DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Developing as a Learner
ATL: Essential understandings
Physical development is concurrent with cognitive
development.

Cognitive development appears to follow a universal

pattern of stages.

Development is the result of a child interacting with his

or her environment.

If you have ever been able to witness the development of a newborn baby over the first twelve
months, you will know that amazing things happen. This is partly due to a process called
maturation - the development of behaviors that are genetically programmed for all humans - or
in other words they are “hard-wired”.

These developmental milestones include smiling, raising his head, tracking objects with her
eyes, gripping objects in his hands, and reaching out for dangling objects - all in the first three
months. In the next three months, other signs of maturation include rolling over from front to
back, babbling, laughing, and sitting up with support.

Another factor in development is learning. This is sometimes defined as the systematic changes
in behavior, thoughts, and feelings as a result of experience. As we will see, physical maturation
and learning - or cognitive development - go hand in hand. Researchers agree that a child’s
genetic makeup determines his or her developmental potential, but also that the development of
this potential is very much dependent on the environment in which the child grows up. Today,
rather than a "nature vs nurture" approach to development, psychologists have adopted an
interactionist approach, by taking biological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors into
consideration.

Research methods in developmental psychology

Researchers who study development use a number of methods and designs. Observations and
interviews in naturalistic settings are now used extensively, but these methods are open to
demand characteristics and lack sound control over extraneous variables. To control for this,
laboratory experiments are still widely used, but researchers are aware of the problem of
ecological validity. The case study method can offer insight into developmental factors,
although there are ethical issues to consider in sensitive case studies - for example, cases of
children who have suffered abuse. The balance between collecting scientific data and still
respecting a child’s integrity is important in developmental research.
There are three common approaches to the study of human development: longitudinal designs,
cross-sectional designs, and cross-sequential designs.

In longitudinal research, researchers study a cohort - a group of people born at or around the
same time - carrying out observations, interviews, or psychometric testing (for example, IQ
tests) as members of the cohort age. Longitudinal studies are prospective in nature -
researchers collect data early in the life of an individual and then continue to test the individual
over a period of time to measure change and development.

There are two key goals of such a design. One goal is to measure change over time. A second
goal is to draw conclusions about which types of development are universal and which types
vary between individuals. A strength of a longitudinal study is that it provides rich data and since
the same children are studied over time, participant variables do not influence the results of the
study. There are also limitations of a longitudinal design. Longitudinal studies often require large
amounts of time and funding. In addition, participants may leave the study if the research runs
for a long time. When data are lost in this way, it affects the possibility of generalizing the
findings of the study.

In order to address some of the limitations of a longitudinal study, researchers may use a
cross-sectional design, a short-term study that compares individuals of different ages at the
same time. It provides a snapshot of behavior across a range of different ages. A cross-
sectional study uses different participants to represent the different age groups under
investigation. This means that one cannot be absolutely sure that the differences found are not
due to participant variables. The cross-sectional design is often used in spite of this, because it
is not as time-consuming as the longitudinal design, and fewer participants drop out of the
study.

As both of these approaches have limitations, researchers may use a cross-sequential

design. This is when different participants are used to represent different age groups - and
then studied longitudinally. In a school environment, an example would be studying a cohort of
6, 8, 10, and 12-year-olds over a period of five years to study their growth as independent
learners. These designs are quite complex but give a fuller picture of development over time
while eliminating the cohort effect - that is, the influence of some variable on the group as a
result of them all being born in the same year - or in schools, being in the same grade level.

Research in psychology: The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and

Children
One of the most well-known longitudinal studies is the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and
Children (ALSPAC). This is a cohort study of children born in Avon, England between 1991 and
1992. Altogether 15,247 pregnant women were recruited for the case study.

Watch the short video which explains how the study was organized.

As a result of the rich data that the researchers have obtained over the past 25+ years, they
have produced over 1500 academic papers. Some of their findings include:
 ● Children whose parents interacted more with them when they were very young – by
reading books, playing games and
restricting the amount of TV watched – had an early advantage at school.
● Children who were looked after by a family member or by a friend before eighteen
months old didn’t develop quite as quickly as children who were looked after by their
parents or who went to formal daycare.
● If a child had a healthy diet of fresh fruit, vegetables, and fish before the age of three,
they were likely to score significantly higher on intelligence tests than children who were
raised on processed food.
● When assessed at eight years old, children of divorced parents who had little or no
contact with their natural father had more adjustment issues than children who had
regular contact with their father, even if only by phone.

This is a very small number of the findings of the study - and the study is still ongoing. Notice
that the results are correlational - meaning that cause-and-effect relationships between
variables cannot be determined. However, comparing this case study to other similar case
studies - like the ELSPAC study in the Czech Republic - makes the possibility of cause-and-
effect relationships more likely.

Cognitive Development: Piaget

Children think differently than adults. They believe in
Santa Claus and the "tooth fairy". They often don't
understand when an adult is using irony. And they are definitely not able to do advanced
algebra. The field of cognitive development studies how a child develops over time in terms of
thinking, problem-solving, language, perception, and information processing.

Like many early theorists, Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget believed that physical maturation was
an essential component of cognitive development. However, he went further - arguing that
children are “active scientists” who learn by interacting with their social and physical
environment. Piaget suggested that children use strategies in thinking and problem-solving that
reflect different stages of cognitive development.

Piaget claimed that children’s development progresses through a series of cognitive stages,
with each stage having distinctly different qualities. He saw the stages as a way to describe
changes in the logic of thinking. His view was that the sequence of stages was the same for all
humans - that is, the way in which we develop is universal.

Stage 1: Sensorimotor intelligence (age 0–2 years)

According to Piaget, the newborn baby relies on innate reflexes and has limited knowledge. In
the sensorimotor stage, the child learns through movements and sensations. Knowledge
simply arises from looking, touching, hearing, sucking, grasping, and putting things in the
mouth. The child gradually comes to have an idea of what different objects are like. To begin
with, the child’s movements are not at all purposeful because he or she has no control over
them. However, when children acquire more control over their bodies, they learn that a specific
movement - like bashing a toy or pulling the tail of a cat - will have specific consequences.

At around eight months old, children develop object permanence - that is, the idea that objects
continue to exist even when they can no longer be seen. Piaget found that a 4-month-old will
not look for a toy if it is hidden under a cloth. It is as if the rule “out of sight, out of mind” applies
at this stage. However, an 8-month-old will lift the cloth, knowing that she will find the toy
underneath. Between 8 and 12 months, the child will keep looking for the object in the place
where he or she found it the last time. This happens even if the child watches someone hide it in
a new place. According to Piaget, it is not until they are around 18 - 24 months old that toddlers
possess fully developed object permanence.

Research in psychology: Baillargeon (1986)

Baillargeon carried out a series of experiments with the aim of testing Piaget's claim that
children do not demonstrate object permanence until around 6 - 8 months.

In one experiment four-month-old female infants saw a toy car roll along a track that was partly
hidden by a screen. A large toy mouse was placed either on the track or behind the track - and
then hidden behind a screen. The infants stared longer when the mouse stood on top of the
track as opposed to in the back of the track, suggesting that they were surprised to see the car
reappear from behind the screen when the mouse stood in its path. The findings in Baillargeon's
impossible situation test have indicated that babies obtain object permanence earlier than
Piaget had claimed - that is, infants aged 3.5 months and older are able to represent and
reason about hidden objects.

See the video to observe a part of their research.

Stage 2: Preoperational Thought (age 2–7 years)

At the beginning of this stage, the child learns to speak.
Children become capable of thinking in symbolic terms - that
is, they can form ideas, but they can only focus on one aspect
of an object or situation at a time, and they cannot transfer
knowledge from one situation to another. Piaget argued that
the child’s understanding of the world is based on
egocentrism - the child can only see the world from his or
her own viewpoint. The child does not understand that others
might see things differently.

Piaget argued that the child can only see the world from his or her own viewpoint. The child
does not understand that others might see things differently. Piaget saw egocentrism as a
cognitive limitation—that is, children cannot understand that someone else’s point of view might
be different from their own.

Research in psychology: Piaget and Inhelder (1956)

In Piaget and Inhelder's classic three-mountain task, children
were shown a three-dimensional display of a mountain scene.
They were then asked to choose a picture that showed the
scene they had observed. In general, the children were able to
do this with little difficulty.

In the next part of the experiment, a child was asked to look at

the model of three mountains. The researcher then placed a
doll in various positions in the model. The child was shown different pictures and asked to
choose the one that showed what the doll would see from its position.

When four-year-olds were asked to select a picture showing what a doll sitting across the table
would have observed when looking at the mountain, they chose the image that reflected their
own viewpoint. Piaget used this to show the egocentrism of children - that is, their inability to
see another person's perspective. By the time children reached the age of seven, they were
able to do this task with little problem.

There has been criticism of this study. Some claim that young children are able to take another
person’s perspective if the material used is more familiar than that used for the three-mountain
task. Some argue that this task is not similar to what children experience in everyday life. A
study by Hughes (see next box) challenged Piaget's findings.

See the following video or this video to observe a replication of the Three Mountain Task.

Challenges to Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Hughes (1975) argued that the Three Mountain Task
did not make sense to children. It was made more
difficult by asking the children to think about what the
doll saw and to match it to a set of photographs. He
wanted to create a task that would be more "age-
appropriate." He showed children a model comprising
two intersecting walls (see image to the left). The
researcher placed a policeman doll at one of the
points on the "X." The children were asked to place
another doll - a "boy doll" - somewhere in the walls so
that the policeman couldn't see him. The four-year-
olds had no problems with this task.

Then Hughes introduced a second policeman doll and

placed both dolls at the ends of two walls (see image
to the left). The children were then asked to once
again hide the boy doll from the policemen. This
would require the children to consider two points of
view. 90 percent of children aged 3.5 to 5 years old
were able to do this task without error.

When he added more walls and a third policeman, 90 percent of four-year-olds were still able to
do the task without any difficulty. Hughes showed that by four years old children have lost their
egocentric thinking. He didn't argue that the stages do not exist, but that Piaget overestimated
how long it took for this skill to develop.

A second limitation in children’s thinking is that it is dominated by the appearance of things.

According to Piaget, pre-operational children cannot understand the concept of conservation -
that is, physical properties remain the same even if the object’s appearance is changed.

In one variation of a conservation task, children are presented with two similar glasses that hold
the same amount of water and asked which glass has more water in it. Young children have no
problem with this task. But then the researcher pours the liquid from one glass into a taller,
skinnier glass while the child watched. The researchers then asked the same question again.
Piaget found that children believed that the taller glass had more of the liquid, even though they
had seen where the liquid had come from. Piaget said that children at this age focus on the
most visible change. They are not able to understand that the amount of liquid cannot be
different, simply because it has been poured into a different kind of glass.
Li et al. (1999) tested 486 Chinese primary school children on the classic liquid conservation
task. The researchers supported Piaget’s theory that the percentage of children who get the
answer right increases with age. They also found that children from schools with a good
academic reputation generally achieved better results than those from less privileged schools.
This indicates that differences in cognitive development are not only related to brain maturation
but also to factors such as education.

Piaget's own research has shown to be highly reliable. For example, this video demonstrates
children's understanding of the concept of conservation. As with Li et al's study above, we can
see that there is a stage when children are not able to understand this concept and then a point
in time where this is a basic understanding. This appears to indicate that children's cognitive
abilities develop over time.

Stage 3: Concrete Operational Thought (age 7–12 years)

For many children, this is the time when they begin formal schooling. They start to use some
rules of logic in problem-solving, but only when dealing with concrete tasks. If children at this
stage are given the following problem: “House A is more expensive than House B. House C is
more expensive than House A. Which is the most expensive?” they would be able to solve it,
but they would need some images for support. Problem-solving is generally random and not
systematic.

Stage 4: Formal Operations (from 12 years)

By the end of this stage, adolescents can use formal, abstract logic. They can mentally
manipulate ideas, concepts or numbers, and they can think hypothetically. This means they can
think about what could happen or what would never happen. They will also approach problem-
solving in a systematic way. Piaget believed that everybody reaches the formal operational
stage when they are around 20, but this is not necessarily the case. Modern research has
demonstrated that it depends to a large extent on education.

ATL: Applying Our Understanding

One of the important contributions of Piaget's theory

was that it described how children's cognitive skills
develop over time. This not only helped us better
understand what children are able to do at different
grade levels in school but also guided the toy industry in
what is appropriate for children.

For each of the following toys, decide which stage of

Piaget's cognitive development is the most appropriate.
Be able to defend your position.

1. Scrabble
 2. Play phone
3. Connect four
4. Puzzles
5. Mirror
6. Checkers (Draughts)
7. Jack-in-the-box
8. Rubik's Cube

Evaluation of Piaget's Theory

Piaget was the first to suggest a comprehensive theory of cognitive development and his
theories have been applied successfully in education. Today the idea of teaching children
"developmentally appropriate" skills is a fundamental part of teacher education. Understanding
which skills children can do at which age is an important application of Piagetian theory. In
addition, Piaget suggested that children learn best when the teacher sets up situations where
the child can discover ideas for themselves. This approach is called child-centered learning and
it has been used extensively in education systems around the world.

Piaget changed the traditional view of children as passive, suggesting instead that children are
active in searching out knowledge and constructing mental representations of the world. He also
suggested inventive research methods to investigate the way children think, and he proposed a
coherent theory of the differences in thinking in the different stages, although he did not explain
why these changes take place. Many of his concepts have been tested empirically and some
research is still conducted on the basis of his ideas.

An important limitation of Piaget’s theory is that he underestimated the role of social learning -
for example, instruction by adults or other children. He claimed that children acquire knowledge
by exploring and acting in the world in a process of self-discovery. He studied individual children
and did not pay much attention to the social and cultural context of cognitive development. As
we will see in the next part of this chapter, it was Vygotsky who was to consider these issues.

Strengths & Limitations of Piaget's Theory

Strengths

● The first theory of its kind. His theory that cognitive changes are driven by biological
maturation is widely accepted and supported.
● Research consistently supports the progression of cognitive development as outlined by
Piaget.
● Piaget has had a major effect on education.
● The theory has cross-cultural support.

Limitations

● The original studies used tasks that were too language-dependent and were not age-
appropriate for the children.
 ● Much of the research was cross-sectional in design - not observing the cognitive
development of individual children over time, but comparing performance on cognitive
tasks at different age levels.
● As seen in later research, the ages at which the stages begin have been criticized.
Evidence shows that often children enter the stages earlier than Piaget predicted.
● The theory is descriptive rather than explanatory.

Cognitive Development:
Vygotsky
The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky argued
that it is not possible to describe the process by
which children cognitively develop without
taking into account the child’s social
environment or culture. Culture provides
knowledge, and it teaches children what to
think and how to think. Vygotsky’s
sociocultural theory suggests that a child’s
cognitive development is based on interaction
with other people in order to develop cultural tools to understand the world.
Cultural tools should be understood as both the implicit and explicit rules or norms in the
culture. Knowledge is transferred via imitation, direct instructions, or collaborative learning.
Language is the primary form of interaction that adults use to transmit to the child the
knowledge that exists in the culture. Experiences with other people become internalized and
form the child's mental representation of the world.

Vygotsky and Piaget both agreed that children actively construct knowledge and that they learn
best if new knowledge is related to existing knowledge and abilities. Vygotsky argued that
babies are born with “elementary mental functions” - that is, attention, sensation, memory, and
perception. Cultural influences transform elementary functions into higher mental functions,
such as problem-solving and thinking. Contrary to Piaget, Vygotsky believed that learning tends
to precede development.

Vygotsky postulated that a child develops through interaction with a “more knowledgeable
other.” This could be a parent, sibling, teacher, or peer who has a better understanding or
higher ability level than the learner. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions of
the tutor and then internalizes the information.

An important element in sociocultural theory is the concept of the zone of proximal

development, which refers to the difference between what a child can achieve independently
and what a child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a more knowledgeable
other. A child can increase in competence if he or she receives assistance to perform a task
that is just slightly beyond his or her current ability. This is called scaffolding. Successful
scaffolding can change the child’s level of performance on a particular task.

Tudge & Winterhoff (1993) found that the best peer tutors are those who are significantly
ahead of their tutees. However, if the tutor lacks confidence or fails to provide the necessary
scaffolding, then the tutoring is ineffective. Simply interacting with a "More Knowledgeable
Other" is not enough for a child to develop.

Finally, Vygotsky also believed in the importance of play. He said that play allows children to
take on roles they would normally not be able to perform in real life, requiring them to solve
problems and strategize about theoretical situations. This helps them to extend their cognitive
abilities.

Research in psychology: Nichols (1996)

Vygotsky argued that social interaction was the key to
development and learning. Nichols (1996) carried out a
study to find out if children working in groups would
learn more effectively than if they were working alone.

90 American high school students were randomly

allocated to one of three groups for one semester. One
group had a half-semester of collaborative group
learning and then a half-semester of traditional lectures.
The second group had a half-semester of lectures and
then a half-semester of collaborative group learning. The third group had a full semester of
traditional instruction.
It was found that groups 1 and 2 showed significantly higher levels of achievement than group
3. In addition, motivation was highest during the collaborative group learning part of the course.
This supports Vygotsky's theory that social interaction promotes development.

The role of language in development

Vygotsky also placed more emphasis on language than Piaget did. Vygotsky argued that one of
the great developmental markers is the internalization of language - that is, language is not just
used for communication, but for thinking and problem-solving.

Private speech is when people talk aloud to themselves. It is a means for children to plan
activities and strategies. Studies have found that children who engage in large amounts of
private speech are more socially competent than children who do not use it. For example,
Winsler et al (2003) videotaped 32 three and four-year-old children doing a series of problem-
solving tasks - some in the lab and some in their preschool classroom. They also carried out
interviews and surveys with the parents and teachers. They observed that children's private
speech patterns were generally stable across tasks and over time. They also found that based
on the reports of the teachers and parents, those children who engaged in high levels of private
speech had more highly developed social skills.

Vygotsky's stages of language development

Preintellectual speech. Language as a social contact. This includes crying, babbling, laughing,
and gesturing.

Autonomous speech (12 months) The child begins to invent words for objects in an effort to
communicate with adults.

Naïve psychology (begins at 18 to 24 months) The child begins to use adult words. As the
child begins to name things, connections develop between words and objects. During this
period, the young child's first expression is a simple word that conveys a greater meaning. For
example, when the young child says 'car!' it may mean 'I see a car' or 'I want to go for a ride in
the car!' As the child's thoughts become differentiated, he can formulate simple requests in the
form of short and simple sentences.

Communicative and egocentric speech (around 3 yrs old) The child's speech splits into two
types of speech: communicative and egocentric. Communicative speech is used to convey
meaning to others. The child is able to use simple sentences, such as 'I want milk.' Egocentric
speech is self-talk, that guides a child through a task with no intention of communicating with
someone else.
From about the age of three to seven, there's a lengthy period of the development of egocentric
speech. Egocentric speech often occurs in the presence of other children involved in the same
activity, such as playing house together. It also occurs when the child is attempting to solve a
problem. In these activities, the child's talk is a monologue; it is not intended to be a
communicative form of speech. For example, if a child is trying to put together a puzzle, she
might say "I need to first find a blue one. Here is a blue one. It should go near another blue
one." She is not necessarily communicating with anyone; she is simply stating these directions
for herself. This self-talk guides a child through a task.

During the preschool period, egocentric speech increasingly moves inward as inner speech. It
is a silent form of verbal thinking. The psychological nature of inner speech is important
because it represents the most advanced level of the relationship between speech and thinking.

Challenges to Vygotsky: Prior and Welling (2001)

Vygotsky argued that younger children think aloud while solving
problems until their speech has internalized A study by Prior and
Welling (2001) wanted to test this idea by seeing if children at the
preoperational stage of development who read a text aloud would
understand it better than if they read it quietly to themselves.

The sample consisted of 73 Canadian children aged 5 to 8 years

old. They were selected for the sample after teachers confirmed that
their reading level was appropriate for their age group. In one condition, the children were
asked to read a text quietly to

to themselves; in the second condition, they were asked to read it aloud. They were then tested
on their understanding of the passage.

The results showed that the younger children showed no difference in comprehension, whether
they read the text quietly or aloud. The older children, however, performed best when they read
aloud! This contradicts Vygotsky's theory of the development of internalized speech.

One study alone would never discredit a theory. However, the research on the role of speech in
learning is controversial and often conflicting in its findings.

TOK: Thinking Ethically

Take a look at this Ted Talk. Deb Roy uses modern technology to map the language
development of his own son. Many of the comments he makes show that he is applying
Vygotsky's ideas of development to his own son's development of language.

This is an amazing example of how modern technology can be used to gather a lot of data
which gives researchers a richer understanding of child development. And like Piaget, Roy is
studying his own child. But do you think that this is an ethical study? Why or why not?

A comparison of Piaget & Vygotsky

 ● Both theorists believed that young children are curious and actively involved in their own
learning.
● Both theorists acknowledge the role of biological maturation in a child's development.
● Piaget argues that cognitive development is a universal process that occurs in defined
stages. Vygotsky places more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development.
● Vygotsky placed more emphasis on the role of language in development. Piaget does
not address this.

Evaluation of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of cognitive development

● The theory has been successfully applied in teaching - for example, in the use of
scaffolding and cooperative learning.
● The theory takes a more holistic view of development than Piaget's theory.
● There is a lack of empirical support for some of his theories - especially with regard to
the role of language in development.

Theories of Brain Development

Newborn babies show some characteristics that are universal in
all human beings. They have inborn reflexes such as sucking
and grasping, and they possess some basic sensory abilities.
They also seem to be prepared for social interaction with other
humans. Modern research shows that a baby responds to
human faces almost immediately after birth. From early on,
babies can exchange sounds and non-verbal signals with the
mother or primary caregiver. The innate capacity for social
responses in newborn babies enables them to interact with
others long before language develops.

The brain of a newborn has more than a trillion nerve cells that communicate across many
trillions of synapses. The central nervous system continues to grow in size and complexity after
birth. Synaptic growth is most significant in the first year of life, but it continues during childhood
and into late adolescence. However, human brains are made for lifelong learning; neural
connections can be formed throughout the entire life of an individual. The ability to develop and
change in response to the environment is called neuroplasticity.

Two theories of brain development

Maturation theory: Brain development is the result of genetic mechanisms. Babies are born
with "innate modules" and "core knowledge" relevant to the physical and social world. In a
sense, the newborn is "preprogrammed" for brain development and maturation occurs over
time. Interaction with the environment may promote or hinder this maturation process.

The skill-learning hypothesis: This theory argues that brain development is driven by learning
and neuroplasticity. In other words, the environment and personal experience play a key role in
the developing brain. This does not mean that there is no genetic component to brain
development, but that the key changes observed in brain development during childhood are
attributed to neuroplasticity. We have seen examples of this in our study of neuroplasticity - e.g.
Draganski (2004) or Rozenzweig, Bennett, and Diamond (1972). You will also see examples of
this in your study of the role of trauma on development.

Maturation theory
Maturation theory was already rather dominant in the 1930s. Arnold Gesell argued that babies
are born with a “developmental clock” that will determine when developmental milestones will
occur – for example, when they will sit, walk, talk, and engage in abstract thinking. He argued
that these milestones occur in a fixed sequence and at a specific time. This theory would have
a major effect on other theorists' "stage theories" - for example, Piaget's theory of cognitive
development.

Konrad Lorenz also argued that child development was based on innate behaviors that
develop during "critical periods." If the behavior did not develop during that period, it would be
impaired. This idea was also used by Bowlby in his theory of attachment.

Both of these theorists influenced our thinking about the brain, even though their research was
not about the brain itself. Instead, they were making assumptions about the innate nature of
development.

Classic Studies in Psychology

Konrad Lorenz carried out classic research on what he called "imprinting." According to Lorenz,
imprinting is when a bird forms an attachment to the first thing it sees upon hatching. Lorenz
discovered that newly hatched goslings would follow the first moving object they saw.

Take a look at a rather dated video that contains original footage of Lorenz's work. What might
this have to do with human behavior?

Modern research argues that there are some aspects of development that are supported by the
maturation theory.

For example, researchers have found that the development of vision is linked to brain
maturation. At birth, babies have difficulty tracking moving stimuli. At around one month, infants
go through a phase of “sticky fixation” where they have difficulty shifting their gaze from one
stimulus to another. Sticky fixation ends at two to three months when we see the maturation of
regions of the parietal cortex. At 4 to 6 months, the infant is able to anticipate the location of an
object, in line with the maturation of the frontal cortex.
Le Grand et al (2001) found that infants with bilateral cataracts - that is, cataracts in both eyes -
do not develop full visual skills, even if surgery is done at an early age. Even nine years after
surgery, children still struggle with processing some facial information. This strongly indicates
that there may be a critical period for the development of the brain's visual processing regions.

Thinking About Research

Early research on the development of vision was carried out
by Hubel and Wiesel (1964). They were interested in
children who had congenital cataracts, a disorder in which
the lens of the eye is clouded upon birth. In spite of surgery
to remove cataracts at an early age, there was still
impairment to vision in the affected eye. Hubel and Wiesel
hypothesized that there was a sensitive period during
which the visual nerve cells develop and that if the retina did
not receive any visual information at that time, the visual
cortex would fail to process information.

Hubel and Wiesel used four newborn kittens and sewed one of their eyes shut for the first three
months of their lives. That eye did not get any visual information and received 10,000 to
100,000 times less light than the normal eye. That meant that the visual cortex could not receive
any input from that eye.

After three months, Hubel and Wiesel removed the stitches. The researchers recorded the
activity of the visual system in each kitten by inserting an electrode into the sedated kitten’s
visual cortex of the brain, which let them monitor electrical activity or inactivity in the cortex. The
researchers found that the cells in the eyes that were sewn shut did not respond to visual
stimuli. In addition, they could not be used again.

Question: This study had the goal of improving our understanding of the development of the
visual cortex in order to help children with infant cataracts. Do you think that the use of cats in
this study was ethically acceptable?

Modern technology makes it possible to investigate brain development by looking at glucose

metabolism in various brain regions. Chugani (1999) reviewed a series of studies of newborn
human babies done with a PET scan and found that there was little activity in the cerebral
cortex, which is associated with higher-level functioning. There was high activity in the brain
stem, which regulates inborn reflexes such as sucking or the startle reflex. The research also
established that the limbic system - including the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the
cingulate cortex - was active in newborns. Chugani related the activation of the limbic system to
the infant’s ability to read the emotional content of human faces, and to communicate via facial
expressions and eye contact.

Bachevalier et al. (1999) found that if they lesioned areas of the limbic system in a newborn
monkey, it gradually lost the capacity for social behavior. Eye contact decreased and the animal
showed blank facial expressions. This indicates that reading facial expressions is to some
extent an innate capacity, which can be lost due to brain damage.
From the age of six to nine months, the frontal lobes and the prefrontal areas of the cortex begin
to function more fully, due to the growth and myelinization of neurons. There is also growth in
areas of the brain such as the hippocampus, which plays an important role in memory, and the
cerebellum, the control center for body movements. Psychologists believe that these changes in
brain structure provide the physical basis for the child’s ability to engage in more complex motor
behavior and an increased ability to learn.

During middle childhood, growth in the area of the frontal lobes continues. Researchers
hypothesize that the pattern of brain changes taking place between five and seven years of age
enables the frontal lobes to coordinate the activities of other brain centers so that more complex
behaviors become possible. These include attention control, forming explicit plans, and
engaging in self-reflection. Evidence to support this theory comes from observations of humans
with damage to the frontal lobes, as well as experimental research with animals. Individuals with
frontal lobe damage are unable to plan ahead or stick to plans. They seem to have no self-
control and they are easily distracted. These deficits are very similar to what we observe in
young children.

ATL: Thinking Critically

Why can't I remember anything before age 4?

Carry out a simple interview study. Ask people the following

three questions:

● What is your earliest memory?

● How old were you at the time?
● On a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being the strongest, how
confident are you that this memory is accurate?

If your research is in line with most psychologists, most

people's earliest memories are around the age of four. Why do you think that this is true?

There are two key arguments. The first is the neurological argument that the hippocampus and
the frontal cortex are not well developed until the age of three or four. As we know from case
studies like Milner's study of HM, if the hippocampus is not working correctly, memory cannot be
transferred from STM to LTM. So, this first argument makes some sense.

Or does it? If it is the lack of hippocampal development that makes it impossible for us to
remember anything before the age of 3 or 4, how does a four-year-old remember things that
happened when he was two or three? The fact that three-year-olds can retrieve memories from
earlier in their life seems to imply that the hippocampus is functioning well enough.

Another theory is that although biologically children are able to create autobiographical
memories, they have not yet developed a sense of self - that is, they do not have a sense of
continuous self over time. As a child develops a sense of self - around the age of 4 - they are
able to organize and retrieve autobiographical experiences.

Questions to consider
Which of these two theories do you find the most convincing? What else would you want to
know in order to decide which of the two theories is the most credible?

Evaluating maturational theory

Some behaviors are seen very early in the life of a child. In addition, some areas of the brain
have been shown to develop in a predictable manner and may have "sensitive" periods for
development.

There is support for brain maturation linked to development in animal research.

It is not possible, however, for us to carry out developmental tests in PET or fMRI. Often,
research is carried out on infants with suspected clinical symptoms.

Even though infants appear to be “pre-wired” for certain types of learning, when we study even
4-month-old infants, they have already had hundreds of hours of experience. This means we
cannot rule out the role of learning and neuroplasticity.

In most aspects of development, maturation, and neuroplasticity are not mutually exclusive -
that is, neither theory can explain the complexity of human development on its own.
Development is the interaction of brain maturation and neuroplasticity as a result of learning
from the environment.

Development of the Brain During Adolescence

When children reach their teenage years, they become able to think in more abstract ways. The
brain changes taking place at this stage are less dramatic than those earlier in life, but they are
no less important. Reorganization and myelinization of the higher brain centers like the
prefrontal cortex continue at least until the age of 20. This enables teenagers to process
information faster and to perform higher-level cognitive activities such as strategic planning.
However, the area that controls impulses in the prefrontal cortex is among the latest brain
regions to mature, at around 20 years.

Giedd (2004) undertook a longitudinal study of healthy children, carrying out MRI scans every
second year. He found that 95 percent of the structure of the brain is formed when the child is
five or six, but he also concluded that areas in the prefrontal cortex appear to grow again just
before puberty. The growth spurt in synapse formation just before puberty is a clear illustration
of how different parts of the brain mature at different times, and that the frontal cortex matures
relatively late. However, this does not necessarily reveal anything specific about the relationship
between behavior and brain structures, although popular interpretations of neuroscientific
findings have claimed that problem behavior in adolescents is due to their immature brains.
ATL: Thinking Critically
Dr. Adriana Galván discusses the teenage brain in the following TEDx presentation. Watch the
video and then think about the questions below.

Questions

Would you consider the fMRI studies on sugar and money valid studies? Why or why not?

What is Galván's explanation for why the reward system is not as active in adults?

What implications does this research have on our understanding of the teenage brain?

Exam preparation
On an exam, you may be asked to discuss brain development with regard to human
development. Here are a few key things that you should remember:

● The brain is not fully developed at birth but will continue to develop from birth to the early
twenties.
● The brain develops from back to front.
● Brain development is based on genetic predisposition and interaction with the
environment.

The final point is an important one. The brain is "plastic" - it responds and adapts to
environmental stimuli. In the section of this chapter on "deprivation and trauma," you will have
more research on the role of environmental factors on the developing brain that could be used
here. You may also find information in the HL cognitive approach extension on how interacting
with technology may be affecting the brain.
 Influences on Development
ATL: Essential Understandings
A child's social and cognitive development may be affected
by environmental factors.

Childhood experiences may have a lifelong effect on an

individual.

Both protective and risk factors play a role in human

development and our ability to be resilient.

There are several factors that may affect a child's development. Many of these are
environmental and social factors - such as the role of peers and play, socioeconomic factors,
and childhood trauma.

These factors may play a role both in a child's cognitive and social development. Up until this
point, we have focused on cognitive development, but another important part of child
development is social development. Social Development refers to how people develop social
and emotional skills across the lifespan. Healthy social development allows us to form positive
relationships with family, friends, and other people in our lives.
The Role of Peers and Play
Play is sometimes seen as a "waste of time" in a preschool
program. It is often defined as the time when children are not
"learning." But according to developmental psychologists, this
perception is wrong.

Psychologists believe that play is an important tool for helping

young children develop motor skills, a sense of morality, and
even "theory of mind" - that is, the ability to understand that
others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one's own.

The nature of play changes over time and reflects a child’s development. Piaget and Vygotsky
studied play as a means of understanding a child’s cognitive development.

According to Piaget, play develops in line with the stages of cognitive development. In the
sensorimotor stage, a child’s play is dominated by practice play. Practice play is the practice of
some useful behavior out of its usual context. It involves the repetition of skills that have already
been mastered. Mental practice is also a form of play. For example, toddlers often ask, “Why?”
to practice question asking. Not that they really want an answer.

Practice play is based on imitation. Through this, the child learns. But it does not always mean
that the child understands. For example, a typical joke for a 3-year-old would be:

John: Knock, knock.

Mom: Who’s there?
John: John
Mom: John who?
John: John Crane! Hahaha hahaha.

Clearly, the child has understood the format of the joke but doesn’t understand how language
play works.

Symbolic play develops at around two years old and marks the beginning of representational
thought through the use of substitute objects or actions. These are “pretending” behaviors.
Symbolic play emerges with the development of language.

Symbolic Play
Piaget separated symbolic play into different stages.

Stage 1: (Ages 2 - 4) Children imitate the actions of others. For example, they pretend to
be on the phone.
 Stage 2: (Ages 4 - 7) Dramatic play becomes increasingly more accurate and complex.
The play is characterized by orderliness (things must go in specific places), an exact
imitation of reality (you have to have a ticket to get on our bus!), and adopting roles
(dividing a group of children into who will be the father, mother, sister, dog).

Stage 3: (Ages 7 - 12) Storylines are more predominant in play. Play can be picked up
where it was left off before as though it is a continual story. Roles are more reality-based.

Finally, the child begins to be primarily interested in games with rules around age 7. This final
stage is characterized by competition between individuals which is regulated by a cultural code
or a temporary mutually agreed-upon set of rules. The development of play is additive and not a
replacement. In fact, children often engage in more than one type of play during a single
episode of play.

ATL: Reflection
Think back to when you were a young child at school. Write a description of a "play experience"
that you remember. After you have written the description, consider the following questions.

1. Why do you consider this a "play experience?" What is it that defines this activity as "play?"

2. What skills (if any) do you think that you learned from this experience?

When considering play, you may ask if this is a behavior solely seen in humans. This article by
the BBC may be of interest. There is an interesting link in that article to an article on
snowboarding crows.

ATL: Research
According to Healthofchildren.com, “Play is the work of children. It consists of those activities
performed for self-amusement that have behavioral, social, and psychomotor rewards. It is
child-directed, and the rewards come from within the individual child; it is enjoyable and
spontaneous.”

Take a look at other definitions of "play" online. Which aspects of the definition above do you
think are important for a definition of play? What might you challenge? As a class, try to write
an "updated" definition of play based on your findings.

It is pretty much impossible to prove that play actually causes learning or development rather
than that play is the result of development - requiring and reflecting the child's existing skills.
For example, there is a correlation between a delay in language development and a delay in
symbolic play, but the relationship between the two variables is not clear. Psychologists argue,
however, that taking on different roles allows children the unique opportunity to learn social
skills such as communication, problem-solving, and empathy (Hughes, 1999). It is most likely
that the relationship is bidirectional - language development leads to symbolic play and symbolic
play leads to further language development.
Research in psychology: Russ, Robins, and Christiano (2010)

Psychologists distinguish between two types of problems -

convergent and divergent. A convergent problem has a
single correct solution or answer. A divergent problem has
many different potential solutions. Some research suggests
that the way children play may contribute to their ability to
solve divergent problems.

Pepler and Ross (1981) wanted to see if the type of play that
children engage in would affect their problem-solving
strategies. The sample comprised 72 children from three daycare centers in southern Ontario.
The children were equally divided by sex and age. They were randomly allocated to one of three
conditions. Some children were given materials for convergent play (puzzle pieces). Other kids
were given materials for divergent play (blocks). A researcher read a story to the third group,
which served as a control.

Kids were given time to play and then were tested on their ability to solve problems. One of the
tests that the children were given presented them with two sets of three figures (vehicles and
random shapes) and were asked, to tell or show the experimenter as many ways as possible
that one might play with the figures. The mean score for the number of potential uses for the
figures is seen in the following table.
Convergent play Divergent play Control

46 59 32

A limitation of the study is that the children were assessed on their problem-solving almost
immediately after completing their play experience. In addition, the children were randomly
allocated to conditions that may not have reflected their usual play routines - therefore,
dispositional factors cannot be ruled out.

Russ, Robins, and Christiano (2010) decided to address those limitations in their own study.
The researchers carried out a longitudinal study to see if the ability to pretend-play in 6 and 7-
year-old children would predict divergent thinking over a four-year period. The sample of 31
children was observed as first and second-graders to measure their level of pretend play. The
children also took a test of divergent thinking - similar to the one done by Pepler and Ross.

Four years later, the children were again observed and the same test was given, but adjusted
for age appropriateness. As predicted, the quality of imagination in early play predicted
divergent thinking over time, independent of IQ. Early divergent-thinking scores were predictive
of later divergent-thinking scores.
Culture and Play

Jared Diamond has written about the cultural differences in

play in hunter-gatherer societies in his book The World Until
Yesterday. Since these societies tend to be small, all children
form a single multi-age playgroup of both sexes. Although the
play serves as fun, it serves a clear function of letting children
practice things that they will later have to do as adults. Among
the Dani people of New Guinea, these activities include
fighting battles with grass spears, building huts, creating
gardens, and dragging a flower attached to a string, as if it were a pig. The Nuer children of
Sudan have most of their games about cattle. Children build cattle enclosures out of sand and
create small mud cattle. This shows that regardless of the culture, play is an important part of
their social development.

However, Diamond writes that a regular feature of the games of hunter-gatherers is the lack of
competitions or contests, compared to many games in developed societies that involve keeping
score or identifying a winner. Games often involve sharing and discourage contests. This could
be a reflection of the harsh environment which demands a more collectivistic approach to life.

A typical game played by Kaulong children in New Britain demonstrates this type of play.
Anthropologist Jane Goodale (not the primatologist) gave the children bananas so that every
child could have a banana. Instead of the children having a contest of getting the best banana
or competing to get the most bananas, every child took a single banana. Each child then cut
his/her banana in half, eating half and then giving the other half to another child. Then they took
that half and cut it in half and repeated the process. They did this until they simply had stubs,
laughing all the way. This demonstrates the types of sharing behavior which is necessary for
such hunter-gatherer societies. (Diamond, p 91)

A final comparison that Diamond makes is the function of toys. American society produces a lot
of “educational toys.” In contrast, traditional societies have few or no toys. Toys that do exist are
made by the child or the parents. Play activities are preparing them for “real life.” So, they
pretend to hunt, which eventually they will actually do. Play and education are integrally linked in
traditional societies. Diamond writes that his New Guinean friends “were astonished that
American children need specified places, times and instructions in order to learn how to meet
and play with each other." (p 207).

ATL: Thinking Critically

There has also been research that shows that perhaps the type of play that children engage in
is not as important as one would think. A lot of parents feel that the use of modern technologies
may hurt a child's development by denying them "normal play." Take a look at this study. What
do you think? Does it support or refute the idea that technology and less free play may hurt a
child's development? Be able to support your answer.

The Counterargument
From all the research above, one would think that this is an open-and-shut case of cause and
effect. It appears that play is really important in a child's development of creativity, cognition,
and self-esteem. Well, maybe not so fast...

Lillard et al (2013) reviewed 150 studies on pretend play conducted over the last 50 years. She
and her colleagues concluded that there is no clear evidence that pretend-play leads to
creativity, problem-solving, intelligence, or emotional regulation. Most of the studies had serious
methodological flaws and failed to be replicated. She argues that although researchers might
want to believe that play is important, researchers may be seeing a causal link that just isn't
there.

Instead, what she found was that many of the studies were highly directive, telling the children
which toys to play with and how. Real pretend play is often spontaneous and develops over
time. When children play in groups, it is often the relationships within that group that may affect
pretend play.

The Role of Peers

Play can have a positive and a negative social influence on children. A child's sociometric
status (Coie & Dodge, 1988) in play can have a significant effect on the child's academic
performance as well. The following chart looks at four classifications of children and how these
classifications typically affect their social and cognitive development.

Status Characteristics Outcomes

 Accepted Physically attractive High sociability

Interacts positively and Good cognitive skills

cooperatively
Academic success
Good at negotiation and
compromise Better adjusted as adults

Adjust behavior to join in play

Rejected Aggressive, disruptive, or Poor school performance

aggressive uncooperative
Longer-term behavioral and
Poor emotional control emotional maladjustment

Poor perspective-taking skills; lacks Problems in relationships.

play etiquette

Unaware that they are disliked.

Rejected Passive, timid, or socially awkward Low self-esteem

withdrawn
Hold negative expectations of Poor school achievement
others
Social anxiety and/or depression
Does not approach peers for play

Aware that they are disliked

Neglected Socially inept Not always disadvantaged

Plays alone Can make some friends

Prefers to be alone More prone to loneliness and

depression

The classifications here were done through a series of observations of classroom environments.
We will see how the role of peers plays an important role in gender roles later in the unit. We will
also see that having a strong peer group is a protective factor and plays an important role in
resilience.
Poverty and Development
The economist Paul Krugman commented in the New York
Times on findings from neuroscientists. Children growing up
in very poor families, with low social status, experience high
levels of stress hormones that may impair brain development
and cognitive functioning. 17.4 percent of children in the US
live below the poverty line. Based on these statistics,
Krugman argued that children born to the poorest parents
have an almost 50 percent risk of remaining in that position.
Because of poor development, they miss social and
economic opportunities.

Cognitive researchers have found that poverty is one of the major risk factors in a child’s
cognitive development. Factors such as poor nutrition, poverty-related health problems, home
environment, parenting practices, and living in poor neighborhoods with high levels of crime and
unemployment, are all factors that may impact cognitive development in children.

Risk factors as a result of living in poverty

Stress over meeting basic needs of food, shelter, and safety

Malnutrition

Substance abuse in the community

Exposure to environmental toxins - according to one report, one in six American children has toxic
levels of lead in his or her blood; 55% of African American children living in poverty have toxic levels of
lead in their blood.
 Trauma caused by insecurity in their community and a lack of safety

Higher than-average levels of physical and sexual abuse

Lack of educational opportunities

Discrimination

Less stimulation in their environment

Noble et al (2005) found that children with a lower socioeconomic status (SES) performed
worse on all tests of cognitive performance compared to middle-SES children. The question is
why?

For years psychologists have argued that poverty has an effect on a child’s cognitive
development. The problem with this argument, of course, is that there are many aspects of
poverty that may be the “cause” of cognitive impairment. One of the variables that has been
studied by psychologists is malnutrition.

One argument is that inadequate food intake and an unhealthy diet limit children’s ability to
learn. Children who are chronically undernourished become less active and show less interest
in their social environment. It is believed, however, that it is not malnutrition alone that results in
cognitive malfunctioning, but rather the combined negative effects of exposure to
undernourishment and other consequences of poverty. If children are given appropriate food
and stimulation, it can modify cognitive impairment caused by earlier malnutrition.

Children who do not live in poverty have a number of protective factors - that is, factors that
help facilitate healthy development. These include a balanced diet, access to good education, a
stimulating environment (for example, exposure to technology and innovation), access to
financial support, low stress over basic needs, and access to health care.

Kar et al (2008) studied the effect of malnutrition on cognitive performance in a sample of 20

Indian children in two age groups, one from 5 to 7 years old and another between 8 and 10. The
data was compared to children in a control group. Malnourished children in both groups scored
lower in attention, working memory, and visuospatial tasks than the control group. However,
older children showed less impairment. Kar posited a theory of delayed cognitive
development rather than permanent impairment - that is, a lack of a healthy diet in infancy has
only a temporary effect on development.

ATL: Critical Thinking

Kar et al's study seems like good news. Nutrition does

not have life-long effects on development; development is
simply delayed.
But what does this mean for the child who is experiencing delayed development? Based on the
findings of this study, if you were asked to do a presentation for teachers on working with
children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, what would be two recommendations that you
would make?

Research in psychology: Pollitt et al (1995)

Pollitt carried out a study in four extremely poor villages

in central Guatemala for a period of eight years.
Because it was thought that protein was the most
important nutrient missing from the villagers’ diet, it was
decided to give villagers a nutritional supplement.
Participants were pregnant women and children under
the age of 7. More than 2000 children and mothers
participated between 1969 and 1977.

Participants in two of the villages received a high-protein supplement called Atole. The
inhabitants of the other two villages - who served as the control group - received Fresco, which
contained no protein. Both supplements provided vitamins and minerals as well as calories, but
Fresco only had one-third of the calories of Atole.

The findings showed a significant drop in infant mortality in both sets of villages but with a 69%
decrease in villages taking Atole and only a 24% decrease in the villages taking Fresco.
Children on Fresco suffered a slower rate of growth and a slower rate of recovery from infection.
They also learned to crawl and walk slightly later on average. Because these undernourished
children remained small for their age, adults may have tended to treat them as if they were
younger than their actual age.

A follow-up study was carried out in 1988, eleven years after the completion of the first study.
The participants who received Atole in early life performed significantly better on most tests of
cognition compared to those who received Fresco. Children from the lowest socio-economic
level of the village scored just as high as those in the higher SES of the village. With every
additional year of schooling, the differences in achievement between those children who took
Atole vs. Fresco increased. However, the children from the villages still performed less well than
children from middle-income households in a more prosperous area of Guatemala.

The research above indicates that there are biological factors that influence the developmental
gap between children from low and high SES levels. But could there be other factors?

One of the arguments is that children in poorer families lack environmental stimulation. If you
remember the study by Rosenzweig and Bennett, they found that a lack of stimulation in the
environment led to a lack of neural development in the frontal lobe of rats. But could this also
be true in humans?
Farah et al (2008) investigated the relationship between environmental stimulation and parental
nurturing on cognitive development. The sample was made up of 110 African American middle-
school children. They were evaluated at ages four and eight through a series of interviews and
observations. The researchers found that there was a positive correlation between
environmental stimulation and language development. There was also a correlation between
parental nurturing and long-term memory performance.

A final factor that may account for the effect of poverty on development is the role of cognitive
load - that is, the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. If the
cognitive load is too high, then it is not possible to process new information.

Research in psychology: Mani et al (2013)

Participants were from two different groups: people with an average income of roughly 20.000
and 70.000 USD. The aim of the study was to see if making the participants aware of their
financial situation would impact their level of cognitive processing.

Participants were presented with four financial scenarios. For example, “Your car is having
some trouble and requires $X to fix. You can pay in full, take out a loan or take a chance and
not fix the car right now. How would you go about making your decision?”

Within each financial group, the participants were randomly allocated to one of two conditions.
In the easy condition, the above scenario would have a value of about $150. In the “hard”
condition, the above scenario would have a value of about $1500. The goal of such scenarios
was to prime the participants and make their own financial situation more salient.

The participants were given a test of cognitive processing -

the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test. This is a common
component of IQ tests. Participants must choose which of
several alternatives best fits a space in a sequence of
shapes (see the image on the left).

Findings indicated that in the “easy condition”, there was

little difference in cognitive performance for either the “rich”
or the "poor" participants. However, for the “poor”
participants, their scores were much lower under the “hard”
conditions - that is, when their financial position was made
salient.

Mani argues because worry about financial realities often

preoccupies the poor, they have a heavier cognitive load on
a day-to-day basis, making it difficult to focus on more
demanding cognitive tasks.

However, this is a rather artificial task, so Mani and his team went out into the “real world” to do
some fieldwork.
Field Study
The study examined 464 sugarcane farmers living in 54 villages in
Tamil Nadu, India. Each of the farmers earned at least 60% of his
income from the sugarcane harvest. This means that prior to the
sugarcane harvest, the farmers are poor. After the harvest, they
are significantly richer. This is a natural experiment, as the
farmers experience cycles of poverty.

As in the lab experiment, the Raven’s Progressive Matrices test

was administered both before and after the harvest. In addition,
the Stroop Test was administered.

On the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, the farmers scored an average of 5.45 items correct
post-harvest, but only 4.35 items correct pre-harvest. On the Stroop test, they took an average
of 131 seconds to respond in the "interference condition" post-harvest, as compared to 146
seconds pre-harvest. In addition, the average number of errors the farmers made was higher
before the harvest than after - 5.93 versus 5.16. The results of this experiment are significant at
p < 0.001.

Once again, it is clear that poverty has an effect on the farmers’ ability to manage the cognitive
load demanded by these tasks. This means that the poor are less capable not because of
problems in their cognitive or biological development, but because of the context of poverty.

Evaluation of the Research

According to psychologists, the exact link between socioeconomic background and individual
development is not yet fully understood. It seems that there is a cumulative effect of positive or
negative factors related to socio-economic factors. This means that individuals from more
privileged homes have greater educational opportunities, more role models, and higher parental
expectations than children from less privileged backgrounds. However, early adverse
experiences do not necessarily determine the life path of an individual. Werner and Smith
(1992) carried out a longitudinal study of high-risk children and found that one-third had
adjusted well to adult life. This may mean that dispositional factors rather than situational factors
may play a more significant role in a child's development - as we will see in the part of this unit
on resilience.

Methodological considerations in research on the effects of poverty

● Poverty is a relative term. The definition, except for the poorest of communities, is not
absolute.
 ● The vast majority of research is correlational in nature. This means that a cause-and-
effect relationship cannot be established.
● Samples are often not representational and thus the findings of studies are not highly
generalizable.
● It is impossible to isolate the many factors that may influence cognitive development
which may be associated with poverty.
● Applications of findings have improved the lives and opportunities of many individuals -
for example, free breakfast programs.

Trauma and Development

The effect of abuse, neglect, or trauma on the
development of a child is a very important but difficult
topic to study. Psychologists study the effects of what is
called Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) - that is,
physical abuse, sexual abuse, exposure to domestic
violence, and a substance-abusing parent. Research
indicates that the effects of abuse depend on the child’s age and gender, as well as the duration
of the experience.

There are two types of effects as a result of deprivation (neglect) or trauma. First, there are the
physiological and neurodevelopmental effects. Secondly, there are the effects on a child's
psychosocial development.

Unfortunately, abuse and neglect are not uncommon. According to the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, every year more than 3 million reports of child abuse are made in
the United States. On average, the United States loses between four and seven children every
day to child abuse and neglect.

Child abuse occurs at every socioeconomic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all
religions, and at all levels of education. Studies indicate that about 30% of abused and
neglected children will later abuse their own children.

To get a better understanding of the concept of ACEs and the effect that they have on a child's
development, watch the following video featuring American pediatrician, Nadine Burke Harris.

Effects of Abuse on Development

Psychologists claim that children can recover from
even very adverse conditions if they are removed from
such situations and given proper care and attention.
This is supported by a classic case study of child
abuse by Koluchova (1972). She undertook a
longitudinal study of a pair of Czech twin boys who had
been discovered at the age of 7 in terrible living
conditions.

The boys’ mother had died when they were born; they
were raised by their father and then later, after the father remarried, their stepmother. The
stepmother kept them in conditions of severe deprivation. They had been kept locked in
isolation in a cellar; they had been mistreated and beaten. They did not have adequate food, so
they were suffering from vitamin deficiency when they were found. They had no access to
exercise or stimulation of any kind, apart from the contact they had with each other.

Apparently, nobody knew of their existence; but by the time they reached age seven, their
situation came to the attention of the authorities. At that time, the boys could hardly walk, play,
or speak. They were initially placed in foster care and then later adopted by two sisters.

When they were found, the twins’ prognosis seemed very poor. The boys’ IQ scores were
estimated to be around 40 at the time they were found, but by the age of 14, these had risen to
around 100 for one, and 90 for the other. Their school performance was generally good and
they were highly motivated. By the age of fourteen, they had caught up academically to other
14-year-olds, and as adults, they were able to attend university and develop good relationships
with others.
It seems that, given the right sort of loving and caring environment and the opportunity to
develop an attachment to a sensitive caregiver, the effects of deprivation may be reversible.
However, there are some important considerations when drawing this conclusion:

1. The twins were not totally isolated, so they may have formed an attachment to each
other. This may account for their ability to later form healthy relationships with others.
2. The twins were discovered at the age of 7 which may explain why they recovered from
the effects of their abuse; similar children who were discovered much later in life did not
always demonstrate such a high level of recovery.
3. Because we do not have any way of knowing the academic potential of the children prior
to the abuse, we cannot say for sure how well they have recovered.
4. This is a case study of two individuals, so the findings may not be easily generalized -
gender, culture, and historical period must be considered.

Effects of Institutionalization on Development

Some of the earliest research on deprivation was carried out by René Spitz on institutionalized
children. He found that children who were in institutions were showing evidence of delayed
development. They were smaller in size and they were not able to carry out appropriate
developmental physiological markers such as rolling over or crawling. They also did not express
emotions in a way consistent with child behavior. Spitz coined the term hospitalism for what he
saw - but he did not understand why these symptoms were happening.

In addition, neglected children also have lower cognitive performance. Dennis (1973) carried out
a study of children in an orphanage in Beirut, Lebanon. He found that unadopted adolescents in
institutions aged 16 had a mean IQ of 50, which is classified as moderately retarded. Children
adopted between 2 and 6 had a mean IQ of 80; children adopted by age 2 had a mean IQ of
100 - which is average. It appears that institutionalization also has a direct impact on a child's
cognitive development.

There is evidence that long-term institutionalization of children and abuse both have an effect on
the child's brain development.

Chugani et al. (2001) carried out PET scans on a sample of 10 children adopted from
Romanian orphanages and compared them with 17 healthy adults and 7 children. The results
showed significantly decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the
amygdala. Chugani concluded that the dysfunction in these brain regions may have resulted
from the stress of early deprivation and might be linked to long-term cognitive and behavioral
deficits.

Carrion et al (2009) performed fMRI scans and found that children suffering from PTSD after
experiencing abuse or witnessing violence performed worse on verbal memory tests and
showed less hippocampal activity compared to a control group. It is believed that the reason for
this is linked to the human stress response. Experiences of abuse act to increase levels of the
stress hormone cortisol in children. Increased cortisol levels have a negative effect on the
hippocampus which is responsible for memory consolidation.
Research in psychology: Rutter et al, 2007

In December 1989 the Romanian people overthrew their

communist dictator. Romania had been cut off from the West
and most people were unaware of just how bad things were.
This became very much apparent when the media reported the
finding of hundreds of orphanages in which children were living
in horrific conditions.

The communist dictator had outlawed birth control and abortion.

It was the duty of women to bear children for the state. Police
controls, as well as physical check-ups every three months, made sure that women complied.
But they couldn't afford the children they bore, so they turned them over to the state. Then, an
economic decline in the 1980s meant that the orphanages lacked electricity, heat, and food.

When the images of the children made the news, people from around the world wanted to adopt
the children. A significant number of those adoptive parents were in the UK. This resulted in
one of the largest and longest studies of the effects of deprivation and trauma on child
development ever done.

Rutter et al (2007) wanted to investigate the progress of orphans brought to the UK for adoption
in the 1990s.

The sample consisted of 144 Romanian children adopted by UK families. All children had been
adopted between birth and 42 months. For comparison, the researchers used a group of 52
domestic adoptees who had not experienced a depriving institutional experience and were less
than 6 months old at the time of adoption.

Rutter studied three groups:

● Adopted before the age of 6 months

● Adopted between 6 months and 2 years
● Adopted after the age of two (late adoptees)

Both the British and Romanian adoptees were first assessed at the age of 4 years. Data was
then collected again at the age of 6 and then a final assessment was carried out at age 11.

Semi-structured interviews were carried out with the adoptive parents to discuss the child's
behavior. Children were also given standardized tests to assess their cognitive abilities.

Cognitive impairment was found in 15.4% of the adoptees from Romania but in only 2.3% of the
adoptees from the UK.

According to Rutter, there was a response-dose relationship between institutionalization and

both cognitive impairment and attachment disorders - that means, those that spent a longer time
in the institution were more likely to have more persistent cognitive deficiencies and disinhibited
attachment - that is, a lack of close, confiding relationships, rather indiscriminate friendliness
and clingy, attention-seeking behavior, a relative lack of differentiation in response to adults, a
tendency to go off with strangers and a lack of checking back with a parent in anxiety-provoking
situations.

For those who spent between 6 and 24 months in an institution, 12% of children demonstrated
cognitive impairment at age 6. For those who were in the institution for more than 24 months,
36% demonstrated significant cognitive impairment.

The researchers concluded that the negative effects of institutionalization could be overcome if
intervention took place before 6 months of age.

Watch the following video for the effects of institutionalization on development.

The Rutter study supports the findings of Bowlby regarding the role of a sensitive period in
which optimal cognitive development takes place - that is, under 2.5 years.

Kreppner, O’Connor, Dunn & Andersen Wood (1999) had similar findings in their study of
104 Romanian orphans adopted into British families before the age of 2 compared to 50 British
adoptees. Analysis for group differences between UK adoptees and the Romanian adoptee
groups indicated a general tendency for the UK adoptees to engage in higher frequencies of
pretend play, role play, and referencing others’ mental states than Romanian adoptees.

However, it is difficult to separate out the role of malnutrition in this study. Rutter found that
there was a persistent cognitive deficit at age six in the children who were in the institutions the
longest. This appeared to be the case most often in those that had suffered from malnutrition.

ATL: Thinking Critically

Rutter's study has quickly become a "classic" in psychology. There are many strengths to the
design and the sample of the study. For each of the points listed below, explain why it would be
considered a strength of the study.

1. A substantial proportion of the parents that adopted children already had children of their
own.
2. The degree of deprivation was unusually severe.
3. Almost all children had been placed in the institution in early infancy.
4. There had been no adoptions from institutions in Romania prior to 1989.
5. The adopted Romanian children were ethnically similar to their adoptive parents.
Resilience
Luthar et al (2000) defined resilience as "the
process of avoiding adverse outcomes or doing
better than expected when confronted with major
assaults on the developmental process." These
major assaults could include poverty, war,
personal trauma, privation, or deprivation. A
simpler definition was when Rutter (1990) said
that resilience is when an individual maintains
adaptive behavior in spite of serious risk factors.

This chapter looks at both risk and protective factors through the lens of the biological,
cognitive, and sociocultural approaches.

PSYCHOLOGY VOCABULARY:
Risk Factors: Factors, either dispositional or environmental, that predispose an individual to not
develop to their full potential. This may lead to delayed development, impaired cognitive
functioning, psychological disorders, or other health-related problems.

Protective factors: Conditions or attributes (skills, strengths, resources, supports, or coping

strategies) in individuals, families, communities, or the larger society that help people deal more
effectively with stressful events.

Generally, children are robust, but some people fail to cope with events from their childhood and
develop psychopathology or criminal behaviors. Why is this? For every child, development is
about the successful completion of a number of developmental tasks - for example, developing
bonds with caregivers, being able to self-regulate, showing initiative, and being able to interact
with others and the environment. The individual child may have a difficult temperament, and
there may be a number of risk factors in the child’s environment that hinder normal
development. Parental conflict, the collapse of the family, poverty, parental drug abuse, social
isolation, criminal family background, and belonging to a minority group are among the most
common risk factors cited by developmental psychologists.

Researchers have also identified a number of potential protective factors, such as intelligence,
sociability, special talents, close relationship to a parent or parental substitute, authoritative
parents, socio-economic resources, good school, and relationships with pro-social adults.
Research shows that the consequences of early adversities are to a large extent dependent on
the nature of subsequent life experiences. It seems that even severe deprivation may not have
long-term effects if there is an increase in protective factors.

Resiliency research is inspired by several longitudinal studies on the relationship between life
stressors in childhood and adjustment in adolescence and adulthood. It seems that three factors
are particularly important when it comes to protection from the damaging effects of stressful life
events: the temperament of the child, a close relationship with at least one parent and social
support in the community.

Key study: Werner and Smith (2001)

Werner and Smith (2001) carried out the Kauai

Longitudinal Study. In the study, a multiracial cohort of
698 children, born on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, was
examined at ages 1, 2, 10, 18, 32, and 40 years. 30
percent had experienced a cluster of risk factors. For
example, they had been born and raised in poverty,
there were complications around birth, the family had
financial problems, and they were reared by mothers
with hardly any education. Two-thirds of the children who had experienced four or more of these
risk factors by the age of 2 years had developed learning or behavior problems by the age of 10
or had delinquency records and/or mental problems by the age of 18. However, one-third of the
children did not show this pattern. They had developed into competent, confident, and caring
adults, who succeeded in their school, home, and social lives. They had realistic goals and
expectations for themselves, and by the age of 40, they were all working and had no specific
problems.

Werner and Smith linked this to a number of protective factors. Children who succeeded against
the odds had the opportunity to establish, early on, a close bond with at least one competent,
emotionally stable person who was sensitive to their needs. Within the family structure, this
included grandparents and older siblings. It could also be a teacher that served as a positive
role model, parents of boy/girlfriends, youth leaders, or members of church groups.

Among the most significant variables for positive change were continuing education at
community colleges, vocational skills acquired during service in the armed forces, marriage to a
stable partner, and conversion to a religion that demanded active participation in a “community
of faith.” Conversion to a religious faith provided structure, a sense of community, and a place to
go for advice and direction. It also promoted a sense of self-worth and assurance of salvation.

Researchers now work to find ways to protect children from the damaging effects of stressful life
conditions. They want to understand how protective factors can counteract risk factors because
 they can help to change or reverse expected negative
outcomes. Research shows that resilience can be
cultivated by promoting protective factors in a child’s
life. From this perspective, being resilient is to a large
extent about coping - that is, finding appropriate ways
to deal with the stressors of life. Children at risk are
not able to do this by themselves.

A single risk factor does not normally affect healthy

development, but it is well-known that multiple risk
factors often result in psychopathology. It seems that
one of the most critical factors in healthy development is the relationship between parents and
the child.

This is why many resilience programs include parent education. The New York Center for
Children suggests the following strategies to promote resilience and prevent child abuse and
neglect.

Home visit programs have proven effective, especially in high-risk families. It seems that
this strategy can reduce child abuse, increase access to health care, and lower rates of
maternal depression - thus enhancing the formation of attachment between mother and
child.

Teen-mother parent education and parent groups. Teenagers give birth to 8 percent of
babies in the US. Britner and Reppucci (1997) found that a 12-week parenting
education program for unmarried teen mothers could prevent child abuse. Three to five
years after the birth of their children, program graduates were significantly less likely than
controls to have been reported for maltreatment of their children.

After-school programs in high-risk communities. Mahoney et al. (2005) carried out a

longitudinal study of the effect of after-school programs on the development of academic
performance and motivation for disadvantaged children. They found that participants who
participated in a full year’s after-school program achieved better test scores, reading
achievement, and higher levels of motivation with regard to their academics.

Lowenthal (2001) argues that children who experience a safe environment in after-school
programs learn to set realistic goals, work in small groups, participate in creative activities, and
express their feelings in constructive ways. They also learn social skills, anger control, conflict
management, and how to interpret the emotions and behaviors of other people. If children have
the necessary support in their school work, they will eventually develop a sense of internal
control, be able to cope with stress and interact positively with other people.

Walker et al. (2007) studied risk factors in developing countries. In order to prevent what the
researchers call the intergenerational transmission of poverty, and to build resilience in the
children, they suggested food programs and child development programs for children with
developmental problems. The programs targeted improved nutrition to promote positive physical
growth, as well as stimulation of cognitive and social-emotional skills because these are known
to provide the basis for later success in school and work. In developed countries, long-term
benefits are derived from high-quality early interventions from center-based programs for
disadvantaged children, in terms of better school achievement, better employment
opportunities, better health outcomes, less welfare dependency, and lower crime rates. UNICEF
has assisted governments to support parenting programs in 60 countries, and at least 30
developing countries now have policies on early child development.

It seems that there are some strategies that are associated with success in preventing
developmental problems and building resilience. It is more effective to provide services directly
to children than simply providing information to parents. It also appears that early intervention
can promote child development and prevent developmental loss, not only in developed
countries but also in developing countries.

Biological Approach to Resilience

There is a general consensus among psychologists that resilience is an "innate" quality of
human beings. It is also agreed that resilience is the result of the interaction of this innate
capacity and contextual factors - that is, risk and protective factors. The question is, what is the
biological evidence for resilience?

Research in psychology: Coan, Schaefer & Davidson (2006)

Coan, Schaefer & Davidson's (2006) research is a

good example of how this innate ability interacts with
contextual factors. In their study 16 married women
were threatened with an electric shock while holding
their husband's hand, the hand of an anonymous
male experimenter, or no hand at all while they were
in an fMRI brain imaging scanner. While in the fMRI
the women were shown 12 non-threat indicating
images (safety cues) and 12 threatening images
(threat cues) - that is, images that when shown,
indicated that an electrical shock was possible. The
cues activated brain regions associated with fear and anxiety.

Results showed that the brain's "threat response" was lowest when holding their husband's
hand and strongest when no hand was held. Not only this, but there was a negative correlation
between the reported marital quality and the threat response - that is, the higher the reported
marital quality, the lower the brain's threat response. It appears that social support is the key to
resilience.

The interaction of social support and biological resilience is also shown in a study of oxytocin
which has been shown to reduce anxiety. Kirsch et al (2005) carried out another imaging study
where participants viewed frightening images after receiving nasal sprays of either oxytocin or a
placebo. Those who sniffed oxytocin showed reduced activation in the amygdala. The oxytocin
surge that comes from being around other people could, like endorphins, help to reduce the
stress response.
The following video demonstrates the study by Coan, Schaefer & Davidson (2006)

Although most people recover from trauma and deprivation, some do not. One of the possible
explanations for that is also biological. One of the most significant areas of research in
resilience and PTSD today is neuropeptide Y [NPY], a hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter
in the brain. It is thought to have many functions: increasing food intake, reducing anxiety and
stress, reducing pain perception, and affecting the circadian rhythm. The neurotransmitter is
released as part of a response to stress and works together with the amygdala, prefrontal
cortex, hippocampus, and brainstem to turn off the stress response.

One of the core reasons for the surge in resilience research has been the study of why some
military personnel experience severe PTSD symptoms as a result of combat situations, while
others do not. It would be in the military's interest to find out if there is a way to predict which
soldiers would be less resilient and to determine if there is a way to increase one's level of
resilience to make them more "combat-ready." Morgan et al (2000) carried out a study of
healthy US Army soldiers who participated in a survival course designed to simulate the
conditions endured by prisoners of war, such as food and sleep deprivation, isolation, and
intense interrogations. They found that NPY levels went up in the soldiers' blood within hours of
the interrogations. They found a correlation between the soldiers' responses to the experience
and their level of NPY. Those soldiers who responded more negatively to the training
experience were those with lower levels of NPY. This study was observational and thus
correlational in nature. No cause and effect can, therefore, be determined. So, researchers are
looking to animals to see if they can alter an animal's resilience by increasing the level of NPY.
Sjdyk et al (2008) carried out an experiment where a rat was kept in a tight-fitting plastic pouch
for 30 minutes and then released back into a cage with other rats. The anxiety response caused
by the restraint caused the rat to not interact with the other rats for 90 minutes. When rats were
injected with NPY before being restrained, they interacted with the other rats normally.

The study of the role of NPY in children is still in its early phase. Although research with animal
models is promising, whether we will be able to attribute a child's resilience simply to a
neuropeptide (hormone), remains to be seen. Most likely, such a reductionist approach will not
be enough - but instead, it will only be seen as another risk or protective factor.

ATL: Reflection
Oliver is a skateboard teacher working for Skateistan,
a nonprofit that combines skateboarding and education
as a tool for empowering young people. Half the
population of Afghanistan is under the age of 16, and
70% of the population is under the age of 25. Most
shocking is the role that women play in society — most
of them don’t have jobs and cannot go to school. It’s
even been deemed culturally inappropriate for them to
ride bicycles!
Oliver only makes $10 a week, and he only has electricity every couple of days, but he is
constantly rewarded by his time with the children: showing them how to skate, teaching them
valuable skills in the classroom, and taking them on field trips around Kabul. He was even able
to help a 12-year-old girl, Priscilla, get a job as a skateboarding instructor, so she could stop
begging on the streets as a way of supporting her entire family.

But Skateistan is not without its heartbreak. In April 2015, four of the school’s students were
killed in a suicide bombing at the NATO facility in Kabul. The community rallied together to help
the families of the children who passed away, and at the skate park, a boy skated up and down
the ramps in honor of his deceased brother.

Today, in Afghanistan, 40% of skateboarders are girls. Skateboarding is now the largest female
sport in the country, and Skateistan continues to use it to educate and empower girls and boys
throughout the community.

This story was taken from Buzzfeed. You can see a video HERE of "Skateistan."

Questions

What would be the risk and protective factors for Oliver, as a teacher working for Skateistan?

Do you think that Oliver is able to build resilience in his students? Why or why not?

Developing an Identity
ATL: Essential Understandings
● The emotional bond that a child forms
with his/her caregiver is important for
healthy emotional and social
development.
● One's gender is the result of an
interaction between biological, cognitive,
and social factors.
● Empathy is the result of a child's
development of a theory of mind,
allowing them to understand the beliefs
and desires of others.
This final section of the development chapter looks at the development of one's identity. Identity
is a combination of how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Identity may be
acquired indirectly from parents, peers, and other role models.

Part of identity formation is about our relationship with others. Psychologists have found that
how we interact with others has a lot to do with our early relationship with our parents. The
quality of the infant-parent attachment is a powerful predictor of a child's later social and
emotional behavior. Attachment is defined as a deep and enduring emotional bond that
connects two people.

Another aspect of identity formation is determining one's role in society. This may be on several
levels. In this chapter, we will look at the role that gender identity and social roles play in
identity formation.

Finally, part of our ability to interact with others is the ability to understand the perspective of
other people. This ability to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and
perspectives that are different from one's own is called theory of mind. The ability to not only
understand that this is true but to be able to adopt that perspective and understand an
individual's feelings or position is called empathy.

Attachment
Attachment is the development of a
mutual and intense emotional
relationship between an infant and its
caregivers. According to Bowlby, a
close relationship between the child and
the mother is a basic biological need -
an innate pattern of behavior that has
helped infants to survive. Babies
demonstrate the universal behavior of
seeking proximity to the mother and
reacting with anxiety to separation from
her.

Bowlby argued that behaviors such as

smiling, babbling, grasping, and crying are genetically-based social signals. These signals
encourage parents to care for and interact with their baby so that the infant will be fed, protected
from danger, and provided with the affection necessary for healthy growth.
According to Shaffer (1996), attachment develops until around the age of seven months. At this
age, the baby clearly shows separation anxiety when the primary attachment figure - often the
mother - leaves the child. Research has shown that the infant can discriminate between a
primary attachment figure and other people from around seven months. It is believed that at
this age the child has developed a mental representation of the attachment figure, which is what
Piaget termed object permanence. This simply means that the child knows the mother exists,
even when the child cannot see her. This could explain why the child protests when the mother
leaves. The child also displays stranger anxiety, when unfamiliar people try to make contact
with the child.

ATL: Thinking Critically

Freud argued that the bond between a mother and child
is formed because the baby needs nourishment, which it
receives from the mother. Since the mother provides
this, a bond is formed. This was known as the
cupboard theory.
Harry Harlow challenged this theory with a set of rather
controversial experiments.
In one study, Harlow (1958) isolated a group of rhesus
monkeys from their mothers after birth. The infants were then provided with a “wire mother” and
a “cloth mother.” Four of them were fed by the wire mother, while four of them received milk
from the cloth mother.
Harlow’s experiment showed that the monkeys spent more time with the cloth mother in both
situations, despite receiving milk from the wire mother. Harlow argued that the cloth mother
provided contact comfort which the wire mother did not.

Watch the following video to get a better understanding of Harlow's research.

Questions

1. To what extent do Harlow's experiments disprove Freud's "Cupboard Theory" with

regard to the bond formed between a human mother and child?
2. What are your ethical concerns about this research?

Bowlby's Internal Working Model

Bowlby (1973) argued that there is a continuity between attachment and adult relationships.
Children create an Internal Working Model - or a schema - of themselves, the caregiver, and
their interaction with the caregiver. This internal model will then help individuals to predict what
will happen in relationships as well as to decide which behavior to engage in to resolve conflicts,
disclose intimate information, or evaluate their level of happiness in a relationship.
Internal Working Model
The internal working model includes three important elements:

● ideas about attachment figures and what can be expected from them
● ideas about the self
● ideas about how the self and others relate.

The internal working model will determine the child’s relationship with other people and the way
the child sees himself or herself in the future. If a child experiences love and affection, he or she
comes to see himself or herself as worthy of love and attention.

If the attachment figure occasionally provides less attention and sensitivity, it will not undermine
the child’s confidence, but if this continues, the working model may change. Children who have
experienced neglect or rejection may think that they deserve the neglect. Such a working model
may eventually contribute negatively to mental health and the quality of their relationships with
others.

Research in psychology: Ainsworth's Strange Situation Paradigm

One of Bowlby’s students, the US psychologist

Mary Ainsworth (1970), devised an experimental
procedure called the strange situation test, which
resulted in a classification of attachment patterns.
The strange situation is meant to measure the
child’s attachment behavior, based on how the
child reacts when the mother leaves and
subsequently returns.

In the strange situation test, the mother and infant

are first left alone in a room together. Then a
stranger enters and the mother leaves. The mother then returns and the stranger leaves. The
mother then leaves the baby completely alone. Then the stranger returns. Then the mother
returns and the stranger leaves.

Ainsworth started her work on attachment patterns with the so-called Ganda Project in Uganda.
This was a longitudinal study using home visits, with naturalistic observations of mother-child
interactions in the strange situation, and interviews with the mothers. The sample consisted of
28 children from several villages in Uganda. When the study began, the babies ranged from 15
weeks to two years old. Ainsworth observed them every two weeks, for two hours at a time,
over a nine-month period. The visits took place in the family living room, so it was a natural
environment. Ainsworth used an interpreter when she interviewed the mothers.
Ainsworth was particularly interested in the individual differences between mother-child pairs in
terms of the quality of their attachment relationships. Based on her observations during the
strange situation test, Ainsworth classified the children into three attachment groups: non-
attached, insecurely attached, and securely attached.

According to Ainsworth, secure attachment is dependent on an emotionally responsive mother.

Mothers who are sensitive to the needs of their children tend to have securely attached babies,
while insensitive mothers tend to have insecurely attached babies.

Ainsworth, Bell, and Stayton (1971) replicated the Uganda study in Baltimore, USA. The
sample consisted of 26 mother-infant pairs, who were each visited in their homes every three to
four weeks for the first year of the baby’s life. Based on her observations, she re-defined the
types of attachment:

Types of attachment
Type A - Insecurely attached - avoidant (20 percent of the children) The child shows
apparent indifference when the mother leaves the room and avoids contact with her when
she returns. The child is apparently not afraid of strangers. The mothers of type A children
tend to be insensitive and do not seem interested in their child’s play.

Type B - Securely attached (70 percent of the children) The child is upset when the
mother leaves and is happy to see her again. The child is easily comforted by the mother.
The mothers of type B children are very interested in their child’s play and actively
communicate with their children during play.

Type C - Insecurely attached - ambivalent (10 percent of the children) The child is very
upset when the mother leaves the room, and she has difficulty soothing the child when
she returns. The child seeks comfort, but at the same time rejects it. The mothers of type
C children tend to be inconsistent in their reactions to the children.

You can watch a video of the Strange Situation Paradigm here.

A supplementary attachment type suggested by Main and Solomon (1986) has now been
included. Type D is characterized by insecure-disorganized attachment. A child with this
attachment type shows no particular reaction when the mother leaves or comes back. This
attachment type has been associated with childhood abuse and chronically depressed mothers.

Evaluation of the strange situation paradigm

The strange situation paradigm is popular and still widely used. The method is a highly
standardized procedure that allows for replications across time and culture. It is modeled on
common, everyday experiences where mothers leave their children for brief periods of time in
different settings. However, it could be argued that exposing children to stress in an
experimental setting is very different from what happens in everyday life.
However, some psychologists argue that the Strange Situation test is highly artificial and
extremely limited in terms of the amount of information that is gathered.

The cross-cultural validity of the Strange Situation has been challenged in that it focuses on the
measurement of attachment in terms of the infant’s reaction to the separation and subsequent
reunion with their mother. It does not take into account that the meaning of separation may differ
according to culture. Japanese children are rarely separated from their mothers, so the
separation during the Strange Situation may represent a highly unusual situation that means
something different for Japanese children and their mothers than for US children and their
mothers.

Additionally, in some cultures, interaction with strangers is much more common than in the US
or Japan. In the South Pacific, it is very common for a baby to be tended to by any member of
the community. Asking someone to hold your baby while you go into the post office would not
be seen as something out of the ordinary.

Van Ijzendoorn & Kroonenberg (1988) carried out a meta-analysis of 32 studies involving
eight countries and over two thousand infants. They found that there are differences between
cultures in the distribution of types A, B, and C. For example, the Japanese studies showed a
complete absence of type A but a high proportion of type C. There seems to be an overall
pattern of cross-cultural differences, so that type B is most common, type A is relatively more
common in Western European countries and type C is relatively more common in Israel and
Japan. The difference has been associated with differences in child-rearing. The results of these
studies indicate that if we want valid interpretations of the strange situation in a cross-cultural
setting, we need to have a better understanding of parenting practices in those cultures.

ATL: Thinking Critically

There are several cultural differences in the way that

people raise their children. One of them is the
concept is co-sleeping.

In the United States, even when a baby is still on the

way, the couple starts preparing the baby's room.
Usually, the child is moved to his or her own room
almost immediately upon arrival home. The parents
often use a baby monitor which will let them know if the baby needs anything. It seems from day
1, American parents are pushing their children toward a sense of independence.

On the other hand, in countries like Japan and Sweden co-sleeping is a common phenomenon,
where children sleep with their parents, sometimes as late as eight years old.

It is clear that these practices are a result of cultural norms, but psychologists have wondered
whether this has an effect on the child's level of independence.
Keller and Goldberg (2004) carried out a study of 83 mothers of preschool-aged children. Some
children were co-sleepers and others were solitary sleepers. The data was collected through
questionnaires filled out by the mothers of the children. The hypothesis that co-sleeping could
interfere with children's independence was partially supported: solitary sleepers fell asleep
alone, slept through the night, and weaned earlier than co-sleepers. However, early co-sleeping
children were more self-reliant (e.g. ability to dress oneself) and exhibited more social
independence (e.g. making friends by themselves).

Questions

1. How valid do you think that the findings of Keller and Goldberg's study are? Would you
promote co-sleeping with children in response to the findings of their research? Be able to justify
your response.

2. Are there other cultural factors that you think may influence the attachment of children? What
do you predict would be the effect of those factors?

The role of early attachment on behavior

Attachment theory assumes that internal working models continue throughout the lifespan.
Longitudinal research indicates that the models are relatively stable, although they can be
changed over the lifespan. Research shows that there may be some relationship between the
experience of attachment in childhood and adult love relationships, as predicted by Bowlby.

Research in psychology: Hazan and Shaver (1987)

Hazan & Shaver (1987) assumed that adult attachment

behavior is a reflection of the expectations and beliefs that
people have formed about themselves and their close
relationships, as a result of their experiences with early
attachment figures - that is, their internal working models.

The researchers reworked Ainsworth’s three attachment

styles to describe adult relationships. They then devised a
“love quiz,” which they put into a local newspaper, asking
readers to indicate which of the three patterns best described their feelings about romantic
relationships. The participants had to read the three statements shown and indicate which
paragraph best described their attitude to close relationships.

A self-selected sample of 620 people, aged 14–82 years, responded to the love quiz. The mean
age was 36 years. There were 205 males and 415 females. The researchers found that about
56 percent of respondents showed a secure attachment style, 25 percent showed an avoidant
pattern, and 19 percent showed an ambivalent pattern. The researchers also asked participants
to describe their parents’ parenting style, using a simple adjective checklist. People who were
securely attached said their parents had been readily available, attentive, and responsive.
People who were avoidant said their parents were unresponsive, rejecting, and inattentive.
People who were ambivalent said their parents were anxious, only sometimes responsive, and
generally out of step with their needs.

When asked to describe their feelings about romantic relationships, they found the following
trends.

● Secure lovers: Love relationships were discussed in terms of trust, happiness, and
friendship.
● Avoidant lovers: Characterized relationships with fear of intimacy, emotional highs and
lows, and jealousy.
● Ambivalent lovers: Characterized by obsession, emotional highs and lows, extreme
sexual attraction, and jealousy.

Although the researchers found some correlation between parenting style and adult attachment
patterns, they warned against drawing too many conclusions about the continuity between early
childhood experience and adult relationships. It would be overly deterministic to say that
insecurely attached children would end up in insecure adult relationship patterns.