Emotional Testing

The infants tended to look more at the “mean” man and crawl to the “nice” man. A similar video was shown illustrating a helpful and hurtful shapes. After the square hurt the circle, the circle then chose to be with the square instead of the helpful triangle. There is an assumption made by Saxe and psychologists in this data that the infants are looking at the mean man and shape to understand why they acted the way they did, that the hurtful actions confused these children and so they were intrigued by the actions, perhaps because it is not how the infants would have acted. The results conclude that by the age of one, children can identify helpful and hurtful actions.

An explanation of the potential effects on development of babies and young children of the following experiences.

Little Albert an 11 month old boy was chosen as the participant. Watson identified that a white rat did not provoke any fear response in Albert, so it was a neutral stimulus. Little Albert was then exposed to the white rat, but every time he reached out to touch it Watson would make a loud noise. Albert would get frightened and start to cry. After repeating this several times, Albert started getting frightened just by seeing the rat. Just like the bell in Pavlov's experiment, the white rat had become a conditioned stimulus to Albert. Watson therefore concluded that even complex behaviour such as fear was a learned response.

Harlow’s research elucidates and analyzes emotional and social development among infants when presented with stress and/or fear. “One function of the real mother, human or subhuman, and presumably of a mother surrogate, is to provide a haven of safety for the infants in times of fear or danger“ (Harlow & Zimmerman, 503). As the former experiment showed, both surrogate mothers were available at all times during this trial. Once presented with emotional stress, an extensive percentage of the test subjects hastily rushed to the cloth mother, regardless

In order to discover whether child is in secure stage, Ainsworth and her colleagues (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) investigated a ‘strange situation’ experiment, observing infant’s behaviours and emotional expressions by

DeCasper and Spence (1986) cited in Harris (2004) did an experiment where they asked pregnant women to read passage from a DR Seuss story called The Cat in the Hat. The experiment involved the pregnant women reading the passage twice a day for the last 6 weeks of her pregnancy. The main goal of the experiment was to determine whether the unborn babies recall the passage after birth. The babies where test two or three days after birth, the testing involved with a special pressure- sensing dummy that was wired up to record how hard and fast they were sucking. The babies where divided in to two groups.

The Little Albert experiment has become a famous case study that has been discussed by a plethora of professionals in the psychology industry. In 1920, behaviorist John Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner began to conduct the first experiment that had been done with a child. Watson and Rayner chose Albert because they thought he was stable; he was accustomed to a hospital environment due to his mother’s career as a wet nurse, he was healthy and showed little emotion. Stability played a major factor in choosing Albert for this case study because Watson wanted to ensure that they would do as little harm as possible with the experiment. The conditioning of Albert began with a series of emotional tests that became part of a routine in which Watson and Rayner were “determining whether fear reactions could be called out by other stimuli than sharp noises and the sudden removal of support” (-----). Watson’s method of choice for this experiment was using principles of classic conditioning to create a stimulus in children that would result in fear. Since Watson wanted to condition Albert, he used a variety of objects that would otherwise not scare him. These objects included white rat, dog, blocks, rabbit, fur coat, wool and a Santa Claus mask.

The development of attachment bonds to other biological figures plays an important role in emotional development. Throughout life, an individual will form several relationships, some of which will be sincere and intimate while others will be superficial. However, collectively these relationships provide the foundation of our communities, families, and friendships and become essential to our survival as a species. A secure attachment bond can be classified as the interactive emotional relationship between a caregiver and infant involving the emotional responses of the caregiver to the infant 's cues (Bowlby, 1969). These emotional responses can be expressed in a variety of forms including gestures, sounds, or even movements. Thus, this interactive emotional relationship between the caregiver and infant brings the two closer together creating an environment that allows the infant to feel safe and secure, further developing their ability to communicate and interact with others (Bowlby, 1969).

At a certain age infants begin to resist the unfamiliar and are very vocal in expressing their feelings (Brazelton, 1992).

At 6 weeks infants develop a social smile, at 3 month laughter and curiosity develop, at 4 months full responsive smiles emerge, from 4-8 months they develop anger, from 9014 months they develop a fear of social events, at 12 months the are fearful of unexpected sights and sounds, and at 18 months they are self-aware, feel pride, shame, and embarrassment. In the first two years, infants develop from reactive pain and pleasure to complex patterns of social awareness. Emotions in infants are produced from their body as opposed to their thoughts. Therefore fast and uncensored reactions are common in infants. During their toddler years, the strength of their emotions will increase.

For the second stage, a white rat was used as Watson’s CS, the CS must be a neutral stimulus that initially has no effect on the UR. Little Albert showed no phobia towards the rat before conditioning occurred. By pairing the US with the CS, the infant learned to associate the loud noise of the hammer and metal bar with the white rat. After strengthening the association between the US and the CS by repetition, Little Albert eventually became fearful and upset when only presented with the once neutral stimulus, the white rat. This response was the CR which marked the completion of step three. Little Albert was now afraid of the white rat because it triggered his fear of the loud noise. Classical conditioning can be used to prove many forms of behavior between subjects when looking at the the right unconditioned/ conditioned stimuli and unconditioned/ conditioned responses. The theory of classical conditioning can be used to explain the development of distrust and trust issues in the relationships between people.

Infants begin experimenting different sounds and actions through a trial-and-error pattern in order to be exhibited to the parent’s attention often. During this stage, infants show goal-directed behavior displaying purposeful responses to other people. For instance, a crawling baby will show goal-directed behavior by crawling to a covert in the kitchen, where his sippy cups are stored, taking one out holding it up and grunt to his father as if to say, “I’m thirsty!” Their actions are purposeful. Another important thing happening in the secondary circular reactions sub stage four is that infants achieve object permanence. Object permanence is when an infant is watching an object which then disappears, the infant is still thinking about it or can try to look for object. Even if it is out of sight, it is still on

The second article on classical conditioning was the “Vicarious Classical Conditioning of Emotional Responses in Nursery School Children”. This article was about the emotional response in nursery school children. Short & Venn (1973) noted that nursery

The author described the four main functions, providing a sense of security; regulation of affect and arousal; promoting the expression of feelings and communication; and serving as a base for exploration. In providing a Sense of Securities, in this article, he explained the purpose of this function is to keep in mind that the infant needs to feel secure, because when the infant gets upset both the parents and the infant act to re-establish the sense of security (Bowlby, 1969). Regulation of affect and Arousal, the emphasis here is the state of mind of the infants, and both the infants and the parents develop transactional patterns of relieving the infant’s states of imbalance.

Observation of an infant in the family setting 'provides the observer with an opportunity to encounter primitive emotional states in the infant and his family...' (Rustin in Miller, 1989, 7). According to Rustin infant observation allows to 'explore the emotional events between infant and mother' and 'the aim is to describe the development of the relationship between infant and others (...) and try to understand the unconscious aspects of behaviour and patterns of communication' (Rustin in Miller, 1989, 7). Early infant observation plays a vital role in the psychodynamic training and it gives a thesis of how early emotional development is being influenced by subconscious family dynamics.