Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Temperament and the Reactions to Unfamiliarity, Jerome Kagan (1997)

Temperament and the Reactions to Unfamiliarity, Jerome Kagan (1997)
Review 9-21-10

In the article the author looks at aspects of behavior, or temperament, in infant’s response to caregivers though regularity, tempo, and emotional vigor. The article defines temperament as “the way an individual behaves”, and reports it is evident early in life. Temperament relates to behaviors across a wide range of situations and the article reports there is some evident that certain aspects of temperament might be inherited such as emotionality, activity and sociability. All vertebrates exhibit basic phenomena of having behavioral reactions to unfamiliar events. This has lead to interest by developmental psychologists. The author is attempting to study what has been learned about two temperamental types of children and their reactions to different ways of unfamiliarity.

462 healthy Caucasian, middle class, 16 week old infants were used in the study. “Highly reactive” infants in the study were defined by their reactions of becoming distressed when presentations of brightly colored toys were moved in front of their faces, cotton swabs dipped in dilute butyl alcohol applied to their nose and tape recordings of voices speaking brief sentences. 20% of the population was labeled as “highly reactive” and the 40% who remained relaxed were labeled as “low reactive”.

The infants were again introduced to stimuli at 14 to 21 months. One third of the 73 “high reactive” infants were highly fearful and only 3% showed minimal fear at both ages. One third of the 147 “low reactive” were minimally fearful at both ages and only 4% displayed high levels of fear, by contrast. High reactive children showed greater sympathetic reactivity in the cardiovascular system than the low reactive in the first 2 years.

The children gained control of their crying and reflex to retreat from unfamiliar events and only shoed these responses to dangerous events, which were not easily or ethical to create in a laboratory around 4 or 5 years. The children were interviewed at 4 and half years by an unfamiliar female examiner who was blind to their previous behavior. The “high reactive” children exhibited less significant smiles, 62 “high reactive” children talked and smiled significantly less often than the 94 “low reactive”, and male high reactive children had significantly higher resting heart rates then did the low reactive. Spontaneous comments and smiles were positively correlated. The article reports that high reactive children will be at a higher risk to develop anxiety disorders later in life during adulthood or adolescents. The article also discusses social class; “low reactive” children who are reared in homes where antisocial behavior is socialized may become candidates for delinquency.

The article also looks at the relation between psychological and biological constructs. Variation levels in hormones may accompanied by differences in the intensity and form of responsiveness to unfamiliarity. The difference in “high and low reactive” is interpreted as reflecting variation in the amygdala and its interactions with the hypothalamus, medulla, central gray, cingulated, and ventral striatum.

This article illustrates important points about development such as biological based tendencies with cognitive, emotional and social aspects of growth. The article reports that “4 month old infants who show a low threshold to become distressed are motorically aroused to unfamiliar stimuli are more likely than others to become fearful and subdued during early childhood, whereas infants who show a high arousal threshold are more likely to become bold and sociable.” As a reader, I am interested to see follow up studies on this. Would it be possible to study the children’s children from the study e.g. could we see if one could link high arousal children to having high arousal children? Another interesting idea for follow up research would be paired with neuroscience and the amygdala, due to research pointing towards it as storing fear memories. This article communicates to me that behaviors for survival can be stored and passed down for the survival of the species though evolution.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Culture and Early Infancy Among Central African Foragers and Farmers Hewlett et al 1998 Article Review 9-8-10

Culture and Early Infancy Among Central African Foragers and Farmers
Hewlett et al 1998
Article Review 9-8-10

This article is based on the research of a group of developmental psychologists, Hewlett, Lamb, Shannon, Leyendecker and Scholmerich, and the observed the behaviors of two communities, the Ngandu and the Aka, and how the adults cared for the infants. The two communities were of interest to them due to the socioeconomic similarities; both are small communities and have little consumerism. The two communities differ in how they obtain food and other necessities for life. The Ngandu are farmers who do not move their settlements. The Ngandu are “slash and burn” farmers with marked gender, intergenerational inequality, and stronger chiefs. The Aka are hunter gatherers or foragers who move their settlements. The Aka move their camps several times a year, have high gender and intergenerational egalitarianism and have minimal political hierarchy. The study focused on variability in infant care in small scale or transitional non western cultures.

Hewlett and his colleges observed the daily living activities, caregiving behaviors, and interactions between the child and parent such as physical affection, vocalizing, holding, face to face contact, fussing and smiling. Two groups of infants 3-4 months old and 9-10 month olds were observed. 20 Aka 3-4 month olds, 20 Aka 9-10 month olds, 21 Ngandu 3-4 month olds, and 20 Ngandu 9-10 month olds. The children were observed 3 hours on 4 different days so that all 12 daylight hours were covered. Thirteen of the Aka 3 month olds, 12 of the Ngandu 3 month olds, 9 of the Aka 9 month olds, and 12 of the Ngandu 9 month old were boys. 14 of the 9-10 month old (6 Aka), and Six of the 3-4 month olds (3 Aka, 3 Ngandu) were first borne. 20% of the Aka and Ngandue fathers in both age categories studied had more than one wife. None of the Aka engaged in a cash economy or had a formal education. The Aka parents engaged in subsistence activities during the observations. The Ngandu women and men engaged in subsistence and market activities but none had employment outside of the home. Several of the Ngandu women, and most of the men had received some elementary education. The families completed their daily living activities while being observed. The observations happened during both the rainy and dry seasons. The observed sampled the parents and childrens dyadic behaviors as well as location, position, and identity of the adult near, holding or caring for the infant during a 45 minute period. Data was observed for 20 s and 10s for recording.

The article discussed the differences pervious research from LeVine (1974, 1989, 1994) when caring for a child among different cultures as an environmental factor. The article reports that Children who are born in urban- industrial or pedagogical cultures tend to have parents who focus on active engagement, stimulation, and social exchange. Children cost more, and contribute less to their society. Parents tend to focus more on cognitive skills as the mortality rate of infants is lower. The article reports that children who live in an agrarian or pediatric society are more focused on physical development, survival and health of the child due to higher infant mortality rates. Agrarian parents tend to respond quicker to fussing, feed their infants on demand and keep their children in closer proximity.

The two communities experience a high infant mortality rate, observe each other frequently and have associated with each other for generations. The researchers feel as though this should create more similarities between responsiveness to fussing, frequency of breastfeeding and that both cultures have had the opportunity to learn from each other and modify their child care behaviors.

The article observes the work load of caregivers in different cultures and the effects upon child caregiving, daily activities, and interactions between the child and parent. The article reports the interactions between the communities.

The Aka focus on sharing. They share with many people in many households daily and there is greater age and gender egalitarianism. The Aka live in camps of 25-35 made up of blood relation or married persons. Aka houses are made by women. The men, women and children cooperatively hunt with nets. The men attempt to chase game into the net, while the women stay close to the net and tackle animals once they are trapped. Men and women contribute equally. The Aka’s substance system involves “immediate returns”, which can foster more sharing within the community as there is less invested.

The Aka infants are fed more frequently, adult interactions are more proximal, and are held closer than the Ngandu infants by their caregivers. The Aka caregivers are more likely to respond to each fuss or cry by soothing the infant. The data discusses that the Aka holding their baby has a higher energy cost, as the mothers are pygmies, are shorter and lighter than the Ngandu women. The Aka infants are held almost all the time, and this may explain why the infants sleep more than the Ngandu.

The Ngandu households have marked inequality and some sharing between household with elderly and men receiving move than others. The Ngandu live in communities of around 100 to 400 people. Ngandu women are primary providers who plan, weed, harvest, and prepare meals. The men clean, and burn plantations. The Ngandu are actively engaged in a local cash economy, many are small scale merchants. The workload of the ngandu mothers appears to be greater than the Aka, as well as the substance system is described as “delayed returns”.

The articles statistical analysis reports that the Ngandu adult infant interactions were more distal and became more pronounced in late infancy. The Ngandu infants were less likely to be left to fuss or cry. The Ngandu stimulate their infants more by using distal behaviors. Ngandu infants are held half as frequently as Aka infants. Ngandu infants thus fuss, cry, smile and vocalize to maintain and attract their parent’s attention. The parents will vocalize and stimulate their infants in return.


I find it interesting that this study has followed LeVine’s research while still having subtle variances in environments, social interactions of community members, hierarchy, economy, and outcomes within the two communities which have affected the children’s development and interactions with the parents.

1st blog

I, as many of us, had that moment of terror when I was told, “hey we are going to blog for class”. I wanted to introduce myself a bit before I just jump into this first blog and bare my thoughts with whoever comes across this page.
I am a creature of structure. I would describe myself as a “scattered, energetic person”. The irony of that statement is that most of the people I would work with would also add “organized” to that category. In order to function in my environments I have created a lot of structure and routine to my settings. You may ask yourself why this information is important to you the reader. The answer is reflected in my daily living activities. I create structure and routine which means that I don’t have a lot of change in my environment. I don’t have small children or other changes in my job that many people face. This works well for me, but leaves me lacking for interesting things to blog about. I also don’t want to put information, no matter how confidential, about my clients in my blog, which in turn makes even less for me to blog about. My horror is that my blogs would only be about my crazy cats, hence making me the “crazy cat lady blogger”.
Luckily for you all, I got out of town some this weekend. I think I observed enough fun stuff to fill my blogs for the year without referring to my cats. (We will just have to wait and see on that one though…)
While waiting in line for a ride I saw multiple instances of families attempting to parent their very over excited children while the parents themselves looked exhausted. Now, I am not trying to reflect my own opinions on how to raise children I don’t have, judge these families or attempt to make assumptions about how they were feeling, not knowing any history about them. I also know I needed stuff to blog about, so they became my unwitting volunteers.
One family stood out in particular to me. I followed them in line for around 30 to 45 minutes. During this time I saw the mother and father multiple times use punishment such as taking away reinforces from their children who were under 10 years old. The sibling set was repeatedly fighting and not caring whether their “DS” was taken away for “one month” or not. Eventually the parent sighed and I wondered if they were running out of things to take away. I think every parent has gone down that sneaky spiral once or twice.
Removing all other things aside about my judgments on age appropriate punishment, the parents input, or even past histories of what has worked for this family, the children were not responding to this redirection from the parents and stopping the behaviors. In my mind I went back to a wonderful conversation I had with my individual supervisor this week and trying to create positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement. I thought of all the ways the parents could reward the children for behavior they were looking for while waiting in lines instead of telling them about all the things they were going to lose. I wondered if how simple something as attention to the behaviors the parents were looking for in the lines would increase that behavior in the child.
I hope to use this with my cats. I have a very intelligent crazy little guy, aptly named “chaos”, who does everything he can to get attention though negative behaviors. Maybe I should use a bit of my own reflections on this family with chaos.