Social emotional development Part 1:
- Freudian theory
- Learning theory
- Bowly;s theory
What is attachment?
- Interesting and important process,
How do we know if a baby is attached to the caregiver? Baby wanting to be close to the
caregiver, preference, fear of strangers.
*this is not when the caregiver becomes attached to the baby*
Historical development of this theory:
1. Freudian theory: first one to attempt something that affects someone during infancy that
is years and decades later; early 20th century;
2. Relationship between infant and mother: infant is in the oral stage, oral pleasure from
sucking or nursing ex: mother(CS)-sucking(UCS)-oral pleasure(UCR); sequence of
events fits quite well in classical conditioning: 1940s and 1950s discovery
3. Classical conditioning: Pavlov’s dogs 20th century to salivate when they heard a bell
1. Learning Theory: interested how animals learned about their environment and how
certain stimuli cause different reactions
2. Infants to mothers: same classical conditioning model but it is
3. Mother (CS)-food (UCS)-drive reduction (UCR)
4. These two theories only state that the mother has to just feed them for attachment to
occur
Experiment disproved Learning and Freudian theories: Harry Harlow’s refutation
- Harry raised two baby monkeys
- Raised them in isolation, in a cage with two figures, one with a milk bottle (mom)
and the other one was soft but no food
- Monkeys prefer the soft surrogate mother; would only leave when hungry but still
hold on to the soft one
- Essence of mothering : contact comfort
- he had NOT discovered the essence of mothering
- Monkeys adult were aggressive, withdrawn, not normal monkey behavior, sit in a
corner afraid; unable to reproduce due to antisocial
- Would having their own baby cure them? No.
- Not adequate mothering
- Not much to go on
All the current models on attachment: Bowlby’s theory
Construction of of modern attachment theory: orphanages and infant pediatric wards
- After WW2, many orphans. Effects on it
- Mental retardation, autistic behaviors: affectless personality
- Keeping baby with minimal contact was bad
Do not let parents cut in
German theory of disease
- Diseases could be caused by invisible agents
- Failure to thrive
- Deprived of normal interaction
- Due to loss of contact with parents and lack of social interaction
- Find a hospital that would allow parents to come into the room; study for 6 months
- How did Bowlby devise a theory to explain how devastating emotional it can be to
separate a baby from a caregiver vs normal attachment?
MAjor aspects:
1. Ethology- study of animal behavior in its natural habitat (reaction; geese, monkeys, Jane
Goodall)Conrad Lorenze, switzerland, studied baby geese, hatched from egg and then
imprint on the first moving thing it saw, typically it would be the mother but there is a
sensitive period where the baby goose was ready to imprint; a flock of geese imprinted
on him, evolution had built in a mechanism into the goose species
2. Information science: feedback; as computers grew, the concept is feedback like a
thermostat would give us feedback; maybe baby was needing information to give
feedback: distance between baby and caregiver, distance triggers attachment behaviors
and they will be crying
3. Physiology-stress reactions: strong evolutionary stress response; infants survival relies
on it. Fight or flight mode. SAM or the HPA systems. With rat pups.
4. Cognitive psychology- representations and emotions
