Socio-emotional Development

Babies are social creatures from the moment they are born. An infant fairly quickly begins to show a preference for familiar faces and responds to a parent's presence by cooing and gurgling. As infants become more mobile, by around 6 to 8 months of age, they typically begin to show a clear preference for their mother's company; when frightened by an unfamiliar face, or when separated from their mother, infants at this stage will often cry or show visible distress, and on being reunited with a parent or caregiver they typically reciprocate with smiles or hugs.

This close emotional bond of affection that develops between infants and their parents or caregivers is called attachment. A classic study by Harlow and Harlow (1962) illustrated this powerfully: baby monkeys were separated from their mothers about 8 hours after birth and reared for six months by two 'surrogate' (substitute) mothers built in an experimental chamber — one made of bare wire, the other covered in soft cloth. Half of the baby monkeys were fed by the wire mother, and half by the cloth mother. Regardless of which surrogate had actually fed them, the baby monkeys consistently showed a strong preference for the cloth mother and spent far more time with her. This classic finding demonstrates that providing nourishment or feeding was not, by itself, the crucial ingredient in attachment — contact comfort mattered far more. A similar pattern can be seen in young children who form a strong attachment to a favourite blanket or toy: children know perfectly well that the object is not their mother, yet it still provides them real comfort, and as children grow more self-assured they typically abandon such objects on their own. …