Infancy: Self and Others

This is Unit Four, part two, on how infants learn to calm down, their first social skills, and attachment. Part one closed on emotions that wait for a sense of self. Part two opens with how infants calm down, then turns to the bond between an infant and a caregiver. Carry one question through this part: where does attachment come from? One old answer was feeding: the infant bonds to whoever brings the milk. At the entry on the Harlows' monkeys, the part tests that answer, and it fails. By the end you will be able to describe how emotion regulation shifts from caregiver to child. To explain joint attention and social referencing. To explain what the Harlows' monkeys showed, and the limits of the study. To name Bowlby's four phases. And to describe the Strange Situation and three attachment patterns.

Three entries on regulating emotion, from a caregiver's rocking to a child who can name a feeling.

How caregivers calm infants.

HGD 0474 Dyadic Regulation and Synchrony

Emotion regulation is moving from high to lower arousal, and infants depend on dyadic regulation: a caregiver holding, rocking, feeding or singing to them. A parent and infant trading smiles and sounds in step show synchrony. Sensitive, responsive caregivers lower infants' negative emotion, and regulation shifts gradually from the caregiver to the child.

Regulation strategies, age by age.

HGD 0475 Regulating Emotion, Age by Age

Infants gain regulation strategies in a sequence. Newborns use attentional distraction, turning away from something upsetting, and by four to six months they shift attention deliberately. Self-soothing follows, sucking a thumb or rubbing a blanket. In the second year toddlers seek attention, calling, reaching and asking to be held, and by about twenty-four months they add escape, hiding, protesting or avoiding. Temperament shapes how well each child manages. Cultures support regulation differently: in one comparison, US families used stimulation, Dutch families routine, Italian families touch, and Korean families physical well-being and routine. None is the right way.

Naming emotions.

HGD 0476 Emotional Labelling and Emotional Intelligence

Emotional labelling is recognising and naming one's own feelings, as when a parent says you're frustrated the tower fell, and the toddler later uses the word. With regulation, labelling builds emotional intelligence, understanding emotions in oneself and others, and recognising others' emotions supports empathy. Emotional intelligence is an exam keyword, and it starts here.

Three entries on the infant's first social skills: smiling, imitating, and sharing attention with another person.

Smiles, and imitation.

HGD 0477 Smiles and Imitation

The social smile, smiling at a smiling face, appears around two months, and deliberate imitation of others' actions develops at eight to twelve months, as when a ten-month-old copies a parent's wave. Infants can also imitate actions seen days earlier, deferred imitation, which unit three placed in the sensorimotor stage.

Sharing attention.

HGD 0478 Joint Attention

Joint attention is an infant and a partner attending to the same object or experience together, a basis of social cognition: a baby follows a parent's gaze to a dog, then looks back to share it. In one study, sustained attention during play, not joint attention, predicted later vocabulary. Children with autism often show poorer joint attention.

Social referencing, on the visual cliff.

HGD 0479 Social Referencing on the Cliff

In a visual-cliff study of social referencing, mothers at the far side posed different expressions as their infants crawled toward the apparent drop. No infant crossed when the mother looked afraid, and about three-quarters crossed when she looked joyful. Around the first birthday, infants use a caregiver's face to decide what an ambiguous situation means.

Four entries on what attachment is and where it comes from, including the study that tested the feeding account. The opening question is answered here.

Who an infant attaches to.

HGD 0480 Attachment and the Primary Caregiver

Attachment is the emotional bond between an infant and the primary caregiver, the person who spends the most time with the infant, whether an adoptive father, a grandmother or a mother. Any stable, consistent caregiver can be the attachment figure, and infants can form attachments to several people.

Two early explanations of attachment.

HGD 0481 Early Accounts of Attachment

Sigmund Freud traced attachment to the oral satisfaction of feeding; Erik Erikson traced it to the trust that consistent care builds. Is the infant bonded by the milk, or by the reliable person bringing it? Freud's feeding account made a testable prediction, and a famous study with monkeys put it to the test.

The payoff: the Harlows' monkeys.

HGD 0482 The Harlows' Monkeys

Harry and Margaret Harlow tested whether attachment comes from feeding. Infant rhesus monkeys were raised with two artificial mothers: a wire one holding a bottle of milk, and a soft cloth one that gave no food. If feeding creates attachment, the monkeys should have preferred the wire mother. They did not. They spent nearly twenty-three hours a day clinging to the cloth mother and went to the wire mother only to feed. Frightened, they ran to the cloth mother, calmed, and went back to explore; monkeys with only a wire mother rocked and clutched themselves. Contact comfort, not feeding, is central to attachment, and that answers this part's question. The study has limits a careful reader holds. The subjects were monkeys, so the findings are evidence by analogy, carrying weight because they fit human research such as Bowlby's. And the wire-reared monkeys show the real cost the experiments imposed.

Bowlby's view of why infants attach.

HGD 0483 Bowlby's Ethological View

John Bowlby united biological and cognitive accounts of attachment, building on ethology and on the Harlows' findings. Adults are drawn to a baby's rounded face, large eyes and short limbs, features Konrad Lorenz described, and these features may help draw caregivers in, one biological side of the bond.

Five entries on how attachment forms and how it is measured, ending with the patterns researchers see.

Wariness of strangers, and distress at parting.

HGD 0484 Stranger and Separation Anxiety

Stranger wariness, fear of unfamiliar people, and separation anxiety, distress when a caregiver leaves, appear between about six and fifteen months, after object permanence: a ten-month-old who played with anyone now cries when a visiting aunt reaches for her. Separation anxiety peaks at around fourteen to eighteen months. Both are signs of attachment forming, not problems.

Bowlby's four phases.

HGD 0485 Bowlby's Four Phases

Bowlby described attachment forming in four phases. In pre-attachment, birth to about two months, infants respond to anyone. In attachment in the making, about two to seven months, they come to prefer familiar caregivers. In clear-cut attachment, about seven to twenty-four months, a specific, lasting bond forms, with following and separation anxiety. In reciprocal relationships, from about two years, the bond persists when the caregiver is absent. By then the child has an internal working model, a mental template of how relationships work. Bowlby first thought infants attach to one caregiver; later research shows several attachments are possible.

How attachment is measured.

HGD 0486 The Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation, for infants of twelve to eighteen months, observes separations from and reunions with a caregiver in an unfamiliar room with a stranger: play, a stranger enters, the caregiver leaves, then returns, over about twenty minutes on video. Coders pay most attention to the reunion.

Secure attachment.

HGD 0487 Secure Attachment

Securely attached infants use the caregiver as a secure base for exploring, are upset at separation, and are readily comforted at reunion, like a toddler who brings toys to show her mother, cries when she leaves, and calms quickly on her return. Secure attachment is linked to sensitive, responsive care; about sixty-five percent of US infants are classed secure.

Two insecure patterns.

HGD 0488 Avoidant and Ambivalent Attachment

Avoidant infants show little distress at separation and little response at reunion; ambivalent, or resistant, infants cling, are very distressed, and resist comfort, rushing to the returning parent and then pushing away in anger. US estimates put avoidant attachment at about twenty percent and ambivalent at ten to fifteen percent.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe regulation shifting from caregiver to child, from turning away and self-soothing to seeking help and escape. You can explain joint attention, looking at the same thing together, and social referencing: no infant crossed the cliff when the mother looked afraid. You can explain the Harlows' finding, contact comfort over feeding, and its limits: evidence by analogy, at a real cost to the animals. You can name Bowlby's four phases, from pre-attachment to reciprocal relationships and an internal working model. And you can describe the Strange Situation and its patterns: secure, about sixty-five percent; avoidant, about twenty; ambivalent, ten to fifteen. Part three covers the fourth pattern.