Lecture: Infancy and Toddlerhood: Social-Emotional Development
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 7
Opening
Picture three people in three different places. A teacher in a childcare center's infant room is holding a toddler who is crying at morning drop-off. A home visitor is watching a baby turn toward a parent when a stranger walks in. And a grandparent on a visit is wondering why the baby who used to beam at everyone now cries at the sight of them. Each of them is reading a young child's feelings, and each of them wants to read those feelings fairly.
That's what this lecture is about. In Week 2 you met Erikson's stages and the ethological view, which asks what a behavior does for survival. In Week 3 you learned to keep what a child did apart from what it might mean, and to tell a naturalistic observation from a structured one. Weeks 5 and 6 followed the infant's body and the infant's thinking. In this lecture we stay with the same infants and turn to their feelings and first relationships.
I'll take you through seven ideas in order. First the early emotions, then temperament. Next, what builds a bond, and the laboratory procedure that sorts attachment behavior. Then we'll read the running case's drop-off, place it beside Erikson's first two stages, and end at a mirror. By the end, I want you to be able to describe a toddler's feelings as behavior, without ever turning a research category into a label for a child.
1. The first feelings point at people
Let's start with a smile. Picture a baby of about 2 months on a changing mat. An adult leans in, smiles, and talks softly, and the baby looks right at that face and smiles back. That smile is aimed at a person, and it's one of the first social things a baby does.
Here are the words. Social smiling is a smile aimed at another person's face, in response to that person, and it appears in the first months. Later in the first year, two less cheerful feelings show up. Stranger anxiety is an infant's wariness or distress at an unfamiliar person. Separation anxiety is an infant's or toddler's distress when a familiar caregiver leaves. Both commonly appear in the second half of the first year.
Here's the part people miss. Both of those feelings are signs of growth. A baby can only be wary of a stranger after learning who the familiar people are. And a baby can only miss a parent who leaves if a bond with that parent exists.
One more term. Social referencing is checking a trusted adult's face or reaction to decide how to respond to something new or uncertain. Imagine a toddler at a crowded city park. A large dog trots past. The toddler stops and looks up at a parent's face. The parent smiles and says it's a friendly dog, and the toddler takes two steps closer. The toddler borrowed the parent's reaction to decide what to do.
Pause and try this. A 10-month-old turns away from a visiting grandparent and cries until a parent takes them back. Does that crying mean something is wrong?
Think about what the baby has to know first.
Here's the answer. Nothing is wrong, because stranger anxiety commonly appears in the second half of the first year, and it shows the baby can now tell familiar faces from new ones.
2. Temperament is a child's own style
Now let me take you to a toddler music class. Two toddlers arrive at the same time. One runs straight to the drum and starts banging. The other sits on a parent's lap, watches the first two songs, and joins the circle only near the end. Same room, same songs, two very different starts.
That difference has a name. Temperament is the stable early differences among children in activity, mood, and reactivity. It shows up across many situations, and it's the child's own style rather than a relationship.
Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess followed children in the New York Longitudinal Study, and in their book Temperament and Development they described three types. An easy temperament describes children who are mostly cheerful, adapt readily, and settle into regular routines. A difficult temperament describes children who react intensely, adapt slowly, and have irregular routines. And a slow-to-warm-up temperament describes children who react to new people and situations with mild wariness at first and then adapt over time.
Here's my honesty note. Many children fit none of the three types. This course pins no percentages for them, and you'll never be asked to key one. They're research categories for patterns, never labels for a child.
Thomas and Chess gave us one more idea that matters for every caregiver. Goodness of fit is the match between a child's temperament and the demands and expectations of the caregiving setting. Picture the music leader saying, "Everyone in the circle, right now." That's a poor fit for the toddler on the lap. Now picture the leader saying, "Come in whenever you're ready." Same toddler, better fit.
Pause and try this. A relative says a toddler's difficult temperament proves the parents are doing a bad job. What would you say back?
Weigh what temperament describes before you answer.
Here's the answer. A difficult temperament describes a child's own style, not the quality of the parenting, so the useful question is how well the setting fits that style.
3. Comfort, not feeding, builds the bond
Ask a group of friends why babies love their caregivers, and someone will say, "Because they feed them." It sounds sensible. A research laboratory put that idea to a test.
Harlow, in a 1958 paper called "The Nature of Love", reported a study of infant monkeys raised with two stand-in "mothers." One was made of wire and gave milk. The other was covered in soft cloth and gave no milk. The infant monkeys spent more time clinging to the soft cloth "mother" than to the wire one that gave milk. So comfort, not feeding alone, underlies attachment.
Let's pin down that word. Attachment is the lasting emotional bond between a young child and a particular caregiver, shown in how the child seeks that person for comfort and uses them as a base for exploring.
John Bowlby built a theory around that bond, and it grows out of the ethological view you met in Week 2. Bowlby's attachment theory, set out in his book Attachment, describes attachment as an evolved bond that keeps infants close to caregivers and gives them a secure base for exploring. A secure base is a trusted caregiver whom a young child uses as a safe home point, moving off to explore and checking back or returning for comfort.
Think of a swimmer who pushes off from the wall of a pool, swims a little way out, and comes back to touch the wall before setting off again. The wall doesn't swim for them. It makes the swimming feel safe.
One limitation is worth saying out loud. Harlow studied monkeys, so his study shows what comfort meant to monkey infants. Bowlby and later researchers carried the idea to human babies with their own observations.
Pause and try this. Someone says, "The baby will love whoever gives the bottle." Using Harlow's finding, is that right?
Picture the two stand-in mothers before you decide.
Here's the answer. It isn't right, because Harlow's infant monkeys clung to the cloth "mother" that gave no milk, which points to comfort, not feeding alone.
4. A laboratory procedure sorts patterns, not children
How do you study a bond you can't see? Mary Ainsworth's answer was to watch what a 1-year-old does when a caregiver leaves the room and comes back, in the same order, for every child.
Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall described that procedure in Patterns of Attachment, in 1978. The Strange Situation is a structured laboratory procedure of brief separations from and reunions with a caregiver, used to sort patterns of attachment behavior.
They described three classifications. In the secure pattern, a child uses the caregiver as a base for exploring, may be upset at separation, and seeks and is comforted by the caregiver at reunion. In the insecure-avoidant pattern, a child shows little distress at separation and tends to ignore or turn away from the caregiver at reunion. In the insecure-resistant pattern, also called ambivalent, a child is very distressed at separation, both seeks contact and resists it at reunion, and stays hard to comfort. Later, Mary Main and Judith Solomon described a fourth, the disorganized pattern, for contradictory or confused behavior toward the caregiver.
So that's 3 classifications from Ainsworth and colleagues, plus 1 from Main and Solomon, for 4 in all. And from Harlow's paper in 1958 to Patterns of Attachment in 1978 is 20 years.
Here's the rule this course keeps. Each classification is a research category for a pattern of behavior in one procedure. It's never a label for a real child. We say "behavior consistent with the secure pattern in the Strange Situation," never "a secure child." And attachment behavior varies across cultures, so the same protest or greeting can carry different meanings in different places.
Pause and try this. A friend worries that putting a toddler in childcare will stop the toddler from forming a secure attachment. What does this course say?
Think about how many people a toddler can bond with.
Here's the answer. Childcare outside the home doesn't by itself prevent a secure attachment, because children form bonds with parents and with familiar caregivers; the effects of many hours of childcare are debated, and this course takes no side.
5. Reading the drop-off: style versus relationship
Now let's bring the research back to an ordinary morning. Remember, the running case is illustrative. It was made up for this course and describes no real child. Record R3 was written at a childcare center, at morning drop-off and again at pickup, when the child is 14 months old.
The record holds four behaviors. The toddler cries when the parent leaves. The toddler accepts comfort from a caregiver. The toddler then plays while glancing back toward the caregiver. And at pickup, the toddler reaches for the parent and calms within a minute.
Let's keep the interpretation in its own column. Crying when the parent leaves is separation distress. Accepting comfort shows comfort found with a familiar caregiver. Playing while glancing back shows the caregiver used as a secure base, with a glance much like social referencing. Reaching for the parent and calming shows comfort sought from and found with the parent at reunion.
Here's the week's key distinction. How hard and how long the toddler cries may reflect temperament, the child's own style. Whom the toddler turns to, and how the toddler uses that person while playing, reflects attachment, a relationship. One record can't pull those two apart. You'd need more mornings and more settings.
And here's what the record is not. R3 is one naturalistic observation, not the Strange Situation. So this course assigns R3 no attachment classification. "Calms within a minute" describes behavior, not a type.
Pause and try this. A classmate reads R3 and writes, "This toddler is securely attached." What's wrong with that sentence?
Ask yourself what kind of observation R3 is.
Here's the answer. The sentence turns a research category into a label, and R3 is one naturalistic morning, not the structured Strange Situation, so it gives behavior to describe and no classification.
6. Erikson's first two stages
Erikson's stages give you a second lens. Think of a baby who cries at night and is picked up, fed, and soothed, again and again. Over months, that baby learns something about the world: when I need help, help comes.
Erikson described the first two of his 5 childhood and adolescent stages in Childhood and Society, in 1950. Trust vs. mistrust is the first crisis, in infancy at about birth to 1, in which care that is reliable and responsive helps an infant come to expect that the world and its people can be trusted. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt is the second crisis, in toddlerhood at about 1 to 3, in which a toddler pushes to do things alone and either gains a sense of self-control or comes to doubt their own abilities.
Let's place the records. R3, at 14 months, falls in toddlerhood, stage 2, which builds on the trust of stage 1. R3's acceptance of comfort from a caregiver and from the parent fits that trust. Then record R4 shows the same child at 2½ years, in a childcare center's block area. The child pushes away a caregiver's hand and says, "Me do it." That's the autonomy side of stage 2.
Remember that the ages are approximate. Erikson's stages are a model, not a timetable, and trust keeps mattering long after infancy.
Pause and try this. Which of Erikson's two crises does R4's "Me do it" fit, and which side of it?
Say the stage name the way the course writes it.
Here's the answer. It fits autonomy vs. shame and doubt, the second stage, on the autonomy side, because the child pushes to do the task alone.
7. A face in the mirror
Let's end at a family's bathroom mirror. A toddler has had a snack of berries, and a purple smudge sits on one cheek. The toddler looks in the mirror, stares for a moment, and then reaches up and rubs their own cheek, not the glass.
That's mirror self-recognition: a toddler's recognition of their own image, shown when the toddler touches a mark on their own face after seeing it in a mirror. It typically appears in the second year. A younger baby might pat the reflection or smile at it like another child. Reaching for one's own cheek shows the toddler knows the face in the mirror is their own. That's the emerging self, and it fits the push for autonomy in R4. A child who knows there's a "me" can start to say "Me do it."
Now let's put the week together with R3, using two theories. What the toddler did: cried when the parent left, accepted comfort, played while glancing back toward a caregiver, and at pickup reached for the parent and calmed within a minute. What it shows: separation behavior and the use of a secure base. Bowlby's attachment theory explains it as a bond that keeps the toddler close and supports exploring, and Harlow reminds you that nobody is feeding the toddler at pickup. Erikson adds that comfort found reliably builds trust.
Pause and try this. Say the reading of R3 and R4 in one plain sentence that names the behaviors and the two theories.
Give it a try before you hear my version.
Here's the answer. R3's crying at drop-off, glancing back while playing, and calming within a minute at pickup show separation behavior and a secure base, which Bowlby's theory explains. Erikson adds that reliable comfort builds trust, and R4's "Me do it" shows autonomy.
That one sentence is the habit this course is building: behavior, concept, and evidence, in words a family could follow.
Closing
Let's recap in the order we went. Social smiling comes in the first months, and stranger anxiety and separation anxiety commonly appear in the second half of the first year, as signs that a bond exists. Social referencing is a toddler checking a trusted face. Temperament is a child's own style, and goodness of fit is how well the setting matches it.
Harlow showed that comfort, not feeding alone, underlies attachment, and Bowlby described the secure base. The Strange Situation sorts behavior into 4 patterns, which are never labels for children. R3 is one morning, read as behavior. Erikson's first two stages are trust vs. mistrust and autonomy vs. shame and doubt. And mirror self-recognition typically appears in the second year.
Next in this module, you'll find the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. And in Week 8, the midterm review closes the first half of the course and adds one light new topic, play.
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