Social and Emotional Development Quiz

Social and Emotional Development

• Infants learn from caregivers through intersubjectivity and social referencing, learning about others and their emotions.
• Attachment is the initial bond between caregivers and provides a sense of security.
• Temperament describes an infant's behaviors and emotional reactions, which includes personal "styles" and influences how they interact with others.
• Temperament types are easy, difficult, and slow to warm up.
• Different cultural contexts affect parenting styles and expectations. Cultural expectations impact a parents' role in a child's life and behaviors, including care/warmth behaviors.
• The family stress model links economic pressures and externalizing/internalizing problems in childhood and adolescent development, including interpersonal conflict.

Models

• Children learn social behaviors by observing and imitating others (models).
• Caregivers are essential early models; later, peers and teachers become more influential.
• Attachment is impactful, and parenting styles influence a child's development.

Early Socio-Emotional Processes

• Infants demonstrate emotions like interest, distress, disgust, and happiness, from birth.
• As early as 2 months, infants display more emotions, such as anger, sadness, surprise, and fear.
• Social smiles emerge from 2 to 3 months of age.
• Infants prefer their mother's voice and show laughter by 4 months of age.

Developing a Sense of Others

• Intersubjectivity is the shared experience of subjective states, enabling individuals to understand one another's goals, intentions, and emotions.
• Newborns (as young as 1 day old) can copy facial expressions of their parents as an early form of intersubjectivity.
•  Joint attention emerges at 3-6 months and shows the child's ability to share focus on something with others.
• Social referencing shows taking cues from others in unfamiliar situations.

Attachment

• Harlow's research (1950s) on infant rhesus monkeys, raised without mothers, demonstrated the importance of physical comfort over food in establishing attachment.
• Attachment involves the strong emotional bond between a child and caregiver.
• Initially, attachment was linked to being fed; however, research highlighted the importance of a secure base.
• Secure attachment is a foundation for seeking comfort and support, especially during stressful situations, leading to positive outcomes.
• Attachment is stable, yet experiences play a role, with secure attachment correlating with better social skills.
• Insecure attachment can relate to problems with building/maintaining friendships.

Attachment Stages

• Pre-attachment (0-6 weeks): Infants seek contact with caregivers and are not distressed when parents leave them.
• Attachment in the making (6 weeks to 8 months): Preferences toward familiar people emerge, even with strangers.
• Clear-cut attachment (8 months to 18 months): Infants actively seek comfort from caregivers; separation anxiety develops.
• Reciprocal relationships (18-24+ months): Infants become more comfortable spending time away from their caregivers, but occasionally check in.

Secure Base and Safe Haven

• The concepts of secure base and safe haven describe the dynamic relationship between a child and their caregiver. The caregiver's signal detection and availability for comfort provide structure. 

Stranger Anxiety and "Strange Situation"

• Stranger anxiety typically emerges around 8 months and involves distress with strangers.
• The "Strange Situation" paradigm, developed by Ainsworth, assesses attachment styles through observations of infants' reactions to different scenarios, including when alone with a stranger or when the caregiver returns.
• Four attachment patterns are categorized: secure, anxious/resistant, avoidant, and disorganized.

Attachment over the Lifespan

• Securely attached individuals are better able to recover from interpersonal conflicts.
• Textbook evidence shows that secure attachment correlates with a greater diligence in school, more favorable peer interactions, and better teacher evaluations. 
• The stability of attachment is modest (around 0.39), highlighting the profound impact of experiences.
• Insecure attachment can relate to negative behaviors.

Temperament

• Temperament is each infant's unique pattern of behaviors and emotional reactions. Understanding these reactions provides insight into how they approach the world.
• Three primary temperament types include easy, difficult, and slow to warm up.

Nine Traits of Temperament

• Activity level.
• Rhythmicity.
• Approach/withdrawal.
• Threshold of responsiveness.
• Intensity of reaction.
• Attention span.
• Distractibility.
• Adaptability.
• Quality of mood.

Influencing Factors on Temperament

• Temperament is biologically-based and interacts with experience.
• Parental sensitivity (being attuned to the infant's communication and responding moderately and appropriately) is a crucial factor.
• The environment and the child’s temperament need to be compatible ("goodness of fit") for optimal development.

Parenting Styles (Baumrind)

• Parenting styles are categorized by warmth/responsiveness and expectations/control.
• Authoritative involves high warmth/responsiveness and high expectations/control.
• Authoritarian involves low warmth/responsiveness and high expectations/control.
• Permissive/indulgent involves high warmth/responsiveness and low expectations/control.
• Rejecting/neglectful involves low warmth/responsiveness and low expectations/control.

Family Stress Model

• Economic pressures, parental distress, interparental conflict and parenting problems can stress families and lead to negative outcomes for children, including drug use, depression, academic struggles, and interpersonal difficulties.

Parenting in Diverse Cultural Contexts

• Expectations about parenting roles differ across cultures.
• Culturally relevant caregiving behaviors (like saying "I love you") vary across cultures.
• Cultural expectations regarding discipline vary.