- The processes of adaptation are influenced by the constitution, external environment and the developmental phases of the organism.
- Once this mother schema is formed others are assimilated into it
- If the infant trusts mother, infant is in position to trust others…conversely, if mother is experienced as a source of pain, infant will expect pain and frustrations from others
- At this point separation from mother will be more damaging
COMPONENTS OF ATTACMENT
- In addition to contact and crying, infants communicate through:
- Eye contact and smiling
- Social smile
- Babbling and raising arms
In sum: Processes of attachment that lead to establishment of human schemas are primarily sensorimotor
- Infant socializes the parents more than the reverse:
With smiles and cries infant communicates what to do and when to do it
Crying, smiling and the related tender, pleasurable interactions between mother and infant is central in the affectionate attachment that serves as a necessary prelude to later socialization
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Schedules of eating and sleeping,
- Breast versus bottle feeding,
- Toilet training and the like,
have only minor significance in early socialization. These activities are, in her view, of more importance to the mother than the infant.
- Attachment is a complex process that takes some time to become firmly established in humans.
Bowlby puts it:
No form of behavior is accompanied by stronger feeling than is attachment behavior. The figures toward whom it is directed are loved and their advent greeted with joy. So long as a child is in the unchallenged presence of a principal attachment figure, or within easy reach, he feels secure. A threat of loss creates anxiety and actual loss, sorrow; both, moreover, are likely to arouse anger.
Separation
- The infant’s attachment to a mother figure can be gauged by his reaction to separation or loss.
- A number of characteristic reactions develop that function to maintain the mother-infant bond once it is established or to bring the mother and infant together if they become separated.
*Set the pattern for reactions later in life involving these same feelings.
- A characteristic pattern occurs in 3 stages:
- Protest and distress
- Crying
- Despair or despondency (in those instances where separation is prolonged, despair passes into detachment)
The anger that is characteristic of the total reaction punishing the mother is a biologically built in mechanism serving as a goal because of the advantages it brings to survival of the species.
- Anxiety that the attached infant shows upon separation – commonly termed “separation anxiety” is the first interpersonal anxiety.
- Schemas amplified by this powerful emotion are the prototypes for later interactions involving attachment and loss.
The infant derives his initial security from attachment, and disruptions in attachment may be thought of as the prototypes of insecurity.
Bowlby states, “…it is my belief that there is no experience to which a young child can be subjected more prone to elicit intense and violent hatred for the mother figure than that of separation…”
- The intensity of direct rage, as well as the prevalence of indirect anger such as a refusal to look at, smile, or relate to mother.
- stems from the frustration of loss
- Is useful in getting needs met, including the need for reunion
- Serves to discourage the mother from abandoning the child on future occasions.
Bowlby puts it:
“…aids the recovery of the lost object and the maintenance of union with it…”
Anger is the earliest interpersonal expressions of this emotion.
PLAY, CURIOSITY, AND EXPLORATION IN INFANCY
- Sucking is central to feeding
- Sucking, mouthing and tasting come to be used in non-nutritive exploration
- Exploration of the world expands;
- by six months of age the infant has achieved permanent object schemas
- Progresses from a stage in which he sees the world as fleeting images and acts, to one in which he perceives objects as having and independent existence in time and space.
By six months the infant can coordinate these schemas, and from this emerges a new schema which represents “fingers” as more or less permanent things that transcend the immediate actions of touching or being sucked.
Construction of reality is the formation of the sensorimotor sense of self.
Development occurs in all sensorimotor areas during the first year; infants babble when they are alone and this is the precursor to the play with words so central in early language learning.
Of all objects to look at, explore or play with none are more interesting, varied or inherently attractive than other human beings.
- Tactile and kinesthetic sensations
- Sensual experiences
- Mother is the natural object of the child’s first attachment
- The infant is predisposed to explore and interact with his environment in a great number of ways
- Infants in stimulating environments have more to explore
- Infants raised in a bland or dull environment may lapse into self-stimulation such as repetitive rocking, head-nodding, or sound making.
A recent study showed that:
-infants with the highest levels of curiosity and exploration had mothers who provided a great deal of stimulation and who were closely attuned to their infant’s capacities
-infants who were paid little attention by their mothers spent 41 times more of their life doing little or nothing.
- The second major way in which the mother affects the infant’s developing play, curiosity, and exploration is through the nature of their mutual attachment.
- Dependence-independence
- Secure attachment and exploration of the novel world away from mother
Attachment and Exploration
- The establishment of attachment has what might be termed an instinctual priority.
- Emotionally amplified schema of attachment is dominant and engages the infant in attachment-promoting behavior
- Crying
- Seeking after the mother
When the mother is present, attachment can be taken for granted and infant is free to move out from his secure base to explore.
- Separation from the mother heightens both aggressive and attachment-seeking behavior, as well as interfering with exploration and new learning
- When the pattern is disrupted a number of unpleasant consequences ensue.
Person Schemas and Fear of Strangers
- The infant explores the world of other persons
- Around eight months he may begin to display fear at the appearance of strangers (eight month anxiety)
- The infant assimilates strangers to his mother schema and if too discrepant, fear is aroused
- “Person schemas” expand with increasing experience in the months that follow.
- From a secure base of attachment comes an eventual growth of the infant’s personal world.
Individual Differences
- Genetic differences between infants
- Inevitable variations in social environment
- Generally plastic or malleable nature of the instincts involved
- Infant’s differ widely in their general level of activity
- Attachment to a specific mother figure begins as early as five months, but may not be manifested until one year of age
- Infants differ widely in their degree of “cuddliness”
- Other aspects of infant behavior:
- Age of onset of fear of strangers
- The degree and form of reactions to separation and reunion
- The age at which the infant is able to conserve permanent objects.
- All of these individual differences shape the individual’s style:
- Personality
- Unique life style
- Special patterns of action and reaction
- Unique way of being
Separation or maternal deprivation produces some form of distress in all infants, but much more so in certain cases.
A sense of trust, structured largely along sensorimotor and emotional lines, arises out of the variety of interactions with maternal figures in which the infant’s needs are met;
- Holding, the mutual communication of emotion, sensual stimulation and gratification, stimulation and play, feeding;
- Elimination of distress, and comforting during periods or pain;
- The mother aids the developing sense of trust by providing security for the infant’s anxiety as well as a base for exploration.
- Encouragement of curiosity and exploration as well as firm limits that protect.
A sense of trust refers to a particular set of personal and self schemas.
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Mothers and others come to have a particular set of meanings for the infant as do :
- Urges
- Pains
- Fears
- Pleasurable sensations
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Predictability, the association of mother with pleasure and elimination of distress, attachment and control all shape schemas in a trusting direction.
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Sense of trust is the hoped-for outcome of infancy
- Infants who lack consistent mothering figures or
- who experience crucial; or repeated separations;
- those whose parents treat them sadistically;
- or use them in games to play out their own unresolved conflicts;
- or those simply incapable of responding to the infant’s basic needs,
- Will come to view the world, themselves, nd others through schema formed by such experiences
- Mothers and others create a sense of trust in their children by the kind of administration which in its quality combines sensitive care….of needs; a firm sense of trustworthiness within the trusted framework of the culture’s life style
- This forms the basis in the child for a sense of identify which will later combine a sense of being “all right”, of being oneself, and of becoming what other people trust one will become.
