Chapter 11 Emotional Development, Temperament and Attachment emotional development

Chapter 11 Emotional Development, Temperament and Attachment

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Displaying Emotions

• Sequencing of Distinct Emotions
• At birth; interest, distress, disgust, contentment
• 2-7 months; anger, sadness, joy, surprise, fear (all basic emotions)
• Middle of second year; embarrassment, shame, pride, guilt, envy
• Self-recognition and self-evaluation

• Figure 11.1 Young infants display a variety of emotional expressions.

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Parents influence self-evaluative emotions
• If mothers are critical of failure, shame follows failure, little evidence of pride after success
• Opposite if mothers were positive about successes
• Guilt more likely than shame if reason why behavior was wrong

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Socialization of Emotions
• Emotional display rules – societal circumstances for emotional expression
• Mothers tend to model only positive emotions to young infants
• Become more responsive to infants’ positive emotions

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Regulating Emotions
• Ability develops very slowly
• Present in 6-month-olds
• Toddlers rarely regulate fear
• Parents may want children to feel emotional arousal to teach them
• To sympathize with victims
• Feel guilty for their transgressions
• Feel pride

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Acquiring Emotional Display Rules
• Age 3 can disguise true feelings
• But at 13, still difficult to suppress anger
• Ability in older adolescents is linked with being more prosocial, ability to resist peer pressure

• Figure 11.2 With age, children are better able to display positive emotional reactions after receiving a disappointing gift. ADAPTED FROM SAARNI, 1984.

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Recognizing and Interpreting Emotions
• Social Referencing
• 7-10 months – use others emotional reactions to regulate own behavior
• Second year, look to others reactions after appraising a new situation
• Conversations about Emotions
• 18-24 months
• Contributor to empathy

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Later Milestones in Emotional Understanding
• Labeling emotional expressions of others improves during childhood
• 4-5 infer emotion from body movements
• Emotion may be due to past event
• By 8, same situation may cause different emotions

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Emotions and Early Social Development

• Emotional displays are communicative
• Interpreting others emotions provides knowledge
• Emotional competence is crucial to social competence
• Emotional expressivity
• Emotional knowledge
• Emotional regulation

TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

• Temperament – individual differences in

• Fearful distress
• Irritable distress
• Positive affect / sociability
• Activity level
• Attention span / persistence
• Rhythmicity

TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

• Hereditary and Environmental Influences on Temperament

• Hereditary Influences
• Identical twins more similar than fraternal twins
• Moderately heritable

• Figure 11.3 Average correlations in infant temperament among identical twins, fraternal twins, and nontwin siblings born at different times. BASED ON BRAUNGART ET AL., 1992; EMDE ET AL., 1992.

TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

• Environmental Influences
• Shared environment influences positive aspects of temperament
• Nonshared environment influences negative aspects
• Cultural Influences
• Shy and reserved a disadvantage in the U.S., but valued in Asian cultures

TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

• Stability of Temperament

• Activity level, irritability, sociability, fearfulness – moderately stable
• Behavioral inhibition
• Moderately stable at extremes
• Considerable fluctuation for other individuals

TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

• Early Temperamental Profiles and Later Development

• Easy (40%) – even tempered, positive, open to new experiences
• Difficult (10%) – active, irritable, irregular in habits
• Slow-to-warm-up (15%) – inactive, moody, respond to novelty mildly negatively

TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

• Temperamental Profiles and Adjustment
• Difficult – problems adjusting to school activities, irritable, aggressive
• Slow-to-warm – half may be ignored or neglected by peers due to hesitancy to try new activities

TEMPERAMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

• Child Rearing and Temperament
• Temperament can change
• Goodness of fit between temperamental style and patterns of child rearing

ATTACHMENT

• Attachment – strong affectional ties that we feel with special people in our lives

• Attachments as Reciprocal Relationships

• Infants and parents become attached to each other

• Establishment of Interactional Synchrony

• Synchronized routines – coordinated interactions between infant and caregiver
• Important for emotional attachments

ATTACHMENT

• How Do Infants Become Attached?

• The Growth of Primary Attachments
• The Asocial Phase (0-6 weeks)
• Social and nonsocial stimuli produce positive reactions
• The Phase of Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks – 6/7 months)
• Favor people, but any person is OK

ATTACHMENT

• The Specific Attachments Phase (7-9 months)
• 1st true attachment; favor one person
• Secure base for exploration
• The Phase of Multiple Attachments (9-18 months)
• Attachment to other people, additional family members, regular babysitter

ATTACHMENT

• Theories of Attachment

• Psychoanalytic Theory: I Love You Because You Feed Me
• Freud – pleasure of eating results in attraction to person providing pleasure
• Erickson – responsiveness to child’s needs more important than feeding

ATTACHMENT

• Learning Theory: I Love You Because You Reward Me
• Feeding elicits positive responses from infant increasing caregiver’s affection
• Infants learn feeding time provides comfort, mother is important
• Harlow’s study – comfort is more important to attachment than food
• Feeding practices not linked to attachment

ATTACHMENT

• Cognitive-Developmental Theory: To Love You, I Must Know You Will Always Be There

• For attachment, must discriminate familiar people from strangers
• Object permanence

ATTACHMENT

• Ethological Theory: Perhaps I Was Born to Love

• Attachment contributes to survival
• Preadapted characteristic – predisposition to form attachments
• “Kewpie doll” appearance may promote attachment; not necessary
• Crying – difficult to ignore, as are smiles

• Figure 11.4 Infants of many species display the “Kewpie doll effect,” which makes them appear lovable and elicits caregivers’ attention. ADAPTED FROM LORENZ, 1943.

ATTACHMENT

• Comparing the Four Theoretical Approaches

• Caregivers do play an important role in infants emotional development, take care of me and you are worthy of affection
• Infants are active participants in the attachment process emitting innate responses
• Timing is related to cognitive development
• All approaches are important!

• Table 11.1 Overview of Theories of Attachment. Each theory of attachment has a different perspective on the basis of attachment and attachment related behaviors, and together the four theories help explain the complexity of the attachment relationship.

ATTACHMENT

• Attachment-Related Fears of Infancy

• Stranger Anxiety
• Begin at time of primary attachment
• Peaks at 8-10 months, then declines
• Separation Anxiety
• Appears at 6-8 months
• Peaks at 14-18 months
• Gradual decline, but may be visible in adolescents

ATTACHMENT

• Why Do Infants Fear Strangers and Separations?
• The ethological viewpoint
• Biologically programmed to fear strangers and circumstances where familiar companions are not present
• The cognitive-developmental viewpoint
• Violating schemes of familiar faces and knowing someone will return

ATTACHMENT

• Individual Differences in Attachment Quality

• Assessing Attachment Security
• Strange Situation
• Naturalistic caregiver/infant interaction to look for secure base
• Brief separation
• Reunion episode

• Table 11.2 The Eight Episodes of the Strange Situation. NOTE: Episodes two through eight last for three minutes each, although separation episodes may be cut short and reunion episodes may be expanded for babies who become extremely upset. BASED ON AINSWORTH et al., 1978.

ATTACHMENT

• Secure Attachment (65%)
• Explores situation
• May be upset by separations
• Warm greeting on return, seeks comfort
• Outgoing with strangers when mother is present

ATTACHMENT

• Resistant Attachment (10%)
• Little exploration, want to be close
• Very distressed upon separation
• Ambivalent on return, want to be close, but will resist physical contact
• Wary of strangers even when mother is present

ATTACHMENT

• Avoidant Attachment (20%)
• Little distress when separated
• Ignore mother on return
• Often sociable with strangers, but may ignore or avoid them

ATTACHMENT

• Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment (5%)
• Most insecure
• Confusion about whether to approach or avoid the mother when reunited
• Strange situation in general not useful for characterizing children much older than 2

ATTACHMENT

• Attachment Q-set – for 1- to 5-year-olds
• Trained observer sorts 90 descriptors into “most like” to “least-like” categories
• Result is level of secure attachment

ATTACHMENT

• Cultural Variations in Attachment Classifications
• Percentages in each category vary due to variations in child rearing
• What is secure or insecure varies also
• Stressing dependency on others versus independency

ATTACHMENT

• Fathers as Caregivers

• Attachment
• Later half of first year,
• Positive attitude toward parenting
• Spends time with infant
• Sensitive caregiver
• More likely to provide playful stimulation
• Can assume all roles of a parent

ATTACHMENT

• Fathers as Contributors to Emotional Security and Other Social Competencies
• Infants with secure attachments to both parents, most socially responsive
• Infants securely attached to one parent were better than those insecurely attached to both

• Figure 11.5 Average levels of social responsiveness and emotional conflict shown by infants who were either securely or insecurely attached to their mothers and fathers. NOTE: Social responsiveness ratings could vary from 1 (wary, distressed) to 9 (happy, responsive). Conflict ratings could vary from 1 (no conflict) to 5 (very conflicted). SOURCE: Adapted from Main & Weston, 1981.

ATTACHMENT

• Factors That Influence Attachment Security

• Quality of Caregiving
• Mothers of securely attached infants are sensitive, responsive caregivers
• Resistant infants have parents who are inconsistent in their caregiving
• Avoidant infants have parents who are impatient and rejecting, or overstimulating

• Table 11.3 Aspects of caregiving that promote secure mother-infant attachments. NOTE: These six aspects of caregiving are moderately correlated with each other. Source: Based on data from De Wolff and van Ijzendoorn, 1997.

ATTACHMENT

• Quality of Caregiving, continued
• Disorganized/disoriented infants were often neglected or abused

ATTACHMENT

• Who is At Risk of Becoming an Insensitive Caregiver?
• Clinically depressed individuals
• Caregivers who were unloved, neglected, or abused as children
• Caregivers with unplanned pregnancies

ATTACHMENT

• Ecological Constraints on Caregiving Sensitivity
• Insensitive parenting more likely
• Health, legal, financial problems
• Unhappy marriages
• What Can be Done to Assist Insensitive Caregivers?
• Interventions work and promote secure attachments

ATTACHMENT

• Infant Characteristics
• Temperament hypothesis – infants’ temperament influences style of attachment (Kagan)

• Table 11.4 Percentage of 1-year-olds who can be classified as temperamentally “Easy,” “Difficult,” “Slow to Warm Up” who have established secure, resistant, and avoidant attachments with their mothers. SOURCE: Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Thomas & Chess, 1977.

ATTACHMENT

• Does Temperament Explain Attachment Security?
• No – elements are related but not a good explanation
• Secure attachment to one caregiver, insecure to another
• Interventions increase secure attachment
• Role of shared environment

• Figure 11.6 Comparing the impact of maternal and child problem behaviors on the incidence of insecure attachments. Maternal problems were associated with a sharp increase in insecure attachments, whereas child problems were not. BASED ON VAN IJZENDOORN ET AL., 1992.

ATTACHMENT

• The Combined Influences of Caregiving and Temperament
• Quality of caregiving determines whether attachment will be secure or insecure
• Temperament determines the type of insecurity displayed by infants

ATTACHMENT

• Attachment and Later Development

• Long-Term Correlates of Secure and Insecure Attachments
• Secure attachments predict intellectual curiosity and social competency later in childhood – visible at 15-16 years old

ATTACHMENT

• Why Might Attachment Quality Forecast Later Outcomes?

• Attachments as Working Models of Self and Others
• Cognitive representations
• Others are dependable or not, I am lovable or not
• Stable over time

• Figure 11.7 Four perspectives on close emotional relationships that evolve from the positive or negative “working models” of self and others that people construct from their experiences with intimate companions. ADAPTED FROM BARTHOLOGEW & HOROWITZ, 1991.

• Figure 11.8 Because of differences in their internal working models, securely attached children are biased to remember positive experiences and insecurely attached children to remember negative experiences. BASED ON BELSKY, SPRITZ, & CRNIC, 1996.

ATTACHMENT

• Parents’ Working Models and Attachment
• Also impact infants’ attachment style
• Even if measured prior to infants birth
• Mothers with secure attachment representations like interacting with infants more

ATTACHMENT

• Is Attachment History Destiny?

• No.
• Secure attachment with one person can offset an insecure attachment with the mother
• Secure can become insecure as life events change

ATTACHMENT

• Working Moms, Day-Care, and Early Emotional Development

• 40% of children cared for full-time by parents
• Quality of Alternative Care
• Very uneven in the U.S.
• Low risk of adverse outcomes if day care is excellent

• Table 11.5 Characteristics of high-quality infant and toddler day care.

ATTACHMENT

• Parenting and Parents’ Attitude about Work

• Mothers happier and more sensitive if employment status matches attitude
• Children who receive sensitive, responsive care at home are at little risk of poor emotional outcomes from day care
• Excellent day care helps buffer children against emotional insecurity should parenting be less than optimal

ATTACHMENT

• Worst outcome is due to insensitive parenting and poor alternative care
• The U.S. needs a better policy for parental leave for child care
• 4 months of unpaid leave is not optimal
• Other industrialized nations are much better
• Middle class parents face greatest day care challenge

• Table 11.6 Sample parental-leave policies in modern industrialized nations. SOURCE: KAMERMAN, 2000.