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“Social Anxiety” in Infancy
Abstract
Consider the following vignette:
Brian, an 8-month-old infant, crawled briskly into his family’s living room and stopped when he reached the middle of the floor. He paused to scan, with a sober expression, the faces of the unfamiliar adults surrounding him until he viewed his mother’s smiling demeanor, at which time he broke into an animated grin and an explosive cackle. During the next half hour, Brian played happily at his mother’s feet while adult conversation continued. On one occasion, his mother left the room briefly to prepare refreshments. When he later looked up to discover his mother missing, Brian’s happy play deteriorated into anguished sobs until his mother returned. It took a few additional minutes of comfort before he was ready to return to play again. At the end of the meeting, one of the adults stooped down to Brian and asked cheerily, “How ya doin’, big fella?” Brian looked up at him with a serious expression for a moment. Then he turned to his mother with loud sobs.
... These temperamental differences, or the neurophysiological patterns underlying them, may contribute directly to the incidence, latency, duration, and intensity of separation distress (Davidson & Fox, 1989;Fox & Davidson, 1987;Gunnar, Larson, Hertsgaard, Harris, & Brodersen, 1992;Gunnar, Mangelsdorf, Larson, & Hertsgaard, 1989). Nevertheless, individual differences in separation distress are not generally consistent over age (Kagan, Kearsley, & Zelazo, 1978;Thompson & Lamb, 1984;Thompson & Limber, 1990), which suggests the importance of a developmental dimension in the analysis of temperamental differences in separation reactions. ...
... As infants become able to represent mother and search for her during her absence, and to expect to be picked up upon her return, greater distress should reflect greater cognitiveattentional sophistication or atlunement. More specifically, greater distress should reflect the ability to maintain the coordination of motor plans with respect to an absent or frustrating goal (see Thompson & Limber;1990). Because this capacity is critical to sensorimotor functioning in general, we hypothesized that separation-reunion distress at 4-8 months would predict higher sensorimotor scores. ...
... Thus, we surmise that separation and reunion distress at 10 months continued to reflect greater cognitive engagement or sophistication, as first revealed at 6 months. However, by 10 months, this distress may indicate a violation of more specific expectancies, heightened by contextual factors (Thompson & Limber, 1990). Mother's unavailability when called, especially when behind a closed door, and the continued strangeness of a reunion without toys or mother-initiated pick-up, may have seemed particularly incongruous to cognitively sophisticated or highly attuned infants (Kagan et al., 1978). ...
Associations between emotional responses to maternal separation and cognitive performance were expected to change with cognitive development over the first year. In this longitudinal study of 39 infants, measures of separation and reunion distress at 2, 6, and 10 months were interleaved with measures of sensorimotor coordination at 4, 8, and 13 months. Separation distress at 2 months predicted lower sensorimotor scores, whereas separation distress at 6 and 10 months corresponded with higher scores. Duration of distress in reunion showed the same pattern of associations, when controlled for general emotionality Infants' positive engagement and physical touch with their mothers at 10 months predicted higher sensorimotor scores as well. Emotional responses and cognitive performance may be linked by individual differences in self-regulation and attentional engagement, as mediated by age-specific developmental issues.
... Nighttime fears thus appear more likely to be pathological, at least in terms of deviance from typical developmental patterns, at some points than at others. Similarly, whereas being separated from primary caregivers commonly provokes fear among infants and toddlers (Thompson & Limber, 1990), comparable separation-related distress is less typical among older children and adolescents (Compton, Nelson, & March, 2000). Its occurrence among older youths may thus indicate the presence of pathology. ...
This chapter examines the cognitive and neural mechanisms through which humans regulate anxiety over the course of the life span. We first define salient terms and concepts that are at the heart of our review and the models on which we rely to describe emotion and anxiety regulation, focusing on common manifestations of anxiety across development. We then review the literature on the regulation of anxiety and fear. In particular, we attend to the ways varied anxiety regulation strategies and their neural correlates vary across development. In the final section, we discuss contexts, both intrapersonal and interpersonal, that may facilitate or inhibit the use of different regulatory mechanisms and strategies among individuals experiencing anxiety across the life span.
... Nighttime fears thus appear more likely to be pathological, at least in terms of deviance from typical developmental patterns, at some points than at others. Similarly, whereas being separated from primary caregivers commonly provokes fear among infants and toddlers (Thompson & Limber, 1990), comparable separation-related distress is less typical among older children and adolescents (Compton, Nelson, & March, 2000). Its occurrence among older youths may thus indicate the presence of pathology. ...
This chapter defines relevant terms and reviews available literature on classification of childhood anxiety disorders. Specifically, it examines data regarding commonalities and differences among the anxiety disorders as they present in juveniles and in adults. The chapter further reviews the data on one specific childhood anxiety disorder: Social Phobia or Social Anxiety Disorder due to the fact that research on this disorder has increased recently from clinical psychopathology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology perspectives. Social Anxiety Disorder provides an excellent model for integrating these viewpoints, especially insofar as they have each grappled with the constructs of emotion and emotion regulation. The chapter summarizes recent advances in basic neuroscience that relate to Social Anxiety Disorder and emotion regulation. These advances in neuroscience suggest that fear states might be best conceptualized as a family of distinct but related entities.
... During infancy and toddlerhood, most infants develop a fear of loss and shyness to strangers that peaks around 8 to 12 months of age, as is expressed by wariness around unfamiliar people. 100,101 These fears are often followed by separation anxiety that peaks around 10 to 18 months marked by distress about being separated from parents. For most children, those fears disappear around 2 to 3 years of age. ...
The objective of this narrative review of the literature is to describe the epidemiology, etiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of pediatric anxiety disorders. We aim to guide clinicians in understanding the biology of anxiety disorders and to provide general guidelines for the proper diagnoses and treatment of these conditions early in life. Anxiety disorders are prevalent, associated with a number of negative life outcomes, and currently under-recognized and under-treated. The etiology involves both genes and environmental influences modifying the neural substrate in a complex interplay. Research on pathophysiology is still in its infancy, but some brain regions, such as the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, have been implicated in fear and anxiety. Current practice is to establish diagnosis based purely on clinical features, derived from clinical interviews with the child, parents, and teachers. Treatment is effective using medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, or a combination of both. An introduction to the neuroscience behind anxiety disorders combined with an evidence-based approach may help clinicians to understand these disorders and treat them properly in childhood.
... Individual differences in trajectories of developing stranger fear are understudied given widespread belief that stranger fear emerges and develops in a predicable fashion (Sroufe, 1977;Thompson & Limber, 1990). However, temperament research has shown individual differences in observed distress to a stranger to be a reliable marker for heightened behavioral inhibition, a risk factor for the development of anxiety characterized by heightened reactivity to novelty (Kagan 2000;Kagan et al., 1987). ...
Despite implications that stranger fear is an important aspect of developing behavioral inhibition, a known risk factor for anxiety, normative and atypical developmental trajectories of stranger fear across infancy and toddlerhood remain understudied. We used a large, longitudinal data set (N = 1285) including multi-trait, multi-method assessments of temperament to examine the normative course of development for stranger fear and to explore the possibility that individual differences exist in trajectories of stranger fear development between 6 and 36 months of age. A latent class growth analysis suggested four different trajectories of stranger fear during this period. Stable, high levels of stranger fear over time were associated with poorer RSA suppression at 6 months of age. Rates of concordance in trajectory-based class membership for identical (monozygotic) and fraternal (dizygotic) twins, along with associations between atypical stranger fear development and greater anxiety-related maternal characteristics, suggested that individual differences in developmental trajectories of stranger fear may be heritable. Importantly, trajectories of stranger fear during infancy and toddlerhood were linked to individual differences in behavioral inhibition, with chronically high levels of stranger fear and sharp increases in stranger fear over time related to greater levels of inhibition than other developmental trajectories.
... As a result, infants become capable of adjusting means for achieving ends in the object world as well as joint attention and social referencing in the interpersonal world (e.g., Corkum & Moore, 1998;Tomasello, 1995). Corresponding changes in the socioemotional domain include separation distress, stranger anxiety, and deliberate efforts to engage mother's help (e.g., Emde et al., 1976;Thompson & Limber, 1990). The 9-month shift is more universally recognized by infancy researchers than the 4-month shift, but Sroufe, Case, Fischer, Trevarthen and others stipulate both as critical junctures in early development. ...
Previous models of developmental transitions in infancy have proposed global reorganizations in cognitive and emotional functioning. Neo-Piagetian theories suggest a specific timetable for normative shifts in cognitive development, but dynamic systems con- structs may be necessary to tap corresponding transitions in emotion regulation. We looked for reorganizations in attentional habits for regulating emotion in 12 infants assessed lon- gitudinally over 16 sessions in the first year. Sensorimotor tasks and a frustration-induction procedure were conducted in each session. Videotapes of behavior were coded for atten- tional focus and distress. The strength of attentional habits was operationalized as the rate at which infants returned attention to their mother or a frustrating toy following a break in engagement. Event history analysis was used to test for changes in this rate. Results indi- cated cognitive-developmental shifts at 4.5 and 9 months, as predicted by neo-Piagetian theory. At both these ages, reduced rates of reengagement indicated increased plasticity in habits for attending to mother, though this effect was eliminated in the presence of distress. Reengagement of attention to the toy changed in unpredicted ways.
... This is an important area to study due to the large role that positive emotional expression, control of negative emotion, and ability to recognize and respond to emotional behavior play in the proficiency of social skills. Additionally, as indicated by previous researchers (Gerwitz, 1972;Gerwitz & Pelaez-Nogueras, 1992;Thompson & Limber, 1990), environmental stimuli such as a parent's emotional behavior (e.g., fearful expression in the presence of an u n f a d i a r individual) may set the occasion for socially anxious responses. Thus, the environmental factors that lead to the establishment of certain parental behaviors as discriminative stimuli for anxious responses should be investigated in order to be able to prevent these type of relations from being established. ...
The quality of social relationships is a strong predictor of later adjustment. Thus, it is crucial to identify those environmental factors that lead to appropriate versus deficient childhood social relations. Parent-child interaction is one important context to examine due to the crucial role that the family environment plays in children's social development. This article reviews the parental factors associated with social anxiety, integrating the literature from various fields within psychology. Methodological limitations of this research are discussed, pointing to ambiguous constructs, limited assessment procedures, lack of research integration, and reliance on cognitive interpretations. Finally, suggestions are made for future investigations to clarify the definition of constructs and allow for more precise specification of the parental behaviors associated with social anxiety.
... Emotion in reunion ranged from pleasure to extreme distress, with some degree of distress evident in nearly all sessions. Reunion distress has been found to be a rich measure of individual response styles as well as normative age differences in emotional development (Thompson & Lamb, 1984;Thompson & Limber, 1990). Thus, we decided to code the intensity of reunion distress for our measure of emotional state. ...
This study reports on a new dynamic systems method for studying infant socioemotional development, using conventional statistical techniques to portray dynamic systems constructs. State space grids were constructed from two ordinal variables, distress intensity and attention to mother, and hypothetical attractors were identified as grid cells with high cumulative duration of behavior. Attractor and state space characteristics were operationalized and tested, first to assess the utility of the method and second to reconceptualize and extend conventional developmental hypotheses. The basin strength and relaxation time of hypothetical attractors demonstrated their ‘attractiveness’ and predicted consistency in attractor location across sessions. Developmental changes and individual continuities in the organization of behavior were also revealed, in ways that would be inaccessible to conventional research methods.
... It is likely that an innate fear of negative evaluation is universal, and is modified through the experience of positive social interaction. For example, all children go through a period of stranger anxiety at about 8 months, which might have protected them in earlier times from kidnapping (Thompson and Limber 1990). They unlearn this stranger anxiety by the experience of positive interaction with strangers and by increased social competence. ...
We explore paternal social anxiety as a specific risk factor for childhood social anxiety in a rational optimization model. In the course of human evolution, fathers specialized in external protection (e.g., confronting the external world) while mothers specialized in internal protection (e.g., providing comfort and food). Thus, children may instinctively be more influenced by the information signaled by paternal versus maternal behavior with respect to potential external threats. As a result, if fathers exhibit social anxiety, children interpret it as a strong negative signal about the external social world and rationally adjust their beliefs, thus becoming stressed. Under the assumption that paternal signals on social threats are more influential, a rational cognitive inference leads children of socially anxious fathers to develop social anxiety, unlike children of socially anxious mothers. We show in the model that mothers cannot easily compensate for anxious paternal behavior, but choose to increase maternal care to maintain the child's wellbeing. We discuss research directions to test the proposed model as well as implications for the prevention and treatment of child social anxiety.
This chapter provides a perspective on conceptual, definitional, and diagnostic nosology issues for the field. It is proposed that social anxieties and fears, like other phobic disorders, exist along a continuum across the general population. The range of social anxieties/fears along this continuum is from no anxiety/fear to "normal" levels to psychopathological extremes. The debate on "overpathologizing" socially anxious people then may be addressed by a conceptualization that acknowledges both "normal" social anxieties that are mildly to moderately intense, or transient, and also their potential connectedness to social anxiety disorder (SAD), depending on potentially contributing environmental and individual factors. The chapter also reviews the evolution of constructs important to the area. Finally, it reemphasizes the need for a multidisciplinary approach to studying and understanding distress and dysfunction related to social situations. It uses the term "social anxiety" in an attempt to broadly encompass the various constructs emanating from the various disciplines and subdisciplines.
The capacity to manage emotion is based on the growth of self-regulatory capacities in the early years, but is also affected by situational demands, influences from other people, and the child's goals for regulating emotion in a particular setting. For most children growing up in supportive contexts, the growth of emotional regulation is associated with enhanced psychosocial well-being and socioemotional competence. But for children who are at risk for the development of psychopathology owing to environmental stresses or intrinsic vulnerability (or their interaction), emotional regulation often entails inherent trade-offs that make nonoptimal strategics of managing emotion expectable, perhaps inevitable, in a context of difficult environmental demands and conflicting emotional goals. This analysis discusses how emotional regulation in children at risk may simultaneously foster both resiliency and vulnerability by considering how emotion is managed when children (a) are living with a parent who is depressed, (b) witness or experience domestic violence, or (c) are temperamentally inhibited when encountering novel challenges. In each case, the child's efforts to manage emotion may simultaneously buffer against certain stresses while also enhancing the child's vulnerability to other risks and demands. This double-edged sword of emotional regulation in conditions of risk for children cautions against using “optimal” emotional regulation as an evaluative standard for such children or assuming that emotional regulation necessarily improves psychosocial well-being. It also suggests how the study of emotional regulation must consider the goals for regulating emotion and the contexts in which those goals are sought.
By the age of 1 year toddlers demonstrate distinct coping habits for dealing with frustration. However, these habits may be open to change and reorganization at subsequent developmental junctures. We investigated change in coping habits at 18-20 months, a normative age for major advances in social cognition, focusing on the dynamic systems principles of fluctuation and novelty at transitions. Specifically, we asked whether month-to-month fluctuation, novel behavioral habits and real-time variability increased at the age of a normative transition, despite individual differences in the content of behavior. Infants were given frustrating toys while their mothers sat nearby without helping, on monthly visits at 14-25 months (before, during and after the hypothesized transition). State space grids representing patterns of behavioral durations were constructed for each episode and compared over age. As predicted, month-to-month fluctuation in grid patterns increased temporarily between 17 and 20 months, partly independently of a concurrent peak in distress, and new behavioral habits replaced old ones at the same age. Coping habits changed differently for high-and low-distressed toddlers. However, changes in real-time variability did not generally meet our expectations.
There have been significant advances in recent years in the understanding and treatment of social phobia, which are summarised in this Special Issue. This paper outlines and describes some further priority areas for future research. It is suggested that social phobia should be investigated as a developmental condition, with special attention to the first two years of life; and subtypes of social phobia be further explored and their implication for treatment. Social phobia is often comorbid with other disorders and its relationship with these disorders warrants further investigation with respect to causality and treatment implications. Lastly, the investigation of social phobia within a health services research context is highlighted with the necessity of refining the design of clinical trials to establish the efficacy and effectiveness of current treatments.
From chapter introduction: In previous analyses of infants' behavior in the strange situation it had been found useful to view behavior as resulting from the arousal of two major behavioral systems--the exploratory system activated especially by a novel assembly of toys, and the attachment system activated in a sequence of episodes involving stress. Bronson (1972) concluded from his investigations of infants' responses to strangers that "reactions to the larger social environment seem to evolve thought an interplay between two adaptive systems. . " which he identified as affiliation with and wariness of other humans. In the present analysis of response to strangers in our strange situation, we suggest that our findings offer evidence of complex interrelationships among four behavioral systems when a baby with his mother in an unfamiliar environment encounters a friendly stranger-- (1) an affiliative system, (2) a system that we label fear-wariness, and the (3) attachment and (4) exploratory systems that previous discussions have emphasized.
The construct of wariness of strangers is sufficiently viable to withstand recent critiques and to have an important place in an integrated view of infant development. Negative reactions to strangers appear to be a general phenomenon, although there is considerable individual variation in age of onset and in developmental course. The manifestation of aversive reactions is highly influenced by context and procedural variations. When procedural and coding variations are taken into account, stranger approach studies reveal consistent developmental trends; negative reactions are rare in the first half year, common by 8 or 9 months, and increasingly frequent throughout the first year. The range of reactions can be reliably coded, and even subtle aversive responses have been validated in a variety of ways. There is evidence of some stability of negative reactions, though consistency of individual differences in type of reaction has not been adequately assessed. The meaning and significance of wariness are most clearly seen when examined in interaction with the affiliative, exploratory, and attachment systems and when its implications for major problems in cognitive, social, and emotional development are considered.
Compared fathers with mothers and strangers as elicitors of attachment behaviors in 10 male and 10 female infants from each of 3 age groups (10, 13, and 16 mo). Differential proximity-seeking behavior, distress vocalization, and stranger eye contact from a "secure base" were used to index attachment. Fathers were superior to strangers as elicitors of attachment behaviors but 2nd to mothers at all age levels. When both parents were present, Ss approached mothers twice as often as fathers. Tested with each parent separately, they traveled to the mother in a shorter time than they traveled the same distance to the father and spent more time near the mother. The amount of eye contact with strangers was greater when Ss were near mothers as compared to fathers. Distress vocalization during separation from the parents was one of the few measures which did not discriminate between mothers and fathers. (21 ref)
Studied 76 36-47 mo olds to examine the finding of D. K. Routh et al , that some 3-yr-olds did not tolerate staying in a playroom alone without crying. Multivariate analysis of variance of the effects of age, sex, and experimental condition on the 10 dependent measures indicated a significant multivariate effect only for experimental condition; the univariate test of the effect of condition on time before whimpering or crying was also significant.
Because perceptions of personal agency are important contributors to behavioral regulation, they play a significant role in promoting and maintaining competent functioning. Yet, thus far, these processes have been studied almost exlusively in older children and adults. Our discussion sketches the outlines of a life-span approach to the study of competence development by considering the emergence of personal agency beliefs in the infancy and toddler years and their importance to early developmental achievements. After presenting a general framework for conceptualizing personal agency beliefs and an overview of the research with older groups relevant to this framework, studies of the origins of perceived effectance and their motivational consequences in infancy are reviewed. Next we propose that individual differences in the security of attachment and their sequelae can be viewed as reflecting, in part, variations in perceptions of personal agency among infants and toddlers, a view which also suggests important new directions in attachment theory and research. Finally, we outline research issues concerning the generality and stability of personal agency beliefs, their behavioral correlates at different ages, and their overall role in a general life-span theory of competence development.
Presented 12 strangers, adults and children of both sexes, to 48 male and 48 female 8- and 12-mo old infants. Results indicate that (a) 8-mo infants respond positively toward strangers, but this positive response decreases from 8-12 mo. (b) Infants respond more positively to child than to adult strangers. (c) 12-mo males respond more positively to female than to male strangers. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Compared the quality of separation distress of 26 19-mo-old Down's syndrome (DS) infants observed in the strange situation as defined by the present 2nd author and F. C. Serafica (see record
1974-10581-001) with that of 43 normal infants who were observed at 12½ and 19½ mo to assess whether DS infants responded more similarly to cognitively comparable normals than to age-comparable normals. Time-sampled ratings of facial and vocal expressions yielded summary measures of peak distress intensity and emotional range for each episode, latency to distress onset and rise time to peak intensity during separation episodes, recovery time (i.e., soothing) during reunions, and emotional lability for the entire assessment. For both expressive modalities, DS Ss evinced less intense separation distress, longer latencies to onset, briefer recoveries, and a diminished range and lability of responding in comparison with normals at each age. These group differences were predicted in light of the cognitive and physiological characteristics of DS. Despite these differences, the organization of response parameters was highly similar for DS and normal children: Distress intensity was negatively correlated with onset latency and positively correlated with recovery time. Analysis of emotion–attachment interrelations revealed that distress intensity was consistently associated with a contact-maintenance vs distance interaction dimension of mother-directed behaviors for each group. (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this book, we provide a thorough review of the literature concerning the origins, interpretation, and developmental significance of individual differences in early infant-parent attachment. The orientation we adopt borrows heavily from the ethological framework presented by Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby. As progenitors of this powerful theoretical framework, Ainsworth and Bowlby deserve our deep gratitude, and we hope that they will view our efforts as an attempt to evaluate and build constructively upon their influential work and orientation. We hope that the thoroughness of our discussion serves our field by taking stock of the evidence currently available and providing both stimulus and orientation for future research on the formation and developmental significance of early infantile attachments. © 1985 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
No one would deny the proposition that in order to understand human behavior and development, one must understand "feelings. " The in tere st in emotions is enduring. Yet, within the discipline of psychology, the study of feelings and emotions has been somewhat less than re spectable, a stepchild to the fields of cognitive science and psycho linguistics. PerusaI of the language acquisition literature reveals a greater concem among psychologists for the acquisition of prepositions than for terms that convey feelings. Without question, issues related to emo tion, its development, and its measurement have been neglected in the research literature until quite recently. From a developmental perspective, Piaget and his followers have articulated a complex theory of transition and change in intellectual behavior. Nearly a century ago, Freud proposed an elaborate theory of personality development in which some aspects of emotional growth were considered. We await the construction of a comprehensive theory of emotional development. Recognizing such a need, we set out over a decade ago to solve what seemed to be a relatively simple problem: By observing young children, could one successfully classify children in terms of individual differences on emotional dimensions such as happiness, fear, and anger? The task appeared easy. One could send graduate students into a preschool and ask them to observe children for several days, after which th ey would rank the children in terms of differences on various emo tional dimensions.
Psychophysiological measures are attractive to behavioral scientists for many reasons. They can be precisely recorded and provide a broader range of measurement than most other kinds of assessment tools. They are extremely sensitive to changes in arousal and behavioral state and can be used with subjects of various ages since response parameters are broadly comparable throughout most of the life span. Furthermore, the attractiveness of these measures is heightened by theoretical formulations which relate physiological activation to various psychological processes in a relatively straightforward fashion. Thus, psychophysiological measures offer precise, sensitive assessments of phenomena which are otherwise frustratingly difficult to appraise.
Researchers interested in the developing mother—infant relationship have observed that beginning in early infancy there is already a complex nonverbal communication system (Bowlby, 1969; Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974; Stern, 1977). We agree with Darwin (1872) that a critical aspect of this “first language of infancy” is that emotional signals are reciprocally exchanged between mother and infant.
This chapter deals with three broad issues: Whether emotions are epiphenomenal, how emotions play a crucial role in determining appraisal processes, and what the mechanisms are by which emotions may influence interpersonal behavior. We present evidence from studies indicating that emotions play a crucial role in the regulation of social behavior. Social regulation by emotion is particularly clear in a process we call social referencing—the active search by a person for emotional information from another person, and the subsequent use of that emotion to help appraise an uncertain situation. Social referencing has its roots in infancy, and we propose that it develops through a four-level sequence of capacities to process emotional information from facial expression. We discuss whether the social regulatory functions of emotion are innate or socially learned, whether feeling plays an important role in mediating the effects of emotional expressions of one person on the behavior of another, and whether stimulus context is important in accounting for differences in reaction to the same emotional information.
In its most general form, the discrepancy hypothesis states that an organism attends and affectively responds to new stimuli as an inverted-U function of the stimuli’s physical or conceptual discrepancy (i.e., dissimilarity) from a well-familiarized standard stimulus. That is, moderate discrepancies from highly familiar stimuli receive both the highest degree of attention and positive affect, whereas stimuli that are quite familiar or extremely different from what the organism knows well receive relatively less attention and less positive—perhaps even negative—affective responses and evaluations. The hypothesis is presented graphically in Figure 1.
Whether infants normally develop distress to a stranger in the second half year of life is an important and apparently unresolved question in view of recent criticisms of prior research. To answer the question whether there is a developmental shift in infants' reactions to a standardized approach by a stranger, a longitudinal study was carried out of 14 infants tested during monthly home visits from months 4 through 12. Films of facial expressions were rated to establish the presence and absence of distress. Positive as well as negative facial expressions were recorded, and attention was given to details of behavioral reactions rather than to pooled indices of behavior. All infants tested showed distress at some point in the first year with a mean age of onset of 8 months. Distress tended to persist on subsequent testings. The developmental course of the infants' reactions involved two opposite functions: a decline in positive responding and an increase in negative responding in association with the stranger's approach during the second half of the first year. Thus, we concluded that a developmental shift was found, and, in conjunction with other recent work contrasting reactions to mothers, the shift was interpreted as due to reactions to strangers.
Evidence concerning the developmental correlates of nonmaternal care in the first year of life are examined with respect to infant-mother attachment and subsequent social development. Even though the evidence is somewhat inconsistent, a circumstantial case remarkably consistent with attachment theory can be made that extensive infant day care experience is associated with insecure attachment during infancy and heightened aggressiveness and noncompliance during the preschool and early school-age years. Several studies indicate that such later consequences may dissipate over time, but it is not evident that this is always the case. It is concluded that some nonmaternal care arrangement in the first year for more than 20 hours per week may be a risk factor in the emergence of developmental difficulties and that the ultimate consequences of such risk are best understood in the context of characteristics of the child, the family, and the caregiving milieu. It is emphasized that this reading of the literature carries with it no inevitable implications for public policy.
Twenty premature and 20 fullterm infants participated in study of stranger sociability and infant-mother attachment. The preterms were born 4–10 weeks early and had a mean birth weight of 1990 grams. The two groups of infants did not differ on variables such as SES or time between hospital discharge and laboratory assessment. Stranger sociability was assessed in the Stevenson and Lamb (1979) procedure, and security of attachment in the Strange Situation (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969). Mothers also completed questionnaires on child-rearing attitudes, perinatal anxiety, and infant temperament. Results showed that birth status was unrelated to both attachment and sociability. Securely attached infants were more sociable, however, and were perceived as more “easy” than insecurely attached infants. Difficult infants were less sociable than infants perceived as easy.
The aims of this study were (1) to test for independence in the quality of the infant's attachment to each parent, (2) to test the concept of security by viewing infants judged secure versus insecure with mother in a situation designed to arouse mild apprehension, (3) to examine the effects of existing infant-parent relationships upon positive social responsiveness to new persons, and (4) to identify characteristics of infants judged unclassifiable within the Ainsworth system. In the first part of the study 61 infants were seen with different parents in the Ainsworth strange situation at 12 and 18 months. Classifications with mother and with father were independent; father as well as mother categories were stable over an 8-month period. 44 infants were additionally seen with mother at 12 months in a play session in which an adult actor attempted to establish a friendly relationship. Conflict behavior occurred in infants judged nonsecure with mother. The relationship to father as well as to mother appeared to affect friendly responsiveness to the adult actor. Infants unclassifiable within the Ainsworth system (12.5%) showed conflict and little positive responsiveness to the adult actor.
12-month-old infants were given an opportunity to approach female, adult strangers who played either active or passive roles in the interaction. On 4-min trials the active strangers talked, gestured, and offered a series of toys to the infants. The passive strangers sat behind the same toys but only looked and smiled at the infants. Infants in the active-stranger group spent reliably less time near their mothers and fussed and cried less; they spent more time near the strangers, looked at them longer, and touched them more often. Further description of the infants' interaction with the active strangers indicated that they frequently watched the strangers manipulate the toys, touched toys the strangers held, exchanged toys, imitated the strangers, and devised and played games with them. The infants were highly sociable and infant-stranger interaction was reciprocal. An additional contrast between infants who encountered either the same or different strangers on each trial failed to provide evidence that the strangers' familiarity influenced the infants' reactions to them.
The effects of positive, negative, and mixed positive-negative adult interaction patterns on children's performance and preference were studied. For 3 nursery school children, 1 adult dispensed positive comments for task responding, a second adult reprimanded off-task behavior, a third adult used both contingencies, and a fourth adult remained silent. Response measures indicated that positive-negative and negative adults maintained task behavior; the positive and extinction adults' control deteriorated. On preference probes positive adults were most often selected first, the negative adults typically going unselected; positive-negative adults generally were neither approached nor avoided. Discussion considered the effectiveness of positive and negative comments, side effects of punishment, and clinical implications.
Ethological attachment theory is a landmark of 20th century social and behavioral sciences theory and research. This new paradigm for understanding primary relationships across the lifespan evolved from John Bowlby's critique of psychoanalytic drive theory and his own clinical observations, supplemented by his knowledge of fields as diverse as primate ethology, control systems theory, and cognitive psychology. By the time he had written the first volume of his classic Attachment and Loss trilogy, Mary D. Salter Ainsworth's naturalistic observations in Uganda and Baltimore, and her theoretical and descriptive insights about maternal care and the secure base phenomenon had become integral to attachment theory. Patterns of Attachment reports the methods and key results of Ainsworth's landmark Baltimore Longitudinal Study. Following upon her naturalistic home observations in Uganda, the Baltimore project yielded a wealth of enduring, benchmark results on the nature of the child's tie to its primary caregiver and the importance of early experience. It also addressed a wide range of conceptual and methodological issues common to many developmental and longitudinal projects, especially issues of age appropriate assessment, quantifying behavior, and comprehending individual differences. In addition, Ainsworth and her students broke new ground, clarifying and defining new concepts, demonstrating the value of the ethological methods and insights about behavior. Today, as we enter the fourth generation of attachment study, we have a rich and growing catalogue of behavioral and narrative approaches to measuring attachment from infancy to adulthood. Each of them has roots in the Strange Situation and the secure base concept presented in Patterns of Attachment. It inclusion in the Psychology Press Classic Editions series reflects Patterns of Attachment's continuing significance and insures its availability to new generations of students, researchers, and clinicians.
16 children at each of ages 2, 3, and 4 years were observed being approached by and interacting with a friendly stranger during their mothers' presence and absence in a standardized situation. Analyses of discrete behaviors yielded results consistent with those of earlier studies. Further analyses, based on a behavioral systems approach, focused on temporal patterns of reactions to the stranger. A number of qualitative patterns of response were identified which represent both age and individual differences, and which lead to conclusions different from those studies based on the analysis of discrete behaviors. The results are discussed in terms of the usefulness of a behavioral systems approach to the study of social development.
Mothers differ in the strategies they use to prepare their children for upcoming brief separations. To investigate the effects of the preparation's length, 40 mothers provided either brief (10 sec) or somewhat repetitious (70 sec) information about the separation before leaving their 2-year-old child with an unfamiliar person in a playroom. Children given brief preparations remained in the room longer and played more with toys than did children receiving extended preparations. The findings demonstate that all attempts to prepare children for an imminent separation are not equivalent. Subtle factors involved in a preparation appear to influence its effectiveness.
In a short-term longitudinal study 20 infants were followed at monthly intervals from 6 to 12 months of age. Familiarization with an initially strange object was followed by the introduction of an incongruous object on each occasion. At all ages a decrement in visual responsiveness, followed by response recovery to the incongruous stimulus, was found. Simultaneously obtained data on manipulative behavior showed a different age pattern: up to 8 months latency to touch was indiscriminate throughout the series of trials, indicating an immediate-approach tendency irrespective of perceived degree of familiarity, whereas after this age relatively prolonged hesitation to contact the unfamiliar stimulus occurred. The onset of the capacity for such wariness brings about selective approach-avoidance behavior and is considered to reflect the growing influence of the infant's memory store on expressive behavior.