Chapter 6 Social & Personality Development in Infancy

Freud suggested that individual differences in personality originate in the nursing and weaning practices of infants' mothers. Erikson emphasized the roles of both mothers and fathers, as well as other adults in the infant's environment, in providing for all the infant's needs, thereby instilling a sense of trust concerning the social world.

How do Freud's and Erikson's views of personality development in the first 2 years differ?

The infant begins to develop a sense of self, including the awareness of a separate self and the understanding of self-permanence (which may be collectively called the subjective self) and awareness of herself as an object in the world (the objective self) during the middle of the second year. An emotional self develops in the first year. The range of emotions infants experience—as well as their ability to make use of information about emotions, such as facial expressions—increases dramatically over the first year.

How do the subjective self, the objective self, and the emotional self develop during the first 2 years?

For parents to form a strong attachment relationship with an infant, what is most crucial is the development of synchrony, a set of mutually reinforcing and interlocking behaviors that characterize most interactions between parent and infant. Fathers as well as mothers form strong bonds with their infants, but fathers show more physically playful behaviors with their children than do mothers.

How does synchrony affect parent-infant relations?

Studies in many countries suggest that secure attachment is the most common pattern everywhere, but cultures differ in the frequency of different types of insecure attachment.

In what ways do patterns of attachment vary across cultures?

Temperament theorists generally agree on the following basic temperament dimensions: activity level, approach/positive emotionality, inhibition, negative emotionality, and effortful control/task persistence.

On which dimensions of temperament do most developmentalists agree?

Using a procedure called the Strange Situation, Ainsworth identified four patterns of attachment distinguished by infants' responses to separations from and reunions with their mothers. Securely attached infants separate easily and greet mothers positively when they return. Infants with insecure/avoidant attachments avoid contact with mothers especially at reunion. Infants with insecure/ambivalent attachments are upset at separation but do not greet mothers positively at reunion. Infants with insecure/disorganized attachment display confused, contradictory patterns such as moving toward the mother while looking elsewhere. Attachment patterns remain stable as long as an infant's circumstances remain so. Most children with autism spectrum disorders are attached to their caregivers but lack the ability to form relationships with others.

What are the four attachment patterns that Ainsworth discovered?

Bowlby proposed that a child's attachment to a caregiver develops in four phases: (1) indiscriminate aiming of attachment behaviors toward anyone within reach; (2) focus on one or more figures; (3) "secure base behavior" at about 6 months of age, signaling the presence of a clear attachment; and (4) an internal model of attachment that influences current and future close relationships.

What are the four phases of attachment and the behaviors associated with them?

The security of the initial attachment is reasonably stable; later in childhood, securely attached children appear to be more socially skillful, more curious and persistent in approaching new tasks, and more mature. The internal model of attachment that individuals develop in infancy affects how they parent their own babies.

What are the long-term consequences of attachment quality?

Ethologists hypothesize that early emotional bonds are the foundation of later personality and social development. They further suggest that the first 2 years of life are a sensitive, or critical, period for the development of attachment.

What are the main ideas of attachment theory?

There is strong evidence that temperamental differences have a genetic component and that they are at least somewhat stable throughout infancy and childhood. However, temperament is not totally determined by heredity or neurological processes. The "fit" between children's temperaments and their environments may be more important than temperament itself.

What are the roles of heredity, neurological processes, and environment in the formation of temperament?

The impact of day care on children's social development is unclear. Some studies show a small difference in security of attachment between children in day care and those reared at home; others suggest that home-care and day-care children do not differ with respect to attachment. Some studies show children who spend more time in day care to be more aggressive; others show them to be more socially skillful.

What does research suggest about the risks of nonparental care with respect to social development?

Infants in nonparental care are more likely to be overweight than those who are cared for exclusively by parents. Research on the effects of nonparental care on cognitive developmental variables such as intelligence test scores and academic achievement have produced inconsistent results. Some studies show positive effects, but others do not. When a child receives more intellectual stimulation in nonparental care than he would at home, there are likely to be positive effects on cognitive development. But when the reverse is true, nonparental care may have neutral or negative effects on cognitive development.

What might be the effects of nonparental care on physical and cognitive development?

Caregiver characteristics such as marital status, age, education level, and income can affect infants' attachment quality. Also, infants whose parents have psychiatric illnesses are more likely to form insecure attachments than babies whose parents do not have these disorders.

What variables might affect a parent's ability to establish an attachment relationship with an infant?

Infants' physiological responses to the stresses associated with nonparental care may underlie its association with developmental outcomes. The quality of nonparental care a child receives may be as important as the quantity of nonparental care. Individual differences and gender may interact with the quality of a care arrangement, the quantity of outside-the-home care a child receives, or both. Average differences between children who receive nonparental care and those who are cared for entirely in their own home are small.

What variables should be taken into account in interpretations of research on nonparental care?

Comparing parental to nonparental care is difficult because there are many types of nonparental care arrangements. Families that choose nonparental care also differ from families that care for their children at home.

Why is it difficult to study the effects of nonparental care on development?

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

a group of disorders that impair an individual's ability to understand and engage in the give-and-take of social relationships.

Synchrony

a mutual, interlocking pattern of attachment behaviors shared by a parent and child.

Insecure/Avoidant Attachment

a pattern of attachment in which an infant avoids contact with the parent and shows no preference for the parent over other people

Secure Attachment

a pattern of attachment in which an infant readily separates from the parent, seeks proximity when stressed, and uses the parent as a safe base for exploration

Insecure/Disorganized Attachment

a pattern of attachment in which an infant seems confused or apprehensive and shows contradictory behavior, such as moving toward the mother while looking away from her

Insecure/Ambivalent Attachment

a pattern of attachment in which the infant shows little exploratory behavior, is greatly upset when separated from the mother, and is not reassured by her return or efforts to comfort him

Personality

a pattern of responding to people and objects in the environment.

Objective (Categorical) Self

a toddler's understanding that she or he is defined by various categories such as gender or qualities such as shyness.

Subjective Self

an infant's awareness that she or he is a separate person who endures through time and space and can act on the environment.

Social Referencing

an infant's use of others' facial expressions as a guide to his or her own emotions.

Stranger Anxiety

expressions of discomfort, such as clinging to the mother, in the presence of strangers.

Separation Anxiety

expressions of discomfort, such as crying, when separated from an attachment figure.

Temperament

inborn predispositions, such as activity level, that form the foundations of personality.

Goodness-of-Fit

the degree to which an infant's temperament is adaptable to his or her environment and vice versa.

Attachment

the emotional tie to a parent experienced by an infant, from which the child derives security.

Niche Picking

the process of selecting experiences on the basis of temperament.

Attachment Theory

the view that infants are biologically predisposed to form emotional bonds with caregivers and that the characteristics of those bonds shape later social and personality development.