ENTERING THE SOCIAL

WORLD
Socioemotional Development in Infancy and
Early Childhood
Beginnings: Trust and
Attachment
 Erikson’s Stages of Early Psychological
Development

Basic Trust vs. Mistrust

• Infants are dependent on caregivers to meet their

needs and provide comfort
• The responsiveness and consistency with which
caregivers meet these needs helps to develop a
basic sense of trust and openness in the child
• If these needs are not met, the child develops
wariness and lack of comfort
• When trust and mistrust is balanced, infants can
acquire hope
• Hope - is an openness to new experience
tempered by wariness that discomfort, or danger
may arise
Erikson’s Stages of Early Psychological
Development

Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

• 1 – 3 years old
• Child develops a sense of control over their own
actions
• If autonomy is not achieved, the child is shameful
and doubt their own capabilities
• Blend of autonomy, shame, and doubt gives rise
to will
• Will – the knowledge that, within limits,
youngsters can act their world intentionally; this
occurs when autonomy, shame, and doubt are in
balance
Erikson’s Stages of Early Psychological
Development

Initiative vs. Guilt

• 3 – 5 years old
• Play becomes purposeful and includes playing
the role of mother, father, teacher, athlete or
writer
• Child start to explore the environment on their
own, ask innumerable questions about the world
• Child develops imagination for possibilities for
themselves
• With proper encouragement and balance,
initiative and cooperation are developed
• Purpose - balance between individual initiative
and the willingness to cooperate with others
Erikson’s Stages of Early Psychological
Development

Erikson’s First Three Stages

Age Crisis Strength

Infancy Basic Trust vs. Mistrust Hope

1 – 3 years Autonomy vs. Shame and doubt Will

3 – 5 years Initiative vs. Guilt Purpose

The Growth of Attachment

• Evolutionary psychology
views many human
behaviors as successful
adaptations to the
environment
Steps Toward Attachment

• Attachment – enduring socioemotional

relationships between infants and their caregivers
• Children who form attachments to an adult are
more likely to survive
• Attachments are usually formed with the mother
but may be formed with any responsive and
caring person
The Growth of Attachment
• Four phases in the growth of attachment
according to Bowlby:
• Preattachment (birth to 6-8 weeks) - infants
behaviors evoke a response in adults
• Attachment in the making (6-8 weeks to 6-8
months) – babies respond differently to primary
caregiver
• True attachment (6-8 months to 18 months) –
babies see the attachment figure as a special
person
• Reciprocal relationship ( 18 months and on) -
they cope with separation more effectively
because they can anticipate that the caregiver
will return
The Growth of Attachment

Father–Infant Relationships
• Attachment typically first
develops for mothers then
soon becomes attached to
fathers
• Fathers tend to spend more
time playing with children
than taking care of them
• Physical play is the norm for fathers, while
mothers spend more time reading and talking to
babies, showing them toys, and playing games
like patty-cake
• Children tend to seek out the father for a
playmate and mothers are preferred for comfort
The Growth of Attachment
Forms of Attachment

• Secure attachment: the baby may or may not cry when

the mother leaves, but when she returns the baby wants
to be with here, and if the baby is crying is tops
The Growth of Attachment

• Avoidant attachment: the baby is not upset when the

mother leaves and, when she returns, may ignore her by
looking or turning away. Infants with an avoidant
attachment look as if they’re saying “You left me again. I
always have to take care of myself”
The Growth of Attachment

• Resistant attachment: the baby is upset when the mother

leaves, and it remains upset or even angry when she
returns and is difficult to console. These babies seem to
be telling the mother, “Why do you do this? I need you
desperately and yet you just leave me without warning. I
get so angry when you’re like this”
• Disorganized (disoriented) attachment: the baby seems
confused when she returns, as if not really understanding
what’s happening. The baby often behaves in
contradictory ways, such as nearing the mother when she
returns but not looking at her, as if wondering. “What’s
happening? I want you to be here, but you left and now
you’re back. I don’t’ get what’s going on!”
 The Growth of Attachment
Consequences of Attachment
• Children with secure attachments are
more confident and successful with
peers
• Securely attached children have
fewer conflicts with friends and peers
• The conclusions is that children use
early attachment as prototypes for
later relationships and interactions
• Disorganized attachments linked to
anxiety, anger, and aggression
What Determines Quality of Attachment?

• Infants develop an internal

working model – a set of
expectations of the
availability and
responsiveness of caregivers
in times of stress
• Positive model: this person is
dependable, caring, plus
concerned about my needs and
willing to meet them
• Negative model: this person is
uncaring, undependable,
unresponsive, and even
annoyed by my needs
• Fussy and difficult-to-console babies have more
difficulty in forming secure attachments
• Rigid and traditional caregivers than accepting and
flexible ones
• Prompt responsiveness to crying promotes
secure attachments
Attachment, Work, & Alternate Caregiving

• Quality of mother-child attachment for 15- and 36-

month-olds is unrelated to
• Daycares’ quality or length of stays
• Number of changes in daycare
• Age when this care began
• Type of children (childcare center vs. in the home with a
non-relative)
• Child forming attachments to non parental caregivers
• Insecure attachments are likelier given low-
quality or frequent childcare combined with
caregivers who already are unresponsive and
insensitive
Attachment, Work, & Alternate Caregiving
Features of High-Quality Daycare
• Low ratio of children to caregivers
• Well-trained, experienced staff
• Low staff turnover
• Ample opportunities for educational and social stimulation
• Good communication between parents and daycare
workers about the program’s goals and routines
• Sensitive and responsive caregiving is key
Emerging emotions
Experiencing and Expressing Emotions
• Emotions have functional (adaptive) value (e.g., guiding
behavior and facilitating relationships)
• Basic emotions are experienced by humankind and that
consists of three elements:
• A subjective feeling
• A psychological change
• An overt behavior
• They consist of joy, sadness, anger, fear, distress,
disgust, interest, and surprise
• Studying infants’ facial expressions and overt
behaviors reveals their probable trajectory
Experiencing and Expressing Emotions
Development of Basic Emotions
• Newborns: pleasure and distress
• 2 to 3 months: sadness
: social smiles
-occur upon seeing a human face
-sometime accompanied by cooing
-express pleasure at seeing another
• 4 to 6 months: anger
-reflects an increasing understanding of goals and
their frustration
Experiencing and Expressing Emotions
• 6 months :stranger wariness
-child looks away and begins to fuss
- occurs one children start to locomote
-adaptive as a natural restraint against wandering
away from familiar others
occurs less with strangers in a familiar environment
:disgust
- adaptive in signaling toxins ( feces) or potential
illness ( vomit)
Experiencing and Expressing Emotions
Emergence of Complex
Emotions
• Complex emotions include
guilt, embarrassment, and
pride
• To be experienced, child first
must understand the self and
behavior in relation to whether
they have met standards or
expectations
• This self-understanding emerges around 15-18
months
• Complex emotions emerge at 18-24 months
Experiencing and Expressing Emotions
Later Developments

• With increasing cognitive development, children

experience basic and complex emotions in more
and different situations
-Ex: Fear of the dark of imaginary creatures declines
during elementary school
-understand appearance vs. reality
Experiencing and Expressing Emotions
Cultural Differences in Emotional
Expression
• Many basic and complex emotions
are expressed similarly around the
world
• Expressing emotions differs across
culture
• Asian children are encouraged to show
emotional restrain
• European-American 11-month-olds
cried and smiled more than Chinese
infants of same age
• Cultures differ in which events trigger emotions
• Asian children are proud of class-wide
achievement
• American children are more proud of public
personal achievement, whereas Asians are
embarrassed
Experiencing and Expressing Emotions
• American children express anger at others for ruining their
property of hurting them
• Asian-Buddhist children would inhibit anger and feel
shame instead for their possible role in the event
Recognizing & Using Others’ Emotions

• Adults are more skilled at recognizing subtleties in

emotion and detecting when others are faking an emotion
• 4-6 months: differentiate among faces expressing
happiness, sadness, and fear
• Infants attend more to facial expression of negative
emotions than happy or neutral one (adaptive value)
• Infants understand a facially displayed emotion
as shown by them matching their emotions to
other peoples.
• Social referencing is a behavior in which infants
in unfamiliar or ambiguous environment look at
an adult for cues to help them interpret the
situation
Recognizing & Using Others’ Emotions

• 14-month-olds remember earlier observed

emotional reactions of parents to particular
objects
• 18-month-olds use the reactions of one adult to
another adults behavior to guide their own
behavior
• Factors contributing to children’s emotions
understanding
• Parents and children frequently discussing past
emotions (especially negative ones, such as fear and
anger)
• Parents explaining how feeling differ and feelings
situational elicitors
• A positive and rewarding relationship with parents and
siblings
-possibly contributes dues to more frequent discussions about a
full range of emotions
Regulating Emotions
• Emotion regulation: controlling in some way
what one feels and how to communicate
the feeling
• Dependent on cognitive processes
• Attention
• Reappraisal
• Across age, some children more poorly regulate their
emotions compared to others, which can create
adjustment problems
• 4-6 months: use simple strategies to regulate emotions
• Turning away from a scary image
• 24 months: Get an adults attention and help, express sadness
rather that fear or anger
Regulating Emotions
• Older children and adolescents
• Become better in controlling their own emotions
rather than relying on others
• Use mental strategies to regulate emotions
• Tailor their strategies to the particular situations
Interacting with Others
The Joys of Play
• 6 months: will look, smile, and point at one another
• 12 months: parallel play is when children play alone but
are aware of and interested in what another child is doing
• 15-18 months: simple social play, toddlers engage in
similar activities as well as talk an smile at each other
• 24 months: cooperative play, theme-based play where
children taking on a different role
The Joys of Play

Make-Believe
• Values and traditions are expressed through
make-believe or imaginary characters
• Entertaining, while promoting cognitive
development
• Helps children explore frightening topics
• Imaginary playmates promote imagination, sociability, and
adjustment
• Pretend play is a regular part of preschooler’s play
• 16-18 months understand difference between pretending vs. reality
The Joys of Play
Solitary Play
• Usually not an indicator of problem
• Can reflect uneasiness with others for
which professional help should be sought if
child
• Wanders aimlessly among others
• Hovers over other who are playing
 The Joys of Play
Gender Differences in Play
• 24-36 months: prefer playing
with same sex- peers
• Boys prefer rough and tumble,
competition, and dominance
• Try to be the victor by exaggerating
and threatening or contradicting the
other
• Girls prefer more cooperative,
prosocial, and conversation-
oriented
• Their acts and remark s support
others and sustain interactions
The Joys of Play
• Evolutionarily adaptive
• Males strive to establish a high rank to gain
access to more mate
• Females have affiliation goals, because they
traditionally leave their community to join
another
The Joys of Play
• Parental Influence
• Playmate: scaffolding the child’s
play and rendering it more
sophisticated
• Social director: arranging play
dates and official play activities
• Coach: help children learn how
to initiate interactions, make
joint decisions, and resolve
conflicts
• Mediators: help children resolve
disputes, share, and identify
mutually acceptable activities
Helping Others

• Prosocial behavior is any behavior that benefits another

person
• Cooperating, being polite
• Altruism is a prosocial behavior such as helping and
sharing in which the individual does not benefit directly
from his or her behavior
• 18 months: recognize others’ distress signals and will try
to comfort them
Helping Others
• 3 year-olds: are gradually starting to understand others
needs and learning appropriate altruistic responses
-still somewhat limited because of egocentrism in distinguishing
others’ needs or desires from their own
Helping Others

Skills Underlying Altruistic

Behavior
• Perspective-taking is
accurate perception of
another’s physical, social, or
emotional viewpoint as
distinct from one’s own
• Empathy is experiencing
another person’s feelings
Helping Others
Socialization of Altruism

• Modeling: When children see adults helping and caring for

others, they often imitate such prosocial behavior

• Disciplinary practices: Children behave prosocially more often

when their parents are warm and supportive, set guidelines,
and provide feedback

• Opportunities to behave prosocially: You need to practice to

improve motor skills and the same is true to prosocial
behaviors– children and adolescents are more likely to act
prosocially when they’re routinely given the opportunity to help
and cooperate with others
Gender Roles and
Gender Identity
Images of Men and Women: Facts and
Fantasy
• Gender stereotypes is a set
of guidelines about how one
should behave, especially
with others
• Social role is a set of
cultural guidelines about
how one should behave,
especially with other people
Leaning Gender Stereotypes
• 18 months: Girls and boys look longer at gender-
stereotyped pictures of toys
• 4 year-olds: extensive knowledge of gender-stereotyped
activities and some behaviors or traits
Images of Men and Women: Facts and
Fantasy

• Preschool: believe boys are physically

aggressive, but girls are verbally aggressive
• Post-preschoolers: have a growing belief about
gender-stereotyped traits and occupations
Images of Men and Women: Facts and
Fantasy
Gender-Related Differences
• Verbal ability: girl toddlers have larger vocabularies;
thereafter read, write, and spell better, and have
fewer language problems

• Mathematics: not limiting females to traditional

stereotypes, this gender gap has diminished in the
past 25 years

• Spatial ability: from infancy onwards, boys more

accurately and rapidly solve visual-spatial problems
Images of Men and Women: Facts and
Fantasy
Images of Men and Women: Facts and
Fantasy
• Social influence: girls comply more with adult
directions and more readily accept others’
influence attempts, possibly because they value
group harmony
• Aggression: starting at 17 months, boys are more
physically aggressive
• Girls are likelier to engage in relational aggression, hurt
other by damaging their peer relationship
• Emotional sensitivity: Girls are more empathic
Gender Typing
• Parents are equally warm
and encouraging to boys
and girls
• However, results show
parents to model and
differentially reinforce
“appropriate” gender
typed behaviors:
• Girls playing dolls, dress up
• Boys engaging in rough-and-
tumble play, playing with
blocks, mild aggression
• Results support social learning theory
• Differential reinforcement of gender-typed traits
and behaviors is likelier in:
• - parents with traditional views of each gender’s right
and roles
• - fathers, who punish, and are more accepting of
dependence in girls
Gender Typing
• Mothers rarely contradict or question children’s gender-
stereotyped statements
• Peers influence gender roles in two ways
• Children learn more about their role from like-sex than opposite-sex
peers by engaging so often in same-sex play
- Sharpens one’s sense of gender group membership
- Heightens the contrast between each gender’s roles and behaviors
• Peers treat boys even more harshly than girls for ‘feminine’
activities and interests

• Gender identity is sense of oneself as male or female

Gender Typing
Gender Identity
• Kohlberg’s thee stages:
• Gender labeling is young children’s understanding that
they are either boys or girls and naming themselves
accordingly (ages 2 or 3)
• Gender stability is understanding in preschool children
that boys become men and girls become women
• Gender constancy is understanding that maleness and
femaleness do not change over situations or personal
wishes (between ages 4 to 7)
Gender Typing
• Gender-schema theory states that children want to learn
more about an activity only after first deciding whether it is
masculine or feminine
Gender Typing
Biological Influences
• Evolutionary theory is when men and women
evolved different traits and behaviors adaptive to
their unique investments
• Identical twins are more similar that fraternal
twins in preference for sex-typical toys and
activities
• In utero testosterone exposure predict
preferences for masculine-typed activities
Gender Typing
• Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) is a genetic
disorder in which girls are masculinized because the
adrenal grand secrete large amounts of androgen during
prenatal development
• Enlarged clitoris can resemble a penis
• Prefer masculine activities and male friends
• Hormone therapy and sex operations do not undo these
preferences
• Greater prenatal androgen exposure exacerbates these
preferences
• Brain regions critical for gender-role behavior
Evolving Gender roles
• Family lifestyles, culture and history influence
children’s gender roles
• Family Lifestyle Project: studied 1960-1970s
counter counterculture members who socialized
their children without traditional gender beliefs
• Children did not stereotype occupations or object use
• Children did prefer same sex friends or activities
• Evolutionary history partly continues to influence
certain roles