Social interaction and the development of infants

In the first two years of an infant’s life, they undergo many changes that allow them to develop into a fully functioning human being. These developments are controlled by internal and external factors. Social interaction is an exceedingly influential external factor, which can help to form many aspects of development. For example, infants in the first two years of their lives are learning to differentiate between social stimuli, for example recognising mother’s face and voice. This is mastered by the infant in a relatively small time scale after birth (Mills & Melhuish, 1974). The child can then use this new learned ability to interact with its caregivers, even without understanding the social meaning of their actions, for example when a child smiles, the child is not aware of what a smile means in our society, but when the caregiver sees this sign of emotion, they cannot help but to smile back, and positively reinforces that learned action to the child. To see how important social interaction is for the development of a child in the first two years of its life, it is important to observe key areas of behaviour such as attachment to others, the child’s temperament and their language acquisition.

One of the most researched areas of development in children is attachment and how we form them. Attachment, as defined by Ainsworth and Bell 1970, is “an affectional tie that once person forms between himself and another specific one”. This is the first strong social connection that infants have to another human being/s. Research by Shaffer and Emerson, conducted in 1964, and suggested that there are three stages in the development of primary attachments; the asocial stage, the stage of indiscriminate attachment and the stage of specific attachment. The asocial stage, which spans from birth to six weeks, is when the infant uses signals to interact with its environment, for example crying, babbling, and smiling and so forth, which is not aimed specifically to anyone. The second stage of indiscriminate attachment, the infant has learnt that if it cries it will receive attention, but is still not aimed at a particular individual and the child can be comforted by anyone. This stage lasts until around seven months after birth. The last stage, specific attachment, can be observed between seven and eleven months, and is suggests that the infant will start to form specific attachments to caregivers, a bond is then made, and will no longer accept comfort from others.

Bowlby (1988) described that the need for social attachment between the infant and its caregiver is because the infant needs to actively seek to “attain or maintain proximity” to another individual that is more attuned to their surroundings and can provide for the infants needs (attachment behaviour).

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There have been three key theories to try and explain why we form attachments, and if it is important for children to form social bonds in the early stages of life. The psychoanalytical theory proposes that feeding and the production of food is the main reason why we form attachments. Based on Freud’s psychosexual stages, this theory focuses on the oral stage (the first of the stages), and suggests that the child gets pleasure from attaining food through sucking behaviour (Miller, 1993). Erikson in his stage theory (1950, 1968) states that the first year of life is where the infant establishes trust between themselves and a caregiver, who in return provides nutrition and comfort. Without this trust, the child does not know whether they will be provided with the vital source of support that the child needs to survive.

There are two main learning theories, the first being the early learning theory. The psychoanalytical theory is closely linked to this theory, as they both suggest that being provided with food is the main reason why we attach. This theory revolves around the secondary drive hypothesis by Dollard and Miller (1950), which explains that infants attach to the mother to gain access to important things that are needed for survival, things that they cannot provide for themselves for example food and warmth, all of which soothe the child’s cries. This social interaction between the mother and the child then allows for the infant to associate this with the caregiver, and the bond is strengthened. However, this hypothesis disagrees with research conducted by Shaffer and Emerson (1964), which found that the infant can become attached to more than one caregiver, who is not necessarily the sole provider to the physiological needs of the child.

The second learning theory for attachment is the social learning theory devised by Hay and Vespo, (1988). The theory states that the child does not automatically become attached to the mother, or caregivers, but that the caregivers has to interact with the child and show them affection, for the child to feel a connection with them, from which they can then form a relationship together.

Another theory of attachment is Ethological theory, which states that there is an evolutionary role in the reasoning of why we as humans attach. The theory suggests that mothers before birth are already biologically predisposed to become attached to their offspring, and therefore ensures that they survive, and the species can continue. Research to support this theory was mainly collected by Bowlby (1969, 1980), who suggests that attachment is monotropic; focused on only one caregiver, namely the mother. However, research by Ainsworth (1979) disagrees with Bowlby’s theory of monotropy, and suggests that infants form more than one attachment to many different caregivers. This is supported by Shaffer and Emerson’s study, which displayed attachments to other close family members for example grandparents and fathers. It has also been found that siblings can also be important in contributing to the social development of infants (Adler, 1964).

These three theories suggest that attachment between the infant and its caregiver is formed relatively easily, but comparatively, if a child has little to no access to social interaction in the first two years of their life, it can be particularly harmful to the child’s development. This can be explained by the social stimulation hypothesis which can be observed in research collected in the 1940’s, which showed the children growing up in institutions had a low staff to child ratio and so rarely had any interaction with a caregiver. Children were also segregated from each other, and so were cut off from all forms of social stimulation. At first the infants acted no different from those brought up in ‘normal’ family homes where the children are given lots of attention and interaction, but after six months there was a noticeable difference; the children’s behaviour changes and the children were completely avoidant of any social activities (negative working model of the self) and see that they are not getting noticed by others (negative working model of others), (Goldfarb, 1943). This research implies that children need constant social interaction to develop properly. Bowlby (1953), after studying institutional care after the Second World War, saw that the care that the children were receiving was more physical, and not for their “emotional needs”. He developed the maternal deprivation hypothesis; suggested that infants should “experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his mother”. Conversely, infants in institutions in which there are a much higher staff to infant ratio generally interact ‘normally’ with their caregivers and develop well throughout life and suffer fewer effects (Tizard and Rees, 1975).

Language is another element of develop in the first two years that is strongly influenced by social interaction. There are three main theories that discuss what influences our language acquisition. The learning/empiricist perspective explains that children learn their language by listening to their parent’s speech and imitating it (Bandura, 1971) and by positive reinforcement when the infant says something grammatically correct (Skinner 1957). Research by Weisman and Snow (2001) found that if caregivers expose their children to more advanced words earlier on in life, then the child’s language will be more developed than other children of the same age group. However, it has been argued that children cannot learn syntax this way, as seen by Baron (1992), when children are just learning new sentences; they create statements that adults do not say and therefore could not have imitated.

Chomsky (1959, 1968) disagrees with the learning perspective and suggests a more biological/nativist approach and not a social implication. He suggests that language is too complicated for it to just be learned from caregivers, instead that children born with an innate language acquisition device (LAD) in the brain which processes verbal input. Slobin (1985) thinks that we have an inborn language-making capacity (LMC) instead of an LAD. Both of these systems supposedly enable infants to combine vocabulary that has been collected in the brain, enables them to understand what it means, and then can use this knowledge to create sentences. Lenneberg (1967), combined the two theories of Chomsky and Slobin, and suggests the sensitive-period hypothesis, which states that the best time to learn a language is before adolescence; after this period has been reached language becomes very difficult to learn. For example, a case study of 14 year old Genie (Curtiss, 1977), who until this age was kept locked away with little to no social interaction, and was beaten by her father if she made any noise. When Genie was discovered, she had not had access to language and so could not speak. When she was taught language, she was able to conjure up sentences quite easily, however she was unable to acquire the rules of syntax, which young children learn early on in life without being taught to, supporting Baron (1992) theory. However, Moerk (1989) suggests that language development cannot be explained using LAD or LMC because the researchers themselves do not understand how they work, and how the information received in the brain is processed and understood. The interactionist perspective suggests that both empiricist (social) and nativists (biological) perspective both contribute to learning acquisition (Tomasello, 1995).

A third factor for development that is influenced by social interaction in childhood is temperament. A definition of temperament as described by Hartup and Van Lieshout (1995) is “a substrate for personality development, consisting of simple, basic styles that emerge early and that are tied closely to distinctive modes of emotional expression”. Thomas and Chess (1977, 1989) reported three main type of temperamental styles; ‘Easy’ infants; happy, easily comforted, ‘Slow to warm up’ infants; fussy and are less adaptive, and ‘Difficult’ infants; negative, extreme reactions for example long periods of continuous crying. Hartup and Van Lieshout (1995), suggests that temperament has social implications for the way in which an infant relates to other people for example difficult infants are more likely to develop behavioural problems as they get older. A way to try and combat this behaviour is for caregivers to provide more stimulating challenges for the child and try to promote the children to act in a more pro-active manner (Smith, Cowie and Blades, 1998). Thus suggesting that although temperament can continue throughout life, using social techniques can reduce aspects of temperamental behaviour as the child develops.

In conclusion, attachment to caregivers, language acquisition and a child’s temperament are all influenced by social interaction, and can be seen that the lack of it can lead to developmental abnormalities in children. For infants to develop healthily in the first two years of their life, it appears that they need high amounts of cognitive stimulation, feelings of security from those that care for them, and encouragement for behaviour, so that the child can positively attribute their actions and use these social cues, for example smiling and babbling, to develop all the key skills that they will need as they grow up.