D & L Lecture 1

Recognise-the child's ability to recognise different facial emotional expressions and to convey their own emotions

Understanding-when do children realise that certain situations elicit particular emotional responses?

Regulate-how do children become able to regulate their emotions and control their feelings?

By establishing whether different emotional facial expressions are universally understood

By observing whether newborn infants spontaneously produce recognisable facial expressions

That human understanding of how emotions are conveyed through facial expressions is universal

Pointed out that it could be possible that all cultures simply learn about facial expressions by copying others in specific emotional contexts

YES

Adults were just as good at reading the facial expressions of the children with the abnormalities as the children with no abnormalities

That they could distinguish between photographs of people smiling and frowning

That they could distinguish between expressions of happiness and surprise

They could discriminate between happy, sad and surprised expressions by a live model

They were imitating the facial expression they were watching

The infant looks to their caregiver for information on how they should act in a difficult or uncertain situation

A piece of apparatus used to study depth perception-a glass table with a checkerboard pattern immediately beneath the glass on one half (shallow side) and on the floor on the other half (deep side)

Infants only crossed over to the deep side if their mothers looked happy; if their mothers posed a fearful expression, they did not cross to the other side

18 months

The realisation that a person's feelings may not be clear-cut or match your own emotional response

That infants as young as 18 months can appreciate that another person might like something that they themselves dislike

That the view of the infant-mother attachment was a by-product of the infant associating the mother with providing for physiological needs, such as hunger

That it is an innate primary drive: instinctual behaviours such as crying, clinging and smiling, elicit a reciprocal attachment response from the caregiver

The strange situation procedure

The adult attachment interview

Proximity-seeking, contact-maintenance, resistance and avoidance

Psychopathology

That children use their early experiences with their caregivers to form internal working models which incorporate representations of themselves, their caregivers and their relationships with others. They use these internal working models as templates for interacting with others

Autonomous, dismissing, preoccupied and unresolved

YES

Unresolved

Bowlby's belief that infants need attachment to mother

That it does not have to be the mother and that babies can form multiple attachments

15%

That attachment depends on environmental conditions activating innate predispostion

That sensitivity is the ability to perceive and interpret children's attachment signals and respond to them quickly and appropriately-picking up on the infants' cues and being sensitive to them

Sensitive parenting-prompt responsiveness and warmth

Intrusive, excessively stimulating, controlling interactional styles-parents may not be less involved, but less in tune with the baby, perhaps taking over too much and not letting the child explore themselves-subsequently, the child avoids the parent

Unresponsive, under involved approach to caregiving-not responding to the childs cues, and the child clings on to the parent too much

A meta-analysis from De Wolff and Van Lizendoorn (1997) found only a weak effect size (.22) between mother's sensitivity and attachment

There was a small significant effect size between paternal sensitivity and attachment but not as large as the mother

Depressed people tend to be more self-involved

Face expressions are important and depressed people might not smile often

Type of speech is important-it might be quite slow and sad

Their past and present attachment experiences affect their degree of sensitivity and responsiveness

Semi-structured interview-measuring how they are feeling NOW, how do they view and talk about their experiences? are they genuine? are there any examples of experiences?

Secure-coherent, well-balanced account, clear value of close relationships

Insecure avoidant-deny any importance of attachment experiences, insisting they cannot recall childhood events and emotions

Insecure resistant-over involved issues relating to early attachment experiences

Disorganised-they have not been able to resolve feelings relating to death of loved one or to abuse that they may have suffered

The way a parent represents their own childhood attachment experiences is related to the type of relationship formed with their own child

The gap in explaining the transfer of the parents' state of mind about attachment and their sensitivity

Sensitivity

Treating the child as if they have an autonomous mind and treating them appropriately-giving narrative around the child's mental states

Secure attachment and Theory of Mind

The idea that children have different temperaments; easy, difficult, slow to warm up etc and that different temperaments predict different attachment styles

There are different measures of what temperament is. It may just be the way that the child is reacting in the strange situation

Low socio-economic status

Marital discord

No-but there is an effect between the quality of the care and the sensitivity of the mum to the attachment style

Japan