Why Kids NEED Active Parents

by j.w.gibson, m.s.

Attachment Theory

The biological sciences have always been proud of their solid empirical foundations, and psychology has been secretly and at times outright jealous. When Bowlby (1988) discovered that ethologists had been studying the development of close bonds between mother and offspring, he immediately decided that the new biological perspectives were what psychology needed. Bonds between individuals occur in a wide range of mammalian and avian species, and can be studied experientially in light of their evolutionary significance (Bowlby, 1988). The variety of animals that have adapted such a specific social behavior emphasizes its importance for the transmission of some type of species-specific information.

Ethological theory has discussed the ability to make strong emotional bonds to individuals a basic tenant of human nature which exists in the neonate and continues to develop into old age (Bowlby, 1988). Since humans rely on their social interactions to survive, the healthy development of primary social relationships between caretakers and offspring has lasting consequences for the future processing of other social information, and requisite behavior. However, according to Bowlby (1988) the formation of strong bonds requires several principal propositions:

1) Emotionally significant bonds between individuals have basic survival functions and therefore a primary status. 2) They can be understood by postulating cybernetic systems situated within the CNS of each partner that have the effect of maintaining proximity or ready accessibility of each partner to the other. 3) Each partner builds in his or her mind working models of self and of other and of the patterns of interaction that have developed between them. 4) Present knowledge requires that a theory of developmental pathways should replace theories that invoke specific phases of development in which it is postulated a person may become fixated and/or to which he or she may regress (p.2). While some theoretical understanding of attachment theory have changed since Bowlby, his origination of the theory remains useful.

During infancy and early childhood, children rely on their parents for protection, comfort, and assistance (Bowlby, 1988). They strive to remain in close physical contact, and the accumulation of their interactions helps both the mother and child to better approximate the other’s mental state. How parents respond to their children’s needs affects the specific nature of their attachment and consequently, their social learning about how future interactions will progress.

Infants are equipped with a number of species-characteristic signaling behaviors (i.e. crying) that serve to keep caregivers in very close proximity (Ainsworth, 1989). This proximity-keeping behavior has direct adaptive value since it ensures that parents will tend to the needs of the child. A frightening or stressful situation that produces crying, for instance, will signal the parent’s, and especially the mother’s, protective response mechanisms. Throughout the child’s experiences, gradually they build up “expectations of regularities in what happens to him or her” (Ainsworth, 1989). The consistency of the parent’s responsiveness acts to form the child’s comprehension of how they will be treated in a social environment.

Attachment behavior develops, in one of four ways, based on the consistency and responsiveness of the parents to a child’s needs. Secure attachment develops when parents are consistently available to their children, and are sensitive to their needs. A securely attached child develops a healthy trust that a parent will be around during a frightening or stressful situation (Bowlby, 1988). Because they are confident that their caretaker is protecting and available, they are more likely to explore the surrounding environment, aware that if they get into trouble, they have a safe haven to return to. Being more likely to explore, they will tend to interact with more developmentally appropriate stimulus.

Securely attached children are likely to be described by teachers as “cheerful and cooperative, popular with other children, resilient, and resourceful” (Bowlby, 1988). In addition, they are likely to be relatively indifferent to minimal separations from their mothers and happily greet them upon return (Hetherington & Parke, 1999). Their experience with the social nature of humans is positive and they develop confidence in their ability to navigate the social landscape.
Insecure attachment happens when primary caretakers are inconsistent in their responses to a child’s signals, who are indifferent or distant, who may respond to a child’s request in negative or frustrated ways, or who fails to soothe a child. Insecurely attached children suffer negative social experience and begin to form models that human society functions as they have experienced. Consequently, they are more likely to be described as “emotionally insulated, hostile, or antisocial and as unduly seeking of attention” (Bowlby, 1988). In addition, insecurely attached children may develop inadequate defense mechanisms that confound the relationship between themselves and parents because of their disadvantaged social experiences.

According to a now classic study by Ainsworth, The Strange Situation, children were exposed to a situation where their mothers left and returned twice. The degree of attachment relationship had considerable impacts on the child’s reaction to the situation of the “leavings” and upon the return of their mother. Securely attached children suffered the least amount of stress at being separated from their mothers, showing excitement and warmth upon their subsequent returns (Hetherington & Parke, 1999). In contrast, all the insecurely attached children maintained some degree of dissassociative behaviors directed at the mother for leaving them in strange environments.

Insecurely attached children can be further broken down into three distinct categories: Insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant, and insecure-disorganized (Hetherington & Parke, 1999). Insecure-avoidant attachment children show little distress when their mothers are gone, and avoid them upon return, sometimes becoming visibly upset. Their past history has taught them that the mother is not concerned with their needs and so they are to be avoided. Insecure-resistant attached children show the opposite behavior, becoming extremely upset when mothers leave, but indifferent upon their return, as if to punish their mother’s for leaving them in the first place. The third type, insecure-disorganized attachment babies display random confusion and disorientation upon their mother’s return, often freezing or repeating their movements, such as rocking or tapping of an appendage (Hetherington & Parke, 1999).

The importance of bond formation between parent and child should not be ignored because it sets the stage for neurological development in a number of social and cognitive domains. Personality aspects of children are heavily affected by their primary (parental) relationships. If children learn early that the social world is not stable, does not provide them safety, and is often cruel, they will tend to develop personality patterns that both represent this belief and adapt to survive in such a world. Bowlby (1988) believed that there is a strong emphasis of stability and continuity of how an individual’s existing internal experiences will affect the way in which they construe and respond to every new situation. While the extent of this truth has been challenged and changed over the years, the impact of early social experiences has not been dismissed as a serious factor in the ability of children to develop species-normal behaviors. A child’s first experience of bond formation is not likely to be forgotten, in fact, how well the child forms bonds is a direct measure of how successful they will be as adults in a complex social landscape.

Neural Brain Development in Infants and Children

Brain development in newborns has already undergone considerable construction by the time they are born. One estimate puts neuronal proliferation at an estimated 250,000 per minute (DiPietro, 2000)! Despite the size and complexity of the human infant brain, it is the least differentiated of any organ in the baby’s body (Davies, 2002). This means that while considerable potential exists, the cognitive structures have not been “hardwired” The weaving of connections and specific programs has not yet developed, because the biology needs information from the local environment about which functions it is required to produce. Evolutionarily speaking, it would make little sense for infants to be born with a predetermined set of cognitive programs for, lets say, living in an arctic environment, only to find that their parents had migrated south to warm, temperate rain forests which require an entirely different set of problem solving programs. Two factors affect the development of neural structures in the brain: genetic predisposition and the nature of socio-environmental factors exposed. This is primarily why the early years of development are the most critical to species-normal human development as described by Scarr (Scarr, 1993).


Humans are made up of genotypic possibility and phenotypic expression determined by environmental interactions. Human cognition can be understood in a similar way. Genes are like blueprints, they direct the organization of materials, and instructions for building biological structures, while the mechanism responsible for building those structures lies rooted in the environment social situation. The exact path genotypic expression takes is a function of numerous factors local to the immediate environment that the organism exists in. Babies cannot know what the environmental conditions will be where they are born. They cannot know what types of adaptive problems they will be required to solve (Barkow et al., 1992), therefore, they must learn the social and environmental climates specific to their situational development.

Experience-dependent development is a term used by neurologists, and adopted by some developmental psychologists, to refer to the creation of neural connections by way of outside stimulus. This means that although the brain is a self-organizing structure, it requires interaction with environmental variables in order to create synaptic connections between neural networks (DiPietro, 2000). During the first three years of life, a process called synaptogenesis, the creation of synaptic links between neural material, is so profuse that the density of synapses in the brain is the greatest at any point in life (DiPietro, 2000). The development of synapses is based in part on what environmental or social influences the child is exposed to, so that a child who is deprived of those experiences will develop fewer and less interconnected pathways between brain functioning domains. In addition, a child that is not exposed to the developmentally appropriate stimulus at a time when the neurology is “ready” to develop will fail to “grow” the appropriate cognitive tools for proper information processing.

It has been noted that a critical period exists for the development of many pathways, such as: “attention, perception, memory, motor control, modulation of emotion, the capacity to form relationships and language” (Davies, 2002). If certain types of stimulation are absent in the child’s social environment when the child passes through a critical period, the child’s development in that particular domain may be partially or completely undeveloped; as in the case of the Italian boy whose eye remained covered for an extended period of time (due to lesions), as an infant, and whose neural pathways governing that site were not stimulated to develop adequately (Davies, 2002). By all biological accounts, there was nothing wrong with the eye apparatus, but the child could not see. The specific combination of neural and synaptic development failed to take place because of non-existent information. The brain does not need to waste energy developing biology that it will not use.

The adaptation of a bond formation (attachment) in immediate caretakers is a direct advantage to a developing child’s neurological growth because it provides the appropriate environmental information to the brain; what programs will I need to develop in order to be able to function in this specific socio-environmental arena. Consequently, more advanced developmental growth will lead to better prospects of success as a reproducing individual because the individual will have a larger range of cognitive problem solving tools.

Eventually, the brain slows in its production of synapses, and begins to chisel away at unused cognitive apparatus. Near puberty, a process of elimination or "pruning" of excess neurons begins to happen, selectively cleaning undeveloped synaptic connections (DiPietro, 2000). Because elimination is based in part on the usefulness of the synapses as they are stimulated by environmental experience, those social and environmental stimuli that are most prevalent in a child’s life tend to strengthen the resilience of the synapses to pruning. Children who are continuously underexposed to the proper types of developmental stimulus may fail to develop a collection of synaptic connections that are necessary for normal species functioning in a certain domain, or which connect different yet related domains, such as episodic and long-term memory.

One classic example of the developmental affects of stimulus deprivation is the case of Rumanian orphans. These children grew up (in an orphanage) with little to no stimulation, no individual attention, nor anything that could be remotely construed as love (Davies, 2002). Families that adopted these children noted that they did not have the capacity to make relationships with anyone, adopted parents included. After utilizing brain scans, researchers concluded that fundamental “eccentricities” of emotional functioning areas existed (Davies, 2002). The conclusion was that these children had missed a critical time for the development of emotions as appropriate to relationship formation in later life. Because there was insufficient environmental information to influence the design of neurological structures at the critical period, the structures were not adequately built.

The earliest interspecies relationships that infants are exposed to also affect the physiologic parameters of cardiovascular, metabolic, endocrinologic, and immunologic functioning (DiPietro, 2000). Neurologic development in rats has been found to impact the development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (DiPietro, 2000) which affects the direction of stress secreted ACTH and corticosterone. Genetic mediation of neuroendocrine responses provide a solid example of the role of environment in genetic expression (DiPietro, 2000). Other studies involving non-human primates have duplicated such findings. This suggests that the extent of genetic influence is not limited to neurologic factors, that other biological systems may also be affected by the extent of social stimulus during certain developmental periods in a child’s life, and that in general, the importance of parent-child social interactions on biological development may be severely underestimated.

Tying It All Together: Attachment, Adaptation, and Socio-Dependent Brain Development

Biologists do not debate the certainty of human evolution, nor now should psychologists. “Human minds, human behavior, human artifacts, and human culture are all biological phenomena—aspects of the phenotypes of humans and their relationships with one another” (Barkow et al., 1992). Bowlby’s research into the bond formation process between mother and infant has helped to generate a preliminary understanding of the dynamic interplay between environment and genes in the formation of adaptive mechanisms of human child rearing. Parents who consistently fail to provide a secure base to their children, from where social interaction is close, warm, active, responsive and developmentally required, will handicap the genetic development of their children’s cognitive structures in a number of domains. Improper development of cognitive domains affects all aspects of children’s development since their initial social experience determines to what extent the brain connections are built.

The adaptive value of attachment driven behavior in both a mother and infant can easily be explained. Primary responses in maternal love are to protect and care for a child. This drive improves the chance that the offspring, and genotypes, will survive the incredible dangers associated with the completely dependent nature of human infants. Strong maternal bonds are more likely to ensure close proximity of offspring to primary caretakers and therefore, responsiveness to an infant’s needs. In addition to the protection value provided by attachment, the constant social interaction provides the environmental stimulus necessary for neurological structures to form around the relevant environmental conditions. Synaptic connections are built because of pertinent stimulus. The brain, as the rest of the body, does not waste cellular energy developing structures that it will not use. Therefore, only those cognitive domains that are activated by the growing infant/child are successfully developed.

Developmental psychologists wishing to improve the minimal environmental situations of children would do well to understand the types of stimulus required for neurological activation of species necessary cognitive domains. Numerous intervention strategies have been supported by government and private research. Cumulative research has not conclusively shown that interventions aimed at curbing antisocial and aggressive child behavior are significantly successful (DiPietro, 2000). Much social policy has been written on the premise that early intervention programs for child development are successful if they (1) are implemented early enough, and (2) are comprehensive. Most interventions stem from theoretical bases that intend to change behavioral responses. How can these programs significantly change a behavior when the neurological pathways that determine the behavior have already been grown, pruned, and experientially honed? This is not to say that child behavior cannot be altered, but lasting change will be fundamentally difficult to sustain for any length of time if the conditions of cognitive program development are not taken into account.

Child development theory, in all domains, is greatly enhanced by considering the developmental situation of neurologic and synaptic genesis, which in turn determines what psychological programs will be needed, and to which degree they will be successfully developed.


References
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1989). Attachments beyond infancy. American Psychologist, 44(4), 709-716.
Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (Eds.). (1992). The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Bowlby, J. (1988). Developmental psychiatry comes of age. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 145(1), 1-10.
Davies, M. (2002). A few thoughts about the mind, the brain, and a child with early deprivation. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 47, 421-435.
DiPietro, J. A. (2000). Baby and the brain: Advances in child development. Annual Review of Public Health, 21, 455-471.
Hetherington, E. M., & Parke, R. D. (1999). Child psychology: A contemporary viewpoint (5th ed.). Boston: MA: McGraw-Hill.
Scarr, S. (1993). Biological and cultural diversity: The legacy of Darwin for development. Child Development, 64, 1333-1353.