INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN RESPONSES TO UNFAMILIAR OBJECTS AT TWENTY-THREE MONTHS OF AGE

Abstract

The relationship between the response of 40 infants at 7.5 months toward a stranger, their classifications in the Ainsworth Strange Situation at 12 months, their response, at 23 months, to three unfamiliar objects (a peer, a stranger and a robot) and, their tendency toward behavioral inhibition, assessed at 27 months, was examined.Results show that TypeB children tended to approach the unfamiliar objects more frequently across three situations than TypeC children.However, the response was also related to the results of behavioral inhibition obtained at 7.5 and 27 months.Furthermore, there were individual differences within B type children in terms of Ainsworth's subclassifications.The interactional effect between the behavior types in the Strange Situation and temperamental behavior characterristics on approach behaviors was discuss ed.Key words: