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Child Development Early Socialisation
The nature versus nurture debate is probably one of the oldest debates in psychology. Genetic inheritance (Nature) and environmental factors (Nurture) are the two central explanations of human development and behavior, these include personalities and traits. For example, some children act the same way as their parents, Could this be a similarity caused by genetics? or could it of been something learned from their parents and the environment they lived in early childhood?
There are ways to investigate the effects that nature and nurture have on development and behaviour, Examples of this can be found through twin studies, usually used to investigate nature, and adoption studies, generally used to investigate nurture.
In adoption studies, they look into the traits the adopted child shares with her parents and stepbrothers and sisters, and because there is no biological connection between them, any shared traits are proof of nurture. If there is information available about the biological parents, and then it is shown that the child shares more traits with the adoptive parents, then this backs up the evidence that these traits are due to nurture.
The Genain quadruplets (1930) are a great example of how nature can be investigated. All four identical (Monozygotic) sisters had schizophrenia, this shows that there is a schizophrenic gene. Their parents also suffered from mental illness, which also shows evidence of schizophrenia being due to nature. (Rowe. J 2016)
The relationship bond involving a child and their primary caregiver is known as attachment. Attachment, which is formed in the early years of child development, has an impact on a child, such as development, sense of self, and relationships with others in the future. The development of attachment is based on two main theories behaviouralist and evolutionary. Behavioral psychologists explain attachment in the form of classical conditioning. Evolutionary psychologists suggest attachment behavior is truly selected and passed on as a result of genetic inheritance.
John Bowlby (1969) proposed that babies gain attention from their mothers with pre-programmed behaviors such as crying, smiling, and being vocal as a way to guarantee survival. Bowlby viewed attachment as monotropic, believing that babies attach to one figure only, he considered this to be predominantly the mother. He believed the continuous presence of the mother was particularly important, suggesting that a child’s relations in later life would reflect the primary relationship with the mother and that through the internal working model, social interaction would be dependent on how an infant internalizes attachment formation. The ‘critical period’ for a child’s social interaction between the ages of 18-24 months. Bowlby suggests that there are four defining features of attachment:
Schaffer and Emerson (1964) believed the main caregiver is the person who responds to the infant’s needs the most, it might not always be the mother or the person who spends the most time with them. This is known as ‘sensitive responsiveness’. They found that the infant could form multiple attachments by the age of ten months.
In a longitudinal study of sixty babies from Glasgow that Schaffer and Emerson conducted over eighteen months, the interactions between them and their caregivers were analyzed. This study aimed to find the age at which attachments start and how intense these were. They measured the strength of attachment by observing the infant’s separation and stranger anxiety. They concluded that human attachments develop in three stages:
Asocial (0-6 weeks) This is short-lived. Attention-seeking behavior such as crying and smiling is not directed at anyone in particular, suggesting attachments could be made with anyone.
Indiscriminate attachment (6 weeks to 7 months) is Similar in that the child seeks attention from anyone and is happy to receive attention from anyone. Preferences are shown to familiar faces that elicit a greater response from the infant.
Specific attachments (7 to 11 months) The Child is primarily attached to the main caregiver. If they are separated the child becomes distressed and the child is wary of strangers. (See later notes on the Strange situation).
Ainsworth (1969), a student of John Bowlby, created a new procedure for studying attachment types in infants this procedure was known as the strange situation classification. Babies and young children haven’t developed the skills to express feelings in words, the strange situation is a method that measures the security of an attachment in one to two-year-old infants. This is a participatory observation, that lasts approximately 20 minutes, where a researcher observes the behavioral responses of an infant to a sequence of situations.
There were eight stages, each stage lasted approximately 3 minutes.
- Mother and the baby
- Mother, the baby and stranger
- Stranger and the baby
- Mother returns
- Stranger leaves
- Mother leaves, leaving the baby alone
- Stranger returns
- Mother returns, and the stranger leaves
The infant was scored on these four measures when it was just mum and baby in the room.
- Proximity and contact seeking
- Contact maintaining
- Avoidance of proximity and contact
- Resistance to Contact and comforting
While the infant explored the environment her exploratory behaviors were also recorded.
There are three attachment types, Ainsworth reported that all infants displayed one.
- Secure attachment – infant shows distress when the mother leaves the room,70% of children fall into this category, happy when the mother returns, they avoid the stranger when they learn but friendly when the mother is also there.
- Ambivalent attachment – Ambivalent attachment to the mother 15% of children fall into this category, display intense distress when the mother leaves, are significantly scared of the stranger, and reject contact with the stranger even in the mother is present.
- Avoidant attachment – Show no interest when the mother leaves the room, 15% of children fall into this category, play happily with a stranger and the child doesn’t seem to notice the mother return to the room.
Albert Bandura (1961) investigated if social behaviors, in this case, aggression, could be acquired by observation and imitation, he did this through a controlled experiment on 72 children aged 37- 69 months.
Bandura conducted this experiment to demonstrate that learning can occur from observation of a model, and that imitation would occur when the model had left the room. Also to show that boys would be more aggressive than girls, that the children who observed the non-aggressive model would be less likely to act aggressively, and that children would be more likely to imitate models of the same sex rather than models of the opposite sex.
In this experiment, the adult model repeated acts of physical and verbal aggression three times over toward the Bobo doll. This included repeatedly punching it, hitting it with a mallet, and kicking it.
The results of the experiment supported three of the four aims. The children who observed the violent model were likely to imitate the same behavior they had seen when the model left the room, the boys took part in more than twice as much physical aggression than girls, and both the boys and girls in the non-aggressive group showed less aggression than the control group, however, the boys who had seen the model of the opposite sex behave non-aggressively were more likely than those in the control group to show violence. Boys who saw adult males behaving violently were more influenced than those who saw female models behaving violently. The experiments found that in the same sex aggression groups, boys were more likely to imitate physical acts of violence while girls or more likely to imitate verbal aggression.
The Bobo doll experiment showed that children can learn social behaviors, such as aggression, through the process of observation learning, and through watching the behavior of another person.
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