Chapter 4.PDF

Chapter 4 Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 4.1 Develop working knowledge of emotions (what they are, how they are processed, their functions, development, and regulation) and make applications to clinical situations. 4.2 Examine factors that influence the quality of attachments in early social relationships and, recognizing the importance of early attach- ment quality on later socioemotional development, suggest parent skills to improve insensitive caregiving. 4.3 Identify risk factors (including exposure to adversity, abuse, or trauma) in the overlapping contexts of an infant’s life that threaten attachment security and produce long-term negative effects on emotional functioning. Alex was a full-term baby, but his mother, Marian, suffered complications after the delivery, and she had to have emergency surgery. Alex “roomed in” with her in the hospital while she recovered. His father, Stan, stayed with them much of each day, helping with Alex’s care so that Marian could rest. Both parents were intrigued by everything about Alex—his noises, his sweet odor, his big eyes and tiny fingers. When Alex and Marian were finally released, both parents were greatly relieved to be able to bring their baby home. Yet they were soon exhausted by the demands of caring for a newborn—especially the repeated feedings during the night. And they were scared— Alex seemed so fragile, and they often felt unsure of whether they really were doing everything “right.” Stan returned to work after a two-week leave; Marian stretched her own leave to six months to be sure she would be fully recuperated. Once Stan was back at work, things became more difficult. Stan was worn out from poor sleep, worries about missed income, and the challenges of getting home from a long day at work to a wife still recovering from surgery and a sometimes cranky infant. Some- times Stan’s frustration made him respond angrily to Marian’s requests; sometimes Marian felt hurt and angry in turn. Although they were more irritable with each other than usual, an experienced visiting nurse helped them recognize that the heavy emo- tional and physical demands of this time in their lives were the real problem, and they usually recovered from their arguments quickly, often with humor and mutual expressions of affection. For both parents, their first priority was to be responsive to Alex’s needs, especially when he seemed distressed. When Alex was in a quiet, alert 125 126 Chapter 4 state, both parents enjoyed holding him in their laps, talking to him and exchanging smiles and coos. They found their lives stressful, but they were consistent in their care throughout Alex’s infancy and they each felt strongly bonded to him. Care of an infant, especially for first-time parents, is one of the most challenging of adult experiences. Marian and Stan are fortunate that they are able to recognize the nature of their own emotional responses, and that they have good relationship skills, managing their conflicts with self-awareness, good perspective taking, and trust in each other. Alex is fortunate that his parents are able to manage their reactions as well as they do, and that they are unequivocally committed to being responsive to him and his needs. The nature of this early care will help Alex to begin managing his own emotional responses, to feel valued and safe, and to have positive expectations about others that will serve him well in his future relationships. In the course of their daily work, most professional helpers, from teachers to nurses to counselors, encounter an array of human problems. Despite their differ- ences, all concerns—Marian and Stan’s increased conflicts after Alex’s birth, a young child’s difficulty adjusting to school, a teenager’s uncertainty about the future, an aged widow’s failure to keep up with her blood pressure medications—have a com- mon aspect. They all, to a greater or lesser degree, involve human emotion. You can probably identify the most likely emotional responses of these hypothetical individu- als. Marian and Stan are sometimes frustrated and angry; the child might feel lonely; the teenager, anxious, and the widow, sad. Depending upon your particular theoretical orientation, you could probably sug- gest ways to help any of these folks. Yet, simply identifying the emotions and pro- posing techniques, as good a starting point as that may be, reveals nothing about the person’s emotional development, nor does it provide you any insight as to whether your techniques might work. Are these individuals’ reactions appropriate or even adaptive in light of their situations? How concerned should you be about their symp- toms? What were the precursors that led to their particular level of emotional adjust- ment or maladjustment? What coping styles have they developed over time, and how useful are they? Unless we understand the process of emotional development in its normative context, we may view our clients’ emotions only clinically, as if we were looking at their snapshots, detached from context and earlier experience. Their prob- lems might be seen as manifestations of individual differences (for example, depressed versus anxious) rather than as reflections of their development, and their diagnoses might imply only possession of a set of clinical criteria. Overall, our understanding of clients would be impoverished. The study of emotional development is critical for understanding emotional prob- lems whenever they appear during the life span. Sroufe (1996) argued that “emotional development is the foundation for the study of individual adaptation and psychopa- thology. Pursuing these fields without being fully grounded in emotional development is analogous to trying to do research in genetics without being grounded in biology” (p. xii). Helpers aiming to increase emotional awareness in others and to forge affective change also need a fundamental working knowledge of emotional development. In this chapter, we review the beginnings of emotional development, the processes involved in early bonding, and the implications of these events for later well-being. Emotions: Functions, Nature and Development 4.1 Develop working knowledge of emotions (what they are, how they are processed, their functions, development, and regulation) and make applications to clinical situations. Before we can address the topic of emotional development, we need to concern ourselves briefly with the questions of what emotions are and what they do for us. These fundamental questions have occupied the time, attention, and brainpower of Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 127 generations of gifted thinkers in many disciplines, from philosophy to biology, psy- chology, psychiatry, and the neurosciences. However, there are still many unanswered questions and some major controversies in this area. The scientific debate about the nature of emotions has even been called “The Hundred-Year Emotion War” (Lindquist et al., 2013). Yet, despite disagreements of interpretation, a great deal of useful infor- mation has been gathered, aided by scientific tools for measuring emotional expres- sion, for tracking emotional development and regulation, and for identifying the neural underpinnings of emotion. Functions of Emotions Researchers generally agree that emotions serve many purposes for human beings. It would be hard to disagree that they provide us with a trusty arsenal of survival skills. The fear response that alerts us to a dangerous situation signals us to fight back or escape to protect ourselves. The urge to engage in sexual relations propagates the species. The disgust we experience when we encounter decaying material protects us from exposure to potentially toxic bacteria. The affection elicited by a baby’s smil- ing face promotes the caregiving needed to ensure his continued survival. Emotional responses have ancient, evolutionary significance. Examples of the role emotions play in survival demonstrate how powerful emo- tions are as motivators of behavior. Consider the force of conscience. Conscience is like a thermostat that is ordinarily set at the “feel good” level. If we do something we consider morally or ethically wrong, our emotional temperature changes and we may experience shame or guilt. These feelings prod us to make restitution or to change our errant ways so that we can regain the “feel good” setting (see Chapter 5). Reaching that guilt- or shame-free state can be a powerful reinforcer of behavior. Emotions also serve as a major means of communication. An infant’s distressed facial expression and piercing cry after receiving an inoculation serve as preemptory commands to the caretaker: “Help me! I’m in pain.” When helpers speak of nonverbal communication, an essential component is always the emotional message conveyed through the face, posture, and gestures (e.g., Ekman, 2003). The view of emotion-as- communication underscores the basic social significance of emotions and captures an essential quality of the attachment relationship, to be discussed later in this chapter. Emotions are the stepping-stones that infants use to develop reciprocity with caregiv- ers, ultimately leading to the capacity for emotion management. Emotions are important for cognitive functions as well. Contrary to that age-old warning to keep your feelings out of your logical decision making, Damasio (1994) found compelling evidence that the absence of emotion clearly impairs rather than enhances cognition. He observed patients with damage to the frontal lobe region and noted that they shared a syndrome that he called the Phineas Gage matrix. This syn- drome consists of cognitive dysfunctions such as poor planning, inadequate decision making, inability to take another’s perspective, and problems in sustaining employ- ment. These cognitive limitations went hand in hand with emotional problems such as shallow affect, lack of an enriched emotional life, lack of passion and initiative, and a diminished sense of pleasure and pain. Far from enabling us to be more “rational,” the absence of emotion in our intellectual functioning leaves us sadly lacking in resource- fulness. Contemporary views of emotion emphasize the organizing role emotions play in higher-order cognitive functions like memory, decision making, and planful behav- ior (see Izard, 2009). Last, but certainly not least, emotions have a role to play in overall mental health and wellness. Affective disturbances characterize a major category of mental illness and are strongly related to many other psychopathological conditions. On the posi- tive side, research originally done by Salovey and Mayer (1990) and popularized by Goleman (1995) has emphasized the value of so-called emotional intelligence (or emotional IQ), defined as the ability to perceive emotions (our own and others’), to identify and differentiate the nuances among them, to integrate them with other kinds of cognition, and to manage them. For example, an adult with a “high” emotional IQ is likely to be able to specify his reaction to a violent tragedy: “My first reaction was 128 Chapter 4 terrible sadness... But the second reaction was... anger...” Whereas, someone else might not be able to identify specific feelings: “I felt a bunch of things I couldn’t put my finger on... I just felt bad... Really bad” (Kashdan, Barrett, & McKnight, 2015, p. 10). It will not surprise you that greater emotional intelligence is correlated with greater self-regulation and increased psychological and social well-being (e.g., Extremera & Rey, 2016; Kashdan et al., 2015). What Are Emotions? The “Hundred-Year Emotion War” is mostly about defining what emotions are and determining the nature and sequence of neurological events that create our emotional experience. Old and new theories tend to agree that our emotional experiences usually have both physiological (changes in heart rate) and interpretative (rational, cognitive) components. For example, the old James-Lange theory (James, 1890) stated that a stim- ulus (some kind of threat) leads directly to a physical reaction (racing heart). When we become aware of that physical reaction, we “feel” the emotion (fear). A problem with this description is that our physical reactions are often very simi- lar from one emotion to another. For example, our hearts might race whether we are feeling fear, anger, or happy excitement, but we can usually tell the difference among these emotions. The Cannon-Bard theory (Cannon, 1927) argued that our rational interpretation of an emotional stimulus must be what comes first, or at least must be simultaneous with our bodily reaction, determining the emotion that we “feel.” Modern theorists have the advantage of decades of research on how the brain functions during emotional experiences, but they still debate what constitutes an emo- tion. How different are our physiological responses for different emotions (Lench, Flores, & Bench, 2011; Lindquist et al., 2013)? Do you have to have a “conscious” or “rational” interpretation to feel an emotion (LeDoux & Brown, 2017; Panksepp, Lane, Solms, & Smith, 2017)? Regardless of these fairly esoteric debates, there is a great deal of foundational knowledge that helpers can draw on to understand the development of emotions, emotional understanding, and emotion regulation. Are There Basic Emotions? There is some evidence that all humans experience a set of basic emotions that we share with other species and that serve important evolutionary functions (Al-Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao, & Buss, 2016; Ekman, 2016). Charles Darwin (1872) proposed that certain emotions are innate and universal among humans and primates, rather like primitive instincts. He believed that facial expressions communicate underly- ing emotions and that these emotions are present because they are necessary for sur- vival. Researchers have found that people across a wide variety of cultures, including societies without exposure to Western ideas, fundamentally agree on what constitute expressions of basic emotions (e.g., Ekman & Cardoro, 2011). The standard methodol- ogy used in cross-cultural research involves asking participants from different cultures to view pictures of facial expressions and then to identify the emotions depicted in the photographs. In reviewing studies conducted during the previous 50 years, Ekman (1992) concluded that certain facial expressions are interpreted as the same emotions regardless of cultural context. From American cities to the highlands of New Guinea, both industrialized and non-industrialized peoples appear to derive the same mean- ings from certain characteristic facial expressions. Drawing on this Darwinian tradition, Izard (1992) focused his attention on babies and their ways of communicating emotional messages. He reasoned that infants have little time to learn social conventions and therefore will exhibit only those emotional responses that are inborn. Izard developed coding schemes that enable researchers and clinicians to identify different emotions based upon the position of the facial mus- culature (Izard, 1979; Izard, Dougherty, & Hembree, 1983). Infants display predictable facial expressions in certain circumstances, implying, according to Izard, the under- lying presence of a comparable feeling. For example, when an infant is presented with a new and interesting picture, he will show the facial response of interest. When Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 129 FIGURE 4.1 Babies’ faces express emotions. SOURCE: Sullivan, M. W. Expressions. 5-month-olds during reward learning and its frustration NIMT Study #061778. Rutgers School of Nursing. Used by permission of Margaret Sullivan, PhD. interacting pleasantly with a beloved caretaker, the infant’s face conveys happiness or joy. (See Figure 4.1.) Izard (1991, 2004) concluded that infant expressive behaviors reveal basic emotions, discrete feelings, each with its own unique pattern of underlying neural processes. His list of basic emotions includes joy/happiness, interest, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. Other theorists who espouse the concept of basic emotions have closely related lists (see Ekman, 2016). From this perspective, a sad expression implies the operation of the neural circuitry associated with sadness. If a baby looks sad, he is sad because babies’ faces are mirrors of their felt emotions. According to Izard (e.g., 2011), basic emotions do not depend upon learning and do not require cognitive components, such as analysis or intent or memory for us to experience them. They only require the perception of a stimulus that triggers a set of physiological reactions; an expressive component (like a smile or frown); and a feel- ing component. All of these happen automatically. These emotions can occur without “reportable awareness,” especially in infants. Although basic emotions may be expe- rienced throughout life, Izard argues that older children and adults are more likely to experience emotion schemas. These are the products of experience and culture. Emo- tion schemas may include memories, thoughts, images, and non-cognitive elements like hormonal shifts that interact with and may amplify basic emotional experiences. Think of Stan from the beginning of this chapter. His experience of anger (a basic emotion) is likely to have become more complex over the course of his life. It might now be accompanied by memories of earlier frustrations, appraisals of certain cues as frustrating, self-statements that reinforce anger (e.g., “I deserve to have some time to myself”), and even changes in testosterone production in the presence of certain cues, such as when his wife Marian acts impatiently. Such emotion schemas can become quite durable and begin to reflect a person’s typical response style. Izard has argued that interest and interest schemas hold a position of primacy in emotion and cognitive operations. Over time, the basic emotion of interest is profoundly connected to more overtly cognitive capacities like attention, intelligence, persistence, and goal-directed behavior (Izard, 2007). Interest drives selective attention, from which all processing of information occurs as well as subsequent positive and negative emotions. In Chapter 14 we discuss the foundational role of interest in adult flourishing. 130 Chapter 4 Some theorists disagree that discrete, basic emotions are present from the start of development. Another view is that all emotional reactions are combinations of the same dimensions. For example, any felt emotion has both a valence (from pleas- ant to unpleasant) and a degree of arousal (from low to high) (e.g., Lindquist et al., 2013). These dimensional qualities constitute all emotions, and some kind of “mean- ing making” is necessary to make sense of the felt experiences—that is, to experience feelings as discrete emotions. Sroufe (1996) offers a view of emotional development that reflects this more constructivist analysis of the nature of emotions. He takes the position that emotions are not fully formed at birth but that they develop from undif- ferentiated negative (general distress) or positive (general contentment) responses into more differentiated ones and finally into an integrated emotional repertoire. This developmental change is an example of what is called the orthogenetic principle: As behavior becomes differentiated or elaborated, it also becomes hierarchically orga- nized or controlled by higher levels of functioning. Early infant emotional expressions are considered to be precursors or forerunners of more mature emotions. Emotions start in this fashion, Sroufe reasons, because infants lack the cognitive ability needed to ascribe meaning to emotional experiences. For example, young infants certainly feel distress. At roughly 6 months, this distress can be differentiated into either fear or anger because the infant has learned the difference between threats and frustrating events. At this later time, the infant’s facial expressions can be interpreted more reli- ably as communicating fear or anger, respectively. The View from Neuroscience For a long time, researchers have tried to identify brain-based correlates of emotion. Several influential contributions came from James Papez (1937), who identified the structures of the limbic circuit, and Paul MacLean (1952, 1970), who proposed that the limbic system was the visceral brain, or the site of emotions. Many early studies of anatomy supported the ties between limbic structures, especially the amygdala, and emotional responses, so that the limbic system as the processor and repository of emo- tions was dogma for many years. In Chapter 2 you learned about the importance of the amygdala in initiating the “fight or flight” stress response to a threat. Newer research has suggested a much more complex picture. Some parts of the limbic system do not deal with emotions at all, whereas several parts of the cerebral cortex do. Structures from the brain stem to the prefrontal cortex participate in the coordinated production of emotions (Damasio & Carvalho, 2013). Conventional wis- dom used to be that the cerebral cortex receives sensory input first before convey- ing such input to the limbic structures for an emotional “reading” (Schacter & Singer, 1962). But Joseph LeDoux (2012; LeDoux & Brown, 2017) identified a neural “back alley” through which information about fearful stimuli travels directly from the sen- sory systems through the thalamus to the amygdala, bypassing the cortex altogether and initiating the stress response. Information traveling via this “low road” pathway leads to quicker, more powerful, and longer lasting—but also less rational—responses than information processed first via the cortex. Imagine that one sunny summer afternoon you are swimming alone in the ocean, off the coast of your beach resort. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a gray tri- angular shape rising above the water not too far away. Your body responds in charac- teristically defensive ways, as you learned in Chapter 2. Your stomach tightens, your heart races, your eyes strain to see the object, and so on. The threat is transmitted to your brain’s emotional centers almost instantaneously so that your body can ready itself against the danger. Now, suppose the putative shark fin turns out to be only a piece of debris. Upon closer observation, your cortex distinguishes the difference and allows you to adjust your response to one that is more appropriate. Your initial physi- ological reaction is only a split second ahead of your rational response. Nature has apparently given us an early warning emotional system to provide us with a survival advantage. It is the cortex’s job to decide whether the response is warranted or not. Thus, high-road and low-road processing, involving both reason and emotion, work in concert. Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 131 The glitch is that low-road emotional processing could be responsible for persistent emotional responses that we don’t understand. This can happen through conditioning, or the pairing of emotional responses to stimuli that were once neutral. If you happen to experience marked shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and tightness in your chest while riding an elevator, you may develop a strong aversion to this form of transporta- tion, an example of fear conditioning. LeDoux has argued that phobias, panic, posttrau- matic stress disorder, and anxiety all arise from the operation of the brain’s fear system. As helpers know, these problems and reactions can persist despite the absence of real threat. Another tricky part is that these fears do not extinguish by themselves; probably active new learning or extinction training is needed for their control. They appear to lie in wait until, under stressful conditions, they rear their ugly heads again and affect our responses. Conscious awareness of the stimuli that trigger the response also helps. People with more myelinated pathways between the prefrontal cortex (mediating con- scious awareness) and the amygdala (mediating physiological responses) are better able to regulate the strength of their reactions to fearful cues (e.g., Lapate et al., 2016). A great deal of research on the neural processes underlying emotions has focused on one emotion: fear (LeDoux & Brown, 2017). Studying fear in humans overlaps with studying the stress response (Gunnar, 2017). And, as you have seen, we have learned a great deal about how our bodies respond to stressors, many of which are threat stimuli associated with fear. What about other emotions? Different emotional experi- ences, especially emotions with different valences (positive vs. negative), are at least partially mediated by different neural networks (J. A. Gray, 1990). A positive affect sys- tem (sometimes called the Behavioral Approach System or BAS) supports appetitive, approach-related behavior while the negative affect system (also called the Behavior Inhibition System or BIS) mediates withdrawal, especially under conditions of per- ceived threat. As you might expect, these systems also influence motivation. Think of your desire to enjoy a delicious dinner in a four-star restaurant as an example of motivated approach behavior. When you turn up your nose in disgust after noticing something moldy in the back of your refrigerator, your BIS has kicked in. The affective quality of disgust motivates you to avoid eating lest you come down with food poi- soning. The same kind of thing applies to other behaviors, such as joining an interest- ing social group or avoiding social contacts if they happen to make you anxious. Positive versus negative affect systems are also related to laterality, or right- and left- sided differences in some parts of the brain, largely in certain cortical structures (e.g., Constanzo et al., 2015). Measures of cortical activity (e.g., EEGs) have found more left- sided activation when people experience approach-related positive affect and more right- sided activation when they experience avoidance-related negative affect (e.g., Beraha et al., 2012; Harmon-Jones, Gable, & Peterson, 2010). In depressed individuals, lower levels of left- compared to right-sided activation have been observed, reflecting, and pos- sibly accounting for, the dominance of negative emotional states and negative cognitions (Davidson, 2000). In these individuals, it appears that the prefrontal cortex is unable to effectively down-regulate the amygdala’s activity, which is naturally on guard against potential threats. Davidson and Fox (1989) reported that 10-month-old infants who dis- played greater right-sided activation cried more when separated from their mothers. In toddlers with lower left-side activation, more inhibited behavior was observed. Over time, these particular patterns of emotional responding can develop into one’s habitual emotional way of responding to the world, or one’s affective style (Davidson, 2012). The differences in cortical activation between emotions associated with approach versus avoidance do not mean that different emotions are produced by entirely sepa- rate neural circuits. Remember that emotional reactions fundamentally serve survival functions, and all of these functions are carried out by neurological systems that oper- ate in highly coordinated ways. You learned in Chapter 2, for example, the complex coordination of systems involved in the stress response. The very fact that the stress response sometimes leads to avoidance (flight) and sometimes to approach (fight) sug- gests that emotions like fear and anger are not highly distinctive at the neural level (e.g., Barrett & Satpute, 2017). It may be useful for helpers to keep in mind LeDoux’s (2012) suggestion that emotion, motivation, and arousal are all various aspects of sur- vival circuits, and we should expect them to be interrelated in complex ways. 132 Chapter 4 How Do Emotions Develop? Let’s focus now on some of the normative changes we find in the early development of emotions. We begin with the emotion states that infants and young children express. Then we examine what they understand about other people’s emotions. Finally, we consider how children begin to regulate their emotions. Infant facial expressions, body posture, gaze, and so on, seem to give us a win- dow on early emotional experiences. At birth or close to it, infants display distress (crying), contentment (smiling), disgust (avoiding bitter tastes or unpleasant odors), and interest (staring at faces and objects) (e.g., Izard & Malatesta, 1987). Anger, sur- prise, fear, and sadness seem to be differentiated and expressed by approximately 6 months (Lewis, 2016a). Children begin to show signs of the so-called self-conscious emotions, such as pride, shame, embarrassment, empathy, and guilt, late in infancy, about 18 to 24 months old. For children to experience these feelings, they appar- ently need to be capable of self-recognition, which depends on levels of cognitive functioning that emerge late in infancy (Lewis, 2016b; see Chapter 5). By 36 months or so, most children are showing signs that they experience a full range of human emotions. Learning to recognize and interpret other people’s emotional expressions also begins in infancy. Even in the newborn period babies register higher amplitudes on EEG recordings to fearful sounds than to happy or neutral ones, suggesting that a neonate’s brain is already differentially responsive to some emotionally relevant sig- nals (Cheng et al., 2012). By about 4 months, babies can discriminate among some facial and vocal expressions of emotion (Walle, Reschke, Camras, & Campos, 2017). For example, habituation studies have found that 4-month-olds can tell the differ- ence between expressions of fear and anger, if both face and voice cues are present, although they may not yet understand the meaning of that difference. This research suggests that emotion processing via auditory channels emerges very early in infancy. By 6 months old, babies respond differently to positive versus negative emotional expressions. For example, if an adult shows positive emotion toward one object and negative emotion toward another, babies will prefer to touch the first object, suggest- ing that they are starting to attach meaning to other people’s emotional signals. By 18 to 24 months, infants will sometimes make choices based on even more fine-grained differences in emotional expressions. For example, they will push away food if an adult looks at it with disgust, but not if the adult shows a sad expression when the food is presented. They are also more likely to show prosocial behavior (e.g., helping) when adults express sadness than when they show joy. Nonetheless, interpreting others’ emotional expressions can be difficult even for older children. One study found that the ability to recognize expressions of disgust, sadness, anger, and surprise improved with age from 5 years old up to adulthood. Five-year-olds showed adult levels of recogni- tion only for happiness and fear (Rodger, Vizioli, Ouyang, & Caldara, 2015). The Early Development of Emotion Regulation Emotion regulation is one of the cornerstones of emotional well-being and positive adjustment throughout the life span. It encompasses the strategies and behaviors we use to moderate our emotional experiences in order to meet the demands of different situations or to achieve our goals. For example, healthy people find ways to comfort themselves in difficult times, keeping their distress from overwhelming them. They modulate their excitement in happy times so that they can organize and plan satis- fying experiences, and they rally their excitement to push onward when challenges block the way toward desirable goals. Social problems are often linked to difficul- ties with managing emotions. Think of Stan from the beginning of this chapter. His frustration with the neediness of his wife and baby sometimes made him irritable and angry, which led to conflict between him and his wife. Stan typically recovered quickly, suggesting that he has reasonably good emotional management skills. But if he tended to be overwhelmed by such feelings, the stability of his marriage might be seriously undermined. Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 133 How do we learn to understand, identify, and manage the power of our emotions? It is a process that begins in infancy. The emotions of the newborn are poorly regu- lated. Emotional states can range from contentment to intense distress within minutes. Typically, adult caregivers serve the critical function of helping to manage the new- born’s affect or to modulate affective expression while scaffolding the infant’s own developing emotion regulation. The specific, facilitative environmental circumstances needed for healthy emotional development to occur include supportive, responsive caregiving. Even in the first hours after birth, mothers and other caregivers interact with infants in ways that are likely to heighten positive affect and attention or to soothe negative affect. Mothers gaze at a newborn’s face, smile, affectionately touch the baby, and vocalize in a high-pitched voice. And human newborns tend to respond to such behaviors. For example, if mothers touch, talk, and coo to newborns who are alertly scanning, babies become more alert (Feldman & Eidelman, 2007). And newborns seem to have some slight biases to attend to stimuli that are socially relevant. They look more at face-like stimuli than at other visual stimuli; they show some preference for voices over other sounds; and they look more at biological motion than other kinds (Grossman, 2015). Interactions between young infants and their mothers soon exhibit a repetitive- rhythmic organization, a temporal coordination of nonverbal behaviors, called synchrony. If baby looks at mom, mom gazes back; if baby smacks his lips, mom may smack or smile. Mothers take the lead in maintaining the synchrony by responding contingently to newborns’ cues in these interactions. Babies become more responsive and contribute more to the synchrony as they grow older. Consider smiling, for example. Even though newborns sometimes smile, these seem to be reactions to physiological states. They do not yet respond to other people by smiling. By 2 to 3 months, however, a baby often smiles at human faces, especially his mother’s face, and especially if she is smiling at him. A 3-month-old is more responsive than a newborn in other ways as well. When his mother gazes at him, the 3-month-old gazes back and is likely to vocalize, which encourages mom’s vocalizing, and so on. When mother and baby behaviors are highly synchronized in face-to-face interactions, even the mother’s heart rate tends to be responsive. If the infant’s heart rate either accelerates or decelerates, the mother’s heart rhythm is likely to change in the same direction within 1 second (see Feldman, 2007; Gordon, Zagoory-Sharon, Leckman, & Feldman, 2015). It is important to note that normal caregiver–infant interactions are “messy” (Tronick & Beehgly, 2011). Only about 30% of face-to-face interactions during the first year are positive in the sense that the baby is calm and alert and able to respond to the mother in a synchronous way. Moment-to-moment observations of mothers and infants demonstrate that most mismatches are repaired in the next interactive step, and the caregiver usually instigates the repair (e.g., Chow, Haltigan, & Messinger, 2010). Thus, babies typically experience repeated interactive derailment followed by successful repair. Through this process, sensitive, responsive caregivers modify their infants’ emotions, gently prodding their babies toward longer and longer periods of positive affect and interactive coordination. The importance of caregivers’ responsiveness for infants’ emotion regulation is stunningly demonstrated in a procedure called the still-face paradigm (introduced by Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). A baby is placed in an infant seat directly in front of his mother. Following instructions, the mother at first interacts in a normally pleasant and playful way with her child, which usually involves lots of gaz- ing, smiling, vocalizing, and touching. (This is the baseline episode.) Then, in the still-face episode, the mother becomes unresponsive, as though she were looking at the baby but MyLab Education Video Example 4.1 not seeing him. Finally, in the reunion episode, the mother resumes normal behavior. Even In this still-face procedure, the 2- to 3-month-olds can be heartbreakingly distressed by their mothers’ unresponsiveness caregiver becomes unresponsive to in the still-face episode. Their natural response is to intensify the behaviors that usually the infant’s appeals for attention. “work,” especially gazing intently at the mother and vocalizing. When the mother fails Note the ways in which the child to respond to these other-directed coping behaviors, the baby’s distress heightens, and tries to re-engage the adult. What he will usually resort to self-directed coping behaviors that seem designed for self-com- do you suppose happened after the fort. Babies look away or may even self-stimulate by rocking, sucking, rubbing their hair, video ended? 134 Chapter 4 and so on. Interestingly, this effect is observed if the mother is unresponsive for only a few seconds. The baby’s negative mood persists even when the mother resumes contact. Babies look at their mothers less for several minutes after this experience. And the impor- tance of mothers’ behavior for helping babies manage their negative emotions is espe- cially clear. First, the more responsive and positive mothers are during the actual reunion episode, the less avoidance and distress babies show (see Mesman, van IJzendoorn, & Bakermas-Kranenburg, 2009). Second, babies recover most quickly during the reunion episode if they have consistently experienced such sensitive care from their mothers in the past (Braungart-Reiker et al., 2014; Coppola, Aureli, Grazia, & Ponzetti, 2016). The still-face paradigm illustrates that even very young infants have some natural strategies for coping with their emotions. It also suggests that when adults promote interactive repair, they are scaffolding infants’ use of other-directed cop- ing strategies. As you will see in the next section, the ultimate effects seem to be that infants come to see others as reliable sources of support and to see themselves as effective social agents. Thus, sensitive, responsive caregiving promotes posi- tive social development in many ways. Note that the caregiver provides the experience-dependent environment in which the baby’s coping strategies are practiced and further developed. Once again, the interplay of native and environmental factors is required for a successful outcome. Babies’ emotion regulation typically improves with age. They react less strongly in the still-face paradigm by 6 months old than they did earlier (e.g., Melinder, Forbes, Tronick, Fikke, & Gredeback, 2010). They are less physiologi- cally reactive (e.g., produce less cortisol) and recover more quickly (e.g., stop crying sooner) in other kinds of distressing situations as well, such as after painful inoculations. For example, 2-month-olds show large increases in cor- tisol production after an inoculation; 4- to 6-month-olds show much smaller increases; and by their second year, babies may show no increases at all even though they might still cry and fuss (Gunnar, 2017). Caregivers play a key role in this developmental change. In one study, researchers assessed how responsive mothers were to infants’ crying as their babies were being inoculated at 2 months and 6 months old (Jahromi & Stifter, 2007). Mothers’ soothing responses included kissing, hugging, patting, strok- Mark Richard/PhotoEdit ing, holding, rocking, vocalizing, distracting, looking into the baby’s face, and so on. The more responsive mothers were when their babies were 2 months old, the more quickly the babies stopped crying when they were 6 months old, suggesting that early sensitive care helped the babies to improve their emotion regulation capacity by 6 months. Sensitive adults adjust their management efforts to the needs and abilities Caregivers’ emotional messages influence of the infant as he grows. For example, in another study of infants’ reactions babies’ willingness to crawl over the edge of to inoculations, mothers used primarily touch to soothe 2-month-olds, holding the visual cliff. and rocking them, but they used more vocalizing and distracting efforts when their infants were 6 months old, apparently appreciating their infants’ changing abili- ties to respond to visual and auditory stimuli (Jahromi, Putnam, & Stifter, 2004). With older infants, the caregiver’s emotional expressions can teach the child how to make sense of the world when dealing with emotionally charged situations. Experi- ments by Campos and his colleagues demonstrate that 10-month-old infants who are able to crawl over a “visual cliff” (a glass-covered surface that looks like a sharp “drop- off”) actively seek out their mothers’ responses before proceeding to crawl over the cliff (Campos, Barrett, Lamb, Goldsmith, & Sternberg, 1983). Infants whose mothers respond with fearful facial or vocal expressions do not advance, whereas those whose mothers respond with smiles or encouragement proceed to cross the surface. As early as 7 months old, infants are more likely to smile or laugh at absurd events (e.g., some- one wearing a book on his head) if a parent smiles and laughs first (Mirault et al., 2015). These early “in kind” responses to adults’ emotional expressions may be largely imita- tive or “contagious” as they are sometimes called. But 10- to 12-month-olds can inten- tionally modify their own behavior (see Chapter 3). Now you will see them closely monitoring their caregivers’ emotional reactions to help themselves interpret situations that are ambiguous to them, a process called social referencing (e.g., Stenberg, 2017). Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 135 As children get older, their ability to regulate their own emotional responses grad- ually improves. In the Applications section of this chapter, you will learn more about the kinds of management strategies that sensitive caregivers tend to use as they con- tinue to scaffold these improvements in toddlerhood and beyond. MyLab Education Self-Check 4.1 Attachment: Early Social Relationships 4.2 Examine factors that influence the quality of attachments in early social relationships and, recognizing the importance of early attachment quality on later socioemotional development, suggest parent skills to improve insensitive caregiving. As you have seen, human infants are emotionally and behaviorally equipped to elicit responsive care and stimulation from adults. Adults, in turn, are prepared by nature to stimulate and nurture infants. The social interactions that result help an infant to expand his emotional repertoire, and they support the development of his capacity for emotion regulation. But early interpersonal interactions may have a much broader impact on the infant’s development. Theorists such as John Bowlby (1969/1982, 1973, 1980) and Erik Erikson (1950/1963) have proposed that the relationships an infant has with one or a few caregivers during the first year of life provide him with a working model of himself and of others. (See Box 4.1 and Box 4.2.) These emerging models play an important role in determining how secure and optimistic a child will later feel about venturing forth to explore the broader world. Thus, early relationships are said to lay the groundwork for future interactions with others, for the child’s self-concept, and even for his outlook on life. For Erikson, the characteristics of early caregiving enable a child to form his first feelings about others. When care is timely, sensitive to the infant’s needs, and consis- tently available, he begins to establish basic trust, seeing others as dependable and trustworthy. As his rudimentary view of others takes shape, it influences how he begins to see himself. If others can be trusted to provide for his needs, then his needs must be important and he must be a worthy recipient of care. Feeling trust and feeling worthy emerge together, two sides of the same coin. These early attitudes toward oth- ers and toward the self create a sense of hope or optimism that experiences beyond the caregiving relationship will also be positive and are therefore worth pursuing. Box 4.1: Two Biographical Sketches: John Bowlby and Mary D. Salter Ainsworth In the 1950s, 7-year-old Marianne was hospitalized for a tonsillec- family. But the next day, after the early morning surgery, the pain tomy. The small-town hospital where the surgery was performed struck, and Marianne wanted her mother’s cool hand and sooth- had very strict policies governing visitors to its child patients: 1 ing voice. The hours until her mother’s first visit were endless, hour in the afternoon, maximum of two visitors. Marianne’s expe- and the end of the visit was agony. The release into her parents’ riences with doctors had generally been positive up until then. care the next afternoon was a respite from hell. In addition, her mother was a nurse, so Marianne was warmly Through the middle 1900s, restricted visitation to child hospi- disposed to women dressed in white from head to foot and tal patients was standard policy, based on concerns about infec- smelling wonderfully clean, and she was, blessedly, old enough tion and about disruptions to medical routines. Today, parents to understand what was happening to her. The first afternoon and not only are allowed complete access to their children in most evening, preoperatively, were a pleasant adventure, and Marianne hospitals but also are encouraged to stay with their children con- was able to sleep without distress despite the separation from her tinuously and to be part of the healing and helping process. Many (continued) 136 Chapter 4 hospitals provide cots and even rooms for showering and chang- (e.g., I am valuable, worthy of care) and of others (e.g., others are ing to encourage parental involvement. It was John Bowlby’s reliable and caring). groundbreaking theorizing and research on the sometimes dev- Bowlby’s theoretical work was enhanced and enriched by astating emotional costs of mother–child separations, especially research into the importance of early relationships on children’s during hospitalizations, that initiated a major shift in thinking about behavior. For example, he and his colleagues studied the effects the relative benefits of separating children from their families. of hospitalization and institutionalization on 15- to 30-month- John Bowlby (1907–1990) and Mary D. Salter Ainsworth olds using the careful, detailed observational style of ethology. (1913–1999) were jointly responsible for a revolution in the They documented a series of stages of distress and withdrawal way that parent–child relationships are perceived by researchers that helped create the impetus for change in hospital visitation and clinicians. Bowlby began his professional life in England as a policies described earlier. But the research that captured the psychoanalyst who worked with children. In the 1930s, Bowlby’s attention of both the scientific and the clinical community was clinical work was supervised by Melanie Klein, who invented done by Ainsworth on mothers and babies in their own homes. psychoanalytic play therapy. Bowlby was inclined to look for a Ainsworth, who earned a Ph.D. in psychology at the Uni- relationship between his young patients’ behavior and the kind of versity of Toronto, relinquished her own career to follow her parenting they were receiving, but Klein discouraged his family- husband to London. There she answered Bowlby’s newspaper oriented approach, arguing that the child’s “object” relations ad seeking researchers. His views of the importance of early (internalized representations of relationships) were a function of relationships were consistent with many of her own ideas, and fantasy, not experience in relationships. Bowlby, however, was Ainsworth became an eager student and associate. When her convinced that early relationships play a large role in personal- husband’s career took her to Uganda, she launched a study of ity and behavioral development. He was familiar with Charles local mothers caring for their unweaned infants. She became Darwin’s notion that “... for with those animals which were convinced from her observations that Bowlby was right: Babies benefited by living in close association, the individuals which actively help create an attachment system that protects them took the greatest pleasure in society would best escape various and provides a foundation for later developments. She also dangers...” (1872, Vol. 1, p. 80). Bowlby discovered in the work believed that the 28 Ganda babies she studied were forming of ethologists, biologists who do careful observations of animal attachments of different qualities, and she looked for relation- behavior in natural environments, that animals such as ducks and ships between the infants’ attachment quality and the mothers’ geese are inclined to become devoted followers of whatever they sensitivity and responsiveness. first see moving—usually their mothers, but sometimes a differ- When her husband moved again, this time to Baltimore, Ain- ent animal, such as a human researcher. Such bonding, when it sworth took a position at Johns Hopkins University. Eventually, works “the way nature intended,” promotes the survival of duck- she launched a more detailed and intensive study of 26 mother– lings and goslings by keeping them close to a protective adult. infant dyads. After 18 home visits over the course of each baby’s Eventually, Bowlby integrated ideas from ethology, from sys- first year, she invented the “strange situation test” to assess the tems theory, from cognitive development (including the work of infants’ feelings of security when they were 1 year old. That test Piaget), and from psychoanalysis into attachment theory, argu- is now the preeminent means for assessing attachment quality ing that some human infant behaviors, for example clinging and and has been used in dozens of studies since, by researchers sucking, help keep the mother close, whereas others, for example around the world eager to test the tenets of attachment theory smiling, naturally elicit maternal caregiving. Such behaviors initi- and to explore the precursors and consequences of an infant’s ate the development of an attachment system that promotes the first attachments. Ainsworth’s careful research both enhanced infant’s survival and creates a feeling of security. That system the credibility of Bowlby’s views and demonstrated that interper- changes and consolidates over time as the child’s skills develop. sonal relationships, not just individual behaviors, could be mean- Early clinging and sucking are later replaced by other attachment ingfully investigated using scientific techniques. behaviors, such as protesting when mother leaves or joyfully greeting her when she returns, but the system’s evolutionary SOURCES: Karen, R. (1998). Becoming attached: First relationships and how they shape our capacity to love. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. function remains the same. The attachment system is enhanced Simpson, J. A., & Belsky, J. (2016). Attachment theory within a modern and developed by the responses of the environment (i.e., of the evolutionary framework. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (3rd ed., pp. 91–116). caregiver) and helps the child develop a working model of the self New York, NY: Guilford Press. Bowlby described the infant’s connection with the primary caregiver (usually the mother) as his first attachment relationship. Bowlby’s theory of how it changes and what it means for the child’s psychosocial life is called attachment theory. In Bowlby’s description, infant and caregiver participate in an attachment system that has evolved to serve the purpose of keeping the infant safe and assuring his survival. As we have already noted, both the infant and the adult bring to the system a set of biologically prepared behaviors. These behaviors change as the infant’s repertoire of abilities changes, partly as a function of interactions with others. In early infancy, as we have seen, the infant’s cries and clinging bring a caregiver. Later, instead of clinging, the toddler may keep an eye on one particular adult, often the mother, keeping track of Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 137 Box 4.2: A Biographical Sketch: Erik H. Erikson The parents of a 4-year-old boy named Peter brought him to Erik when children must form basic trust, the warmth, sensitivity, and Erikson for treatment of a frightening problem that appeared to understanding of responsive adults are important ingredients in the be emotionally based. Peter retained his feces for up to a week at development of positive feelings about self or others. a time, and his colon had become enlarged. As he learned more Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994) was the son of Danish par- about Peter, Erikson came to see his problem as a reaction to ents; his mother was Jewish, his father, Protestant. His parents the way others had dealt with normal, stage-appropriate behav- separated before he was born, and he was raised in Germany ior. Before the problem began, Peter had entered what Erikson by his mother and stepfather. His undistinguished youth seems described as the developmental stage of initiative versus guilt, an unlikely beginning for a great developmental theorist. He was when it is common for children to intrude themselves on others in something of a misfit as a young boy. His ethnicity as a Jew a rather aggressive way—such as trying to take over the conver- coupled with his Gentile appearance caused him to experience sation at the dinner table or, as in Peter’s case, being physically social rejection from both his Jewish and his Gentile peers. As aggressive and bossy with adults (see Table 1.2 in Chapter 1). a young man, Erik, born Erik Homberger, changed his surname Peter’s aggressive style was tolerated amiably by his nanny, but to Erikson—a clear attempt to construct his own identity. He his mother was disturbed by it and by the nanny’s tolerance, so was not much of a student, and after high school, uncertain of she fired the nanny. Peter’s anal retention problem started soon his goals or interests, he wandered through Europe rather than afterward. Eventually, Erikson helped Peter to see that his prob- attend college. He studied art for a while, wandered again, and lem was related to his distress at losing his beloved nanny. Peter, eventually accepted an offer to teach children at a school where Erikson felt, was identifying with the nanny, who had told Peter Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund, was a cofounder. Thus that she was going to have a baby of her own, and he was trying began his life’s work as a child clinician. He studied psycho- to hold on to her by retaining his feces. analysis with Anna Freud, and when he and his wife, Joan, fled Erikson’s work with Peter reflects the Freudian roots of his per- Europe in 1933 with the rise of Hitler, he became the first child spective. He saw Peter’s 4-year-old aggressiveness with his nanny analyst in Boston. In his career as a therapist and developmental as having sexual overtones, a normal process for a child in Freud’s theorist, he held faculty appointments at Yale, in the University phallic stage. When Peter’s aggressiveness led to the painful loss of of California system, and finally at Harvard, despite the fact that the beloved nanny, he regressed to using behaviors more typical of he had earned no degrees beyond high school. In his scholarly the anal stage: holding on to his feces. But Erikson’s interpretation work, he not only contributed to research and theory on normal also reveals his innovative, psychosocial perspective, which went personality development, including the formerly uncharted area well beyond his Freudian training. Preschoolers need to express of adult life stages, but also pioneered exploration into cross-cul- their bold new sense of initiative. Adults can be accepting of this tural variations in development, observing the life experiences of need, even as they impose some constraints so that children will Sioux Indians in South Dakota and of Yurok Indians in California. learn to behave in socially acceptable ways. In the process, children Although Erikson extended his work to include adult develop- will learn to curb their own behavior, controlled by their own feelings mental issues, he seems to have had a special concern for the of guilt. But when constraints are imposed in an abrupt, disap- vulnerability of children. In his writing on child rearing, he urged proving, unsupportive way, or when they are excessive, children’s parents to recognize that the most fundamental requirement of appropriate exuberance can be stifled, leading a child to be overly good parenting is to provide a sense of security, to give children restrained and guilty about normal behavior. Just as in infancy, the benefit of calm, reliable care, starting in earliest infancy. her whereabouts in case of need. Instead of crying, the toddler may call to the care- giver or communicate by reaching or pointing. When he does cry, the caregiver may respond differently to different cries, assessing the level and kind of need from varia- tions in the sound, apparently recognizing that crying can serve multiple purposes for the older baby (see Thompson & Leger, 1999). Thus, the system broadens to include and accommodate the infant’s more advanced physical and cognitive abilities, but it still serves the purpose of making the child secure. Attachment is a system, not a particular set of behaviors. The system serves three purposes: It maintains proximity between infant and caregiver, nurturing the emo- tional bond (called proximity maintenance); it provides the potential for ongoing pro- tection (called secure base); and it creates a haven for the infant when he is distressed (called safe haven). Behaviors as diverse as smiling and crying all serve attachment functions, and as already noted, the particular behaviors serving these functions can change over time and circumstance. When helpers reflect on problems faced by chil- dren and families, attachment theory indicates that the proper unit of analysis is at the level of relationships. That is, a behavior (e.g., crying or clinging) must be interpreted within its social context to understand its significance. 138 Chapter 4 Let’s consider the notion of safe haven more specifically, for it is here that attachments serve the important function of stress management. Think back, for a moment, to the earlier discussion of emotion regulation. The infant has limited ability to regulate his episodes of physiological distress. Threats such as hunger, pain, fatigue, loneliness, or overstimulation can produce periods of dysregulation or heightened arousal. Some infants are more easily aroused than others because of individual differences in autonomic reactivity. For all infants, and especially for these more sensitive and vulnerable ones, the stressfulness of physical or emotional discomfort activates the attachment system. By crying, clinging, or showing distress in some other way, the infant signals his need for his caregiver to step in to help man- age stress. Distress, triggered from within the infant or from without, activates the attachment system. The helpless infant needs a caregiver to deactivate his escalating discomfort. With time, sensitive caregiving episodes become associated with relief and love for the caregiver. The caregiver who scaffolds the child’s own develop- ing capacity to regulate his emotions also helps him form a positive social bond. Bowlby, like Erikson, assumed that the quality of care that an infant receives will affect the nature and the eventual impact of his attachments. With responsive, sensi- tive care, infants come to see their primary attachment figure as a source of security, a secure base from which to explore the world. They correspondingly feel confidence in themselves and in their ability to negotiate that world. The infant learns that his signals of distress are heard by others—that they are adaptive in helping him get needs for care and attention met. He also learns that the very expression of these needs is legitimate in that others take them seriously. More broadly, the nature or quality of infants’ first attachments affect their expec- tations and behaviors in other relationships. “These expectations develop into broader representations of their attachment figures, interpretations of their relational experi- ences, guidelines about how to interact with others, and even beliefs about themselves as relational partners” (Thompson, 2016, p. 332). In sum, early experience with a primary caregiver helps the child form his first representations of the self, of others, and of relation- ships. Bowlby referred to these representations as working models—prototypes of social functioning that affect the child’s expectations and behaviors in future relationships. Bowlby’s attachment theory prompted developmental researchers to explore babies’ earliest relationships, seeking a better understanding of how the first attach- ments develop and how important they really are for psychosocial development. In the following sections, we take a look at what this research has revealed and what it might mean for the helping professions. The Developing Bond Between Infant and Caregiver As part of the attachment system, an affectional bond develops. Bowlby argued that as a result of cognitive and emotional changes in the infancy period, the baby’s connection to the caregiver emerges in stages, with a full-fledged attachment likely by about 8 months. In a classic study, Schaffer and Emerson (1964) followed the development of a group of infants through their first 18 months and found a sequence of attachment stages consistent with those Bowlby described. In the first 2 months, infants signal their needs, producing behaviors such as clinging, smil- ing, and crying. Although we now know that even newborns have some ability to recognize their mothers’ voices (see Chapter 3), they show little sign of discrimi- nating among potential caregivers or of having a social preference, so that babies cannot yet be seen as attached to anyone. Next, between about 2 and 6 months, infants gradually show stronger and stronger preferences for particular caregivers, as when a baby smiles more brightly or is more readily soothed by Mom or Dad than by Grandma or Uncle Bill. By about 6 months, babies begin to behave in ways that signal a strong preference for one caregiver, most often the mother. If more than one adult is available, the infant may consistently reach for its mother when stressed, for example. The infant may protest being separated from the mother and will greet her happily when she returns. By 8 to 9 months, the baby may show full- fledged separation anxiety, acting distressed well after the mother has disappeared from view, a behavior that depends on the baby’s ability to recall the mother when Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 139 she is not present (see Chapter 3 for a full description). Along with separation anxi- ety may come stranger anxiety: an increased tendency to be wary of strangers and to seek the comfort and protection of the primary caregiver when a stranger is present. Note that infants can recognize familiar faces and voices much earlier than 6 to 9 months, and they may show some wariness with strangers, but a more intense reaction is common once other indicators of the first attachment emerge. Not all babies show stranger anxiety—it seems to depend in part on how reactive the infant is to new stimulation (see the section on infant temperament later in this MyLab Education chapter). Stranger anxiety is also greatly reduced among infants in some cultures, Video Example 4.2 like the Nso in Cameroon, where friendliness toward strangers is a cultural prac- Separation anxiety and wari- tice (Keller & Otto, 2009). Finally, Schaffer and Emerson observed that soon after ness of strangers appear across babies show signs of their first emotional attachment, many of them are forming cultures, although the behaviors other attachments as well, with their fathers, with regular babysitters, with older that the children show to indicate anxiety vary across cultures. How siblings, and with other family members. By 18 months, most of the babies in their are these behaviors necessary for study were attached to more than one person. the development of attachment As Bowlby theorized, researchers have found that both infants and parents typi- relationships? cally display expressive and behavioral characteristics that appear to foster the growth of attachment bonds. Parsons and colleagues have characterized these as the “orient- ing,” “recognition,” and “intuitive parenting” systems (Parsons, Young, Murray, Stein, & Kringelbach, 2010). These systems partly depend on adults’ rapid neurological responses to babies’ cues, such as a smile or cry. Some of the emotion regulation behaviors you learned about earlier are part of this emerging set of behaviors. Adults’ and babies’ responses in these systems have some automatic components, but they also change with experience: They grow and expand over the course of the relationship (Parsons, Young, Parsons, Stein, & Kringelbach, 2012). We summarize some of the elements of these behavioral systems in Table 4.1. You will probably recognize many of the behaviors involved if you have had opportunities to observe parents interacting with their infants. TABLE 4.1 Dyadic Systems That Foster Social Bonding SYSTEMS MOTHER (CAREGIVER) BEHAVIORS INFANT BEHAVIORS Orienting system (present from birth) Stays in the middle of the infant’s field of vision. Shows preference for human over non-human Enhances proximity between infant and Makes exaggerated facial gestures (like surprise, joy) and faces. caregiver. vocalizations. Shows preference for human speech sounds. Sustains eye contact. Displays “cuteness” or attractiveness to adults Attends quickly to infant cues. (e.g., large eyes, odor, high-pitched vocal sounds). Recognition system (present within Recognizes own infant from cry, touch, and smell. Shows clear preference for caregiver’s voice and a few days after birth) Enhances spe- Prefers to look at own baby’s face compared to other smell. cial responsiveness to each other and baby’s face; viewing own infant’s face induces positive Prefers to look at caregiver’s face compared to encourages contact. mood. that of a stranger. Intuitive parenting system (present in Mirrors infant’s behaviors. Mirrors caregiver’s behavior. early months of infant’s life) Enhances the “Reads” the behavior of infant and ascribes mean- Anticipates response but is more tolerant. attunement of communication between ing to infant behavior; responds to cues promptly and Expects contingency in communication; reacts to parent and caregiver. accurately. non-communication (still-face) with distress. Encourages greater tolerance by allowing for time lags in Experiences feelings of joy and relief; smiles more between responses to infant demands. in context of caregiving relationship. Alters speech patterns (slows down speech, exaggerates Learns repetitive action sequences. vocalizations, uses “parentese” to direct speech to infant). Soothes negative affect in infant. Builds on infants’ improved motor and visual skills through object play and repetitive games. Attachment Shows heightened responsiveness and emotional con- Demonstrates preference for caregiver. (early indicators by 6 months; full-fledged nection to infant. Responds with distress upon separation; shows by 8 to 10 months after birth) Predictably soothes and comforts infant when distressed; protest behaviors (cries, clings, etc.) and seeks Development of a stable preference and minimizes separation. contact when stressed. way of relating to caregiver in order to Demonstrates predictable and sensitive caregiving related Develops sense of confidence that care will be maintain proximity, provide security in to basic needs. predictable. times of stress, and serve as a base for Exhibits capacity to consider the mental state and experi- later independent exploration. ences of infant (mind-mindedness). SOURCES: Kringelbach, Stark, Alexander, Bornstein, & Stein, 2017; Parsons, Young, Parsons, Stein, & Kringelbach, 2012; Parsons, Young, Murray, Stein, & Kringelbach, (2010). 140 Chapter 4 The Biology of Infant Attachment Armed with modern technological tools, researchers are rapidly uncovering the very complex neurological underpinnings of the typical social bonding behaviors described in Table 4.1 that support attachment formation. Many of the brain structures that are important for emotional processing are also involved in social bonding, from the amygdala and hypothalamus to areas of the frontal cortex (Kringelbach et al., 2017). A full description of all aspects is beyond the scope of this textbook. However, let’s look at a few of the key biological ingredients in the bonding process. Findings in this area are directly relevant to practitioners’ interest in prevention of mental and physical disorders. Neuroendocrine systems help with bonding. Oxytocin is a hormone that is syn- thesized in the hypothalamus and released by the pituitary gland. It plays a role in affiliative behaviors: social cooperation, sexual and reproductive activities (in men and women), empathy and forgiveness, and so on (see Hane & Fox, 2016). In moth- ers, its production increases during pregnancy, labor, delivery, and breastfeeding. In both mothers and fathers, it promotes involvement in caregiving activities, such as physical proximity, responsive caregiving, empathy, and affection (Feldman, 2012). For example, one study followed parents and their firstborn babies until the children were 6 months old (Gordon et al., 2015). The researchers tested oxytocin levels from blood samples and found that mothers’ and fathers’ levels did not differ. Both par- ents produced more oxytocin as their babies got older. The researchers also observed mother–infant and father–infant interactions. Higher levels of oxytocin were associ- ated with more caregiving behaviors for both parents, but the types of behaviors dif- fered. Mothers produced more affectionate touch and positive facial expressions, for example, whereas fathers increased their stimulating play behavior. As you know, correlations do not necessarily indicate a causal connection, but experimental studies in which parents’ oxytocin levels have been manipulated (by administering doses nasally) show that increases in oxytocin directly promote engage- ment with an infant. In one study, fathers who received oxytocin showed cardiac changes associated with reduced stress and they interacted more with their infants than fathers who received a placebo (Weisman, Zagoory-Sharon, & Feldman, 2012). It is interesting to note that in response, their infants showed a spontaneous increase in oxy- tocin levels in their blood samples, as well as cardiac changes similar to those of their fathers! It is also noteworthy that for most adults, whether biological parents or not, close contact with infants promotes increases in oxytocin levels (see Young et al., 2017). Oxytocin works in part by reducing neuroendocrine stress responding, although how effective it is depends on a person’s own stress history. Individual differences in maternal oxytocin levels have been associated with a mother’s own early experiences, both in animals and humans. Women who report early emotional neglect have signifi- cantly lower levels of oxytocin and may be less likely to provide positive, responsive caregiving (e.g., Grimm et al., 2014). Oxytocin actually engages in “cross talk” with a wide range of other hormones that are implicated in infant caregiving (Feldman, 2015; Swain et al., 2014). For example, the oxytocin and dopamine systems are connected. Infant behaviors (crying, smiling, vocalizing, etc.) stimulate the release of oxytocin in caregivers, and they also trigger increases in dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward. The links between these hormones and the neural pathways they affect are complicated, but it appears that they work in concert to increase how rewarding parents’ caregiving behaviors are for them (Atzil et al., 2017). Recall from the discussion of epigenetics that the environment has a lot to do with how brain structures and functions develop both before and after birth. We reported in Chapter 2 that Laurent and colleagues (2016) found that sensitivity of mothers’ typi- cal caregiving was associated with their toddlers’ cortisol reactivity when the chil- dren were frightened. More sensitive moms had children whose cortisol responses normalized more rapidly. In another study, researchers examined DNA methylation patterns in 1-year-olds whose mothers had a major depressive disorder (Cicchetti, Hetzel, Rogosch, Handley, & Toth, 2016). These infants showed significantly different Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 141 methylation patterns compared to infants whose mothers did not have this diagnosis, perhaps indicating that the quality of care was responsible. (As you will see later in this chapter, depressed mothers are less likely to provide sensitive, responsive care to their infants than other mothers; see Thompson, 2015.) These data are suggestive of how caregiving might affect children’s brains, but much more work is needed to identify the neural processes that link caregiving, attachment, and children’s social and emotional development. Attachment Quality: Not All Attachments Are Alike In a famous study, Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues found that infants form dif- ferent kinds of attachments to their primary caregivers (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). To measure attachment, they invented the strange situation test. Twelve- month-olds and their mothers were brought to a room (the strange situation) where the child experienced a series of eight 3-minute episodes, each one introducing changes in the social situation, some of which were likely to be stressful to an infant. The stress component was important, given that attachment theory assumes that infants cannot handle stress on their own. At first the mother and baby were left alone in the room; in subsequent episodes, the mother and a stranger (one of the researchers) entered and left the room in various combinations. The baby’s reactions to all of these events were carefully recorded, particularly his tendency to explore the room and the toys and his reactions to his mother and the stranger. The researchers paid special attention to the baby’s response to his mother when she returned after an absence. Ainsworth and her colleagues identified three patterns of infant response, now considered indicative of three different kinds of infant attachment to an adult care- giver. Other researchers subsequently identified a fourth category (Main & Soloman, 1990). It is important to note that all of these patterns do represent attachments, as all babies seem to have needs for proximity maintenance, a secure base, and safe haven. The style of the attachment, however, varies. The following paragraphs describe all four types of attachment patterns. SECURELY ATTACHED Most babies are found to be securely attached (originally described as the “B” cat- egory). They show distress when separated from the mother, often crying and trying to go after her, but they greet her happily on her return, usually reaching up to be held, sometimes molding their bodies to the mother as they seek comfort. Once reassured by her presence and her gestures, they tend to go off and explore the room. Ainsworth argued that babies in this category can use the mother as a secure base from which to explore the world; perhaps they are showing the beginnings of optimism or hope, as Erikson suggested. They may also have learned to tolerate more separation because they have confidence in the mother’s availability if they need her. Sixty-five percent of the 1-year-olds in the Ainsworth et al. (1978) study showed this response pattern, and in most subsequent research the majority of babies fit this description. ANXIOUS AMBIVALENT—INSECURELY ATTACHED Babies in this and the remaining two categories are considered to be attached, in that they show signs of having a special pattern of behavior vis-à-vis their mothers, but their attachments seem insecure, often laced with high levels of anxiety, as though the infant cannot quite achieve a sense of security and ease even when mother is available. Anxious ambivalent babies (originally called “C” babies, comprising about 10% of many samples) often seem stressed even in the initial episode (e.g., sometimes failing to explore at all), and they are quite distressed when separated from their mothers, crying more than babies in other attachment categories (Hane & Fox, 2016). It is their reunion behavior, however, that distinguishes them as insecurely attached. They may act angry, alternately approaching and resisting the mother, or they may respond list- lessly to her efforts to comfort. They seem preoccupied with their mothers and rarely return to exploration after a separation. 142 Chapter 4 AVOIDANT—INSECURELY ATTACHED Avoidant babies (originally called “A” babies and comprising about 20% of most sam- ples), typically fail to cry when separated from their mothers. They actively avoid or ignore her when she returns, sometimes combining proximity seeking and moving away, but mostly turning away. In contrast to babies in other categories, these children often appear unemotional during the episodes of separation and reunion. However, other studies indicate that their heart rates are elevated as much as other babies’ dur- ing separations from their mothers. Their heart rates remain elevated for long peri- ods after mothers return (as do those of anxious-ambivalent babies), whereas secure babies’ heart rates return to baseline quickly (see Gunnar, 2017). DISORGANIZED-DISORIENTED—INSECURELY ATTACHED The category disorganized-disoriented (referred to as “D” babies and constituting a very small percentage of most samples) was first described by Main and Soloman (1986, 1990), who examined strange situation videotapes from several studies, focus- ing on babies who had previously been difficult to classify. These infants produced contradictory behaviors, showing both an inclination to approach the mother when stressed and a tendency to avoid her when she approached! “D” babies are more fully described in the Focus on Developmental Psychopathology later in this chapter. Linking Quality of Caregiving to Attachment Quality Where do attachment types or styles originate? As we have indicated, attachment the- ory suggests that the quality of caregiving during the baby’s first year is the key, and Ainsworth’s early study strongly supported that claim (Ainsworth et al., 1978). All 26 babies and mothers in her study had been observed in their homes at regular intervals from the time of birth. The middle-class mothers were their infants’ primary caregivers, and they did not work outside the home. Yet, they did not all provide the same quality of care. Infants who became securely attached had mothers who responded promptly and consistently to crying during the first year, who handled the infant with sensitivity, who held the baby tenderly and often, and whose face-to-face interactions were respon- sive to the baby’s signals. In other words, they showed many of the features that both Bowlby and Erikson proposed to be important for infant care to create security or trust. Babies who became insecurely attached had mothers who seemed insensitive to their infants in one way or another. The mothers of ambivalent babies were affection- ate but were often awkward in holding. They were inconsistent in their responsiveness to crying. In face-to-face interactions, they often failed to respond to their babies’ sig- nals. For example, in a game of peek-a-boo, an infant might begin to seem overstimu- lated and turn away his gaze. A responsive mother would be likely to wait until the baby reengaged before saying or doing anything, whereas an unresponsive mother might behave more intrusively, trying to force the reengagement by vocalizing or jig- gling the baby. The mothers of avoidant babies seemed to actively avoid holding their babies. They were more often rejecting and angry, and they showed less warmth and affection than other mothers. Babies in the disorganized-disoriented category of attachment were not identified in Ainsworth’s study, but in research where they have been identi- fied, this pattern has been associated with frightening and/or abusive parental behav- ior, as you will see in this chapter’s Focus on Developmental Psychopathology. Ainsworth’s initial research linking mother care to infant security excited the research community and attracted the attention of helping professionals, especially those interested in developmental psychopathology. Decades of research are now available, corroborating the importance of sensitive, responsive care during infancy for attachment quality and deepening our understanding of the nature of such care. One thing we have learned is that maternal sensitivity is linked to infant security, whether we look at middle-class or low-income families, in the United States, in other Western countries or in non-Western cultural groups (Fearon & Belsky, 2016; Mesman et al., 2017; see the “Cross-Cultural Influences on Infant Attachment” section later in this chapter). Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years 143 What are the key ingredients of “sensitivity”? In other words, what really mat- ters to promote secure attachments? Consistent with Ainsworth’s observations, many studies support the importance of prompt responsiveness to distress; interactional synchrony; affectional warmth and positivity (and not expressing hostility, boredom, frustration); and moderately stimulating but nonintrusive interactive involvement with the infant (being supportive without interfering). It also helps if caregivers sup- port the “exploration side” of security, giving their infants freedom to use their devel- oping skills in a safe environment (Bernier, Matte-Gagne, Belanger, & Whipple, 2014; Fearon & Belsky, 2016; Kim, Chow, Bray, & Teti, 2017). Sensitive and Insensitive Parenting We also have a more detailed picture now of what happens when early relationships g

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