Reactions to novelties : Developmental aspects

Sammanfattning: The present thesis considers different aspects of infants' and children's reactions to novelties, that is, unfamiliar persons, objects, and situations. In Study I, the developmental phenomenon stranger wariness was investigated from a temperamental perspective. Stranger wariness at age 10 months was found to be marginally predicted by 5-month individual variation in reactions to frustration, to sensory stimulation, and to novelties and to be predictive of 2-year social inhibition. These results indicate that 10-month stranger wariness does not only reflect a developmental transition but also an individual disposition to be responsive to social novelties.In line with what has been suggested for the behavioral inhibition construct, Study II showed that 2-year-olds' reactions to social and non-social novelties should be considered as belonging to one construct. Furthermore, the relations within and between latency, negative/inhibited and positive/approaching reactions to social and non-social novelties were found to be very similar, implying that identifying children as uninhibited means that they are disposed not only towards lack of negative/inhibited reactions, but also towards approaching/positive reactions when confronted with novelties. Study III concerned preschool social inhibition in relation to attachment security and social experiences in terms non-parental care. The relative contributions of the three variables to school-age social competence with peers and social self-esteem were also investigated. It was found that attachment security and social inhibition were unrelated to each other and that they made significant independent contributions to the explanation of social competence, whereas social self-esteem was only predicted by preschool social inhibition.