PSYCHOLOGIC INFLUENCES: ATTACHMENT AND CONTINGENCY. The
influence of the child-rearing environment dominates most
current models of development. Infants in hospitals and orphanages,
devoid of opportunities for attachment, have severe developmental
deficits. Attachment refers to a biologically determined
tendency of a young child to seek proximity to the parent during
times of stress and also to the relationship that allows securely
attached children to use their parents to re-establish a sense of
well-being after a stressful experience. Insecure attachment may
be predictive of later behavioral and learning problems.
At all stages of development, children progress optimally when
they have adult caregivers who pay attention to their verbal and
nonverbal cues and respond accordingly. In early infancy, such
contingent responsiveness to signs of overarousal or underarousal
helps maintain infants in a state of quiet alertness and fosters
autonomic self-regulation. Contingent responses (reinforcement
depending on the behavior of the other) to nonverbal gestures
create the groundwork for the shared attention and reciprocity
that are critical for later language and social development. Children
learn best when new challenges are just slightly harder than
what they have already mastered, a degree of difficulty dubbed
the "zone of proximal development." Psychologic forces, such as
attention problems or mood disorders, will have profound effects
on the older child's other activities.