Chapter Five: Socioemotional Development in Infancy and Early Childhood PDF

# Chapter Five: Entering the Social World: Socioemotional Development in Infancy and Early Childhood ## 5.1 Trust & Attachment: Learning Objectives - What are Erikson's first three stages of psychosocial development? - How do infants form emotional attachments to mother, father, and other significan...

# Chapter Five: Entering the Social World: Socioemotional Development in Infancy and Early Childhood ## 5.1 Trust & Attachment: Learning Objectives - What are Erikson's first three stages of psychosocial development? - How do infants form emotional attachments to mother, father, and other significant people in their lives? - What are the different varieties of attachment relationships, how do they arise, and what are their consequences? - Is attachment jeopardized when parents of infants and young children are employed outside of the home? ## Erikson's Stages of Early Psychosocial Development - Each of 8 stages involves a unique challenge - Successful resolution results in a particular strength of psychosocial development. - Failure may stunt development, the relevant strength, and impede resolution of future challenges. - Three of his stages and strengths are relevant to infancy and the preschool years. ## Erikson's Stages (cont'd) - **Basic trust vs. mistrust (infancy)** - Infants depend on caregivers to meet their needs and provide comfort. - If needs are not met, the child develops wariness and a lack of comfort. - When caregivers responsively and consistently meet these needs, the child develops a basic sense of trust and openness. - **Hope:** the strength involving openness to new experience, tempered by wariness that discomfort or danger may arise; acquired with a proper balance of trust and mistrust. - **Autonomy vs. doubt (1-3 years)** - Children realize they can have control over their own actions and act independently. - If autonomy is not achieved, children can feel ashamed of their capabilities and start to doubt them. - **Will:** a strength involving children's knowledge that they can act on their world intentionally but within limits; arises from a blend of autonomy, shame, and doubt. - **Initiative vs. guilt (3-5 years)** - Guilt can arise when taking initiative places children in conflict with others or when they pursue their own ambitions without cooperating with others. - Initiative may develop when children successfully play with different roles (e.g., as a parent) and explore possibilities for themselves. - **Purpose:** a strength involving balance between individual initiative and a willingness to cooperate with others. ## The Growth of Attachment - Attachment to caregivers is a critical aspect of Erikson's first stage (basic trust vs. mistrust). - **Evolutionary psychology**: Many human behaviors are successful adaptations to the environment. - Humans are social beings who also form parent-child attachments. - These are adaptations promoting survival to the reproductive years, thereby sustaining the species' existence. ## The Growth of Attachment (cont'd) - **Attachment:** an enduring socioemotional relationship with an adult. - Ensures survival. - Likeliest when the caregiver is responsive and caring. - Often formed with mothers, because they usually are primary caregivers. - Can occur with any responsive and caring person. - Bowlby proposed four stages of attachment. ## Steps Toward Attachment - **Preattachment stage (birth to 6-8 weeks)** - Infants rapidly learn to recognize their mothers. - Infants display many behaviors that elicit adult caregiving (e.g., crying, smiling). - **Attachment in the making (6-8 weeks to 6-8 months)** - Infants behave differently toward familiar versus unfamiliar adults. - Infants are more easily consoled by familiar adults and act happier in their presence. ## Steps Toward Attachment (cont'd) - **True attachment (6-8 months to 18 months)** - Infants have singled out a "special" adult as their secure and stable socioemotional base. - **Reciprocal relationships (18 months on)** - Toddlers act as true partners in the relationship, taking initiatives in interaction. - Can anticipate that parents will return after a separation, which benefits coping. - Toddlers begin to understand parents' feelings and goals. - May use these to guide their own behavior (e.g., social referencing). ## Father-Infant Relationships - Attachment to fathers tends to follow that with mothers. - Fathers tend to spend more time playing with children than taking care of them. - Fathers play with children differently than mothers (more rough and tumble). - Mothers more often read to children and talk with them. - Children tend to seek out the father for a playmate; mothers are preferred for comfort. ## Forms of Attachment - **Ainsworth's Strange Situation paradigm** - Three phases (~3 minutes each) - Child and mother first occupy an unfamiliar room filled with toys. - Mother leaves room momentarily. - Mother then returns to room. - Observe child's reactions during each. - Classified four types of attachment: - Three were insecure types (least frequent). - One is secure (frequent). ## Four Types of Attachment Relationships - **Secure attachment (60-65%)**: Baby may or may not cry upon separation; wants to be with mom upon her return and stops crying. - **Avoidant attachment (20%)**: Baby not upset by separation; ignores or looks away when mom returns. - **Resistant attachment (10-15%)**: Separation upsets baby; remains upset after mom's return and is difficult to console. - **Disorganized attachment (5-10%)**: Separation and return confuse the baby; reacts in contradictory ways (e.g., seeking proximity to the returned mom, but not looking at her). ## Strange Situation Paradigm - Criticisms - Cultures may vary in what they consider appropriate responses to separation and reunion; ergo, we cannot rely on these alone. - **Attachment Q-set**: Observers watch moms and children interact at home, then rate numerous attachment-related behaviors to form a total score. - Scores from Strange Situation and Q-set correlate highly and both predict later quality of relationship (e.g., insecurely attached infants later report anger with parents and low intimacy with them). ## Consequences of Attachment - Environmental instability and stress may cause changes in the quality of attachment (from secure to insecure). - Early attachment may not well predict later outcomes partly due to these factors. - Early secure attachment predicts: - Successful and confident peer relationships. - Fewer conflicts with friends. - More stable and higher-quality romantic relationships. ## Consequences of Attachment (cont'd) - Early disorganized attachments predicts problems with anxiety, anger, and aggression. • Two mutually nonexclusive explanations of why early attachment is a strong predictor: 1. Early relationships teach children to trust and confide in others, leading to skilled social relationships. 2. Parents who establish early secure attachments remain warm and supportive throughout childhood. ## What Determines Quality of Attachment? - Secure attachment results from predictable, sensitive, and responsive parenting: Why? - **Internal working model:** a child's set of expectations about parents' availability and responsiveness, in general and during stress. - **Positive model:** this person is dependable, caring, plus concerned about my needs and willing to meet them. - **Negative model:** this person is uncaring, undependable, unresponsive, and even annoyed by my needs. ## What Determines Quality of Attachment? (cont'd) - **Temperament** also contributes to attachment. - Fussy and difficult-to-console babies are somewhat less likely to form secure attachments. - Particularly for rigid and traditional mothers than accepting and flexible ones. - **Parental training** helps parents interact more affectionately, responsively, and sensitively. - Promotes secure attachments and positive internal working models. ## Attachment, Work, & Alternate Caregiving - Quality of mother-child attachment for 15- and 36-month-olds is unrelated to: - Daycare's quality or length of stays. - Number of changes in daycare. - Age when this care began. - Type of childcare (e.g., childcare center vs. in the home with a non-relative). - Child forming attachments to nonparental caregivers. - Insecure attachments are likelier given low-quality or frequent childcare combined with moms who already are unresponsive and insensitive. ## Features of High-Quality Daycare - Low ratio of children to caregivers. - Well-trained, experienced staff. - Low staff turnover. - Ample opportunities for educational and social stimulation. - Good communication between parents and daycare workers about the program's goals and routines. - Sensitive and responsive caregiving is key. ## 5.2 Emerging Emotions: Learning Objectives - At what ages do children begin to express basic emotions? - What are complex emotions, and when do they develop? - When do children begin to understand other people's emotions? How do they use this information to guide their own behavior? ## Experiencing and Expressing Emotions - Emotions have functional (adaptive) value (e.g., guiding behavior and facilitating relationships). - Theorists distinguish complex from basic emotions. - **Basic emotions** consist of: - a subjective feeling. - a psychological change. - an overt behavior. - They consist of joy, sadness, anger, fear, distress, disgust, interest, and surprise. - All have emerged by 8 to 9 months. - Studying infants' facial expressions and overt behaviors reveals their probable trajectory. ## Development of Basic Emotions - **Newborns**: pleasure and distress. - **2 to 3 months**: sadness. - **2 to 3 months**: social smiles. - occur upon seeing a human face. - sometimes accompanied by cooing. - express pleasure at seeing another. - **4 to 6 months**: anger. - reflects an increasing understanding of goals and their frustration. ## Development of Basic Emotions (cont'd) - **6 months**: stranger wariness. - child looks away and begins to fuss. - occurs once children start to locomote. - adaptive as a natural restraint against wandering away from familiar others. - occurs less with strangers in a familiar environment. - wanes once children can recognize friendly faces. - **6 months**: disgust. - adaptive in signaling toxins (e.g., feces) or potential illness (e.g., vomit). ## Emergence of Complex Emotions - **Complex emotions** include guilt, embarrassment, and pride. - To be experienced, child first must understand the self and behavior in relation to whether they have met standards or expectations. - This self-understanding emerges around 15-18 months. - Complex emotions emerge at 18-24 months. ## Later Developments - With increasing cognitive development, children experience basic and complex emotions in more and different situations. - **Ex.** Fear of the dark or imaginary creatures declines during elementary school. - Understand appearance vs. reality. - **Ex.** Elementary school but not preschool children would experience: - Shame for not defending a peer. - Normative fear about school, health, and personal harm. ## Cultural Differences in Emotional Expression - Many basic and complex emotions are expressed similarly around the world. - Expressing emotions differs across cultures. - **Asian children** are encouraged to show emotional restraint. - **European-American 11-month-olds** cried and smiled more than Chinese infants of same age. ## Cultural Differences (cont'd) - Cultures differ in which events trigger emotions. - **Asian children** are proud of class-wide achievement. - **American children** are proud of public personal achievement, whereas Asians are embarrassed. - **American children** express anger at others for ruining their property or hurting them. - **Asian-Buddhist children** would inhibit anger and feel shame instead for their possible role in the event. ## Recognizing & Using Others' Emotions - Adults are more skilled at recognizing subtleties in emotion and detecting when others are faking an emotion. - **4-6 months**: differentiate among faces expressing happiness, sadness, and fear. - Like adults, infants attend more to facial expressions of negative emotions than happy or neutral ones (adaptive value). - Infants understand a facially displayed emotion as shown by them matching their emotions to other people's. ## Recognizing Others' Emotions (cont'd) - **Social referencing**: 12-month-old infants use adults' (e.g., parents') facial and vocal emotion displays to direct their own behavior. - A child will: - avoid an object if parent expresses fear or disgust. - approach the object if parent shows happiness. - **14-month-olds** remember earlier observed emotional reactions of parents to particular objects. - **18-month-olds** use the reactions of one adult to another adult's behavior to guide their own behavior. ## Recognizing Others' Emotions (cont'd) - **Factors contributing to children's emotion understanding**: - Parents and children frequently discussing past emotions (especially negative ones, such as fear and anger). - Parents explaining how feelings differ and feelings' situational elicitors. - A positive and rewarding relationship with parents and siblings. - Possibly contributes due to more frequent discussions about a full range of emotions. ## Regulating Emotions - **Emotion regulation**: Controlling in some way what one feels and how to communicate the feeling. - **Dependent on cognitive processes**: - **Attention** (e.g., reducing anger by diverting attention to less provocative stimuli, thoughts, or feelings). - **Reappraisal** (e.g., lessening an emotion's intensity by differently interpreting the significance or meaning of an event or feeling). - Across age, some children more poorly regulate their emotions compared to others, which can create adjustment problems (e.g., peer conflicts). ## Regulating Emotions (cont'd) - **4-6 months**: use simple strategies to regulate emotions (e.g., turning away from a scary image). - **24 months**: because it better gets an adult's attention and help, express sadness rather than fear or anger. - **Older children and adolescents**: - Become better able to control their own emotions rather than relying on others. - Use mental strategies to regulate emotions. - Tailor their strategy to the particular situation (e.g., whether its avoidable or not). ## 5.3 Interacting with Others: Learning Objectives - When do youngsters first begin to play with each other? How does play change during infancy and the preschool years? - What determines whether children help one another? ## The Joys of Play - Even two 6-month-olds look, smile, and point at each other. - **12 months**: parallel play, in which children play alone but are keenly interested in what others are doing. - **15-18 months**: simple social play, in which children do similar activities and talk or smile at each other. - **24 months**: cooperative play, theme-based play where children take special roles (e.g., hide-and-seek). ## Make-Believe - Values and traditions are expressed through make-believe or imaginary characters. - Entertaining, while promoting cognitive development. - Helps children explore frightening topics. - Imaginary playmates promote imagination, sociability, and adjustment. - Pretend play is a regular part of preschooler's play. - 16-18 months understand difference between pretending vs. reality. ## Solitary Play - Usually not an indicator of problems. - Can reflect uneasiness with others for which professional help should be sought if child: - wanders aimlessly among others. - hovers over others who are playing. ## Gender Differences in Play - **24-36 months**: children spontaneously prefer playing with same-sex peers. - Not restricted to gender-typed games. - Resist adult encouragement to play with the opposite sex. - Increases through to pre-adolescence. - **Why?** Gender-typed play styles, such as: - Boys prefer rough and tumble, competition, and dominance. - Girls are more cooperative, prosocial, and conversation-oriented. ## Gender Differences in Play (cont'd) - **Why the same-sex play preference? (cont'd)** - **Girls** are more enabling: - Their acts and remarks support others and sustain interactions. - **Boys** are more constricting: - Try to be the victor by exaggerating, and threatening or contradicting the other. - **Evolutionarily adaptive?** - **Males** strive to establish a high rank to gain access to more mates. - **Females** have affiliation goals, because they traditionally left their community to join another. ## Parental Influence - Parental involvement in child's play can lead to later improved peer relations when parents serve as: - **Playmate**, scaffolding the child's play and rendering it more sophisticated. - **Social director**, arranging play dates and official play activities (e.g., swimming). - **Coach**, helping children learn how to initiate interactions, make joint decisions, and resolve conflicts (when done appropriately). ## Parental Influence (cont'd) - Parents also serve as **mediators** to help children resolve disputes, share, and identify mutually acceptable activities. - **Parent-child attachment relationships** indirectly influence children's play. - **When of high quality and emotionally satisfying**: - children generalize this positive internal working model to peer relationships. - children are more confident about exploring their environment, yielding more opportunities to form new relationships. ## Helping Others - **Prosocial behavior**: one that benefits another. - **Ex.** cooperating, being polite. - **Altruism**: prosocial behaviors not directly benefiting the self, but driven by feelings of responsibility toward others. - **Ex.** sharing one's lunch with a friend who forgot his; helping a lost child. - **Adaptive?** Increases person's chances of receiving help, thereby promoting survival, later sexual reproduction, and passing along these genes. ## Helping Others (cont'd) - **18 months**: recognize others' distress signals and will try to comfort them; will help someone in need (e.g., helping a teacher pick up markers she/he dropped). - **By 3 years**: are gradually starting to understand others' needs and learning appropriate altruistic responses. - Still somewhat limited because of egocentrism in distinguishing others' needs or desires from their own. ## Skills Underlying Altruistic Behavior - **Perspective-taking**: accurate perception of another's physical, social, or emotional viewpoint as distinct from one's own. - **Empathy** is one manifestation: the actual experience of another's feelings. - The state and trait of empathy promote helping. ## Situational Influences - Why do even kind children sometimes act cruelly? Help is likelier when children: - Feel responsible for the person in need, which reminders of friendship's or affiliation's importance can promote. - Believe they have the skills to be helpful. - Are in a good rather than a bad mood. - Incur fewer costs or sacrifices for helping. ## The Contributions of Heredity - Prosocial behavior is more similar in identical twins than fraternal ones. - Genes influence aspects of temperament related to prosocial behavior. - Certain children are aware of another's need, but: - Feel so distressed that they cannot figure out how to help due to poor emotion regulation skills. - Their inhibition (shyness) prevents them from helping, despite knowing how. ## Socialization of Altruism - Children are more prosocial and/or empathic when parents: - Model warmth and concern for others. - Model being cooperative, helpful, and responsive. - Discipline warmly and supportively, set guidelines, and give feedback. - Use reason while disciplining, stating how children's actions affect others. - Provide children opportunities to behave prosocially in and outside the home. ## 5.4 Gender Roles & Gender Identity: Learning Objectives - What are our stereotypes about males and females? How well do they correspond to actual differences between boys and girls? - How do young children learn gender roles? - How are gender roles changing? What further changes might the future hold? ## Images of Men & Women: Facts & Fantasy - **Social role**: cultural guidelines as to how we should behave, especially with others. - Gender roles are one of the first learned. - **Learning gender stereotypes**: - Our world is not gender neutral. - 18 months: girls and boys look longer at gender-stereotyped pictures of toys. - 4-year-olds: extensive knowledge of gender-stereotyped activities and some behaviors or traits. ## Images of Men & Women: Facts & Fantasy (cont'd) - **Preschool**: believe boys are physically, but girls verbally, aggressive. - **Post-preschool**: continuously growing beliefs about gender-stereotyped traits and occupations. - Males will have more prestigious jobs (earn more money, have greater power). - Boys are strong and dominant, whereas girls are emotional and gentle. - Recognize gender stereotypes as behavioral guidelines that are not necessarily binding. ## Gender-Related Differences - **How do boys and girls actually differ?** - **Verbal ability**: Girl toddlers have larger vocabularies; thereafter read, write, and spell better, and have fewer language problems. - **Mathematics**: In cultures not limiting females to traditional stereotypes, this gender gap has diminished in the past 25 years. - **Spatial ability**: From infancy onwards, boys more accurately and rapidly solve visual-spatial problems. ## Gender-Related Differences (cont'd) - **Social influence**: Girls comply more with adult directions and more readily accept others' influence attempts, possibly because they value group harmony. - **Aggression**: Starting at 17 mos., boys are more physically aggressive (across cultures). - **Girls** are likelier to engage in relational aggression. - Hurt others by damaging their peer relationships (e.g., gossip, ignore, spread rumors). ## Gender-Related Differences (cont'd) - **Emotional sensitivity**: Girls are more empathic; can better express and interpret others' emotions. - **Caveats about gender differences**: - They depend on experience. - Historical changes affect them. - Most differences are small, reflecting only the average difference between groups of boys and girls. - **Ex.** Some girls may outperform boys on spatial tasks, while some boys may be more emotionally sensitive than girls. ## Gender Typing - Parents are equally warm and encouraging to boys and girls. - However, results show parents to model and differentially reinforce "appropriate" gender-typed behaviors, with: - Girls playing with dolls, dressing up. - Boys engaging in rough-and-tumble play, playing with blocks, mild aggression. - Results support social learning theory. ## Gender Typing (cont'd) - Differential reinforcement of gender-typed traits and behaviors is likelier in: - Parents with traditional views of each gender's rights and roles. - Fathers, who punish their sons more for gender-atypical behavior, and are more accepting of dependence in girls. - Mothers rarely contradict or question children's gender-stereotyped statements. ## Gender Typing (cont'd) - Peers influence gender roles in two ways: - Children learn more about their role from like-sex than opposite-sex peers by engaging so often in same-sex play. - Sharpens one's sense of gender group membership. - Heightens the contrast between each gender's roles and behaviors. - Peers treat boys even more harshly than girls for "feminine" activities and interests. ## Gender Identity - **Gender identity**: sense of self as male or female. - **When is this formed?** Kohlberg's three stages: - **Gender labeling**: understanding that one is a girl or boy and labeling the self as such (2-3 years). - **Gender stability**: understanding that one will forever be a boy or girl (preschool). - **Gender constancy**: understanding that one's maleness or femaleness does not transform across situations, or with personal wishes and superficial changes (4 to 7 years). ## Gender Identity (cont'd) - Kohlberg: only after obtaining gender constancy (Stage 3) do children start learning gender roles. - Some results show this learning to occur earlier, after mastering gender stability (Stage 2). - Gender constancy does help children think more flexibly about gender roles (e.g., ok for girls to play with trucks or boys with dolls). - This theory addresses when but not how children learn about gender or gender-appropriate behaviors. ## Gender Identity (cont'd) - **Gender-schema theory**: addresses "how" children learn about gender and gender roles. - Children decide if objects, activities, or behaviors are "male" or "female" and then decide whether they should learn more about these. - Once children understand or refer to themselves by gender, they play more often with gender-stereotyped toys (17-21 mos.) and watch gender-typed TV shows and evaluate toys more positively if a child of their sex likes the toy. ## Biological Influences - **Evolutionary theory**: Men and women evolved different traits and behaviors adaptive to their unique investments (e.g., childrearing for women and resource provision for men). - **Identical twins** are even more similar than fraternal twins in preference for sex-typical toys and activities. - **In utero testosterone exposure** predicts preference for masculine-typed activities. ## Biological Influences - **Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH)**: genetic disorder of the adrenals secreting large amounts of androgen; affects girls, such that: - their enlarged clitoris can resemble a penis. - they prefer masculine activities and male friends. - hormone therapy and sex operations do not undo these preferences. - greater prenatal androgen exposure exacerbates these preferences. - it seems to affect brain regions critical for gender-role behavior. ## VIDEO: Child with Gender Identity Disorder - This slide contains an image of a video player with the text "PLAY" on it. ## Evolving Gender Roles - Family lifestyles, culture, and history influence children's gender roles. - **Family Lifestyles Project**: studied 1960-70s counterculture members who socialized their children without traditional gender beliefs: - Children did not stereotype occupations or object use (e.g., girls can use a hammer or boys an iron). - Children did prefer same-sex friends or activities. - **Evolutionary history** partly continues to influence certain roles (e.g., women being nurturing or men being protectors and providers).