchers virtually ignored the role of fathers in children’s development in behavioral science research for the first seven decades of the 20th century. More recently, researchers have attempted to better understand the influence of father love on children’s development. Rohner (1998) defines father love in terms of parental acceptance and rejection. Acceptance involves real and perceived feelings and behaviors of nurturance, affection, support, etc. Rejection involves the absence or withdrawal of these real and perceived feelings and behaviors. Rohner reviewed research that highlights the relationship between father love and offspring development.