Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Kaiser Permanente, Woodland Hills, CA, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2019 Oct;3(10):1070-1077. doi: 10.1038/s41562-019-0656-9. Epub 2019 Jul 22.
Attachment-related learning (that is, forming preferences for cues associated with the parent) defies the traditional rules of learning in that it seems to occur independently of apparent reinforcement-young children prefer cues associated with their parent, regardless of valence (rewarding or aversive), despite the diversity of parenting styles. This obligatory attraction for parental cues keeps the child nearby and safe to explore the environment; thus, it is critical for survival and sets the foundation for normal human cognitive-emotional behaviour. Here we examined the learning underlying this attraction in preschool-age children. Young children underwent an aversive conditioning procedure either in the parent's presence or alone. We showed that despite disliking the aversive unconditioned stimulus, children exhibited a behavioural approach for conditioned stimuli that were acquired in the parent's presence and an avoidance for stimuli acquired in the parent's absence, an effect that was strongest among those with the lowest cortisol levels. The results suggest that learning systems during early childhood are constructed to permit modification by parental presence.
依恋相关学习（即，形成对与父母相关联的线索的偏好）违反了传统的学习规则，因为它似乎独立于明显的强化而发生——幼儿偏爱与父母相关联的线索，无论其效价（奖励或惩罚）如何，尽管育儿风格多种多样。这种对父母线索的强制性吸引力使孩子留在附近并安全地探索环境；因此，这对生存至关重要，并为正常的人类认知-情感行为奠定了基础。在这里，我们研究了学龄前儿童对这种吸引力的学习。幼儿在父母在场或不在场的情况下进行了厌恶条件反射程序。我们表明，尽管孩子们不喜欢厌恶的无条件刺激，但他们表现出对在父母在场时获得的条件刺激的行为接近，以及对在父母不在场时获得的刺激的回避，这种效应在皮质醇水平最低的孩子中最为强烈。结果表明，儿童早期的学习系统是为了允许父母的存在而进行修改而构建的。
