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| The person, usually the mother, with whom the infant develops the major attachment relationship. |
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| The process through which society moulds the child’s beliefs, expectations, and behaviour. |
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| Knowledge of the social world and interpersonal relationships. |
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| An infant’s and a caregiver’s cognitive conception of each other, which they use to form expectations and predictions. |
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Definition
| An internal reaction or feeling, which may be either positive (such as joy) or negative (such as anger), and may reflect a readiness for action. |
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| The expectations and attitudes a society holds toward the expression of affect. |
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| A research technique for studying dyadic interactions, in which two individuals are simultaneously videotaped with different cameras and then the tapes are examined side-by-side. |
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Definition
| The smooth intermeshing of behaviours between mother and baby. |
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| The degree to which caregivers gauge their communicative behaviours to respond to input from their infants. |
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| The aspect of personality studied in infants, which include their emotional expressiveness and responsiveness to stimulation. |
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| A concept describing the relation between a baby’s temperament and his or her social and environment surroundings. |
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Term
| New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) |
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Definition
| A well-known longitudinal project conducted in the United States by Thomas and Chess to study infant temperament and its implications for later psychological adjustment. |
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| Plomin and Buss’ theory of temperament, which holds that temperament can be measured along the dimensions of emotionality activity and sociability. |
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Definition
| The tendency to quickly respond in a negative manner to an unfamiliar situation. |
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| The mother’s emotional attachment to the child, which appears shortly after birth and which some theorists believe develops through early contact during a sensitive period. |
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Definition
| A general fear of unfamiliar people that appears in many infants at around 8 months of age and indicates the formation of the attachment bond. |
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Term
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Definition
| Crying and searching by infants separated from their mothers an indication of the formation of the attachment bond. |
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Term
| Strange Situation procedure |
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Definition
| Mary Ainsworth’s laboratory procedure for assessing the strength of the attachment relationship by observing the infant’s reactions to a series of structured episodes involving the mother and a stranger. |
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Definition
| A method of assessing attachment in which cards bearing descriptions of the child’s interactions with the caregiver are sorted into categories to create a profile of the child. |
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Term
| Adult Attachment Interview |
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Definition
| An instrument used to assess an adult’s childhood recollections of the attachment relationship with the primary caregiver. |
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