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Chapter 6

Psychosocial Development during the First Three Years

Experience Human Development

FOURTEENTH EDITION
Diane E. PAPALIA
Gabriela MARTORELL

© 2021 McGraw Hill. All rights reserved. Authorized only for instructor use in the classroom.
No reproduction or further distribution permitted without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill.
 Learning Objectives

Discuss the development of emotions and personality in

infancy.

Describe infants’ social relationships with caregivers,

including attachment.

Discuss the emerging sense of self, autonomy, and moral

development in toddlerhood.

Explain how social contexts influence early development.

Explain child maltreatment and its effects.

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 Foundations of Personality Development

Personality: the relatively consistent blend of emotions,

temperament, thought, and behavior that makes a person
unique.

From infancy on, personality development is intertwined with

social relationships—a combination called psychosocial
development.

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 Emotions

Emotions: subjective responses to experience that are associated with

physiological and behavioral changes.
• Sadness, joy, fear.

People differ in:

• How often and how strongly they feel a particular emotion;
• The kinds of events that produce it;
• The physical manifestations they show; and
• How they act as a result.

Culture also influences the display of emotion.

• Some cultures that stress social harmony discourage open expressions
of anger.
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 First Signs of Emotion: Crying

Newborns plainly show when they are unhappy; and human

brains are wired to respond.
Crying is the earliest and most powerful way infants can
communicate their needs.
• Basic hunger cry.
• Angry cry.
• Pain cry.
• Frustration cry.
By 5 months, babies have learned to monitor their caregivers’
expressions and if ignored, to cry harder.

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 First Signs of Emotion: Smiling and Laughing

Involuntary smiles occur spontaneously soon after birth.

Social smiling: beginning in the 2nd month, newborn infants
gaze at their parents and smile at them, signaling positive
participation in the relationship.
• Laughter is a smile-linked vocalization.
By 12 to 15 months, infants intentionally communicate to
others about objects by smiling.
• Anticipatory smiling: infant smiles at an object and then
gazes at an adult while still smiling.
Positive affective processes are reciprocal.

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 First Signs of Emotion: When Do Emotions Appear?

Complex emotions unfold from simpler ones.

Self-conscious emotions arise only after children have
developed self-awareness.
• Self-conscious emotions: emotions, such as
embarrassment, empathy, and envy, that depend on self-
awareness.
• Self-awareness: realization that one’s existence and
functioning is separate from those of other people and
things.
By about age 3, children are better able to evaluate
themselves against what is socially appropriate and can
demonstrate the self-evaluative emotions of pride, guilt, and
shame.
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 First Signs of Emotions: Altruistic Helping and Empathy

Altruistic behavior: activity intended to help another person

with no expectation of reward.
Altruistic behavior comes naturally to infants.
• The tendency to share, to help, and to comfort seem to be
unrelated to each other; presumably they have different
developmental trajectories.
• Such behavior may collectively reflect empathy: the ability
to put oneself in another person’s place and feel what the
other person feels.
• Mirror neurons: neurons that fire when a person does
something or observes someone else doing the same
thing.
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 Collaborative Activities and Cultural Transmission

The motivation to help and share plus the ability to understand

others’ intentions together contribute to collaboration with
caregivers in joint activities.
• This develops between 9 and 12 months of age and
increases during the 2nd year of life with improved
communication.
Collaborative activities are quintessentially human.
• For example, young children engage in over-imitation,
closely copying all actions they see an adult doing even if
some are clearly irrelevant or impractical.

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 Temperament

Temperament: characteristic disposition or style of

approaching and reacting to situations.
• It is early-appearing and biologically based and results in
predictable ways of responding.
Temperament is closely linked to emotional responses to the
environment, and many responses are emotional in nature.
• Temperament is relatively consistent and enduring,
however.
Individual differences in temperament form the core of the
developing personality.

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 Studying Temperamental Patterns: The New York
Longitudinal Study

Researchers followed 133 infants into adulthood and placed

most into one of three categories:
• “Easy” children: children (about 40% in the study) with a
generally happy temperament, regular biological rhythms,
and a readiness to accept new experiences.
• “Difficult” children: children (about 10%) with irritable
temperament, irregular biological rhythms, and intense
emotional responses.
• “Slow-to-warm-up” children: children (about 15%)
whose temperament is generally mild but who are hesitant
about accepting new experiences.
• Some children do not fit neatly into any one category.
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 Stability of Temperament

Stability of temperament from 2 to 13 months of age is quite

high.
A variety of studies have found links between infant
temperament and later personality and stability in certain
traits, from toddlerhood to early childhood and later.
Culturally influenced practices may influence temperament.
• Proposed influences include the cultural dimensions of
collectivism and individualism, as well as those of power
distance, long-term orientation, masculinity, and
uncertainty avoidance.

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 Temperament and Goodness of Fit

The key to healthy adjustment may be goodness of fit—

the match between a child’s temperament and the
environmental demands and constraints the child must deal
with.

Children also differ in their susceptibility to environmental

influences.

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 Temperament: Behavioral Inhibition

In longitudinal research, Kagan and colleagues studied

behavioral inhibition—how boldly or cautiously a child
approaches unfamiliar objects and situation.
• An underlying difference in physiology—in the excitability
of the amygdala—is theorized to be involved.

Experience can moderate or accentuate early tendencies;

and children may themselves develop buffering strategies.

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 Early Social Experiences: The Family 1

The mother’s role:

• In a series of pioneering experiments, Harlow and
colleagues studied rhesus monkeys separated from their
mothers shortly after birth.
• Two kinds of surrogate “mothers” were presented—one
that was warm and cuddly and one that was wire mesh.
• The experiments showed that mothering includes the
comfort of close bodily contact.
• Human infants need a mother who responds warmly and
promptly.

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 Early Social Experiences: The Family 2

The father’s role:

• The fathering role is in many ways a social construction,
with different meanings in different cultures.
• In the United States, fathers’ involvement in caregiving has
greatly increased.
• A father’s frequent and positive involvement with his child,
from infancy on, is directly related to the child’s well-being
and physical, cognitive, and social development.

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 Gender

Gender: significance of being male or female.

Measurable differences between baby girls and baby boys

are few, at least in U.S. samples.

There is some evidence for differences in social behavior, but

the differences are relatively small.

Behavioral differences are more robust and consistently

identified, including in preferences for toys, play activities,
and the sex of playmates.
• Some of these appear to be innate, while others result
from gender socialization processes.

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 Parental Influences on Gender Differences

Generally, parents use broadly similar parenting styles with

their boys and girls.
However, parents in the United States do tend to stereotype
baby boys and girls.
Parents often unconsciously impart their knowledge of
gendered behaviors through parenting practices.
• Children also watch their parents’ behaviors carefully.

Fathers, especially, promote gender-typing: the

socialization process by which children, at an early age, learn
appropriate gender roles.

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 Developmental Issues: Developing Trust

In Erikson’s stage-based theory of psychosocial

development, babies are faced with the challenge of forming
a basic sense of trust versus mistrust.
• If successful, they develop a sense of the reliability of
people and objects.
• The stage continues until about 18 months.

• Ideally babies develop a balance between trust and

mistrust.

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 Developmental Issues: Developing Attachments 1

Attachment: a reciprocal and enduring tie between two

people—especially between infant and caregiver—each of
whom contributes to the quality of the relationship.

Strange Situation: a classic, laboratory-based technique

used to study infant attachment.
• Episodes are designed to trigger the emergence of
attachment-related behaviors.

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 Developmental Issues: Developing Attachments 2

Ainsworth and colleagues observed 1-year-olds in the

Strange Situation and at home and found three main patterns
of attachment:
• Secure attachment: infant is quickly and effectively able to
obtain comfort from an attachment figure in the face of
distress.
• Avoidant attachment: infant rarely cries when separated
from the primary caregiver and avoids contact on his or her
return.
• Ambivalent (resistant) attachment: infant becomes
anxious before the caregiver leaves, upset during his or her
absence, and both seeks and resists contact on his or her
return.
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 Developmental Issues: Developing Attachments 3

Other research identified a fourth pattern:

• Disorganized-disoriented attachment: after separation
from the primary caregiver, the infant shows contradictory,
repetitious, or misdirected behaviors on the caregiver’s
return.
• The likelihood of disorganized attachment increases in the
presence of multiple risk factors.

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 Developmental Issues: Developing Attachments 4

By the time babies are 1 year old, they have established a

characteristic style of attachment.
• Bowlby: attachment styles are the result of repeated
interactions with a caregiver.
• Secure attachment reflects Erikson’s concept of basic
trust; insecure attachment, mistrust.
Studies of attachment with methods other than the Strange
Situation suggest that:
• The tendency to use the mother as a secure base for
exploring the environment is universal; and
• Attachment may have a neurological basis.

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 Developmental Issues: Developing Attachments 5

Attachment is a relational process.

• Child temperament and parenting interact.
Substitute caregivers can prompt anxiety in children.
• Separation anxiety: distress shown by someone, typically
an infant, when a familiar caregiver leaves.
• Stranger anxiety: wariness of strange people and places,
shown by some infants during the second half of the 1st
year.
• The quality and stability of substitute care is important.

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 Developmental Issues: Developing Attachments 6

Attachment quality has long-term implications.

• Securely attached children have larger vocabularies, show
less stress in adapting to child care, and have more
positive interactions with peers.
• They also have higher levels of curiosity and self-
confidence.
• Secure attachment in infancy influences the quality of
attachment to a romantic partner in young adulthood.
The way adults recall early experience may influence the way
they respond to their own children.
• However, a cycle of insecure attachment can be broken
with intervention.
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 Emotional Communication with Caregivers: Mutual
Regulation

Mutual regulation: process by which infant and caregiver

communicate emotional states to each other and respond
appropriately.
• Infants take an active part by sending behavioral signals.
• Some interactional synchrony may be expressed at a
biological level, as evidenced by heart rates.
Not surprisingly, there are links to later social behaviors.
• Children whose mothers were high in interactional
synchrony when young are more likely to later be better at
regulating their behavior.

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 Social Referencing

Social referencing: understanding an ambiguous situation

by seeking another person’s perception of it.
• One person forms an understanding of how to act in an
unfamiliar situation by interpreting another person’s
perception of it.

Research has provided experimental evidence of social

referencing at 12 months.

As children age, they become less dependent on facial

expression and more dependent on language; and they
become pickier about whom to seek information from.

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 Developmental Issues: The Emerging Sense of Self

Self-concept: sense of self; descriptive and evaluative

mental picture of one’s abilities and traits.

Between 4 and 10 months, infants develop a sense of

personal agency and self-coherence.

Their early perceptual discrimination—as when they pay

attention to their mirror image—may be the foundation of
conceptual self-awareness between 15 and 18 months.

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 Developmental Issues: Development of Autonomy

Autonomy versus shame and doubt: Erikson’s second stage

in psychosocial development, in which children achieve a
balance between self-determination and control by others.
• In Erikson’s theory, occurs from about 18 months to 3 years.
• The virtue that emerges is will.
In the United States, toddlers often enjoy testing the notions
that they are individuals, have some control over their world,
and have new, exciting powers.
• This often shows itself as negativism—“No!”
• The terrible twos are not universal.

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 Moral Development: Socialization and Internalization 1

Socialization: development of habits, skills, values, and

motives shared by responsible, productive members of a
society.

Internalization: during socialization, the process by which

children accept societal standards of conduct as their own.

Self-regulation: a child’s independent control of behavior to

conform to understood social expectations.

Conscience: internal standards of behavior, which produce

emotional discomfort when violated.

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 Moral Development: Socialization and Internalization 2

Kochanska and colleagues:

• Some children show situational compliance, obedience in
response to a parent’s orders only in the presence of signs
of ongoing parental control.
• Other children seem to internalize their parents’ requests
more fully—they show committed compliance, a
wholehearted obedience without reminders or lapses.
• Receptive cooperation: Kochanska’s term for eager
willingness to cooperate harmoniously with a parent in daily
interactions, including routines, chores, hygiene, and play.

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 Moral Development: Socialization and Internalization 3

Factors in the success of socialization:

• How parents go about the job of socializing a child and the
quality of the parent–child relationship;
• The child’s temperament; and

• Security of attachment.

Constructive conflict over misbehavior—with negotiation,

reasoning, and resolution—can help children develop moral
understanding.

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 Relationships with Other Children: Siblings

Sibling relationships begin with the birth of a new baby and

continue to develop positively and negatively.

Although conflict is frequent, sibling rivalry is not the main

pattern of behavior.
• Affection, interest, companionship, and influence are also
prevalent.

Lessons and skills learned from interactions with siblings

carry over to relationships outside the home.
• Likewise, friendships can influence sibling relationships.

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 Relationships with Other Children: Peers

Infants and toddlers show interest in people outside the

home, particularly people their own size.

Toddlers learn by imitating one another.

Preschoolers usually like to play with children of the same

age, sex, and gender.
• They also prefer prosocial playmates who are advanced in
theory of mind.

Some children are more sociable than others.

• Sociability is influenced by both temperament and
experience.

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 Children of Working Parents: Effects of Maternal
Employment

Longitudinal data on 900 European American children showed

negative effects on cognitive development at 15 months to 3
years when mothers worked 30 or more hours a week by the
child’s 9th month.
• Maternal sensitivity, a high-quality home environment, and
high-quality child care lessened these negative effects.

Children in disadvantaged families showed fewer negative

cognitive effects than children in more advanced families.

One factor is the type of substitute care a child receives.

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 Children of Working Parents: Early Child Care 1

About 61% of children under age 5 have some sort of regular

child care arrangement.
• About one-quarter are cared for in some form of organized
care facility.

Temperament and gender make a difference.

• Shy children and insecurely attached children experience
greater stress.
• Boys are more vulnerable to stress.

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 Children of Working Parents: Early Child Care 2

Quality of care can be measured by structural characteristics

and process characteristics.
• Staff training.
• Ratio of children to caregivers.
• Warmth, sensitivity, and responsiveness of caregivers.
• Developmental appropriateness of activities.
The most important element is the caregiver.
• Consistency—low staff turnover—is also important.

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 Maltreatment: Abuse and Neglect

Physical abuse: action taken deliberately to endanger

another person, involving potential bodily injury.

Neglect: failure to meet a dependent’s basic needs.

Sexual abuse: physically or psychologically harmful sexual

activity or any sexual activity involving a child and an older
person.

Emotional maltreatment: rejection, terrorization, isolation,

exploitation, degradation, ridicule, or failure to provide
emotional support, love, and affection.

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 Maltreatment in Infancy and Toddlerhood

The highest rates of victimization and of death from

maltreatment are seen in children aged 3 and younger.

Babies who do not receive nurturance and affection or who

are neglected sometimes suffer from nonorganic failure to
thrive—a slowed or arrested physical growth, accompanied
by poor developmental and emotional functioning.
• Poverty is the single greatest risk factor.

Shaken baby syndrome: form of maltreatment in which

shaking an infant or toddler can cause brain damage,
paralysis, or death.

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 Contributing Factors: An Ecological View 1

Abusive and neglectful parents and families:

• In 2017, about 78% of perpetrators were parents; slightly
over half were women.
• Maltreatment by parents is a symptom of extreme
disturbance in child rearing.
• Abuse may begin when a parent who is already in distress
tries to control a child but loses self-control.
• Abuse and neglect sometimes occur in the same families;
and substance abuse is a factor in approximately a quarter
of such cases.
• Sexual abuse often occurs along with other family
disturbances.
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 Contributing Factors: An Ecological View 2

Cultural influences:
• Norms regarding child care impact the definition of neglect.
• Cultural values associated with higher rates of child
maltreatment include:
• Glorification of violence;
• Rigid gender roles; and
• Beliefs that diminish the status of the child within the parenting
relationship.

• Attitudes regarding corporal punishment are particularly

important.

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 Helping Families in Trouble

State and local child protective services investigate reports of

maltreatment and determine what steps, if any, to take.

Availability of services is often limited.

Foster care removes a child from immediate danger, but the

situation is often unstable, it further alienates the child, the
care may be inadequate, and it may wind up being another
abusive situation.

Individuals who experienced foster care are more likely to

become homeless, to commit crimes, to become teenage
mothers, and to suffer mental or physical health problems.

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 Long-Term Effects of Maltreatment

Consequences may be physical, emotional, cognitive, social,

or a combination.

Some abused children show remarkable resilience, however.

• Optimism, self-esteem, intelligence, creativity, humor, and
independence are protective factors.
• Another key factor may be the social support of a caring
adult.

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 Research in Action: Postpartum Depression and Early
Development

Postpartum depression (PPD) includes symptoms of major

depressive disorder, experienced within 4 weeks of giving
birth, that interfere with maternal functioning.
• First time mothers may be especially at risk.

PPD has profoundly negative effects on mother-infant

interactions and is linked to long-term disruption in cognitive
and emotional outcomes.

Early intervention is essential.

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 Window on the World: Are Struggles with Toddlers
Necessary?

The terrible twos do not appear to be universal.

In a cross-cultural study comparing Mayan families to
American families, researchers found striking differences in
the way siblings interacted.
Two factors appear to explain the differences:
• The age parents felt children can be held responsible; and
• The amount of direct parental supervision children
received.
The researchers suggest the terrible twos may be a phase
specific to societies that place individual freedom above the
needs of the group.
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 Questions?

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