Two to Five Months

1
Two to FiveMonths

• Fogel
• Chapter 6

Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.
2
Overview Chapter 6

• Physical and Motor Development
• Perceptual Development
• Cognitive Development
• Emotional Development
• Family and Society

Experiential Exercises Co-regulating with Baby
3
Introduction

• Around 6-8 weeks first major developmental
  transition
• motor movements more purposeful and deliberate
• perception more acute
• waking time and attention span increase rapidly
• able to establish and maintain eye contact,
  demanding crying wanes, and social smile emerges
• These changes lead to longer adult-infant
  interactions the beginnings of social play

4
Physical Development

• At birth, most infants are 19 to 21 inches in
  length weigh between 7 and 8 pounds
• boys are slightly longer heavier than girls
• By 6 months, height increases by a factor of 1.5,
  while weight increases by a factor of 2
• Individual differences become larger with age
• as infants get older, their height becomes a
  better predictor of their adult height

5
Physical Development

• Growth is asynchronous different parts of the
  body grow at different rates, and growth spurts
  occur at different times in each body region

6
Physical Development

• By 3 months,
• infants can sleep for longer periods before
  waking up and are more likely to sleep through
  the night
• about half of their sleep time is in REM sleep.
  this percentage decreases gradually (in adults,
  only 20 of sleep is REM sleep)

7
Motor Development

• Changes along with physical development

• Areas
• control over posture
• locomotion
• movements of the hands arms

• Video Examples on YouTube
• unsuccessful eye-hand coordination
  www.youtube.com/watch?vCDH1ZWqQNlU
• successful reach grasp http//www.youtube.com/
  watch?vpZRIXMPBiMA
• successful hand-hand transfer
  http//www.youtube.com/watch?vcs5n8GekMC4

8
Motor Development
9
Motor Development

• A babys ability to perform a motor skill depends
  on two factors
• the difficulty of the task
• supports resources
  in the
  environment

Picture from http//babyparenting.about.com/od/ph
otogallery/ig/Baby-and-Toddler-Photo-Gallery/Zoe-C
osette--4-months.htm
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Motor Development

• The difficulty of the task
• easier tasks are mastered first
• objects with graspable appendages vs. balls
  cubes
• small vs. large objects
• between 2 and 6 months, hand arm movements

• become more adapted to the size shape of an
  object
• become more coordinated with eye gaze
• are related to emotional state more likely to
  point when alert attentive

11
Motor Development

• Supports resources in the environment
• during social play with objects, adults help
  infants to practice budding motor skills
• adults hold infants in postures that are most
  conducive to the execution of motor skills
• upright babies attend more to the environment,
  while supine babies are more likely to look at
  their mothers
• infants in upright supine positions are more
  likely to reach for objects within their reach

12
Motor Development Cultural differences

• In Mali, mothers put babies through workout
• training in sitting standing, muscle
  stretching, suspending babies by their arms and
  legs
• many African babies have advanced motor
  coordination compared to Caucasian babies
• Navaho infants spend many hours strapped tightly
  onto cradle boards
• motor development is slower than that of other
  groups

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Motor Development

• In summary
• motor and physical development in the first half
  year is the result of a systems interaction
  between infants, adults, and the environment.
• the ability to perform a
  coordinated task is based
  on three systemic
  factors

14
Perceptual Development

• There is a major shift in perceptual development
  between 2 and 5 months
• infants begin to recognize
  prefer meaningful
  patterned
  stimuli

15
Perceptual Development Visual Pattern Perception

• The ability to perceive whole patterns increases
  dramatically around 3 months
• infants dishabituate when a totally novel figure
  is introduced but not when a different view of
  the familiar figure is shown
• they scan figures drawn with dashed or dotted
  lines as if they were drawn with a solid line

16
Perceptual Development Visual Pattern
Perception Faces

• By 3 months, infants can
  differentiate familiar from
  unfamiliar faces prefer faces over
  nonface stimuli

• They prefer faces from their own ethnic-racial
  group over faces from a different group
  attractive faces over less attractive ones
• They can recognize a smile

17
Perceptual Development Visual Perception of
Moving Objects

• Young infants look longer at moving faces and
  patterns than at static ones
• By 3-4 months, infants perceive moving objects as
  whole units
• By using movement cues, 4-month-old infants are
  aware that objects are solid and that they take
  up their own space

18
Perceptual Development Visual Perception of
Moving Objects

• Infants also detect complex patterns of motion
• 3- to 5-month-olds prefer to look at normal
  walkers or runners over inverted or biologically
  impossible ones

19
Perceptual Development

• the infant is able to perceive meaningful wholes
  because human infants are predisposed to finding
  the similarities and differences between things
• (p. 276)

20
Perceptual DevelopmentAuditory Perception

• Infants recognize and prefer their mothers
  voices at birth
• By 4 months, they prefer speech to nonspeech
  sounds
• Infants seem able to detect different emotions
  expressed in the voice earlier than they can see
  differences between facial expressions
• in one study, 5-month-olds listened longer to
  positive than to negative vocalizations smiled
  more to approving voices, while they frowned more
  to voices expressing disapproval

21
Perceptual DevelopmentAuditory Perception

• Infants at 4 months like music
• they look more toward consonant than dissonant
  music
• they show more attention to maternal singing than
  to motherese
• they can remember songs for at least a week
  without hearing them in between
• they prefer being sung lullabies over recorded
  music
• they attend more to their own bodies during
  lullabies and to the singer during play songs

22
Perceptual DevelopmentCross-modal Perception

• The ability to integrate information coming from
  at least two sensory modalities
• by 3 months, infants can localize sounds better
  if they have visual cues, compared to a sound
  heard in the dark or made from behind a screen
• after about 4 months, infants expect sights and
  sounds to go together they perceive objects
  as coherent wholes

23
Cognitive Development

• Cognition the processing of perceived
  information
• includes learning, memory, and the ability to
  mentally compare different situations
  (similarities differences)

Between 2-5 months, important developments take
place in perceiving, habituating, learning, and
remembering
24
Cognitive DevelopmentHabituation

• Between 2-5 months, infants improve in speed of
  information processing
• related to brain development ability to focus
  on familiar tasks
• by 3 months, infants usually habituate within 1½
  to 2 minutes by 6 months, this drops to 30
  seconds
• Speed of habituation is an early index of
  cognitive differences
• it is a fairly good predictor over a period of 4
  or 5 months (but not over longer terms)

25
Cognitive DevelopmentHabituation Individual
Differences

• Infants who habituate fast at 3 months are more
  likely to habituate fast at 6 months
• faster habituators tend to have parents who
  stimulate their ability to focus visual attention
  are more efficient in their information
  processing
• slow habituators are more likely to have
  perinatal risk factors, illness, malnutrition,
  and poor state control

26
Cognitive DevelopmentMemory

• From birth, infants have short-term memories
  lasting several hours or days
• Long-term memory by 3 months, infants can
  remember situations for up to 2 weeks
• this has been tested in the mobile experiment, by
  Dr. Rovee-Collier and her colleagues

Picture from http//www.psichi.org/images/site_pa
ges/rovee_fig1a.jpg
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Cognitive DevelopmentMemory

• Mobile experiment
• Babies were placed in cribs with brightly colored
  mobiles overhead trained for 15-20 minutes of
  training
• Experimenters decided that they would move the
  mobile if the baby kicked with either the right
  or the left foot
• The mobile was moved more the harder the infant
  kicked
• Infants who were tested less than 2 weeks after
  training managed to repeat the same leg movements
• After a delay of more than 2 weeks, infants
  behaved as if they had never seen the mobile

28
Cognitive DevelopmentLong-Term Memory

• Studies suggest that infants can remember for an
  indefinite period, so long as they continue to
  receive non verbal reminders of the early
  situation
• In one study, infants were given a reminder 24
  hours before 2 weeks had elapsed since their
  original training
• this was effective in helping the infants
  remember the earlier procedure as much as 4 weeks
  after training
• However, when retested in different situations,
  infants are less likely to remember the event
• incl. different cribs same cribs with different
  colored bumpers different mobiles different
  odors or music in the room

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Cognitive DevelopmentLong-Term Memory

• Lack of stability in the environment may have
  negative consequences for cognitive development
• In a mobile-kicking study, the experimenters
  changed the mobile during the training phase
• Infants who did not cry when the mobile was
  changed could easily reactivate the kicking, but
  infants who cried could not

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Cognitive DevelopmentLong-Term Memory

• These findings
• suggest that infants remember whole situations,
  including the emotions, and the specific sights,
  sounds, and smells of the surrounding environment
• suggest that infants have a sense of self-history
  the experience that the past can be connected
  to the present by means of recreating ones own
  actions in similar situations
• call for a reevaluation of the common observation
  that people do not remember their experiences as
  infants, a phenomenon known as infantile amnesia

31
Cognitive DevelopmentLong-Term Memory

• Can we remember experiences from infancy?
• One would have to be in almost exactly the same
  situation and the same emotional state as during
  the original experience
• Since this is unlikely, adults and older children
  are unlikely to be able to retrieve early
  memories for specific events
• People may have memories of early infancy, but
  because it is difficult to replicate the exact
  context, they may be unable to locate the
  memories in a specific time and place

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Cognitive DevelopmentLong-Term Memory

• Can we remember experiences from infancy?
• Reaching in the dark (Clifton et al.)
• 2½-year-olds who had the experience of reaching
  for objects in the dark when they were 6 months
  of age were better at this task than children who
  did not have this experience, even though it is
  unlikely that these children remembered the
  actual experience of doing this when they were 6
  months old
• Still Face (Bornstein et al.)
• 2½-year-olds who had experienced a still-face
  experiment at 5 months looked less at a photo of
  the person who had done the still-face compared
  to two other photos, while other 2½-year-olds
  showed no preference between these faces

33
Cognitive DevelopmentLong-Term Memory

• Can we remember experiences from infancy?
• These studies support the idea of participatory
  memories (see Ch. 2) of early infancy, reported
  by people during somatic awareness and
  psychotherapeutic encounters
• It may be possible to experience a feeling, an
  odor, a body posture, or a pattern of movement
  without remembering a specific time or place when
  it first occurred

Picture from www.globalsomatics.com/about/faculty
-bios.htm
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Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

• Piaget viewed infant actions as adaptations to
  the environment that involve the whole infant
• Sensorimotor Stage I (newborn period)
• the majority of the infants actions are in the
  form of reflexes to adapt to the environment
• Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)
• infants begin to act more purposefully
  they are able
  to recognize the
  connections between their own
  behavior
  events in the environment

Picture from http//streebgreebling.blogspot.com/
2006_11_01_archive.html
35
Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

• Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)
  primary circular reactions
• repetitive movements in which the infant focuses
  on his or her own actions

• by 2 to 3 months, the baby can recognize simple
  connections between behavior its effect, and
  will repeat the same behavior many times, often
  with great delight
• infants at this stage do not appear to be
  interested in the object for its own sake

Picture from babyparenting.about.com/od/photogall
ery/ig/Baby-and-Toddler-Photo-Gallery/Zoe-Cosette-
-3-months.htm
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Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

• According to Piaget, the meaning of a particular
  object or person to the infant is the action and
  experience the child brings to it.
• (p. 282)

For example, a rattle means graspable, seeable,
suckable
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Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

• Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)
• infants actions are not intended to explore the
  object, but to experience the effects of their
  own behavior
• this suggests that infants are developing a sense
  of self-agency, the feeling that they are a
  causal agent that can successfully affect ones
  own body environment
• Later in this stage, infants begin to combine
  different primary circular reaction schemes into
  more unified behavior patterns
• for example, visually guided reaching at about 4
  months

38
Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

• Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)
• Babies in Stage II have the ability for
  cross-modal perception their memories are
  integrated wholes of sights, sounds, smells, and
  movements

• This suggests that infants have a sense of
  self-coherence the feeling that they and the
  objects around them are integrated whole that
  have distinct boundaries

39
Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

• Sensorimotor Stage II (about 1 to 5 months)
• One aspect of self-agency and self-coherence at
  this age is the experience of contingency (see
  Ch. 5)
• In one study (Watson, 1973), the movements of a
  mobile were linked to an infants head presses on
  an automatic pillow
• if infants discovered that the mobile would move
  with their head presses, they usually smiled and
  cooed
• if the pillow inconsistently rewarded head
  presses, infants became frustrated and distressed

40
Cognitive Development Piagetian Perspectives

• In sum,
• In early infancy, exploration, cognition, and
  motor behavior are all part of the same
  underlying developmental process
• Primary circular reactions create powerful
  motivations for babies to become engaged in the
  environment
• especially when adults create highly ritualized
  and repetitive situations as in feeding, playing,
  bathing, and diapering
• Babies of this age do not enjoy deviations from
  the routines, which makes it difficult for them
  to adapt quickly to new caregivers

41
Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• Three related topics
• emotion expression
• emotion experience the inner world of feelings
• emotion regulation self-control over emotions

Picture from babyparenting.about.com/od/photogall
ery/ig/Baby-and-Toddler-Photo-Gallery/Anya--3-and-
a-half-months.htm
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Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• Distress, anger wariness
• One-month-olds functional expressions are
  primarily related to the emotion of distress
  crying, generally with eyes closed
• By 4 months
• infants can still show distress
• they also cry with open eyes, looking at their
  parent, an expression
  that has been interpreted as anger
• See Video Example at http//www.youtube.com/watch
  ?vnmgceSSnhTE
• they also show wary or hesitant expressions by
  turning or looking away from unpleasant or
  confusing situations

Picture from video.yahoo.com/watch/1171950/419442
8
43
Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• Attention enjoyment
• One-month-olds show a range of expressions
  between alertness and drowsiness they have
  difficulty switching attention
• Around 2 months, infants become more complex
  animated and better coordinated with events in
  the environment
• Infants learn cognitive tasks more slowly when
  smiling, which shows that smiling corresponds to
  a non-analytical emotional experience

44
Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• After 2 months, babies also develop new
  expressions of attention and enjoyment
• look for longer periods can more easily shift
  gaze from one thing to another (related to brain
  development)
• more complex expressions of attention
• suggests that the infant is also
  developing
  different attention-related
  emotional experiences such as
  
  concentration, excitement, and
  astonishment

45
Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• Attention enjoyment
• Smiling during face-to-face interaction develops
  between 2-5 months
• By 3 months, infants show multiple types of
  smiles that communicate different positive
  emotional experiences

non-Duchenne smile
Duchenne smile

• Duchenne smiles are likely to occur during
  mother-infant face-to-face play when the infant
  is held upright and is able to see the mother
  smiling and talking

46
Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• Attention enjoyment
• The play smile an extremely wide-open mouth and
  dropping of the jaw is observed when infants
  are held closer to the mother, kissed, or tickled
  

• About 15 of smiling is followed immediately by
  looking away from the social partner
• Some researchers have interpreted this as an
  early manifestation of coyness, an emotion that
  may indicate an awareness of self in interaction
  with others (Reddy, 2000)

47
Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• Attention enjoyment
• During the first 2 months, vocalizations are of
  three sorts cry, discomfort, and vegetative
• After 2 months, two kinds of non-distress
  vocalizations appear
• Speech-like sounds, such as cooing, are produced
  in the front of the mouth and have a more
  resonant quality increase between 2 and 5
  months
• Video Example http//www.youtube.com/watch?vHTjI
  XHlB-m0
• Non-speechlike sounds produced in the back of
  the mouth, lack projection, and have a more nasal
  quality decline between 2 and 5 months

48
Emotional Development Emotional Expression
Experience

• According to the dynamic systems theory of
  emotion (see Ch. 2), emotion is closely related
  to the social communication system
• For example, different types of communication
  (e.g., different types of play) require different
  forms of facial communication will be
  accompanied by different types of internal
  feelings
• In specific types of communicative situations,
  infants show organized patterns of expressive
  movements
• e.g., positive engagement, passive withdrawal,
  active protest

49
Emotional Development Emotional Regulation

• During the first 4 months, increases in emotion
  regulation are shown by
• a decrease in crying
• an ability to easily shift gaze from one thing to
  another
• mastery of continuous and repeated bouts of
  smiling
• smiling is a relaxation response, and it seems to
  be a way of reducing arousal without looking away
  from the situation.
• Infants can now handle a wider variety of
  stimulation with more abrupt changes

50
Emotional Development Emotional Regulation
Contributors to emotion regulation

• sensorimotor skills
• infants can calm themselves when they can get
  their hand into their mouth keep it there
• movements such as reaching for an object can calm
  them down
• caregivers

51
Emotional Development Emotional Regulation

• A small percentage of infants has a regulatory
  disorder
• disturbances of sleep, feeding, state control,
  sensory and perceptual processing, and
  self-calming
• these infants may be diagnosed with autism or
  other developmental disorders
• untreated children show more emotional and social
  problems such as depression and aggression

52
Emotional Development Emotional Regulation

• From a dynamic systems point of view, emotion
  regulation is the result of both infant and adult
  contributions and the unfolding of the
  parent-infant relationship around regulatory
  issues
• (p. 290)

53
Social Development

• Young infants show the widest range of emotion
  expressions in the company of adults
• infants are more likely to smile, vocalize, and
  make relaxed arm movements with responsive adults
  than with peers, inanimate faces, or animate or
  inanimate toys
• Adults adapt themselves to infants

54
Social Development The Effects of Infants on
Adult Behavior

• Exaggeration
• adults tend to exaggerate aspects of
  their speech body movement
  
• Slowing down simplification
• each action is held longer than with an adult
• particular syllables are prolonged and speech is
  slower, giving it a melodic or singsong quality
• adults reduce the complexity of their behavior
  and their speech when talking to infants

Picture from www.familymagazinegroup.com
55
Social Development The Effects of Infants on
Adult Behavior

• Rhythm and repetition
• adults may say the same word or phrase many times
  with minor variations or make a series of
  exaggerated head nods punctuated with a clap or a
  vocalization
• adults use different melodic contours to
  prohibit, elicit attention, encourage infant
  participation, encourage imitation, approve and
  soothe
• exaggeration, slowing down, rhythm, and melody in
  speech are called infant-directed (ID) speech
  (motherese)

56
Social Development The Effects of Infants on
Adult Behavior

• Matching and Attunement
• although infants can imitate adults, adults
  imitate babies much more they may match infant
  vocal sounds, pitches, rhythms, facial
  expressions, body movements, and so on
• in attunement (Stern, 1985), the adults behavior
  is similar to the infants but not an exact copy
• for example, the infant may shake his or her arm
  up and down in a rhythmical motion the parent
  may respond in a different modality, such as
  vocalizing yea-yea-yea-yea in exactly the same
  rhythm as the babys arm movements

57
Social Development The Effects of Infants on
Adult Behavior

• Turn Taking
• protoconversation in the early months, adults
  fill in the natural pauses of the infants
  actions with their own actions, creating the
  appearance of turn taking (M.C. Bateson, 1975
  Trevarthen, 1977)
• between 4 and 6 months, infants begin to shift to
  a more interactive mode of behavior they learn
  to wait until the adult pauses before beginning
  their own actions

58
Social Development The Effects of Infants on
Adult Behavior

• Frames (Fogel, 1993) regularly recurring
  communication routines
• frames that emerge during this period are social
  games like face-to-face play, tickle and other
  tactile games, peekaboo, and frames for playing
  with toy objects
• there are also frames for caregiving such as
  bedtime, bathing, and feeding routines
• parents and infants develop frames that
  are unique to their
  relationship

Picture from tvlesson.blogspot.com
59
Social Development Individual differences
between infants

• Adults are drawn to
• infant vocalizations that are relaxed and
  resonant and have greater pitch contours.
• facial features that have babylike
  characteristics, such as large eyes, a round
  face, thin eyebrows, and a small nose bridge
• attractive infants
• in one study, mothers with less attractive
  infants were more attentive to other people
  besides the infant were more likely to spend
  time in caretaking rather than affectionate
  behavior

60
Social Development Individual differences
between infants

• Gender differences
• with girls, mothers and fathers are more likely
  to comment on the
  present situation the
  infants current state
• with boys, they comment more on absent or
  future events
• mothers of boys stimulate them more in general,
  while mothers of girls are more likely to stroke
  and caress their infants

Picture from www.nevadafamilies.org
61
Social Development Individual differences
between infants

• Expressiveness
• studies have shown that infants who are less
  expressive are actually more aroused by
  stimulation
• low-expressive infants tend to have higher heart
  rates, higher cortisol, and higher muscle tension
  
• these children have been referred to as inhibited
• they are physiologically predisposed to be highly
  responsive to stimulation but tend to withdraw
  from stimulation rather than express signs of
  engagement or enjoyment

62
Cultural DifferencesIn adult-infant communication

• A pattern of close physical contact and rapid
  response to crying (called attachment parenting)
  is common among hunting and gathering cultures
• for instance, Elauma infants spend almost all
  their time in physical contact with an adult
  adults (physically) respond more often and more
  quickly to infant crying than British parents
• more egalitarian societies seem
  to promote
  closer and more lasting
  contact with infants

Picture from www.amazon-indians.org
63
Cultural DifferencesIn adult-infant communication

• In the West
• we try to affect sleeping, feeding, and
  interactive social behavior from an early age
• we want our babies to be scheduled, to smile, and
  not to cry
• we encourage independence through teaching
  behaviors leading to infant socialization
• In Japanese and Native American cultures, adults
  believe that infants are precious close to God
• infants should be kept quiet not influenced by
  adults until they begin to make some of their own
  initiatives (around 6 months)

64
Cultural DifferencesIn adult-infant communication

• Japanese vs. U.S. mothers
• spend less time in physical contact with their
  babies when awake, although they sleep with
  babies at night
• hold, rock, bounce, touch, and kiss their babies
  less
• tend to use more negative vocalizations
  throughout the day, and use more nonsense sounds
  and baby talk during play (vs. sentences adult
  words)
• are more likely to talk about how to incorporate
  objects into social play than to label objects

65
Effects of Adult Behavior on InfantsContingent
Responsiveness

• From 2 months of age, babies seem highly
  sensitive to how others interact with them
• when responses are contingent, infants tend to
  smile, coo, and look more at the adults
• when responses are noncontingent, infants are
  more likely to fuss, cry, or look away
• infants also look and smile more
  when adults are producing
  exaggerated behavior,
  such as motherese

Picture from www.parenthood.com
66
Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants
Experimental disturbances of play frames

• When play frames are disrupted, infants smile and
  gaze less during the interaction
• In one type of study, infants and mothers are
  viewing videotaped images of one another. The
  researchers show the infant a videotape of the
  mother that was made on an earlier occasion, so
  that she is not contingent with the infants
  behaviors
• In another type of study, peekaboo games are
  played in a disorganized way, such as by saying
  peekaboo before covering the face or not
  uncovering the face at the expected time

67
Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants
Experimental disturbances of play frames

• The still-face procedure the experimenter asks
  the mother to be silent nonexpressive
• Some babies continue to smile and look at the
  mother for a few seconds then they stop smiling
  and look away
• If the still face goes on for more than a few
  minutes, the baby becomes increasingly distressed
  and withdrawn.
• When mothers are asked to resume their normal
  interactions, most of the infants begin to cry if
  they have not cried already
• The same effects are observed in different
  cultures and with both mothers and fathers

68
Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants
Experimental disturbances of play frames

• The Still-Face Procedure
• At 3 to 4 months, infants are more distressed at
  the still face than at separation from the mother
• The still-face suppresses the parasympathetic
  (relaxation) nervous system increases cortisol
• When mothers touch their infants during the still
  face, the effect of the still face on the infant
  is significantly less
• If mothers are more contingently responsive
  during the normal play episodes, infants recover
  more quickly show less physiological
  suppression of the parasympathetic and cortisol
  systems

69
Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants Effects of
maternal depression stress

• Depression occurs in 10-13 of women following
  childbirth
• Infants of depressed mothers
• are more likely to be fussy, to show negative
  facial expressions, to have low levels of
  physical activity, and to be withdrawn
• have higher levels of cortisol
• have brain asymmetries indicative of a withdrawn
  mood state
• Effects on infants are more likely if the
  depression lasts long the infants have few
  opportunities to interact with nondepressed adults

70
Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants Effects of
maternal depression stress

• Mothers who are stressed after birth often
  over-arouse their babies do not recognize
  infant cues to slow down or to change behavior
• this behavior creates stress and physiological
  arousal for the baby, who begins the neuroception
  patterns of flight or freeze
• this in turn makes the mother more anxious and
  more insistent, creating a mutually escalating
  spiral of chase-and-dodge and physiological and
  emotional dysregulation
• left untreated, these dyads go on to develop an
  insecure attachment relationship (see Ch. 8)

71
Effects of Adult Behavior on Infants

• In summary
• During play frames, parents modify their behavior
  so that infants can most readily appreciate
  infants smiling and gazing encourage the parents
  to continue
• The mutual influence is co-regulated and dynamic
• the effects of one partner on the other can only
  be determined by looking at individual
  differences between infants (such as infants who
  are difficult) or parents (such as maternal
  depression) or during experimental perturbations
  of adult behavior

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Self-AwarenessThe Sense of an Ecological Self

• The ecological self is characterized by
• Self-agency the sense that one is capable of
  generating ones own actions and expecting that
  these self-generated actions will have
  consequences
• Self-coherence the sense of being a whole
  physical entity with boundaries and limitations
• Self-affectivity is the sense of having inner
  emotional feelings that routinely go together
  with specific experiences
• Self-history is the sense of enduring, of having
  a past, of going on even through changes, as when
  one acts and feels similar ways with familiar
  people or in familiar situations

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Self-AwarenessThe Sense of an Ecological Self

• By 3 ½ months, infants begin to watch their hands
  moving in front of them they feel their arms
  and hands at the same time
• it is likely that this cross-modal experience
  gives the infant a sense of self-recognition
  through self-coherence

• Young infants explore their own bodies, feeling
  the touching hand the part that is being
  touched
• In the first few hours of life, newborns touch
  their own head in an ordered sequence beginning
  with the mouth, then moving to the face, head,
  ear, nose, and eyes

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Self-AwarenessThe Sense of an Ecological Self

• The ecological self is also experienced in
  relation to the social environment
• interacting with another person, it is possible
  to feel the part of the interaction that comes
  from the self in comparison to that part
  contributed by the other
• This kind of participatory co-regulated
  relationship with another person also gives the
  infant information about the other person in
  relation to the self, a sense of intersubjectivity

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Family and Society

• Family systems theory each member of the family
  is a part of a feedback system with every other
  family member
• when families have three or more members,
  the relationship between two
  of them can
  affect the third and vice versa
• The birth of a baby brings major changes for a
  family
• after a child is born, parents must learn to cope
  with a lot of new conditions, including a total
  alteration of lifestyle, lack of sleep, and the
  adjustment of the marital relationship to include
  new family members

Picture from www.canamcryo.com
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Family and Society Success in the Transition to
Parenthood

• New parents must address four type of problems
• The energy demands associated with infant care,
  such as loss of sleep and extra work resulting in
  fatigue
• New parenthood places stress on the marital
  relationship
• The responsibility of caring for and rearing a
  child
• Parents must cope with the additional costs of
  raising a child, in the form of food, clothing
  and education

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Family and Society Success in the Transition to
Parenthood

• Adult developmental factors
• the adults relationships with their own parents,
  prior experience with child care, self-esteem and
  belief in self-efficacy as a parent readiness
  to have children
• Concurrent factors
• the marital relationship, other family members,
  the amount of social support available to the
  parents, nonfamily factors, such as income and
  job satisfaction

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Family and Society Success in the Transition to
Parenthood

• Marital quality
• Predicted by prenatal marital quality couples
  who have the most conflicts prenatally also have
  the most postnatally
• Equality of role relationships before childbirth
  predicts marital satisfaction after birth
• Positive and warm relationship with ones own
  parents
• A postbirth experience that is not more difficult
  than anticipated

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Family and Society Success in the Transition to
Parenthood

• Mothers ability to parent and to cope with child
  rearing is predicted by high level of marital
  satisfaction the amount of father involvement
• For fathers, marital satisfaction is associated
  with more positive attitudes toward the parenting
  role and with more time spent with the infant
• Mens involvement in infant care
  depends primarily on social
  factors, such as
  marriage, job, and social
  acceptability of parenting

Picture from www.flickr.com/photos/93648313_at_N00/1
54159152/
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Experiential Exercises The ecological self

• As humans, we can see part of our bodies in our
  field of vision at all times
• Try this by closing one eye and looking straight
  ahead you will see your own nose
• Thus, whenever you perceive your environment, you
  perceive yourself. Perceiving the environment is
  co-perceiving yourself.
• The ecological self is the sense of self as
  situated in the environment.
• This sense of self is still present in adults,
  but much more in the background of experience.
  You can explore your ecological sense of self
  during everyday activities.

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Experiential ExercisesMutual Gazing

• This exercise is about the parental role the
  infant experience during face-to-face interaction
• The class is divided up into pairs who do not
  know each other very well. Pairs sit on the floor
  or in chairs facing each other
• Students will play the role of either the parent
  or the child (2 min.)
• parents your responsibility is to witness the
  child with a steady gaze.
• children you can do anything you want feel free
  to look at your parent or look away as much as
  you need or want to
• Repeat the same process, only this time the adult
  acts distracted by something in the room
• Repeat the same process, only this time the adult
  acts intrusive, trying to get the babys
  attention.
• Change roles
• Sit in pairs discuss the experience