Early Experience and Later Life

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Early Experience and Later Life

• The Development of Children (5th ed.)
• Cole, Cole Lightfoot
• Chapter 7

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Primacy of Infancy

• The paths first traveled will be the most
  significant for later development
• As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
• Plato And the beginning, as you know, is
  always the most important part, especially in
  dealing with anything young and tender. That is
  the time when the character is being molded and
  easily takes any impress one may wish to stamp on
  it.

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Primacy of Infancy

• Burton White To begin to look at a childs
  educational development when he is two years of
  age is already much too late.
• Joseph Needham One of the most fundamental
  processes in development consists in the
  closing of doors, in the progressive
  restriction of possible fates.

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Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

• Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
• And sorry I could not travel both
• And be one traveler, long I stood
• And looked down one as far as I could
• To where it bent in the undergrowth

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Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

• Then took the other, as just as fair,
• And having perhaps the better claim,
• Because it was grassy and wanted wear
• Though as for that the passing there
• Had worn them really about the same,
• And both that morning equally lay
• In leaves no step had trodden black.

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Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

• Oh, I kept the first for another day!
• Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
• I doubted if I should ever come back.
• I shall be telling this with a sigh
• Somewhere ages and ages hence
• Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
• I took the one less traveled by,
• And that has made all the difference.

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Overview of the Journey

• Effects of Parent-Child Separation
• Vulnerability and Resilience
• Recovery from Deprivation
• Shaping Developmental Pathways

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Effects of Parent-Child Separation

• Temporary Separation
• Extended Separation
• Isolated Children

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Temporary Separation

• Out-of-home care
• By the time they are 4 years of age, nearly all
  children in the United States are in nonparental
  care on a regular basis
• In fact, nearly half of all infants are
  regularly cared for by someone other than
  their mothers and fathers

Percentage of children regularly receiving
nonparental care
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Temporary Separation

• Out-of-home care
• Poor-quality care (the case in nearly half of the
  day care centers) was a risk factor for later
  cognitive and social difficulties, especially
  when combined with insensitive mothering or in
  families with internal conflicts
• Also particularly the case when 20 hours/week of
  non-maternal care during first year of life

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Temporary Separation

• Repeated hospitalization found to be associated
  with subsequent behavior problems and
  delinquency
• Although may be due to stress of ill health or
  from low SES conditions, rather than from
  separation
• Separation by war situations (England WW II)
• 20 years later, behavior fell within normal
  limits

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Extended Separation

• Orphanage (crèche) in Lebanon (little stimulation
  and human contact similar results in Romania)
• Although normal at 2 months, developed
  intellectually at only ½ of the expected rate by
  the end of the first year
• If adopted before 2 years old Functioning
  normally 2-3 years later
• If adopted between ages of 2-6 Only slightly
  retarded
• If remained institutionalized
• Females at 12-16 were so retarded that they were
  unable to function in society
• Boys transferred to another institution at age 6
  that provided more intellectual stimulation and
  experiences at 10-14 were still retarded, but
  able to function in society

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Extended Separation

• Highest risk for those children whose separation
  was coupled with residence in a facility with
  multiple caregivers and a suboptimal range of
  experiences

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Isolated Children

• While studies of isolated children (e.g., Victor,
  the Wild Child) leave little doubt that severe
  isolation can profoundly disrupt normal
  development
• They also show (e.g., twin Czech boys,
  discovered at age 6) that early deprivation is
  not necessarily devastating to later development

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Vulnerability and Resilience

• Risk Factors and Resilience
• Child Characteristics
• Family Characteristics
• Community Characteristics

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Risk Factors

• Four key factors (Rutter, et al.)
• Family discord
• Parental social deviance (criminal or
  psychiatric)
• Social disadvantage (e.g., low SES, large number
  of children close in age)
• Poor school environment (e.g., high rates of
  turnover and absence among staff and pupils)
• Cumulative effect
• No factor alone was associated with psychiatric
  disorders in childhood
• But if as few as two were present at the same
  time, the risk increased significantly

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Average IQ scores for 13-year-olds
Sameroff et al., 1993
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Resilient Children

• Had the ability to recover quickly from the
  adverse effects of early experience or to
  persevere in the face of stress with no apparent
  negative psychological consequences
• Protective factors from
• Individual characteristics
• Family characteristics
• Community characteristics

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Characteristics of the Child

• Risk factors
• In infancy and early childhood irregularity of
  biological functions, negative responses to new
  situations and people, frequent negative mood
• In middle childhood easily distracted (i.e.,
  short attention span), had a hard time adjusting
  to new circumstances

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Characteristics of the Child

• Protective factors
• Secure attachments
• High intelligence and self-esteem
• Pride over personal accomplishments

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Characteristics of the Family

• Risk factors
• Member of low-income family
• Premature birth or birth trauma
• Mother with low educational level
• Parent with some form of psychopathology

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Characteristics of the Family

• Protective factors (Kauai study)
• No more than 4 children in family
• More than 2 years between older/younger siblings
• Availability of alternative caregivers who
  provide attention
• Workload of mother, even if employed outside the
  home, was not excessive
• Family provided structure and rules during
  adolescence
• Family was cohesive

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Characteristics of the Community

• Risk factors
• Low SES communities
• Inner-city neighborhoods
• Protective factors
• Small towns or rural areas
• Strong social support networks provided by kin,
  neighbors, and social service agencies
• Schools with attentive personnel and good
  academic programs

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Recovery from Deprivation

• Transactional Analysis
• Harlows Monkeys
• Recovery from Isolation

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Transactional Analysis

• Models of development that trace the interaction
  between childs and environmental characteristics
  over time

Women (at age 21-27) Institution Comparison
Pregnant before 19 42 5
Not living with childs father 39 0
Insensitivity to child 65 28
Lack of warmth to children 45 19
Serious breakdown in child care 33 0

• However, if usual chain of consequences can be
  broken and favorable transactions established
  (e.g., supportive spouse), normal behavior is
  likely to follow

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Harlows Monkeys

• Totally isolated for only the first 3 months were
  not permanently affected by the experience
• Totally isolated for the first 6 months
  recovered only partially (e.g., incapable of
  normal sexual behavior)
• Isolated for only the second 6 months recovered
  quite quickly
• Total isolation for entire first year resulted
  in full-fledged social misfits who showed no
  desire for social play or interchange, and
  behaved abusively toward their infants

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Recovery from Isolation Effects

• A critical period?
• Punishing monkeys for inappropriate behavior was
  ineffective
• Introducing them to new environment slowly was
  also ineffective
• Pairing with a younger monkey (2-3 months)
  resulted in all 1-year isolates becoming well
  adjusted
• Human implications
• Czech twins (who recovered quite normally) were
  first placed in a special environment with
  younger children
• Socially isolated children in 1-on-1 situations
  with a child 1-1½ years younger nearly doubled in
  rate of peer interactions

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Shaping Developmental Pathways

• Optimal Conditions
• Primacy Revisited
• Limited Predictability

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Optimal ConditionsThe Irreducible Needs of
Children

• Ongoing nurturing relationships
• Physical protection, safety, and regulation
• Experiences tailored to individual differences
• Developmentally appropriate experiences
• Limit setting, structure, and expectations
• Stable, supportive communities and cultural
  continuity

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Kirkegaards Supportive Mothers

• A Mothers (Sensitive Supportive) White
  Watts
• Enjoyed being with their infants (although spent
  less than 10 of their time actually caring for
  them)
• Took pleasure in providing them with
  intellectually stimulating experiences available
  to answer questions
• Placed more importance on their childrens
  exploration and learning than on the appearance
  of their homes (organized in such a way as to be
  safe and interesting)
• Allowed children to take minor risks, but also
  set reasonable limits for them
• Encouraged and supported their children with
  actions that fostered personal independence
• Infants When in preschool were judged to be more
  competent on a battery of tests and observations

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As the twig is bent

• Even children who make remarkable recoveries show
  some residual signs of past deprivation
• Three modifying factors
• Changes in the environment (e.g., good school or
  community-based social-support network)
• Bio-social-behavioral shifts (i.e., early
  problems do not inevitably lead to later
  developmental problems)
• Increased capabilities change the ways in which
  children experience their environments
• Examples Attachment Cognitive Growth

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Case Attachment

• Children who had been assessed as securely
  attached in infancy
• More socially skilled
• Formed more friendships
• Displayed more self-confidence
• Were less dependent
• More open in expressing their feelings
• Formed closer relationships with peers
• Early interactions seem to provide an internal
  working model for subsequent relationships

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Case Cognitive Development

• For many years researchers believed that
  differences in infant intellectual ability did
  not predict later achievement
• Problem Early studies did not tapinto same
  processes at both testings (sensorimotor sphere
  vs. conceptual sphere)
• Finding Significant modest (not strong)
  correlation between memory performance of
  children when they were babies and when they were
  11 years old

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Recognizing limited predictability

• Only moderate correlations
• Child development is simultaneously continuous
  and discontinuous
• Unpredictability is an opportunity for choice

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Scenarios
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Scenario 1

• Think of a time in your life when two pathways
  lay before you and consider what might have
  happened if you had taken a different path.
• What makes it possible to imagine the
  alternative?
• What makes it hard to imagine?

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Scenario 2

• Imagine that you are the director of an
  orphanage. In view of what you have learned so
  far, what are some of the practices you would
  promote to provide the best possible development
  for the children in your institution?

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Scenario 3

• Imagine that you are the director of a community
  program to improve the early experiences of
  children living in a poor community. What sorts
  of programs would you try to promote? Give a
  research-based rationale for your suggestions.