Reflexes, Innate Behavior, and Evolution

• Reflexes are involuntary responses to external stimulation.
• Some reflexes are permanent, while others are present only in the first years of life.
• The Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale uses reflexes to measure a baby's sensory, motor, and perceptual capabilities, which can help determine the baby's health.

Miller's General Orientation Theory

• Contains 4 concepts.
• The same behavior found in all members of the same species.
• A behavior is innate if it is stereotypical for a species, present without previous relevant experience, universal to the species, and unchanged throughout lifetime.
• Reflexes and fixed action patterns are types of innate behavior.
• Fixed action patterns are triggered by a specific sign stimulus.
• Waddington described evolution as the 'epigenetic landscape model' of the rolling ball which may slightly deviate in its path, but it will end up in the same end place all the time.

Evolutionary Perspective

• Phylogenetic change is change in a species over time.
• Ontogenetic change is development over one's lifetime.
• New behaviors and changes in species occur through genetic mutation, while changes in individual behavior arise through personal experiences.

Learning Predispositions

• Certain dispositions would affect how someone learn.
• Sensitive/critical periods are when an is biologically ready to learn a new behavior.
• Imprinting refers to learning to follow a stimulus and preferring it over others.
• General and specific learning skills affect behavior.
• In humans, adaptation demonstrates the capacity to adapt to new situations and is linked to a flexible central nervous system.
• Punishment and reinforcement influence the learning of new behaviors.
• Specialized skills vary across species, each adapted to its environment.

Ethological Methodology

• Ethology studies the behavior of non-human animals, using naturalistic observations and lab experiments.

Infant-Caretaker Attachment

• Bowlby's Theory states that early social attachment to caregivers in early infancy is crucial to normal development.
• Abnormalities can cause despair, grief, detachment, or psychopathy.
• Normal signs of attachment include grasping for the caregiver and seeking physical proximity.
• Blind and deaf children can still develop reflexes.
• Infant and parent behaviors combine into an 'attachment behavioral system'.
• Between 9-18 months, an infant's simple behaviors turn into more complex and self-correcting 'control systems'.
• Infant-caretaker interactions function like negative feedback loops.
• Attachment can be measured in various ways.

Measuring Attachment

• The strange situation procedure (Mary Ainsworth) assess the quality of the emotional bond between mother and child through eight episodes involving introductions, separations, and reunions.
• Three situations are created to test the baby's reactions, including natural caregiver-baby interactions in the presence of toys
• Analysis includes an assessment of the baby using the caregiver as a secure base to explore the room, and the mother's leaving and a stranger entering the room.
• Separation anxiety and stranger anxiety can be measured in this situation.
• Reunion behavior is measured when the mother returns.
• By recording and measuring the child's reaction to these three situations, the child can be classified as having one of the four known attachment patterns.

Forms of attachment

• Four attachment patterns have emerged from the Strange Situation Procedure.

Secure bonding

• Babies shows clear signs of attachment via stranger anxiety, separation protest, and reunion behavior.
• Babies look to the mother when exploring new surroundings and feels comfortable in the mother's presence.
• Babies show distress when separated from the caregiver and seeks comfort during the reunion.
• Babies interact positively with strangers in the presence of the mother, seen in 65% of children.

Insecure-avoidant attachment

• Babies avoid or ignore the mother, do not play near her, are not upset when she leaves, and are less enthusiastic when she returns.
• These babies can interact socially with strangers but can also ignore them, just like the caregiver, form occurs in 20% of children.

Insecure-resistant attachment

• Babies want to be close to the mother and does not explore the room.
• Babies may cling to the caregiver when the caregiver leaves, while also showing angry, dismissive, and sometimes aggressive behavior when she returns.
• Babies will stay close but refuse physical contact when the caregiver returns.
• Babies react alertly to strangers, even when their mother is around and this form occurs in 10% of children.

Insecure disorganized bonding

• Babies demonstrates fear of the caregiver, confused facial expressions, avoidant or resistant behavior with physiological signs of stress, hostility, and aggression.
• Babies do not know whether to avoid or approach the caregiver.
• Babies are the most stressed by the strange situation and are the most insecure and this form occurs in 5% of children.

Effects of attachment styles

• Secure attachment ensures that children are enthusiastic and positive and cry less.
• Benefits in language acquisition, cognitive reasoning, and social competence.
• There is less aggression, more self-confidence, a better self-image, and fewer symptoms of depression, and can later maintain good relationships.
• Insecure attachment leads to children who experience high dependency and are not cooperative.
• They also have poor social skills and are hostile, impulsive, and withdrawn and there may be poor cognitive development.
• Avoidant attached children are quick to interpret other people's behavior as hostile.
• Resistant attached children are more likely to have anxiety disorders and have poorer social skills.
• Attachment effects can last into adolescence and adulthood.
• Attachment style also influences the internal working model.
• The internal working model is a model in which the representation of oneself in combination with relationships with others leads to a form of attachment.
• It also determines how someone will behave toward others in the future.
• Sensitive and attentive nurturing ensures that a child assumes that people are trustworthy.
• Insensitive, neglectful care leads to insecurity and a lack of trust.
• Children with a positive internal work model who form secure attachments have the self-confidence to take on new challenges.
• They are also more likely to enter into mutually trusting relationships with friends and partners.
• Parents also have a positive or negative working model of themselves and others based on their life experiences.
• Research shows that mothers with a positive work model are more likely to respond sensitively and responsively to the child.
• Parents who were securely attached as children are more likely to pass this style on to their own children.
• A secure style leads to healthier relationships later in life.

Factors influencing bonding

• Parenting style influences the development of attachment.
• Sensitivity to signals and quick reactions to them with insecurely attached and caregivers give few reactions (avoidant) or inconsistent reactions (resistant).
• There are six factors that play a role in the development of secure attachment:
  • Disorganized children are often neglected or abused; negative attitude where parents of insecure attached children have a negative, tense, and angry attitude.
  • Synchrony: There is little reciprocal interaction between parents and child with insecurely attached children.
  • Stimulation: There is little stimulation from the parents towards the child with insecurely attached children.
  • Support: Parents provide little emotional support for the child's activities with insecurely attached children.
  • Reciprocity: There is no structured interaction in which mother and child focus on the same thing with insecurely attached children.
• Attachment styles can change in the long term due to changes in the style of upbringing.
• Example, a child may change from a secure attachment style to an insecure attachment style if the upbringing becomes less sensitive in nature.

Risks of Insensitivity

• Personality traits can be a risk for insensitive parenting patterns.
• For example, depressed parents are more likely to ignore the child's signals and have difficulty building a synchronous relationship.
• Parents who are more likely to be insensitive often feel unloved and have been neglected or abused as children.
• Children whose pregnancies were unwanted also have a higher risk of having insensitive parents.
• Parent-child interactions take place in a broader ecological context that can influence the way caregivers interact with the child.
• For example, insensitive parents are more likely to experience health or financial problems.
• Caregivers relationship with their partner can affect sensitivity and interventions can improve.

Culture

• Secure attachment style is universal and occurs most frequently in almost all countries.
• There is more variation in the insecure attachment styles.
• In Japan, there is more resistance to strangers and in certain cultures in Northwest Africa there are no avoidant children.
• In Germany, children are brought up much more independently and here only 49% have a secure style.

Disruptions of bonding

• Children born prematurely are often separated from their mothers for long periods of time in the hospital and experience less touch and smiles from the mother.
• Later on, mothers of premature babies become more active and stimulating.
• There are no major differences in attachment patterns and even in premature babies, most children have a secure attachment style.
• Adopted children suffer more from psychological and academic problems, health problems, difficulty forming social relationships, emotional stress, tension, and aggression.
• Separation from parents has a greater impact if it occurs later in life, and if it happens very early, there is often a secure attachment style.
• A sensitive and responsive adoptive parent can ensure that children adopted later in life form a secure attachment with the new caregiver.
• Physically or psychologically abused children are at risk of social-emotional and cognitive difficulties and in 80% of these cases, there is disorganized attachment.
• Negatively impacts them later on, such as aggressive behavior, depression, and anger
• This is because parents often react negatively to social signals from children.
• Reactive attachment disorders are when the child does not attach and their two causes for this.
  • The maternal deprivation hypothesis occurs when there is no mother figure for the child.
  • Social stimulation hypothesis indicates there is little contact with/no reaction to the child.

Fathers and Bonding

• Many babies form a secure attachment to the father during the second half of the first year.
• Mothers and fathers play slightly different roles in the life of a baby.
• Mothers hold their child more often, talk to the child, play traditional games and take care of physiological needs.
• Fathers provide more physical stimulation and unexpected games for the child.
• Mothers are preferred as bonding agents for anxiety or physical needs, fathers are preferred as playmates.
• More fathers fulfill the caring role when the mother is working.
• Many babies form the same attachment with the father as with the mother.
• It is possible to be securely attached to only one of the two parents.
• Children who are securely attached to both parents are less anxious, less socially withdrawn and can cope better with the challenge of going to school.
• Children who are securely attached to the father also show better emotional self-regulation, better social competence and fewer behavioral problems in childhood and adolescence.
• A good connection with the father can be a buffer when there are poor interactions with the mother.
• Attachment to the father is thought to lead to healthy friendly relationships in later life and to prevent behavioral problems.
• Two separate studies (2016 and 2018) researched parents with pre- and/or postpartum depression and a painful bond with their kind.
• An underlying bond with the child is already associated with postpartum depression in the mother, but has not been extensively investigated in fathers.
• Both studies wanted to include both parents more in this research
  • How can depressive symptoms influence the bond with the child (and the development of the child)?'
  • Chinese longitudinal study (2018) also investigated which factors increase the chance of depression in fathers after birth.
  • Study (2016) also investigated whether marital relationship problems are related to a traditional bond between parents with the kind.
• Both claimed depression influenced the bond between father/mother and child, which in turn influenced the development of the child
• Fathers with depressive symptoms more often had a structural attachment with the child through patience and tolerance, enjoyment in interaction and less affection and pride.
• Implied an unfavorable social development of the child (Ip, 2018).
• And additional attachments was highest in couples whose partner has depressive symptoms (Kerstis, 2016).
• Depressive symptoms six weeks postpartum are associated with an actual attachment with the kind even six months postpartum, for both mothers and fathers.
• Chinese longitudinal study (2018) found that prenatal depressive symptoms of fathers and postpartum depressive symptoms of mothers are risk factors for postnatal depression in fathers
• Study (2016) found, that a systematic bonding that was already associated with higher depressive symptoms in both mothers and fathers, also an association with experiencing a worsened marital relationship.
• Both researchers investigate the importance of screening for and preventing depressive symptoms in both parents during early parenthood.

Attachment Theory

Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory

• Attachment is formed because caregivers satisfy the pleasure drive (via oral stimulation, e.g., sucking).
• Lacks strong empirical support, though it has opened the field for further research on emotional needs and parent-child interaction.

Learning Theory

• Attachment is based on the mother satisfying the infant's hunger (feeding as primary reinforcement).

Cognitive Development Theory

• Cognitive developments (e.g., object permanence) allow infants to form attachments.
• Infants need to differentiate between familiar caregivers and strangers and understand that people exist even when not visible (object permanence).
• Attachment evolves as children understand that separations from parents are temporary and less upsetting.

Bowlby's Ethological Theory

• Attachment is an evolutionary mechanism, rooted in instinctual responses (crying, smiling, clinging).
• Mutual attachment involves both infant and parent forming an emotional bond.
• Babies are biologically prepared to elicit care from parents through social signals (smiling, crying).
• There is debate on whether attachment behaviours are biologically pre-programmed or socially learned.

Phases of Attachment Development (Schaffer's Model)

Indiscriminate Social Responses

• First 1-2 months in which infants respond to all humans similarly.

Discriminating Social Responses

• Occurs from 2-6 months where infants begin to distinguish between familiar caregivers and strangers.
• Preference for familiar caregivers where attachment has not yet formed.

True Attachment

• 6+months

Goal-Corrected Partnership

• Occurs after one year.
• Children begin to understand their caregivers' needs, allowing for more flexible attachment responses.

Phases in the Development of Attachment

• Preattachment Phase (Birth to 6 weeks) shows:
• Indiscriminate social responsiveness.
• Baby responds to any caregiver, does not show preference.
• Infant behavior relies on innate acts to attract attention.
• Attachment-in-the-making Phase (6 weeks to 6-8 months) exhibits:
• Recognition of familiar people.
• Infants show a preference for specific caregivers.
• Infants respond differently to strangers than familiar individuals.
• Clear-cut attachment Phase (7 months to 24 months) reveals:
• Separation protest and wariness of strangers.
• Development of intentional communication.
• Specific attachment to caregivers ( mothers).
• Goal-corrected partnership Phase (24 months onwards) shows:
• Relationships become more two-sided.
• Development of reciprocal relationships where the relationship is more important than the presence of a caregiver for the baby.

How attachment is affected

• Attachment quality varies.
• Secure attachments leads to confidence to explore and independence which less secure attachments cause distress.

Mary Ainsworth's Research

• Focused on how infants use an attachment figure as a secure base for exploration or a safe haven in distress.
• Strange Situation procedure includes separations and reunions with a caregiver to observe attachment behaviour.

Strange Situation Procedure

• Observer introduces mother and baby to experimental room.
• Baby explores while the mother remains passive.
• Stranger enters and interacts with the baby.
• First separation: Baby left with stranger.
• First reunion: Mother returns, comforts baby.
• Second separation: Baby left alone.
• Stranger enters, interacts with baby.
• Second reunion: Mother returns.

Assessments of Attachment

Attachment Q Sort (AQS)

• Caregivers assess children's behaviour using a set of cards describing behaviours.
• Useful for children aged 1-5, assessing secure-base behaviour, exploration, and emotional responses.

Attachment Insecurity Screening Inventory (AISI)

• Used with children aged 6-12 in pre-clinical settings to identify attachment insecurity.

California Attachment Procedure (CAP)

• Assesses how mothers respond to children's fear or upset. Used with children aged 18 months and beyond, particularly useful for children in daycare or routine separations.

Motor and Perceptual Skills Connection

• Motor skills are intrinsically linked with emerging perceptual skills.
• Motor tasks require coordination of multiple sensory inputs .
• Motor development is about controlling behaviours with respect to specific sensory information.

Newborn Motor Behaviours

• Newborns' behaviours are initially less linked to sensory perception and often involve reflexive actions.
• Example: Newborn sucking reflex (non-nutritive sucking is common) are not yet tied to specific sensory needs.

Development of Complex Motor Skills

• Motor development involves becoming more specific in how and when behaviours are produced.
• Behaviours evolve from reflexes and become more complex with time.

Neonatal Reflexes

• Newborns have several reflexes to interact with the environment.
• Reflexes are involuntary responses to stimuli, which may also serve survival functions.
• Reflexes may be building blocks for later motor behaviours and skills and common reflexes and their significance is to use. Examples: Babinski reflex )indictates lower spine function, palmar Grasp and rooting reflex and assist with neurological health and help with newborns.

Characteristics of Innate Behaviors

• Stereotyped
• Present without previous experience
• Universal
• Relatively unchanged

Reflexes and Fixed Action Patterns

• Reflexes are simple, automatic responses to stimuli.
• Fixed action patterns (FAPs): More complex, geneticallyprogrammed sequences of actions that promote survival.

Fixed Action Patterns

• Sign stimulus: A specific stimulus that triggers a fixed action pattern.
• Enhanced stimuli: Stimuli that can strengthen FAPs.
• Ambivalent behaviors: Conflicted behaviors arising from two need systems.
• FAP's can be termed modal action patterns.

Evolution: Phylogenetic vs. Ontogenetic Change

• Phylogenetic change is species change over generations. Ontogenetic change is developmental change.
• Evolution addresses environmental problems such as avoiding predators, obtaining food, and reproducing. Ethological Methods is a naturalistic observation from behaviour.

Ethology

• Ethologists focus on observing species-specific behaviors in natural environments
• Naturalistic observation is central to ethology.

Bowlby's Attachment Theory Summary

• Attachment is innate, triggered by reflexes and signaling behaviours.
• Infants form attachments to specific adults (usually around 6-9 months).
• Separation from a specific attachment figure causes distress and signals danger, prompting behaviours to restore proximity.
• Infants and adults' behaviours become synchronized, forming an “attachment behavioural system."
• Infants' internal working models: mental representations of attachment figures, the self, and relationships.
• Between 9-18 months, infant behaviours form into complex control systems.
• Control-systems theory describes attachment forming a goal-directed system (like a thermostat).
• secure Attachment systems are flexible and. goal is maintaining proximity to an adult.
• Evolutionary Behaviour states reflexes and fixed action patterns ensure the proximity of infants to caretakers

Bowlby Incorporated information-processing theory

• Bowlby incorporated information-processing theory explaining selective attention theory.

Lorenz (1943)

• Noted "babyish" features attract caretaking responses across species.
• Infants' smiles trigger positive responses in adults, reinforcing caregiving behaviours.
• Emotional bonds between infants and caretakers typically form in the first hours or days of life. Klaus and Kennell (1976) found Bonding encourages/ increases survival. Sensitive period for bonding found a critical period/ experiment with stronger contact bonding compared to hospital procedures