PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT (Psychological and Social Development)

- Involves an infant’s or a child’s development in terms of personality, relationships, and sexual

orientation (male or female)
- These processes begin in infancy and further develops during adulthood

Why are some children negative and whiny while others are sweet and good natured?

TEMPERAMENT
 Behavioral and emotional characteristics that are fairly established at birth and lasts
until adulthood
 Strongly influenced by heredity
1. Easy
 Regular in schedules of waking, sleeping, and eating, and are adaptable to
change
 Happy and easily soothed when distressed
2. Difficult
 Irregular in their schedules
 Unhappy about change of any kind
 Loud, active, and tends to be grumpy
3. Slow to warm up
 Less grumpy, quieter, and more regular than difficult
 Slow to adapt to change

ATTATCHMENT

 Emotional bond that forms between the infant and a primary caregiver
 Is usually formed within the first 6 months of the infant’s life and takes effect in the
second 6 months in terms of separation anxiety and stranger anxiety
 Based on an experiment titled “Strange Situation”, four attachment styles were
identified:
1. Secure
 Willing to get down from their mother’s lap soon after entering the room with
their mothers
 Happy, looked back at their mothers and returned to them from time to time
 When strangers come, they feel wary but calm as long as their mother was
nearby
 Upset when their mother left but easily soothed when she returned
 Their mothers were loving, warm, and sensitive and attentive to their infant’s
needs
2. Avoidant
 Loved to explore
 Did not really pay much attention to their mother or to the stranger
 Their mothers were unresponsive, insensitive, and coldly rejecting.
3. Ambivalent
 Ambivalent means “to have mixed feelings about something”
 Constantly clinging onto their mothers and unwilling to explore
 Very upset about the stranger regardless of their mother’s presence
 Protested when their mother left and were hard to soothe, but pushed the
mother away in her return
 Their mothers tried to be responsive, but were inconsistent and insensitive to
the baby’s actions.
4. Disorganized-disoriented
 Unable to decide how they should react to their mother’s return
 Would approach their mother, but avoid making eye contact
 Fearful and showed a dazed and depressed look on their faces
 Their mothers were abusive and neglectful towards the infants.

Influences on Attachment

a. Provision of Food
b. Contact Comfort – “Contact comfort was an important basic affectional or
love variable” (Harlow, 1958, p.574)