Early social developmet

Early social developmet

1. Learning theory

   • All behaviour is learned
   • Behaviourists
   • Classical conditioning
     • Learning through association
     • UCS, UCR; CS, CR
     • Food - UCS; Pleasure - UCR; Feeder - CS; Pleasure to food and feeder - CR
   • Operant conditioning
     • Learning through reward/punishment
     • Dollard and miller
       • Hungry infant feels uncomfortable; creates drive to reduce discomfort; when fed, infant feels pleasure (reward); Food becomes primary reinforcer
       • Attachment is formed because he child seeks the person who supplies the reward
     • eg: Touch a hot stove; burn; wont touch again
   • Evaluation
     • Harlow's monkeys
       • Two monkeys (cloth and bottle)
       • Baby monkey was attached to cloth monkey most
     • Schaffer and Emerson
       • 60 babies from working class Glasgow
       • People who fed and people who interacted
       • Babies became attached to people who were more interactive
     • Largely invalid theory
       • Based on mainly animals

2. Bowlby's attachment theory

   • Evolutionary theory
   • The 6 factors
     • Children have an INATE drive to become attached
     • Imprinting is the mental picturing of your infant; ensures that the infant is close to the caregiver
     • Sensitive period is the 2nd quarter of the infants first year
     • Social releasers are characteristics which elicit caregiving
     • Monotropy is the infants hierarchy of attachments
     • The internal working model is a cluster of concepts which what to expect from others and how they make you feel
   • Evaluation
     • Strengths
       • Imprinting in animals - Lorenz
         • Goslings imprinted on the first moving object they saw
       • Sensitive period, proven by Hodges and Tizard
     • Limitations
       • Multiple attachment - Rutter
         • Found that there are no primary or secondary attachments

3. Strange situation

   • Secure attachment
     • Don't cry If caregiver leaves room
     • Seek close bodily attachment when anxious
     • Comfortable with social reaction
   • Insecure Avoidant
     • Avoid social interaction and intamacy
     • Do not seek proximity of caregiver on reunion
     • Happy to explore without presence of caregiver
   • Insecure Resistant
     • Seek and reject social interaction
     • Distress response when caregiver leaves
     • For and against contact upon reunion

4. Cultural Variation

   • Cultural similarities
     • Ainsworth
       • Found that secure base is the same universally
       • Infants that are securely attached had greater attantion
     • Tronick
       • Breastfed by multiple women
       • Slept with biological mother
       • Still showed one primary attachment
   • Cultural differences
     • Grossman and Grossman
       • Germany - Insecurely attached as children were raised more independantly
   • Conclusion
     • Differences in the patterns of attachment
   • Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg
     • Meta analysis
       • 32 studies
       • 8 countries
       • 2000 strange situation classifications

5. Disruption of attachment

   • Robertson
     • Filmed 2 year old Laura
       • In hospital for 8 days
       • Signs of distress
   • Evaluation
     • Physical V Emotional
       • Early emotional disruption has been found to be reversible

6. Privation (Failure to form attachment)

   • Hodges and Tizard
     • 65 British children
     • Those children were more likely to be bullies and found it more difficult to make friends
   • Romanian Orphans
     • Long term consequences may be less severe then once thought if there is a chance to form a late attachment
   • Evaluation

7. Day care and aggression

   • NICHD - Time in day-care positively correlates with aggression - Longitudinal - over 1000 children - 10 different locations
     • Evaluation -
   • EPPE - children between age of 3 and 7 - 3000 children - Children who had spent longer in day care showed more anti social behaviour - If day care is of high quality duration is reduced