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Introduction To Psychology: Social Development

This chapter discusses social development from infancy through adulthood. It covers how infants form attachments to caregivers through behaviors like social referencing and separation anxiety. Parenting styles and their influence on attachment are also examined. The chapter explores emotion development and regulation in children and how social skills develop through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood according to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development.

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Iqbal Baryar
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93 views

Introduction To Psychology: Social Development

This chapter discusses social development from infancy through adulthood. It covers how infants form attachments to caregivers through behaviors like social referencing and separation anxiety. Parenting styles and their influence on attachment are also examined. The chapter explores emotion development and regulation in children and how social skills develop through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood according to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development.

Uploaded by

Iqbal Baryar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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INTRODUCTION TO

PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 11
Social Development
At the end of this Chapter you
should be able to:

 Learn about Social Development

 Learn about Attachment issues

 Learn About Parenting


The Path to Attachment

 Earliest steps of social development:


form around the bond with the
caregiver

 What is this bond? How is it created?


Faces and Places

 Infant: likes to look at human faces


– By 2 months: Prefer faces that show expressions
– By 3 – 4 months: Prefer faces showing
congruence between facial expression and
expressed emotion
 laughter sound + laughing face
– By 6 months: Understand that human voice
frequently brings relief from stress
 Sound of caregiver’s voice alone can soothe a
baby
Locomotion

 Locomotion changes the baby’s world drastically


– Able to explore, investigate, satisfy curiosity
– Caregiver (CG) must restrict locomotion to keep
baby safe: “No!”
 Social referencing: check’s CG’s facial expression
– Used by baby when baby encounters new/
ambiguous situation
– Baby needs to decide whether situation is safe
or not
– Fear on CG face: baby will be more cautious
Attachment

 6-8 months: with locomotive ability


frequently comes… Separation Anxiety
 Separation Anxiety: Baby becomes upset
when CG leaves room/goes out of sight
– Implies that formation of attachment has
occurred
Attachment: A firm, close, enduring
emotional bond between the baby and the
primary caregiver
Harry Harlow’s experiments

 Do babies attach to caregivers on the


basis of nutrition?

 Infant rhesus monkeys raised in cages


with two fixed objects:
– terry-cloth covered wire-mesh object,
– wire-mesh object that held a bottle of
milk
Harlow’s experiments, cont’d..

 In times of stress/fear/uncertainty,
monkeys always went to terry-cloth
“mother”
-- not the “mother” where they had
been fed

 Contact comfort: more important than


where/how fed for purposes of
attachment
Humans?

 Contact comfort: also important


– Children’s fondness for stuffed animals,
blankets, etc: attachment formed for comfort,
not for food
 Other implications of contact comfort:
– Many animals, including humans, need
contact/physical comfort for normal
development
– Bowlby: among the first to describe a theory
of attachment in humans
Differences Among Children

 Temperament: most important difference in


very young children
– Some common descriptors: “easy” “difficult,”
and “slow to warm up”
– Based on structural/biological innate
differences seen even from a very young age
 Differences in Experience:
– socially and environmentally, exposure varies
across children
– differences in attachment patterns
Attachment to Father

 Fathers can form the “secure base” for


children as easily as mothers
 Fathers: different interaction style with
children
– More physical, more vigorous
– Usually less likely to provide hugs/kisses
– Some social, some biological reasons likely
responsible
Absence of Attachment

 Absence of any parenting/absent physical


contact  extremely disordered behavior
– Seen in experimentally induced isolated
animal models (this experimentation is no
longer permitted)
– Seen in rare instances of orphanages
 Romanian orphans: little or no physical
contact
 This kind of disordered parenting:
permanent social and emotional scars
Differences in Attachment:
Mary Ainsworth

 Different patterns of ways that children form


bonds with parents differ with parental style:
– Securely attached
– Anxious / resistant attachment
– Anxious / avoidant attachment
– Disorganized attachment
 Stability of attachment
– Does child project same type of attachment
across situations? Mixed research results.
Culture, Biology and Attachment

 “Strange situation” as a research


paradigm  yields different results in
different cultures
– In Japan: parents rarely if ever leave
children with non-parent caregivers
– In US: children sleep in their “own
room” while that is rare in many other
cultures
Parenting

 Most important source of socialization for


children is through the parenting they
receive, including:
– How do we interpret the social world?
– What are our belief systems?
 Parenting styles: one area of research
– Vary according to demandingness versus
responsiveness of parenting style
Four Parenting Styles

Authoritative: Quite demanding but also quite


responsive

Authoritarian: Quite demanding but not


responsive

Permissive: Not demanding but quite responsive

Uninvolved: Neither demanding nor responsive


Emotional Development

 How are emotions expressed? How are they


regulated?
 “Reading” others’ emotions: important skill to
acquire
– Infants: express some emotional reading e.g.,
preferring congruent faces; imitation; Social
referencing
– As children grow: better able to imagine others’
emotional state
Emotion Regulation

 The ability to control, diminish, change one’s


feelings
 Ability to think about and converse about
emotions grows
– By about age 5: skills children use to regulate
emotion include
 Distraction
 Compensation
 Reinterpretation
Development after Childhood

 First focus on adult/aged development: Erik


Erikson
– Development tasks differ significantly by age
 1 – 18 month old: attachment, trust in others
 18 – 36 months: self control, autonomy
 3-6 years: purpose, direction, initiative
 6 yrs – puberty: Social, physical, school skills
 Adolescence: Identity
Erikson’s stages

 Early Adulthood: intimate bonds of love,


marriage
 Middle Age: Life goals of family, career,
society; generativity to next generation
 Later years: Meaning making, meaning
accepting, integrity of one’s life as it was lived
– Important insights: adolescence as a transition
with serious developmental challenges
– Adulthood: Midlife transition also figures
prominently; we live longer, more challenges

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