Social and emotional development

• Evolutionary perspective

  Infant survival depends on proximity to caregiver
• Bowlby (1969)


  Human infants unable to follow adults so must depend on signals
• Adults predisposed to respond

  Signals are psychological and physiologically arousing (Caria et al., 2012)
• Oxytocin


  Released when babies are born to make you fall in love with the baby and take care of them, it causes the structure of your brain which makes you respond to the baby
• Konrad Lorenz (1943) - baby schema ('Kindchenschema')


  Baby schema in infant faces is perceived as cute and induces motivation for caretaking in adults (Glocker et al., 2009)
• Face characteristics


  Big eyes, puffed cheeks unlock an instinct to make us take care of babies
• Neural Basis for Caregiving Impulse

  • Areas of the brain (lateral premotor regions, the supplementary motor area, the thalamo-cingulate circuit, the left anterior insula) become active for looking at baby faces (over animals) despite having no biological relation (Caria et al. 2012)
• Will respond selectively positively to infants rather than other species because our brain is wired that way even if you are not a parent
• 'Cute' Product Design (Miesler et al. 2011)


  Baby faced version has a more appealing effect in us, we habituate significantly slower to things that are baby faced
• Smiles before 1 month


  Reflexive and unrelated to social interaction, occur most often during deep sleep and the transitions between waking and sleep
• Smiles at 2 months


  In response to pleasing and gently surprising social stimuli: high pitched voice (esp. female), combination of facial movements + voice, smiling face and voice (Wolff, 1963)
• Smiles at 3 months


  To elicit pleasurable attention and emotional connection
• Anticipatory smiling at 8-10 months


  Infant smiles at an object and then gazes at adult while continuing to smile
• Smiling aids the process of attachment/bonding


  Parents report wanting to spend more time with their infant once they begin smiling (Newson & Newson, 1963)
• Expressions Before Birth


  The number of facial expressions shown by prenatal infants dramatically increases between 24 and 35 weeks of gestation (Reissland et al., 2013), expressions including smiling and scowling can be seen from 20-24 weeks of gestation (Sato et al., 2014)
• Emotional Expressions from Birth


  Babies express basic emotions of interest, sadness, and disgust and by 8 months this includes joy, anger, surprise and fear (Izard & Malatesta, 1987)
• Adults are skillful at reading these facial emotions (Izard, 1980) even if infants have facial disfigurements (Oster, 2003)
• Emotional expression is innate, blind children express the same emotional expressions
• Normal infant crying

  1. 3 hours per day in the first 6 weeks of life
• Patterns of infant crying

  Basic (e.g. hunger) starts arrhythmically, builds, Mad/angry: with phases varying in length, Pain: sudden onset, long loud cry-breath holding
• Adults use crying to read an infants' internal states


  Used by professionals to diagnose potential abnormalities
• Adult women clearly perceive differences between basic cries and pain cries whether they are mothers or not (Gustafson & Harris, 1990)
• Infants' cries are elaborated and directed towards caregivers through gestures (Gustafson & Green, 1991)
• Infant's cries reflect a melody with the parents language
• Infants with brain damage/Down's Syndrome often will show delay in response to pain, have a different cry mechanism
• Crying as a means of regulating physiological homeostasis


  By discharging excess energy and tension (Brazelton, 1962,1985)
• Crying found universally to reach highest level at 6 weeks (Barr, 1999) and even in chimps (Bard, 2000)
• Infants reared in non-western cultures who are rarely allowed to cry do not appear to suffer any health or psychological consequences (e.g. Ainsworth, 1977)
• Protoconversations


  Infants join in rhythmic protoconversational exchanges from birth (Bateson, 1975; Malloch, 1999; Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001)
• From 6 weeks infants orient strongly to a partner's eyes and they join in turn-taking "utterances" of protoconversation, coordinating coos, pre-speech lip and tongue movements, and hand gesture (Trevarthen, 1979)
• Burst-pulse rhythm typify early interactions: Feeding behaviors (Kaye 1982/1986)
• 4 month old's vocalize 10-15% of time: used to examine early 'conversations'
• Mother behaves as if infant always responds – creates a 'conversation' across dyad, dynamic temporally regulated similar to adult conversations: providing foundations
• Infants (2months old) and mothers communicated via a video system – 'live interaction'. Played back to infant 'out of sync'- infants quickly disengage, look away, even show distress (Murray & Trevarthen, 1985)
• Infant looks to the caregiver to glean information on how to respond to an uncertain situation. At about 1 year old, infant will respond positively to stranger if mother's reaction is positive (Striano & Rochat, 2000)
• Give and take situation and when parent stops responding it causes baby distress (the still face experiment)
• Imitation


  Newborns a few minutes old imitate face expressions of emotion, mouth openings and tongue protrusions that they see in another person (e.g. Meltzoff and Moore, 1977; Kugiumutzakis, 1985)
• Mirror Neurons


  Fire when monkey performs goal-orientated action e.g. grasping banana, AND when monkey completely still observing someone else performing action (di Pellegrino et al. 1992; Gallese et al. 1996)
• Babies who can't perform an action would not get the same brain activation
• Preference for Human Faces

  Infants of 4 days show a preference for looking at a standard face over a scrambled face (Fantz, 1961)