7. Sadness
• Timeline
– Rare in the 1st year of life
– Exception: Children of depressed mothers
• Triggers
– Infant sadness is a response to maternal sadness
8. Fear
• Timeline
– 6mo: Facial expression of fear
• Triggers
– Sudden, unexpected movement
– Stranger anxiety
9. Surprise
• Timeline
– 6mo: Open mouth, raised eyebrows
• Triggers
– Something that violates expectations
10. Happiness
• Timeline
– 1mo: Smile in response to sensory experiences
– 3mo: Social smile when interacting with others
– 4mo: Laughter
13. Visual Perception
• Timeline
– 2wk: Hard to perceive others emotions
• Vision still poor, Only look at facial boundaries/edges
– 3mo: Can discern happy, sad, and angry faces
– 3mo: Distressed by still faces (emotionless)
– 9mo: Social referencing
• If mom likes X, so will the infant
• If mom dislikes X, the infant will avoid it
16. In Developing Nations
• Patterns
– 0mo: Mother and infant never apart
– 6mo: Care delegated to older girls
• Infants are among many people
• Infants are held/carried almost constantly
• Fathers are often remote/absent in the first year
17. In the West
• Patterns
– Nuclear family
– Sleep in a separate room from birth
– Mother and infant are alone for most of the day
– The infant may be left in a crib/seat for significant periods
– Fathers relatively more involved
18. Theories of Social Development
• Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development
• Attachment theory
19. Theories of Social Development
• Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
– “Trust vs. Mistrust” is the developmental challenge in
infancy
– Infants are born entirely dependent on others
– They need someone they can reliably trust for food,
warmth, protection, and love
– Basic trust in the social world generalizes from these early
experiences of trust or mistrust
20. Theories of Social Development
• Attachment Theory
– Children need a primary caregiver with sensitive
responsiveness for social and emotional development to
proceed normally
– The infant uses this attachment figure as a secure base to
explore from and return to
– The caregiver’s responses create internal working models
that guide the child’s perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and
expectations in later relationships
22. Attachment Theory
• Key Contributors
– Konrad Lorenz
– Harry Harlow
– John Bowlby
– Mary Ainsworth
– Mary Main
– Allan Schore
23. Lorenz
• Imprinting
– Time-sensitive attachment behavior
– Lorenz demonstrated geese imprint on the first moving stimulus they
see within a “critical period” (13-16 hours after hatching)
– Goslings could even imprint on Lorenz himself!
24. Harlow
• The Wire Mother Experiments
– Demonstrated attachment is not based on food, as was
previously thought
• Gave young rhesus monkeys a choice between two
different “mothers,” one made of soft terrycloth who
provided no food and the other made of wire who
provided food in a bottle
– Monkeys spent almost all time with the cloth mother
– When scared, monkeys would return to the cloth mother
– When the cloth mother was removed, the monkeys’ health
deteriorated
26. Bowlby
• Deprivation Studies
– Observed that hospitalized children separated from their
parents went on to develop significant problems
– Orphans completely deprived of maternal attachment
would become anaclitically depressed and eventually die
due to lack of interest in food
– Saw attachment as an innate survival mechanism
27. Ainsworth
• The “Strange Situation”
– An experiment to assess the attachment style between
mother and child
– Believed that a mother’s sensitive response to her child
(attunement) determines the attachment style:
• Secure attachment
• Insecure-avoidant attachment
• Anxious-ambivalent attachment
• Disorganized attachment
30. Main
• Adult Attachment Inventory
– Used to assess attachment patterns in adults
– Finding: Childhood attachment styles persist into
adulthood!
31. Schore
• Neuroscience
– Sees attachment as a co-regulating system
• The mother regulates the child
• The child regulates the mother
– Proper brain development depends on attachment
• “The Effects of Poor Attachment on Brain Development”
