Life Span Development

Week 4, Chapters 4 & 5

Development and The Emerging Self

Emotional and Social Development

Theorists do not all agree about how to define or characterize emotions. They do agree that
emotions have survival value. Emotions are powerful motivators of behavior, and spontaneous
emotional expressions help us to communicate with one another. For infants, this communicative
function helps initiate reciprocal interaction with a caregiver.

Emotions enhance cognitive functioning like planning. They play a role in mental health and
wellness. Positive life outcomes are associated with higher levels of emotional intelligence.
Researchers agree that basic emotions are similar across cultures.

Izard argues that even infants’ expressive behaviors reveal these emotions
(happiness, interest, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear), that they are innate, and
that each has its own neural circuitry, although more elaborate emotion schemas
emerge as a function of experience.

A more constructivist approach argues that all emotional reactions are

combinations of two dimensions, valence (pleasant to unpleasant) and arousal (low to high).

In Sroufe’s orthogenetic theory of emotional development, newborns begin by

displaying general distress or general contentment. These early emotional
expressions are precursors of more mature emotions, and the later emotions depend
on cognitive developments that give children the ability to ascribe meaning to
emotional experience. Emotions are differentiated over time and come under the
control of higher levels of functioning.

Lower and higher order brain systems involved in emotion processing,

 Limbic system
 The cerebral cortex (which tends to assign meaning).

LeDoux found that there is an “early warning emotional system.” Some sensory
information bypasses the cortex, causing fear and allowing a rapid response to
stimuli that may pose a threat.

Rational processing by the cortex is a split second behind, and sometimes

determines that there is no threat, allowing fear to subside. If rapid emotional responses are
paired with formerly neutral stimuli, we may be conditioned to automatically respond with fear
to stimuli that are not threatening, perhaps explaining phobias, panic reactions, and posttraumatic
stress disorder.
Two major, partially separate networks related to positive and negative affect.
 Left brain activation is more closely associated with approach related positive reactions.
 Right brain activation is more associated with avoidance-related negative reactions.

Depressed individuals show lower levels of left sided activation compared to right-sided
activation.

Soon after birth

 Babies show distress, contentment, disgust, and interest through body posture, gaze, and
facial expressions.
 Newborns show different brain activity to fearful versus happy or neutral sounds.
6 months old
 Anger, surprise, fear, and sadness differentiated and expressed.
 Babies respond differently to positive versus negative facial and vocal expressions.
18 to 24 months
 Self conscious emotions such as pride and embarrassment emerge.
 Infants are making more fine-grained distinctions, such as between expressions of disgust
versus sadness.

Emotion regulation is a cornerstone of

emotional wellbeing and positive adjustment.
Mothers and other caregivers interact with
infants in ways that aid the development of
emotion regulation.

Synchrony
 Interactions between mothers and
infants exhibiting a repetitive-
rhythmic organization.
 When synchrony breaks down, infants
tend to show distress and mothers tend to initiate repairs that regulate the infants’
emotions, encouraging longer periods of positive affect.
 The still-face paradigm is used to study synchrony, along with its breakdown and repair.

Sensitive adults adjust their emotion management behaviors to the needs and abilities of infants
as they grow. And as infants get older, they engage in social referencing, basing their own
emotional reactions to ambiguous situations, on their caregivers’ behaviors.

Attachment: Early Social Relationships

Theorists such as Bowlby and Erikson have proposed that the infant’s first relationships with
caregivers provide them with working models of the self, of others, and of relationships.

Erikson - Argued that consistent, sensitive care helps the infant establish basic trust in others
and feelings of worthiness, which contribute to optimism about future relationships.
Bowlby’s Attachment Theory - Biologically prepared behaviors bring infant and mother into a
close relationship, or attachment system, that emerges in stages. By about 8 months the infant
has a strong affectional bond to the primary caregiver, which leads to both separation anxiety and
stranger anxiety. The attachment system serves the purpose of proximity maintenance and
provides a secure base and haven.

Both infants and parents display expressive and behavioral characteristics that foster attachment.
 Orienting behaviors (e.g., caregiver stays in infant’s field of vision)
 Recognition (e.g., infant’s early recognition of mother’s voice)
 Intuitive parenting (e.g., caregiver ascribes meaning to infant behavior)

Researchers have identified some of the neurological processes and structures involved in this
bonding system. Oxytocin is associated with more caregiving behavior in both mothers and
fathers, and for most adults’ close contact with infants promotes increases in oxytocin levels.

The Strange Situation Test - Measures the quality of infant–mother attachments

Ainsworth identified three types of attachment.

 Securely attached infants - explore
a new situation when mother is
present, are distressed if she
leaves, and are comforted and
happy when she returns, they use
their mothers as a secure base.
 Anxious/ambivalent babies
(insecurely attached) - They may
alternately approach and resist the
mother, or may respond listlessly
to her, rather than taking ready
comfort.
 Avoidant babies (insecurely
attached) - They avoid or ignore
their mothers when they return after an absence, although their heart rates reveal that they
are stressed in her absence.
Main identified a fourth attachment type
 Disorganized/Disoriented (insecurely attached) - React to their mothers in contradictory
ways, engaging in an odd array of behaviors.

Maternal caregiving through the first year of life is correlated with infants’ attachment quality at
12 months.
 Mothers of securely attached babies provide consistent, sensitive care to their infants.
 Mothers of insecurely attached babies are more likely to be insensitive in one way or
another.
 Mothers of disorganized-disoriented babies can be abusive.

Early work by Ainsworth suggested even “normal” variations in maternal

responsivity and sensitivity are linked to differences in infant attachment security and
emotion regulation.

Adverse or insensitive maternal care - Intrusive or neglectful.

 Depressed mothers show high rates of these kinds of patterns. Their infants tend to show
heightened right brain activation and lower left brain activation, suggesting more
negative than positive emotional experiences.

Infant temperament may have an influence on attachment quality.

 Physiology effects reactivity
 Highly reactive and irritable babies can be more difficult to care for which can affect
caregiving, making it harder for a parent to be responsive and sensitive.
 Children with difficult temperaments may be more vulnerable to the effects of caregiving
quality.
 Parents who adjust to their infants’ temperament, creating goodness of fit between their
caregiving and the needs of a particular infant, can moderate their child’s temperament
and influence the impact of early temperament on later adjustment.

Babies form attachments to both their mothers and fathers, as well as other frequent caregivers.
Each parent’s sensitivity influences the quality of the infant’s attachment to that parent, although
the primary caregiver may have the most influence on a baby’s attachments overall. Across
cultures the connection between sensitive caregiving (responsiveness to distress) and security of
attachment has been corroborated.

It is possible for children with reactive attachment disorder to later form secure attachments.

Early attachment quality can predict later psychosocial functioning, including dependency, self-
confidence, and social skills. If children have secure attachments with both parents, their later
functioning is more positive than if they have a secure attachment with only one parent. It is
unclear whether the early attachment quality is the cause of later psychosocial adjustment or
whether the ongoing quality of the parents’ caregiving is the key predictor.

Once a pattern is established between parent and child, it tends to be repeated. However, it can
be changed, and if it is, the child’s working model of relationships, of self, and of others can also
change. In some studies, parents’ own attachment quality has been predictive of the quality of
attachment they establish with their infants. Focusing on the quality of infant–caregiver relations,
rather than the specific parenting practices, seems to provide a better understanding of later
socioemotional development.

Attachment in Context

Attachment contexts
 Parents’ relationships
 Extended family relationships
 Neighborhoods. Etc.

All contexts can affect infants’ emotional well-being and attachment security. Children under 5
are especially likely to be exposed to negative experiences in these contexts, including
traumatizing events such as maltreatment, accidents, and marital conflict. Attachment security
can be a protective factor, but children who have such experiences are also at increased risk of
forming insecure attachments.

The Self-System

William James
 Viewed the self-system as multidimensional
 The self as subject
 The self as active agent or “I”
o Is continuously experienced, is distinguished from others
 The self-concept
o The object of our own observations and evaluations
 The “Me”
o Consists of personal attributes, the material (or physical), social, and spiritual
characteristics of self
  Self-esteem
o The evaluation of one’s attributes, can be good, bad, or neutral.

Charles Cooley
 Introduced a developmental perspective into theorizing about the self
 Self-representations are constructed from our interactions with others,
especially caregivers
 We build a looking-glass self that reflects our view of how others see us

George Herbert Mead

 Added that language and society contribute to shaping the self-system
 That there are culturally determined differences in people’s preferred ways
of viewing themselves.

The Early Development of the Self-System

The pre-self - Develops in infancy

 Begins with early inklings of one’s body permanence and separateness from others.
 Derived from the regular and reliable infant–caregiver interactions.
 Habitual interactions are established and may promote a budding sense of mastery by the
second half of the first year with responsive caregiving.

Self-in-relationship - Begins to emerge late in the first year

 Infants engage in intentional action, a sign of the I-self, a sense of agency.
 Separation distress and social referencing signal the baby’s deepening understanding that
the other is separate.
 Babies explore more readily in the presence of a familiar caregiver.
 Depend on the baby’s relationship to others.

Self-recognition - As early as 15 months

 In the mirror recognition.
 “Body-as-obstacle” tests.
 Children are forming a self-concept, or a “Me.”
 Advances with self-evaluation or self-esteem.
 Self-descriptive words after the second birthday.
 Abused children show signs of poor self-esteem from the beginnings of mirror
recognition.
 Gradually differentiated self-descriptions emerge, with preschoolers describing more
concrete characteristics, such as “little,” and older children beginning to refer to more
abstract, less obvious qualities, such as “funny.”

Self-regulation involves both emotional and behavioral control. Emotional control begins in
infancy when caregiver–infant interactions give babies outside assistance with affective control.
The caregiving relationship is the context in which the infant’s own capacity for emotion
regulation develops.

Behavior regulation begins in the second year when toddlers achieve objective self-recognition.
The simultaneous summary emergence of symbolic or representational thought and other
cognitive skills allow the child to begin learning and storing rules or standards of conduct. By
late in the second year, self-conscious emotions emerge, such as embarrassment or guilt,
emotions that require awareness of self and of others’ judgments. Between 2 and 3, children
show such emotions when they realize they have broken a rule or made a mistake. Once these
capacities are in place, the child can begin to control her own behavior based on others’
expectations.

Early Socialization

Parenting and the Development of the Self-System

As the infant becomes a toddler, her needs shift from total dependency to growing independence,
and the parent–child relationship reorganizes such that sensitive, responsive caregiving begins to
include efforts to socialize the child, to shape or control the child’s autonomous action, so that
she remains safe and behaves in culturally appropriate ways.

Two dimensions of parenting style

 Warmth or parental responsiveness - affection, acceptance, involvement, and interest
 Control or parental demandingness - the degree to which parents impose and enforce
standards of behavior.

Four parenting styles

Authoritative - high on warmth and on demandingness.
Authoritarian - low on warmth but high on demandingness.
Permissive - high or moderate on warmth but low on demandingness
Neglecting or uninvolved - low on warmth and on demandingness.

Authoritative parenting
 Associated with the most positive outcomes in child development
 Adaptability, competence, good social relations, low levels of antisocial behavior, high
self-esteem, and good self-regulation.

The correlations between parenting styles and outcomes are significant but moderate, indicating
that such outcomes are also influenced by other factors, not just parenting style.

Methods of control
 Power assertion - Involves physical punishment or withdrawal of privileges
o Effective for immediate control of behavior, but may not have longer term
benefits
o Harsher forms can have some negative side effects, such as increased
aggressiveness in children.
  Psychological control - Includes love withdrawal
o Generates high anxiety and elicits immediate compliance
o Has few effects on long term self-regulation.
 Induction - Providing explanations and emphasizing benefits to the child and to others
o most effective for promoting internalization of rules and longer term self-
regulation.

Parenting, genetics, child

temperament, and other
factors all contribute to
child outcomes. Parenting
practices are partly the
result of child
characteristics, such as
temperament traits. The
effectiveness of different
parenting practices is partly
a function of a child’s
temperament.

Some parenting practices may have different meaning, and therefore different outcomes,
depending on ethnicity and culture. In some cultures, harsh practices are normative, and parents
may combine high levels of warmth with corporal punishment.

Psychological control practices seem to

have the same negative effects across
cultures (e.g., high levels of child
anxiety) regardless of potential
moderating factors, such as
normativeness. Corporal punishment,
which inflicts pain on children to control
behavior, has been shown to predict
increases in later externalizing behavior
and mental disorders, even in its
“milder” forms (i.e., spanking).
Normativeness and parental warmth
appear to moderate the link between
corporal punishments and aggression,
but not change the direction of effects.

Conscience: The Beginnings of a Moral Self

Children’s internalization of rules and values is associated with conscience, feeling distress when
one violates a rule. This is the beginning of moral development.
Children are more cooperative and compliant when they share a warm, responsive relationship
with a parent. Their compliance can also be related to anxious arousal. Hoffman argued that mild
arousal can help children pay attention to a rule but doesn’t make them so anxious that they pay
attention only to how afraid they are. This is consistent with the finding that mild power
assertion practices are more likely than more severe power assertion practices to lead to
children’s internalization of rules and their long-term compliance. Further, Hoffman’s ideas help
explain why children who have fearful temperaments respond best to gentle discipline, but
children who are fearless are unfazed by either gentle or harsh disciplinary practices. The most
important determiner of compliance for fearless children is the warmth of their relationship to the
parent.

Bibliography
Broderick, P. C., & Blewitt, P. (2019). The life span: Human development for helping
professionals. (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Allyn & Bacon.

LS 4&5 Vocabulary

Chapter 4
The function of emotions
 Emotions have survival value
 Emotions are powerful motivators of behavior
 Emotional expressions help us to communicate
 Emotions enhance cognitive functioning, including planning and social perspective
taking

Evidence for the biological basis of emotions

 Cross-cultural congruence of basic emotions
 Infants display of basic emotions very early
 Specific brain systems governing expression of emotion

Izard's differential emotions theory

 Emotional expressions a product of evolution
 Elaborate emotion schemas a function of experience

Sroufe's orthogenetic theory

 Early emotional expressions are precursors of more mature emotions
 Later emotions depend on cognitive developments

Maclean argued
Emotions originate in evolutionarily old system (limbic circuit), serves survival function
for many species

Ledoux
Found an "early warning emotional system," with some sensory information bypassing
the cortex and rational thought

Left brain activation

More associated with approach-related positive reactions

Right brain activation

More associated with avoidance-related negative reactions

Emotion regulation
Is one of the cornerstones of emotional well-being and positive adjustment throughout the
life span

Emotion regulation
Encompasses the strategies and behaviors we use to moderate our emotional experiences
in order to meet the demands of different situations or achieve our goals

Adult caregivers
Serve the critical function of helping to manage the newborn's affect or to modulate
affective expression while scaffolding the infant's developing emotion regulation
Sychrony
Repetitive-rhythmic organization, a temporal coordination of nonverbal behaviors

Still face paradigm

A research technique for assessing infant coping strategies

Other directed coping behaviors

Efforts to deal with stress that appear to be aimed at changing the behaviors of others

Self-directed coping behaviors

Efforts to deal with stress that appear to be aimed at self-comfort

Social referencing
Basing emotional reactions on caregivers' behaviors

Bolwby proposed
Relationships an infant has with one or a few caregivers during the 1st year of life
provide him with a working model of himself and others

Basic trust is formed

When care is timely, sensitive to the infant's needs, and consistently available

Basic trust
Seeing others as dependable and trustworthy

Attachment theory
(Bowlby) infant and caregiver participate in and attachment system that has evolved to
serve the purpose of keeping the infant safe and assuring his survival

Early social relationships

 Erikson: consistent, sensitive care helps infants establish basic trust and feelings of
worthiness bowlby: a system of innate behaviors bond the infant to a primary caregiver
for proximity maintenance, providing a secure base and safe haven
 Ainsworth: created strange situation test and systematically assessed attachment quality

Stranger anxiety
Increased tendency to be wary of strangers and seek comfort and protection of the
primary caregiver

Strange situation test

 Series of eight 3-min episodes introducing changes in a social situation
 Infant reactions carefully recorded; tendency to explore, reactions to mother and stranger

Ainsworth initially identified three patterns

 Securely attached (b babies)
  Anxious-ambivalent insecurely attached (c)
 Avoidant insecurely attached (a)

Other researchers later identified fourth pattern

Disorganized-disoriented insecurely attached (d)

Securely attached
Show distress when separated for the mother, often crying and trying to go after her.
Greet her happily upon return

Anxious ambivalent
Often seemed stressed and are quite distressed when separated from their mothers. Upon
reuniting, they may act angry and resist the mother.

Avoidant
Fail to cry when separated from their mothers. Actively ignore her upon return

Disorganized - disoriented
Produce contradictory behaviors, showing both inclination to approach the mother when
stressed and a tendency to avoid her when she approaches

Link maternal care to attachment quality

 Mothers of securely attached babies provide consistent, sensitive care
 Mothers of insecurely attached babies are more likely to be insensitive
 Maternal caregiving in 1st year correlated with infants' attachment quality at 12 months
 Mothers of disorganized-disoriented babies may be abusive, neglectful

Infant temperament may influence attachment

 Difficult babies highly reactive, fearful, irritable
 Easy babies more placid, positive, regular
 Slow-to-warm-up babies between the extremes, more fearful, wary, but less reactive and
irritable

Early attachment predicts

Later functioning; dependency, self-confidence, social skills

Early social bonding

From the 6th month of pregnancy until the 2nd year of life, the right hemisphere matures
more quickly than the lef

Ocytocin
Hormone released in the hypothalamus and modulates the transmission of impulses

Oxytocin promotes
Physical proximity, responsive caregiving, empathy, and affection
Oxytocin reduces
Stress and helps mothers deal with the physical and emotional challenges of childbirth
and childrearing

Secure social bonds

Are constructed through dyadic interaction using emerging set of skills that grow and
expand over the course of the relationship.

Neglectful (withdrawn) caregivers typically show

A pattern of under-stimulation marked by reduced eye contact, infrequent holding, non
responsiveness, less positive and more negative affect. Intrusive (over-stimulating)
caregivers display more anger, irritability, coerciveness, and poorly timed responses.

Dyadic skills that foster social bonding

 Orienting system - enhances proximity between infant and caregiver
 Recognition system - enhances special responsiveness to each other and encourages
contact
 Intuitive parenting system - enhances the attunement of communication between parent
and caregiver
 Attachment - development of a stable preference and way of relating to caregiver in order
to maintain proximity, provide security in times of stress, and serve as base for later
independent exploration

Goodness of fit model

Suggest the temperament and caregiving should interact in determining the quality of a
child's attachment relationships

Chapter 5

William James
 Distinguished self-as-subject ("i") and the self-as-object, or self-concept ("me")
 "i" continuously experienced, distinct from others
 "me" a collection of personal attributes
 Self-esteem is evaluation of one's attributes

James Cooley
Added developmental perspective
Self-representation constructed in interactions with others over time

George Herbert Mead

 Added language and society
 Culturally determined differences in preferred ways of viewing selves
Precursors of self-awareness in infancy
 "pre-self," early inklings of body permanence
 Procedural representations of interactions
 Social referencing implies recognition of separateness

Emergence of self-awareness and self-concept

 Self-recognition as early as 15 months
 Self-descriptive words at 2 years
 Self-evaluation advances with self-recognition

Self-control, self-regulation, behavior regulation

 Stop yourself from doing something forbidden
 Make yourself do things you don't feel like doing
 Emotion regulation underlies behavioral control

The early progress of behavior regulation

 Caregivers assist with early emotional regulation
 Behavior regulation depends on cognitive skills, learning rules and standards
 Self-conscious emotions emerge, shame, guilt

Self-system
Includes aspects related to the self, such as self-concept, self-regulation, and self-esteem

A basic feature of the self

 Is that it incorporates both the private and
 The more public sides of our nature, accommodating our ability to keep our own
 Counsel and still be known to others by virtue of our interactions with them.

Self concept
A description of personal attributes

Self esteem
One's evaluation of personal attributes

Valence
Affective value of a characteristic either good, bad, or neutral

Looking glass self

The process of self-development as one that originates from observing the reflected
appraisal of others

Rigs (representations of interactions)

Procedural representations or schemata - preverbal, unconscious, and kind of
sensorimotor memory

Self recognition
 Is a clear signal the child has begun to formulate a conscious concept of self

How does behavior regulation con into being?

 Representational thought
 Emotional response to wrongdoing

Self-conscious emotions
Take place after objective self-awareness ex: shame, guilt, and pride

Challenges for parents trying to be sensitive and responsive

 The need to grant some autonomy to the child
 Must begin to socialize the child

Dimensions of parenting style

 Warmth, or parental responsiveness: acceptance, involvement and interest,
supportiveness
**listening to the child, being involved, and interested in the child's activities, accepting
the child, making positive attributions toward the child, being "tuned in" and supportive

 Control, or parental demandingness; setting and enforcing standards, making maturity

demands
**the degree to which parents impose discipline

Child centered
Sidelining parental needs

Parent centered
Show little responsiveness to their children's concerns and are unlikely to do things to
meet those concerns

4 parenting styles
 The authoritative style
- highly responsive and highly demanding
 The authoritarian style
- low responsiveness but highly demanding
 The permissive style
- moderately to highly responsive but low on demandingness
 The neglecting-uninvolved style
- low on both dimensions

Parenting style correlations with outcomes for children

 Authoritative style: better adaptability, social relations, competence, self-esteem
 Authoritarian style: greater irritability, anxiety and anger
 Permissive style: more uncontrolled, impulsive behavior, low levels of self-reliance
 Neglecting/uninvolved style: more impulsiveness, aggression, depression, low self-
esteem
Parenting practices: methods of control
 Power assertion: physical punishment or threats, withdrawal of privileges (mild to severe)
- effective immediate control, but not long term, harsh forms increase aggression
 Love withdrawal: withdrawing attention or affection, expressing disappointment
- elicits compliance, but generates high anxiety, few effects on long-term self-
regulation
 Induction: use of explanation, appealing to child's desire to be grown-up
- most effective for promoting internalization of rules and longer term self-
regulation

Other possible explanations for the correlation of parenting style with child outcomes
 Shared inheritance and traits may influence parenting style and child behavior
 Child's temperament influences parenting, outcomes, susceptibility to parenting strategies

Cultural context
 Shapes parenting practices and effectiveness
 Important not to conflate culture with geography, sex, or race
 Wide variation both within and between groups

Parenting affects the developing self-system

Self-esteem, behavioral self-regulation, internalization of standards and rules

Internalization is associated with conscience

Feelings of distress when one violates a rule, or contemplates violating a rule

Two aspects of parenting promote these processes

 Warmth and responsiveness facilitate self-control
 Anxious arousal facilitates willingness to comply and internalization of standards

Authoritative parents
Seem to get the best results from their children

Differential susceptibility
When a physical make up makes and individual more likely to be affected by
environmental influences than other people.