Belief

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief 

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A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition about the world is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be occurrent (e.g. a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be dispositional (e.g. a person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white").

There are various different ways that contemporary philosophers have tried to describe beliefs, including as representations of ways that the world could be (Jerry Fodor), as dispositions to act as if certain things are true (Roderick Chisholm), as interpretive schemes for making sense of someone's actions (Daniel Dennett and Donald Davidson), or as mental states that fill a particular function (Hilary Putnam). Some have also attempted to offer significant revisions to our notion of belief, including eliminativists about belief who argue that there is no phenomenon in the natural world which corresponds to our folk psychological concept of belief (Paul Churchland) and formal epistemologists who aim to replace our bivalent notion of belief ("either we have a belief or we don't have a belief") with the more permissive, probabilistic notion of credence ("there is an entire spectrum of degrees of belief, not a simple dichotomy between belief and non-belief").

Beliefs are the subject of various important philosophical debates. Notable examples include: "What is the rational way to revise one's beliefs when presented with various sorts of evidence?"; "Is the content of our beliefs entirely determined by our mental states, or do the relevant facts have any bearing on our beliefs (e.g. if I believe that I'm holding a glass of water, is the non-mental fact that water is H₂O part of the content of that belief)?"; "How fine-grained or coarse-grained are our beliefs?"; and "Must it be possible for a belief to be expressible in language, or are there non-linguistic beliefs?".

Psychology

Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation and therefore one of the building blocks of conscious thought. Philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis, and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis.

The concept of belief presumes a subject (the believer) and an object of belief (the proposition). So, like other propositional attitudes, belief implies the existence of mental states and intentionality, both of which are hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mind, whose foundations and relation to brain states are still controversial.

Beliefs are sometimes divided into core beliefs (that are actively thought about) and dispositional beliefs (that may be ascribed to someone who has not thought about the issue). For example, if asked "do you believe tigers wear pink pajamas?" a person might answer that they do not, despite the fact they may never have thought about this situation before.

This has important implications for understanding the neuropsychology and neuroscience of belief. If the concept of belief is incoherent, then any attempt to find the underlying neural processes that support it will fail.

Philosopher Lynne Rudder Baker has outlined four main contemporary approaches to belief in her book Saving Belief:

• Our common-sense understanding of belief is correct – Sometimes called the "mental sentence theory," in this conception, beliefs exist as coherent entities, and the way we talk about them in everyday life is a valid basis for scientific endeavour. Jerry Fodor was one of the principal defenders of this point of view.
• Our common-sense understanding of belief may not be entirely correct, but it is close enough to make some useful predictions – This view argues that we will eventually reject the idea of belief as we know it now, but that there may be a correlation between what we take to be a belief when someone says "I believe that snow is white" and how a future theory of psychology will explain this behaviour. Philosopher Stephen Stich has argued for this particular understanding of belief.
• Our common-sense understanding of belief is entirely wrong and will be completely superseded by a radically different theory that will have no use for the concept of belief as we know it – Known as eliminativism, this view (most notably proposed by Paul and Patricia Churchland) argues that the concept of belief is like obsolete theories of times past such as the four humours theory of medicine, or the phlogiston theory of combustion. In these cases science has not provided us with a more detailed account of these theories, but completely rejected them as valid scientific concepts to be replaced by entirely different accounts. The Churchlands argue that our common-sense concept of belief is similar in that as we discover more about neuroscience and the brain, the inevitable conclusion will be to reject the belief hypothesis in its entirety.
• Our common-sense understanding of belief is entirely wrong; however, treating people, animals, and even computers as if they had beliefs is often a successful strategy – The major proponents of this view, Daniel Dennett and Lynne Rudder Baker, are both eliminativists in that they hold that beliefs are not a scientifically valid concept, but they do not go as far as rejecting the concept of belief as a predictive device. Dennett gives the example of playing a computer at chess. While few people would agree that the computer held beliefs, treating the computer as if it did (e.g. that the computer believes that taking the opposition's queen will give it a considerable advantage) is likely to be a successful and predictive strategy. In this understanding of belief, named by Dennett the intentional stance, belief-based explanations of mind and behaviour are at a different level of explanation and are not reducible to those based on fundamental neuroscience, although both may be explanatory at their own level.

Strategic approaches make a distinction between rules, norms and beliefs as follows:

• Rules. Explicit regulative processes such as policies, laws, inspection routines, or incentives. Rules function as a coercive regulator of behavior and are dependent upon the imposing entity's ability to enforce them.
• Norms. Regulative mechanisms accepted by the social collective. Norms are enforced by normative mechanisms within the organization and are not strictly dependent upon law or regulation.
• Beliefs. The collective perception of fundamental truths governing behavior. The adherence to accepted and shared beliefs by members of a social system will likely persist and be difficult to change over time. Strong beliefs about determinant factors (i.e., security, survival, or honor) are likely to cause a social entity or group to accept rules and norms.

Historical conceptions of belief

In the context of Ancient Greek thought, three related concepts were identified regarding the concept of belief: pistis, doxa, and dogma. Simplified, pistis refers to "trust" and "confidence," doxa refers to "opinion" and "acceptance," and dogma refers to the positions of a philosopher or of a philosophical school such as Stoicism.

Emotion and beliefs

Research has indicated that emotion and cognition act in conjunction to produce beliefs, and more specifically emotion plays a vital role in the formation and maintenance of beliefs.

Formation

We are influenced by many factors that ripple through our minds as our beliefs form, evolve, and may eventually change

Psychologists study belief formation and the relationship between beliefs and actions. Three models of belief formation and change have been proposed:

Conditional inference process

When people are asked to estimate the likelihood that a statement is true, they search their memory for information that has implications for the validity of this statement. Once this information has been identified, they estimate the likelihood that the statement would be true if the information were true, and the likelihood that the statement would be true if the information were false. If their estimates for these two probabilities differ, people average them, weighting each by the likelihood that the information is true and false. Thus, information bears directly on beliefs of another, related statement.

Linear models

Unlike the previous model, this one takes into consideration the possibility of multiple factors influencing belief formation. Using regression procedures, this model predicts belief formation on the basis of several different pieces of information, with weights assigned to each piece on the basis of their relative importance.

Information processing models and change

These models address the fact that the responses people have to belief-relevant information is unlikely to be predicted from the objective basis of the information that they can recall at the time their beliefs are reported. Instead, these responses reflect the number and meaning of the thoughts that people have about the message at the time that they encounter it.

Some influences on people's belief formation include:

• Internalization of beliefs during childhood, which can form and shape our beliefs in different domains. Albert Einstein is often quoted as having said that "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." Political beliefs depend most strongly on the political beliefs most common in the community where we live. Most individuals believe the religion they were taught in childhood.
• Charismatic leaders can form or modify beliefs (even if those beliefs fly in the face of all previous beliefs). Rational individuals need to reconcile their direct reality with any said belief; therefore, if belief is not present or possible, it reflects the fact that contradictions were necessarily overcome using cognitive dissonance.
• Advertising can form or change beliefs through repetition, shock, and association with images of sex, love, beauty, and other strong positive emotions. Contrary to intuition, a delay, known as the sleeper effect, instead of immediate succession may increase an advertisement's ability to persuade viewer's beliefs if a discounting cue is present.
• Physical trauma, especially to the head, can radically alter a person's beliefs.

However, even educated people, well aware of the process by which beliefs form, still strongly cling to their beliefs, and act on those beliefs even against their own self-interest. In Anna Rowley's book, Leadership Therapy, she states "You want your beliefs to change. It's proof that you are keeping your eyes open, living fully, and welcoming everything that the world and people around you can teach you." This means that peoples' beliefs should evolve as they gain new experiences.

Modification of beliefs

An extensive amount of scientific research and philosophical discussion exists around the modification of beliefs, which is commonly referred to as belief revision. Generally speaking, the process of belief revision entails the believer weighing the set of truths and/or evidence, and the dominance of a set of truths or evidence on an alternative to a held belief can lead to revision. One process of belief revision is Bayesian updating and is often referenced for its mathematical basis and conceptual simplicity. However, such a process may not be representative for individuals whose beliefs are not easily characterized as probabilistic.

There are several techniques for individuals or groups to change the beliefs of others; these methods generally fall under the umbrella of persuasion. Persuasion can take on more specific forms such as consciousness raising when considered in an activist or political context. Belief modification may also occur as a result of the experience of outcomes. Because goals are based, in part on beliefs, the success or failure at a particular goal may contribute to modification of beliefs that supported the original goal.

Whether or not belief modification actually occurs is dependent not only on the extent of truths or evidence for the alternative belief, but also characteristics outside the specific truths or evidence. This includes, but is not limited to: the source characteristics of the message, such as credibility; social pressures; the anticipated consequences of a modification; or the ability of the individual or group to act on the modification. Therefore, individuals seeking to achieve belief modification in themselves or others need to consider all possible forms of resistance to belief revision.

Prediction

Different psychological models have tried to predict people's beliefs and some of them try to estimate the exact probabilities of beliefs. For example, Robert Wyer developed a model of subjective probabilities. When people rate the likelihood of a certain statement (e.g., "It will rain tomorrow"), this rating can be seen as a subjective probability value. The subjective probability model posits that these subjective probabilities follow the same rules as objective probabilities. For example, the law of total probability might be applied to predict a subjective probability value. Wyer found that this model produces relatively accurate predictions for probabilities of single events and for changes in these probabilities, but that the probabilities of several beliefs linked by "and" or "or" do not follow the model as well.

Knowledge and epistemology

A Venn diagram illustrating the traditional definition of knowledge as justified true belief (represented by the yellow circle). The Gettier problem gives us reason to think that not all justified true beliefs constitute knowledge.

Epistemology is concerned with delineating the boundary between justified belief and opinion, and involved generally with a theoretical philosophical study of knowledge. The primary problem in epistemology is to understand exactly what is needed in order for us to have knowledge. In a notion derived from Plato's dialogue Theaetetus, where the epistemology of Socrates (Platon) most clearly departs from that of the sophists, who at the time of Plato seem to have defined knowledge as what is here expressed as "justified true belief". The tendency to translate from belief (here: doxa – common opinion) to knowledge (here: episteme), which Plato (e.g. Socrates of the dialogue) utterly dismisses, results from failing to distinguish a dispositive belief (gr. 'doxa', not 'pistis') from knowledge (episteme) when the opinion is regarded true (here: orthé), in terms of right, and juristically so (according to the premises of the dialogue), which was the task of the rhetors to prove. Plato dismisses this possibility of an affirmative relation between belief (i.e. opinion) and knowledge even when the one who opines grounds his belief on the rule, and is able to add justification (gr. logos: reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) to it.

Plato has been credited for the "justified true belief" theory of knowledge, even though Plato in the Theaetetus (dialogue) elegantly dismisses it, and even posits this argument of Socrates as a cause for his death penalty. Among American epistemologists, Gettier (1963) and Goldman (1967), have questioned the "justified true belief" definition, and challenged the "sophists" of their time.

Justified true belief

Justified true belief is a definition of knowledge that gained approval during the Enlightenment, "justified" standing in contrast to "revealed". There have been attempts to trace it back to Plato and his dialogues. The concept of justified true belief states that in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition, but also have justification for doing so. In more formal terms, an agent ${\displaystyle S}$ knows that a proposition ${\displaystyle P}$ is true if and only if:

• ${\displaystyle P}$ is true
• ${\displaystyle S}$ believes that ${\displaystyle P}$ is true, and
• ${\displaystyle S}$ is justified in believing that ${\displaystyle P}$ is true

This theory of knowledge suffered a significant setback with the discovery of Gettier problems, situations in which the above conditions were seemingly met but where many philosophers deny that anything is known. Robert Nozick suggested a clarification of "justification" which he believed eliminates the problem: the justification has to be such that were the justification false, the knowledge would be false. Bernecker and Dretske (2000) argue that "no epistemologist since Gettier has seriously and successfully defended the traditional view." On the other hand, Paul Boghossian argues that the justified true belief account is the "standard, widely accepted" definition of knowledge.

Epistemology versus religion

Historically belief-in belonged in the realm of religious thought, belief-that instead belonged to epistemological considerations.

Belief-in

To "believe in" someone or something is a distinct concept from "believing-that." There are at least these types of belief-in:

• Commendatory / faith – we may make an expression of 'faith' in respect of some performance by an agent X, when without prejudice to the truth value of the factual outcome or even confidence in X otherwise, we expect that specific performance. In particular self-confidence or faith in one's self is this kind of belief.
• Existential claim – to claim belief in the existence of an entity or phenomenon in a general way with the implied need to justify its claim of existence. It is often used when the entity is not real, or its existence is in doubt. "He believes in witches and ghosts" or "many children believe in Santa Claus" or "I believe in a deity" are typical examples. The linguistic form is distinct from the assertion of the truth of a proposition since verification is either considered impossible or irrelevant or a counterfactual situation is assumed.

Belief-that

Economic belief

Economic beliefs are beliefs which are reasonably and necessarily contrary to the tenet of rational choice or instrumental rationality.

Studies of the Austrian tradition of the economic thought, in the context of analysis of the influence and subsequent degree of change resulting from existing economic knowledge and belief, has contributed the most to the subsequent holistic collective analysis.

Delusion

Insofar as the truth of belief is expressed in sentential and propositional form we are using the sense of belief-that rather than belief-in. Delusion arises when the truth value of the form is clearly nil.

Delusions are defined as beliefs in psychiatric diagnostic criteria (for example in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Psychiatrist and historian G.E. Berrios has challenged the view that delusions are genuine beliefs and instead labels them as "empty speech acts," where affected persons are motivated to express false or bizarre belief statements due to an underlying psychological disturbance. However, the majority of mental health professionals and researchers treat delusions as if they were genuine beliefs.

Science

In scientific medical writing, the verb 'believe' can mean "actively accept as true" on the basis of external evidence (for example, a statement of the type, "we believe that x is a better treatment than y in this disease" can imply that "after examining the available evidence, we have concluded that x is...").

Religion

Religious belief refers to attitudes towards mythological, supernatural, or spiritual aspects of a religion. Religious belief is distinct from religious practice and from religious behaviours – with some believers not practicing religion and some practitioners not believing religion. Religious beliefs, deriving from ideas that are exclusive to religionoften relate to the existence, characteristics and worship of a deity or deities, to the idea of divine intervention in the universe and in human life, or to the deontological explanations for the values and practices centered on the teachings of a spiritual leader or community. In contrast to other belief systems, religious beliefs are usually codified.

Forms

A popular view holds that different religions each have identifiable and exclusive sets of beliefs or creeds, but surveys of religious belief have often found that the official doctrine and descriptions of the beliefs offered by religious authorities do not always agree with the privately held beliefs of those who identify as members of a particular religion. For a broad classification of the kinds of religious belief, see below.

Fundamentalism

First self-applied as a term to the conservative doctrine outlined by anti-modernist Protestants in the United States, "fundamentalism" in religious terms denotes strict adherence to an interpretation of scriptures that are generally associated with theologically conservative positions or traditional understandings of the text and are distrustful of innovative readings, new revelation, or alternative interpretations. Religious fundamentalism has been identified in the media as being associated with fanatical or zealous political movements around the world that have used a strict adherence to a particular religious doctrine as a means to establish political identity and to enforce societal norms.

Orthodoxy

First used in the context of Early Christianity, the term "orthodoxy" relates to religious belief that closely follows the edicts, apologies, and hermeneutics of a prevailing religious authority. In the case of Early Christianity, this authority was the communion of bishops, and is often referred to by the term "Magisterium". The term orthodox was applied almost as an epithet to a group of Jewish believers who held to pre-Enlightenment understanding of Judaism – now known as Orthodox Judaism. The Eastern Orthodox Church of Christianity and the Catholic Church each consider themselves to be the true heir to Early Christian belief and practice. The antonym of "orthodox" is "heterodox", and those adhering to orthodoxy often accuse the heterodox of apostasy, schism, or heresy.

Modernism/reform

The Renaissance and later the Enlightenment in Europe exhibited varying degrees of religious tolerance and intolerance towards new and old religious ideas. The philosophes took particular exception to many of the more fantastical claims of religions and directly challenged religious authority and the prevailing beliefs associated with the established churches. In response to the liberalizing political and social movements, some religious groups attempted to integrate Enlightenment ideals of rationality, equality, and individual liberty into their belief systems, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reform Judaism and Liberal Christianity offer two examples of such religious associations.

Approaches to others

Adherents of particular religions deal with the differing doctrines and practices espoused by other religions or by other religious denominations in a variety of ways.

Exclusivism

People with exclusivist beliefs typically explain other beliefs either as in error, or as corruptions or counterfeits of the true faith. This approach is a fairly consistent feature among smaller new religious movements that often rely on doctrine that claims a unique revelation by the founders or leaders, and considers it a matter of faith that the "correct" religion has a monopoly on truth. All three major Abrahamic monotheistic religions have passages in their holy scriptures that attest to the primacy of the scriptural testimony, and indeed monotheism itself is often vouched as an innovation characterized specifically by its explicit rejection of earlier polytheistic faiths.

Some exclusivist faiths incorporate a specific element of proselytization. This is a strongly-held belief in the Christian tradition which follows the doctrine of the Great Commission, and is less emphasized by the Islamic faith where the Quranic edict "There shall be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) is often quoted as a justification for toleration of alternative beliefs. The Jewish tradition does not actively seek out converts.

Exclusivism correlates with conservative, fundamentalist, and orthodox approaches of many religions, while pluralistic and syncretist approaches either explicitly downplay or reject the exclusivist tendencies within a religion.

Inclusivism

People with inclusivist beliefs recognize some truth in all faith systems, highlighting agreements and minimizing differences. This attitude is sometimes associated with Interfaith dialogue or with the Christian Ecumenical movement, though in principle such attempts at pluralism are not necessarily inclusivist and many actors in such interactions (for example, the Roman Catholic Church) still hold to exclusivist dogma while participating in inter-religious organizations.

Explicitly inclusivist religions include many that are associated with the New Age movement, as well as modern reinterpretations of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Bahá'í Faith considers it doctrine that there is truth in all faith-systems.

Pluralism

People with pluralist beliefs make no distinction between faith systems, viewing each one as valid within a particular culture.

Syncretism

People with syncretic views blend the views of a variety of different religions or traditional beliefs into a unique fusion which suits their particular experiences and contexts (see eclecticism). Unitarian Universalism exemplifies a syncretic faith.

Adherence

Typical reasons for adherence to religion include the following:

• Some see belief in a deity as necessary for moral behavior.
• Some regard religious practices as serene, beautiful, and conducive to religious experiences, which in turn support religious beliefs.
• Organized religions promote a sense of community among their followers, and the moral and cultural common ground of these communities makes them attractive to people with similar values. Indeed, while religious beliefs and practices are usually connected, some individuals with substantially secular beliefs still participate in religious practices for cultural reasons.
• Each religion asserts that it is a means by which its adherents may come into closer contact with the Divine, with Truth, and with spiritual power. They all promise to free adherents from spiritual bondage, and to bring them into spiritual freedom. It naturally follows that a religion which can free its adherents from deception, sin, and spiritual death will have significant mental-health benefits. Abraham Maslow's research after World War II showed that Holocaust survivors tended to be those who held strong religious beliefs (not necessarily temple attendance, etc.), suggesting that belief helped people cope in extreme circumstances. Humanistic psychology went on to investigate how religious or spiritual identity may have correlations with longer lifespan and better health. The study found that humans may particularly need religious ideas to serve various emotional needs such as the need to feel loved, the need to belong to homogeneous groups, the need for understandable explanations and the need for a guarantee of ultimate justice. Other factors may involve sense of purpose, sense of identity, or a sense of contact with the divine. See also Man's Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, detailing his experience with the importance of religion in surviving the Holocaust. Critics assert that the very fact that religion was the primary selector for research subjects may have introduced a bias, and that the fact that all subjects were Holocaust survivors may also have had an effect. According to Larson et al. (2000), "[m]ore longitudinal research with better multidimensional measures will help further clarify the roles of these [religious] factors and whether they are beneficial or harmful."

Psychologist James Alcock also summarizes a number of apparent benefits which reinforce religious belief. These include prayer appearing to account for successful resolution of problems, "a bulwark against existential anxiety and fear of annihilation," an increased sense of control, companionship with one's deity, a source of self-significance, and group identity.

Apostasy

Typical reasons for rejection of religion include:

• Some people regard certain fundamental doctrines of some religions as illogical, contrary to experience, or unsupported by sufficient evidence; such people may reject one or more religions for those reasons. Even some believers may have difficulty accepting particular religious assertions or doctrines. Some people believe the body of evidence available to humans to be insufficient to justify certain religious beliefs. They may thus disagree with religious interpretations of ethics and human purpose, or with various creation myths. This reason has perhaps been aggravated by the protestations and emphases of some fundamentalist Christians.
• Some religions include beliefs that certain groups of people are inferior or sinful and deserve contempt, persecution, or even death, and that non-believers will be punished for their unbelief in an after-life. Adherents to a religion may feel antipathy to unbelievers. Numerous examples exist of people of one religion or sect using religion as an excuse to murder people with different religious beliefs. To mention just a few examples:
  • the slaughter of the Huguenots by French Catholics in the sixteenth century
  • Hindus and Muslims killing each other when Pakistan separated from India in 1947
  • the persecution and killing of Shiite Muslims by Sunni Muslims in Iraq
  • the murder of Protestants by Catholics and vice versa in Ireland (both of these examples in the late twentieth century)
  • the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that continues as of 2018 – According to some critics of religion, such beliefs can encourage completely unnecessary conflicts and in some cases even wars. Many atheists believe that, because of this, religion is incompatible with world peace, freedom, civil rights, equality, and good government. On the other hand, most religions perceive atheism as a threat and will vigorously and even violently defend themselves against religious sterilization, making the attempt to remove public religious practices a source of strife.
• Some people may be unable to accept the values that a specific religion promotes and will therefore not join that religion. They may also be unable to accept the proposition that those who do not believe will go to hell or be damned, especially if said nonbelievers are close to the person.
• The maintenance of life and the achievement of self-esteem require of a person the fullest exercise of reason—but morality (people are taught) rests on and requires faith.

Collective belief

A world view comprises a set of mutually supportive beliefs. The beliefs of any such system can be religious, philosophical, political, ideological, or a combination of these. Philosopher Jonathan Glover says that beliefs are always part of a belief system, and that tenanted belief systems are difficult for the tenants to completely revise or reject. This insight has relevance for inquisitors, missionaries, agitprop groups and thought-police.

Perspectives

A collective belief is referred to when people speak of what "we" believe when this is not simply elliptical for what "we all" believe.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote of collective beliefs and proposed that they, like all "social facts", "inhered in" social groups as opposed to individual persons. Jonathan Dancy states that "Durkheim's discussion of collective belief, though suggestive, is relatively obscure".

Philosopher Margaret Gilbert (1942- ) has offered a related account in terms of the joint commitment of a number of persons as a body to accept a certain belief. According to this account, individuals who together collectively believe something need not personally believe it individually. Gilbert's work on the topic has stimulated a developing literature among philosophers. One question that has arisen is whether and how philosophical accounts of belief in general need to be sensitive to the possibility of collective belief.

Philosopher Jonathan Glover warns that belief systems are like whole boats in the water; it is extremely difficult to alter them all at once (for example, it may be too stressful, or people may maintain their biases without realizing it).

 

Jonathan Glover (1941- ) believes that he and other philosophers ought to play some role in starting dialogues between people with deeply-held, opposing beliefs, especially if there is risk of violence. Glover also believes that philosophy can offer insights about beliefs that would be relevant to such dialogue.

Glover suggests that beliefs have to be considered holistically, and that no belief exists in isolation in the mind of the believer. Each belief always implicates and relates to other beliefs. Glover provides the example of a patient with an illness who returns to a doctor, but the doctor says that the prescribed medicine is not working. At that point, the patient has a great deal of flexibility in choosing what beliefs to keep or reject: the patient could believe that the doctor is incompetent, that the doctor's assistants made a mistake, that the patient's own body is unique in some unexpected way, that Western medicine is ineffective, or even that Western science is entirely unable to discover truths about ailments.

Glover maintains that any person can continue to hold any belief if they would really like to (for example, with help from ad hoc hypotheses). One belief can be held fixed, and other beliefs will be altered around it. Glover warns that some beliefs may not be entirely explicitly believed (for example, some people may not realize they have racist belief-systems adopted from their environment as a child). Glover believes that people tend to first realize that beliefs can change, and may be contingent on their upbringing, around age 12 or 15.

Glover emphasizes that beliefs are difficult to change. He says that one may try to rebuild one's beliefs on more secure foundations (axioms), like building a new house, but warns that this may not be possible. Glover offers the example of René Descartes, saying: "[Descartes] starts off with the characteristic beliefs of a 17th-century Frenchman; he then junks the lot, he rebuilds the system, and somehow it looks a lot like the beliefs of a 17th-century Frenchman." To Glover, belief systems are not like houses but are instead like boats. As Glover puts it: "Maybe the whole thing needs rebuilding, but inevitably at any point you have to keep enough of it intact to keep floating."

Glover's final message is that if people talk about their beliefs, they may find more deep, relevant, philosophical ways in which they disagree (e.g., less obvious beliefs, or more-deeply-held beliefs). Glover thinks that people often manage to find agreements and consensus through philosophy. He says that at the very least, if people do not convert each other, they will hold their own beliefs more openmindedly and will be less likely to go to war over conflicting beliefs.

The British philosopher Stephen Law (1960-) has described some belief systems (including belief in homeopathy, psychic powers, and alien abduction) as "claptrap" and says that such belief-systems can "draw people in and hold them captive so they become willing slaves of claptrap [...] if you get sucked in, it can be extremely difficult to think your way clear again".

Attachment in children

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_in_children

 

Mother and child

Attachment in children is "a biological instinct in which proximity to an attachment figure is sought when the child senses or perceives threat or discomfort. Attachment behaviour anticipates a response by the attachment figure which will remove threat or discomfort". Attachment also describes the function of availability, which is the degree to which the authoritative figure is responsive to the child's needs and shares communication with them. Childhood attachment can define characteristics that will shape the child's sense of self, their forms of emotion-regulation, and how they carry out relationships with others. Attachment is found in all mammals to some degree, especially nonhuman primates.

Attachment theory has led to a new understanding of child development. Children develop different patterns of attachment based on experiences and interactions with their caregivers at a young age. Four different attachment classifications have been identified in children: secure attachment, anxious-ambivalent attachment, anxious-avoidant attachment, and disorganized attachment. Attachment theory has become the dominant theory used today in the study of infant and toddler behavior and in the fields of infant mental health, treatment of children, and related fields.

Attachment theory and children

Attachment theory (Bowlby 1969, 1973, 1980) is rooted in the ethological notion that a newborn child is biologically programmed to seek proximity with caregivers, and this proximity-seeking behavior is naturally selected. Through repeated attempts to seek physical and emotional closeness with a caregiver and the responses the child gets, the child develops an internal working model (IWM) that reflects the response of the caregiver to the child. According to Bowlby, attachment provides a secure base from which the child can explore the environment, a haven of safety to which the child can return when he or she is afraid or fearful. Bowlby's colleague Mary Ainsworth identified that an important factor which determines whether a child will have a secure or insecure attachment is the degree of sensitivity shown by their caregiver:

The sensitive caregiver responds socially to attempts to initiate social interaction, playfully to his attempts to initiate play. She picks him up when he seems to wish it, and puts him down when he wants to explore. When he is distressed, she knows what kinds and degree of soothing he requires to comfort him – and she knows that sometimes a few words or a distraction will be all that is needed. On the other hand, the mother who responds inappropriately tries to socialize with the baby when he is hungry, play with him when he is tired, or feed him when he is trying to initiate social interaction.

However, it should be recognized that "even sensitive caregivers get it right only about 50 percent of the time. Their communications are either out of synch, or mismatched. There are times when parents feel tired or distracted. The telephone rings or there is breakfast to prepare. In other words, attuned interactions rupture quite frequently. But the hallmark of a sensitive caregiver is that the ruptures are managed and repaired."

Attachment classification in children: the Strange Situation Protocol

William Blake's poem "Infant Joy" explores how to name a child and feel emotionally attached to it. This copy, Copy AA, printed and painted in 1826, is currently held by the Fitzwilliam Museum.

 

The most common and empirically supported method for assessing attachment in infants (12 months – 20 months) is the Strange Situation Protocol, developed by Mary Ainsworth as a result of her careful in-depth observations of infants with their mothers in Uganda(see below). The Strange Situation Protocol is a research, not a diagnostic, tool and the resulting attachment classifications are not 'clinical diagnoses.' While the procedure may be used to supplement clinical impressions, the resulting classifications should not be confused with the clinically diagnosed 'Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD).' The clinical concept of RAD differs in a number of fundamental ways from the theory and research driven attachment classifications based on the Strange Situation Procedure. The idea that insecure attachments are synonymous with RAD is, in fact, not accurate and leads to ambiguity when formally discussing attachment theory as it has evolved in the research literature. This is not to suggest that the concept of RAD is without merit, but rather that the clinical and research conceptualizations of insecure attachment and attachment disorder are not synonymous.

The 'Strange Situation' is a laboratory procedure used to assess infant patterns of attachment to their caregiver. In the procedure, the mother and infant are placed in an unfamiliar playroom equipped with toys while a researcher observes/records the procedure through a one-way mirror. The procedure consists of eight sequential episodes in which the child experiences both separation from and reunion with the mother as well as the presence of an unfamiliar stranger. The protocol is conducted in the following format unless modifications are otherwise noted by a particular researcher:

• Episode 1: Mother (or other familiar caregiver), Baby, Experimenter (30 seconds)
• Episode 2: Mother, Baby (3 mins)
• Episode 3: Mother, Baby, Stranger (3 mins or less)
• Episode 4: Stranger, Baby (3 mins)
• Episode 5: Mother, Baby (3 mins)
• Episode 6: Baby Alone (3 mins or less)
• Episode 7: Stranger, Baby (3 mins or less)
• Episode 8: Mother, Baby (3 mins)

Mainly on the basis of their reunion behaviours (although other behaviours are taken into account) in the Strange Situation Paradigm (Ainsworth et al., 1978; see below), infants can be categorized into three 'organized' attachment categories: Secure (Group B); Avoidant (Group A); and Anxious/Resistant (Group C). There are subclassifications for each group (see below). A fourth category, termed Disorganized (D), can also be assigned to an infant assessed in the Strange Situation although a primary 'organized' classification is always given for an infant judged to be disorganized. Each of these groups reflects a different kind of attachment relationship with the mother. A child may have a different type of attachment to each parent as well as to unrelated caregivers. Attachment style is thus not so much a part of the child's thinking, but is characteristic of a specific relationship. However, after about age five the child exhibits one primary consistent pattern of attachment in relationships.

The pattern the child develops after age five demonstrates the specific parenting styles used during the developmental stages within the child. These attachment patterns are associated with behavioural patterns and can help further predict a child's future personality.

Attachment patterns

"The strength of a child's attachment behaviour in a given circumstance does not indicate the 'strength' of the attachment bond. Some insecure children will routinely display very pronounced attachment behaviours, while many secure children find that there is no great need to engage in either intense or frequent shows of attachment behaviour".

Secure attachment

A toddler who is securely attached to its parent (or other familiar caregiver) will explore freely while the caregiver is present, typically engages with strangers, is often visibly upset when the caregiver departs, and is generally happy to see the caregiver return. The extent of exploration and of distress are affected by the child's temperamental make-up and by situational factors as well as by attachment status, however. A child's attachment is largely influenced by their primary caregiver's sensitivity to their needs. Parents who consistently (or almost always) respond to their child's needs will create securely attached children. Such children are certain that their parents will be responsive to their needs and communications.

In the traditional Ainsworth et al. (1978) coding of the Strange Situation, secure infants are denoted as "Group B" infants and they are further subclassified as B1, B2, B3, and B4. Although these subgroupings refer to different stylistic responses to the comings and goings of the caregiver, they were not given specific labels by Ainsworth and colleagues, although their descriptive behaviours led others (including students of Ainsworth) to devise a relatively 'loose' terminology for these subgroups. B1's have been referred to as 'secure-reserved', B2's as 'secure-inhibited', B3's as 'secure-balanced,' and B4's as 'secure-reactive.' In academic publications however, the classification of infants (if subgroups are denoted) is typically simply "B1" or "B2" although more theoretical and review-oriented papers surrounding attachment theory may use the above terminology.

Securely attached children are best able to explore when they have the knowledge of a secure base to return to in times of need. When assistance is given, this bolsters the sense of security and also, assuming the parent's assistance is helpful, educates the child in how to cope with the same problem in the future. Therefore, secure attachment can be seen as the most adaptive attachment style. According to some psychological researchers, a child becomes securely attached when the parent is available and able to meet the needs of the child in a responsive and appropriate manner. At infancy and early childhood, if parents are caring and attentive towards their children, those children will be more prone to secure attachment.

Anxious-resistant insecure attachment

Anxious-resistant insecure attachment is also called ambivalent attachment. In general, a child with an anxious-resistant attachment style will typically explore little (in the Strange Situation) and is often wary of strangers, even when the caregiver is present. When the caregiver departs, the child is often highly distressed. The child is generally ambivalent when they return. The Anxious-Ambivalent/Resistant strategy is a response to unpredictably responsive caregiving, and that the displays of anger or helplessness towards the caregiver on reunion can be regarded as a conditional strategy for maintaining the availability of the caregiver by preemptively taking control of the interaction.

The C1 subtype is coded when: 

"...resistant behavior is particularly conspicuous. The mixture of seeking and yet resisting contact and interaction has an unmistakably angry quality and indeed an angry tone may characterize behavior in the preseparation episodes..." 

The C2 subtype is coded when:

"Perhaps the most conspicuous characteristic of C2 infants is their passivity. Their exploratory behavior is limited throughout the SS and their interactive behaviors are relatively lacking in active initiation. Nevertheless, in the reunion episodes they obviously want proximity to and contact with their mothers, even though they tend to use signalling rather than active approach, and protest against being put down rather than actively resisting release...In general the C2 baby is not as conspicuously angry as the C1 baby."

Anxious-avoidant insecure attachment

A child with the anxious-avoidant insecure attachment style will avoid or ignore the caregiver – showing little emotion when the caregiver departs or returns. The child will not explore very much regardless of who is there. Infants classified as anxious-avoidant (A) represented a puzzle in the early 1970s. They did not exhibit distress on separation, and either ignored the caregiver on their return (A1 subtype) or showed some tendency to approach together with some tendency to ignore or turn away from the caregiver (A2 subtype). Ainsworth and Bell theorised that the apparently unruffled behaviour of the avoidant infants is in fact as a mask for distress, a hypothesis later evidenced through studies of the heart-rate of avoidant infants.

Infants are depicted as anxious-avoidant insecure when there is:

"...conspicuous avoidance of the mother in the reunion episodes which is likely to consist of ignoring her altogether, although there may be some pointed looking away, turning away, or moving away...If there is a greeting when the mother enters, it tends to be a mere look or a smile...Either the baby does not approach his mother upon reunion, or they approach in 'abortive' fashions with the baby going past the mother, or it tends to only occur after much coaxing...If picked up, the baby shows little or no contact-maintaining behavior; he tends not to cuddle in; he looks away and he may squirm to get down." 

Ainsworth's narrative records showed that infants avoided the caregiver in the stressful Strange Situation Procedure when they had a history of experiencing rebuff of attachment behaviour. The child's needs are frequently not met and the child comes to believe that communication of needs has no influence on the caregiver. Ainsworth's student Mary Main theorised that avoidant behaviour in the Strange Situational Procedure should be regarded as 'a conditional strategy, which paradoxically permits whatever proximity is possible under conditions of maternal rejection' by de-emphasising attachment needs. Main proposed that avoidance has two functions for an infant whose caregiver is consistently unresponsive to their needs. Firstly, avoidant behaviour allows the infant to maintain a conditional proximity with the caregiver: close enough to maintain protection, but distant enough to avoid rebuff. Secondly, the cognitive processes organising avoidant behaviour could help direct attention away from the unfulfilled desire for closeness with the caregiver – avoiding a situation in which the child is overwhelmed with emotion ('disorganised distress'), and therefore unable to maintain control of themselves and achieve even conditional proximity.

Disorganized/disoriented attachment

Main article: Disorganized attachment

Ainsworth herself was the first to find difficulties in fitting all infant behaviour into the three classifications used in her Baltimore study. Ainsworth and colleagues sometimes observed 'tense movements such as hunching the shoulders, putting the hands behind the neck and tensely cocking the head, and so on. It was our clear impression that such tension movements signified stress, both because they tended to occur chiefly in the separation episodes and because they tended to be prodromal to crying. Indeed, our hypothesis is that they occur when a child is attempting to control crying, for they tend to vanish if and when crying breaks through'. Such observations also appeared in the doctoral theses of Ainsworth's students. Crittenden, for example, noted that one abused infant in her doctoral sample was classed as secure (B) by her undergraduate coders because her strange situation behaviour was "without either avoidance or ambivalence, she did show stress-related stereotypic headcocking throughout the strange situation. This pervasive behaviour, however, was the only clue to the extent of her stress".

Drawing on records of behaviours discrepant with the A, B, and C classifications, a fourth classification was added by Ainsworth's colleague Mary Main. In the Strange Situation, the attachment system is expected to be activated by the departure and return of the caregiver. If the behaviour of the infant does not appear to the observer to be coordinated in a smooth way across episodes to achieve either proximity or some relative proximity with the caregiver, then it is considered 'disorganised' as it indicates a disruption or flooding of the attachment system (e.g. by fear). Infant behaviours in the Strange Situation Protocol coded as disorganised/disoriented include overt displays of fear; contradictory behaviours or affects occurring simultaneously or sequentially; stereotypic, asymmetric, misdirected or jerky movements; or freezing and apparent dissociation. Lyons-Ruth has urged, however, that it should be wider 'recognized that 52% of disorganized infants continue to approach the caregiver, seek comfort, and cease their distress without clear ambivalent or avoidant behavior.'

There is 'rapidly growing interest in disorganized attachment' from clinicians and policy-makers as well as researchers. Yet the Disorganized/disoriented attachment (D) classification has been criticised by some for being too encompassing. In 1990, Ainsworth put in print her blessing for the new 'D' classification, though she urged that the addition be regarded as 'open-ended, in the sense that subcategories may be distinguished', as she worried that the D classification might be too encompassing and might treat too many different forms of behaviour as if they were the same thing. Indeed, the D classification puts together infants who use a somewhat disrupted secure (B) strategy with those who seem hopeless and show little attachment behaviour; it also puts together infants who run to hide when they see their caregiver in the same classification as those who show an avoidant (A) strategy on the first reunion and then an ambivalent-resistant (C) strategy on the second reunion. Perhaps responding to such concerns, George and Solomon have divided among indices of Disorganized/disoriented attachment (D) in the Strange Situation, treating some of the behaviours as a 'strategy of desperation' and others as evidence that the attachment system has been flooded (e.g. by fear, or anger). Crittenden also argues that some behaviour classified as Disorganized/disoriented can be regarded as more 'emergency' versions of the avoidant and/or ambivalent/resistant strategies, and function to maintain the protective availability of the caregiver to some degree. Sroufe et al. have agreed that 'even disorganised attachment behaviour (simultaneous approach-avoidance; freezing, etc.) enables a degree of proximity in the face of a frightening or unfathomable parent'. However, 'the presumption that many indices of "disorganisation" are aspects of organised patterns does not preclude acceptance of the notion of disorganisation, especially in cases where the complexity and dangerousness of the threat are beyond children's capacity for response'. For example, 'Children placed in care, especially more than once, often have intrusions. In videos of the Strange Situation Procedure, they tend to occur when a rejected/neglected child approaches the stranger in an intrusion of desire for comfort, then loses muscular control and falls to the floor, overwhelmed by the intruding fear of the unknown, potentially dangerous, strange person'.

Main and Hesse found that most of the mothers of these children had suffered major losses or other trauma shortly before or after the birth of the infant and had reacted by becoming severely depressed. In fact, 56% of mothers who had lost a parent by death before they completed high school subsequently had children with disorganized attachments. Subsequently, studies, whilst emphasising the potential importance of unresolved loss, have qualified these findings. For example, Solomon and George found that unresolved loss in the mother tended to be associated with disorganised attachment in their infant primarily when they had also experienced an unresolved trauma in their life prior to the loss.

Later patterns and the dynamic-maturational model

Studies of older children have identified further attachment classifications. Main and Cassidy observed that disorganized behaviour in infancy can develop into a child using caregiving-controlling or punitive behaviour in order to manage a helpless or dangerously unpredictable caregiver. In these cases, the child's behaviour is organised, but the behaviour is treated by researchers as a form of 'disorganization' (D) since the hierarchy in the family is no longer organised according to parenting authority.

Patricia McKinsey Crittenden has elaborated classifications of further forms of avoidant and ambivalent attachment behaviour. These include the caregiving and punitive behaviours also identified by Main and Cassidy (termed A3 and C3 respectively), but also other patterns such as compulsive compliance with the wishes of a threatening parent (A4).

Crittenden's ideas developed from Bowlby's proposal that 'given certain adverse circumstances during childhood, the selective exclusion of information of certain sorts may be adaptive. Yet, when during adolescence and adult the situation changes, the persistent exclusion of the same forms of information may become maladaptive'.

Crittenden proposed that the basic components of human experience of danger are two kinds of information:

1. 'Affective information' – the emotions provoked by the potential for danger, such as anger or fear. Crittenden terms this 'affective information'. In childhood this information would include emotions provoked by the unexplained absence of an attachment figure. Where an infant is faced with insensitive or rejecting parenting, one strategy for maintaining the availability of their attachment figure is to try to exclude from consciousness or from expressed behaviour any emotional information that might result in rejection.
2. Causal or other sequentially ordered knowledge about the potential for safety or danger. In childhood this would include knowledge regarding the behaviours that indicate an attachment figure's availability as a secure haven. If knowledge regarding the behaviours that indicate an attachment figure's availability as a secure haven is subject to segregation, then the infant can try to keep the attention of their caregiver through clingy or aggressive behaviour, or alternating combinations of the two. Such behaviour may increase the availability of an attachment figure who otherwise displays inconsistent or misleading responses to the infant's attachment behaviours, suggesting the unreliability of protection and safety.

Crittenden proposes that both kinds of information can be split off from consciousness or behavioural expression as a 'strategy' to maintain the availability of an attachment figure: 'Type A strategies were hypothesized to be based on reducing perception of threat to reduce the disposition to respond. Type C was hypothesized to be based on heightening perception of threat to increase the disposition to respond' Type A strategies split off emotional information about feeling threatened and type C strategies split off temporally-sequenced knowledge about how and why the attachment figure is available. By contrast, type B strategies effectively use both kinds of information without much distortion. For example: a toddler may have come to depend upon a type C strategy of tantrums in working to maintain the availability of an attachment figure whose inconsistent availability has led the child to distrust or distort causal information about their apparent behaviour. This may lead their attachment figure to get a clearer grasp on their needs and the appropriate response to their attachment behaviours. Experiencing more reliable and predictable information about the availability of their attachment figure, the toddler then no longer needs to use coercive behaviours with the goal of maintaining their caregiver's availability and can develop a secure attachment to their caregiver since they trust that their needs and communications will be heeded.

Significance of patterns

Research based on data from longitudinal studies, such as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and the Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaption from Birth to Adulthood, and from cross-sectional studies, consistently shows associations between early attachment classifications and peer relationships as to both quantity and quality. Lyons-Ruth, for example, found that 'for each additional withdrawing behavior displayed by mothers in relation to their infant's attachment cues in the Strange Situation Procedure, the likelihood of clinical referral by service providers was increased by 50%.'

Secure children have more positive and fewer negative peer reactions and establish more and better friendships. Insecure-ambivalent children have a tendency to anxiously but unsuccessfully seek positive peer interaction whereas insecure-avoidant children appear aggressive and hostile and may actively repudiate positive peer interaction. On only a few measures is there any strong direct association between early experience and a comprehensive measure of social functioning in early adulthood but early experience significantly predicts early childhood representations of relationships, which in turn predicts later self and relationship representations and social behaviour.

Studies have suggested that infants with a high-risk for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) may express attachment security differently from infants with a low-risk for ASD. Behavioural problems and social competence in insecure children increase or decline with deterioration or improvement in quality of parenting and the degree of risk in the family environment.

Criticism of the Strange Situation Protocol

Michael Rutter describes the procedure in the following terms:

Father and child

"It is by no means free of limitations (see Lamb, Thompson, Gardener, Charnov & Estes, 1984). To begin with, it is very dependent on brief separations and reunions having the same meaning for all children. This may be a major constraint when applying the procedure in cultures, such as that in Japan (see Miyake et al., 1985), where infants are rarely separated from their mothers in ordinary circumstances. Also, because older children have a cognitive capacity to maintain relationships when the older person is not present, separation may not provide the same stress for them. Modified procedures based on the Strange Situation have been developed for older preschool children (see Belsky et al., 1994; Greenberg et al., 1990) but it is much more dubious whether the same approach can be used in middle childhood. Also, despite its manifest strengths, the procedure is based on just 20 minutes of behaviour. It can be scarcely expected to tap all the relevant qualities of a child's attachment relationships. Q-sort procedures based on much longer naturalistic observations in the home, and interviews with the mothers have developed in order to extend the data base (see Vaughn & Waters, 1990). A further constraint is that the coding procedure results in discrete categories rather than continuously distributed dimensions. Not only is this likely to provide boundary problems, but also it is not at all obvious that discrete categories best represent the concepts that are inherent in attachment security. It seems much more likely that infants vary in their degree of security and there is need for a measurement systems that can quantify individual variation".

Ecological validity and universality of Strange Situation attachment classification distributions

With respect to the ecological validity of the Strange Situation, a meta-analysis of 2,000 infant-parent dyads, including several from studies with non-Western language and/or cultural bases found the global distribution of attachment categorizations to be A (21%), B (65%), and C (14%). This global distribution was generally consistent with Ainsworth et al.'s (1978) original attachment classification distributions.

However, controversy has been raised over a few cultural differences in these rates of 'global' attachment classification distributions. In particular, two studies diverged from the global distributions of attachment classifications noted above. One study was conducted in North Germany in which more avoidant (A) infants were found than global norms would suggest, and the other in Sapporo, Japan, where more resistant (C) infants were found. Of these two studies, the Japanese findings have sparked the most controversy as to the meaning of individual differences in attachment behaviour as originally identified by Ainsworth et al. (1978).

In a recent study conducted in Sapporo, Behrens et al. (2007) found attachment distributions consistent with global norms using the six-year Main & Cassidy scoring system for attachment classification. In addition to these findings supporting the global distributions of attachment classifications in Sapporo, Behrens et al. also discuss the Japanese concept of amae and its relevance to questions concerning whether the insecure-resistant (C) style of interaction may be engendered in Japanese infants as a result of the cultural practice of amae.

A separate study was conducted in Korea, to help determine if mother-infant attachment relationships are universal or culture-specific. The results of the study of infant-mother attachment were compared to a national sample and showed that the four attachment patterns, secure, avoidance, ambivalent, and disorganized, exist in Korea as well as other varying cultures.

Van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg conducted a meta-analysis of various countries, including Japan, Israel, Germany, China, the UK and the USA using the Strange Situation. The research showed that though there were cultural differences, the four basic patterns, secure, avoidance, ambivalent, and disorganized can be found in every culture in which studies have been undertaken, even where communal sleeping arrangements are the norm. Selection of the secure pattern is found in the majority of children across cultures studied. This follows logically from the fact that attachment theory provides for infants to adapt to changes in the environment, selecting optimal behavioural strategies. How attachment is expressed shows cultural variations which need to be ascertained before studies can be undertaken.

Discrete or continuous attachment measurement

Regarding the issue of whether the breadth of infant attachment functioning can be captured by a categorical classification scheme, continuous measures of attachment security have been developed which have demonstrated adequate psychometric properties. These have been used either individually or in conjunction with discrete attachment classifications in many published reports. The original Richter's et al. (1998) scale is strongly related to secure versus insecure classifications, correctly predicting about 90% of cases. Readers further interested in the categorical versus continuous nature of attachment classifications (and the debate surrounding this issue) should consult a paper by Fraley and Spieker and the rejoinders in the same issue by many prominent attachment researchers including J. Cassidy, A. Sroufe, E. Waters & T. Beauchaine, and M. Cummings.

Feral child

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child 

Mowgli was a fictional feral child in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.

A feral child (also called wild child) is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and so has had little or no experience of human care, behavior or human language. There are several confirmed cases and other speculative ones. Feral children may have experienced severe abuse or trauma before being abandoned or running away. They are sometimes the subjects of folklore and legends, typically portrayed as having been raised by animals.

Description

Feral children lack the basic social skills that are normally learned in the process of enculturation. For example, they may be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright after walking on fours all their lives, or display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them. They often seem mentally impaired and have almost insurmountable trouble learning a human language. The impaired ability to learn a natural language after having been isolated for so many years is often attributed to the existence of a critical period for language learning, and taken as evidence in favor of the critical period hypothesis.

There is little scientific knowledge about feral children. One of the best-documented cases has supposedly been that of sisters Amala and Kamala, described by Reverend J. A. L. Singh in 1926 as having been "raised by wolves" in a forest in India. French surgeon Serge Aroles, however, has persuasively argued that the case was a fraud, perpetrated by Singh in order to raise money for his orphanage. Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim states that Amala and Kamala were born mentally and physically disabled. Yet other scientific studies of feral children exist, such as the case of Genie.

History

Prior to the 1600s, feral and wild children stories were usually limited to myths and legends. In those tales, the depiction of feral children included hunting for food, running on all fours instead of two, and not knowing language. Philosophers and scientists were infatuated with such children, and began to question if these children were part of a different species from the human family.

The question was taken seriously as science tried to name and categorize the development of humans, and the understanding of the natural world in the 18th and 19th century. Around the 20th century, psychologists were attempting to differentiate between behavior and biological culture. Feral children who lived in isolation or with animals provided examples of this dilemma.

Documented cases of feral children

Raised by primates/monkeys

• Marina Chapman claimed to have lived with weeper capuchin monkeys in the Colombian jungle from the age of five to about nine, following a botched kidnapping in about 1954. Unusual for feral children, she went on to marry, have children and live a largely normal life with no persisting problems.
• Robert Mayanja (1982) lost his parents in the Ugandan Civil War at the age of three, when Milton Obote's soldiers raided their village, around 50 miles (80 km) from Kampala. Robert then survived in the wild, presumably with vervet monkeys, for three years until he was found by soldiers of National Resistance Army.
• Saturday Mthiyane (or Mifune) (1987), a boy of around five, was found after spending about a year in the company of monkeys in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He was given the name Saturday after the day he was found, and Mthiyane was the name of the headmistress of the Special School which took him in. In 2005 he died in a fire, at the age of around 17, he could still not talk, and still walked and jumped like a monkey. He never ate cooked food and refused to share or play with other children.
• John Ssebunya, from Uganda, was a toddler when his father killed his mother and hanged himself. Instead of going into a care facility, he went to live with vervet monkeys. For two years he learned how to forage and travel. The monkeys protected him in the wild. When he was around seven years old, he was brought back to civilization. According to a local villager, the only forms of communication he was capable of were crying and demanding food, and he was a "wild boy" whom everyone feared.

Raised by wolves

• Hessian wolf-children (1304, 1341 and 1344) lived with the Eurasian wolf in the forests of Hesse.
• Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja (ca. 1946, Sierra Morena, Spain) lived for 12 years with wolves in the mountains of Southern Spain. He was discovered at age 19. Rodríguez's story was depicted in the 2010 Spanish-German film Entrelobos. For his portrayal of Rodríguez, young actor Manuel Camacho received a Best New Actor nomination at the 2011 Goya Awards.

Raised by dogs

• Oxana Malaya was an eight-year-old Ukrainian girl who lived with Black Russian Terriers for six years. She was found in a kennel with dogs in 1991. She was neglected by her parents who were alcoholics. The three-year-old looking for comfort crawled into the farm and snuggled in with the dogs. Her behavior imitated dogs more than humans. She walked on all fours, bared her teeth, and barked. She was removed from her parents' custody by the social services. As she lacked human contact she did not know any words besides "yes" and "no". Upon adulthood, Oxana has been taught to subdue her dog-like behavior. She learned to speak fluently and intelligently and works at the farm milking cows, but remains somewhat intellectually impaired. Years later, Oxana admitted on a Russian talk show that her story was slightly less dramatic; neglected by her parents, she sought out the company of the dogs and learned to imitate them as they were more responsive than her parents.
• Ivan Mishukov, a six-year-old boy was rescued by the police in 1998 from wild dogs, who he lived with for two years. He ran from his mother and her abusive alcoholic boyfriend at the age of four. He earned the dogs' trust by giving them food and in return the dogs protected him. The boy had risen to being "alpha male" of the pack. When the police found him, they set a trap for him and the dogs by leaving food in a restaurant kitchen. Because he had lived among the dogs for only two years, he relearned language fairly rapidly. He studied in military school and served in the Russian Army.
• A 10-year-old Chilean boy (Dog Boy) was abandoned by his parents, lived with street dogs who hunted for food with him, and may have nursed him. At the age of five, the boy was abandoned by his parents and escaped a child care facility with 15 street dogs. The boy lived in a cave with the stray dogs and searched for food with them. He would search garbage cans to find leftover food to eat. He was raised by dogs since he was little. In 2001, he was found by the police, and he tried to escape by going into the water. However, he was caught and hospitalized.
• Traian Căldărar, Romania (found in 2002) also known as "the Romanian Dog Boy" or "Mowgli". From the ages of four to seven, Traian lived without his family. The boy was found at the age of seven and was described as a three-year-old due to undernutrition. His mother had left her home because of domestic violence, and Traian ran from home sometime after his mother left. He lived in the wild and took shelter in a cardboard box. He suffered from infected wounds, having poor circulation, and a children's disease caused by vitamin D deficiency. Traian was found by Manolescu Ioan, who had been walking across the country after his car broke down. In the surrounding area, a dog that had been eaten was also found. Many assume that the boy was eating the dog to stay alive. When Traian was being cared for, he would usually sleep under the bed and wanted to eat all the time. In 2007, Traian was being taken care of by his grandfather and was doing well in 3rd grade at school.
• Andrei Tolstyk (2004) was raised by dogs in a remote part of Siberia from the age of three months to 7 years. He was neglected by his parents because he had speaking and hearing problems. Social workers who found the boy were curious about why the boy was not admitted to his local school. This boy was not able to talk as he lacked human interaction and had many dog-like characteristics including walking on all fours, biting people, and sniffing his food before eating.
• Madina, a three-year-old girl. Madina lived with dogs from birth until she was three years old. She slept with them in the cold, ate food with them, and played with them. Her father left her after she was born, this caused her mother to become an alcoholic and neglect Madina. When found by social workers in 2013 she was completely nude and engaged in dog like behavior including chewing on bones. Afterwards doctors confirmed that she was still mentally and physically capable despite being neglected for nearly her entire life.

Raised by bears

• The three Lithuanian bear-boys (1657, 1669, 1694) – Serge Aroles shows from the archives of the Queen of Poland (1664–1688) that these are false. There was only one boy who lived in the forests of Lithuania with the Eurasian brown bear, he was found in spring 1663 and then brought to Poland's capital.

Raised by sheep

• An Irish boy brought up by sheep, reported by Nicolaes Tulp in his book Observationes Medicae (1672). Serge Aroles gives evidence that this boy was severely disabled and exhibited for money.
• A 14-year-old boy also known as the sheep boy, was found in the former Soviet Union living in a sheep flock. He was raised by sheep for 8 years. He had no communication skills and could not use the toilet. His parents left to find work and was left with his grandmother. His grandmother took care of him until she died.

Raised by cattle

• The Bamberg boy – who grew up among cattle (late 16th century).

Raised by goats

• Daniel, Andes Goat Boy (1990) lived in the wild for about 8 years. He was discovered in the mountains of Peru and was raised by goats. He walked and ran on all fours with the mountain goats. He drank goat's milk, ate berries, and roots.

Raised by ostriches

• The "ostrich boy" – A boy named Hadara was lost by his parents in the Sahara desert at the age of two, and was adopted by ostriches. At the age of 12, he was rescued and taken back to society and his parents. He later married and had children. The story of Hadara is often told in west Sahara. In 2000, Hadara's son Ahmedu told his father's story to the Swedish author Monica Zak, who compiled it to a book. The book is a mixture of the stories told by Ahmedu and Zak's own fantasy.

Other documented cases

Kaspar Hauser.

• Jean de Liège. Described by natural philosopher Sir Kenelm Digby in his book 'Two Treatises' (1644).
• The girl of Oranienburg (1717).
• The two Pyrenean boys (1719).
• Peter the Wild Boy of Hamelin (1724) – Mentally handicapped boy, affected with Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome. He lived only one year in the wild.
• Victor of Aveyron (1800) – Victor was a feral child in the forests of Aveyron for twelve years. The subject is treated with a certain amount of realism in François Truffaut’s 1970 film L’Enfant Sauvage (UK: The Wild Boy, US: The Wild Child), where a scientist's efforts in trying to rehabilitate a feral boy meet with great difficulty.
• Marie-Angelique Memmie Le Blanc, was a famous feral child of the 18th century in France who was known as The Wild Girl of Champagne, The Maid of Châlons, or The Wild Child of Songy. Marie-Angélique survived for ten years living wild in the forests of France, between the ages of nine and 19, before she was captured by villagers in Songy in Champagne in September 1731. She was likely born in 1712 as a Native American of the Meskwaki (or "Fox") people, and brought to France in 1720; or she was born in an unknown location in 1721. Marie died in Paris in 1775. Documents show that she learned to read and write as an adult, thus making her unique among feral children.
• Hany Istók (a.k.a. Steve of the Marsh) of Kapuvár, Hungary (1749). According to documents stored at the Catholic parish of Kapuvár, an abandoned child was once found in a marshy lakeside forest by two fishermen. He was brought to the town of Kapuvár, where he was christened and received the name Steven. The local governor took him to his castle and tried to raise him, but the boy eventually escaped and ran back to the forest. Later, numerous folk tales developed around his character, depicting him as a "half fish, half human creature" who lived in a nearby lake.
• Kaspar Hauser (early 19th century), portrayed in the 1974 Werner Herzog film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle), who existed but whose account of his own early isolation may well have been a hoax.
• Ramachandra (1970s and 1980s) – First reported in 1973 in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, at roughly 12 years old, and as living an amphibian lifestyle in the Kuwano River. He was rescued in 1979 and taken to a nearby village. He only partly adapted to a conventional lifestyle, still preferring raw food, walking with an awkward gait, and spending most of his time alone in nearby rivers and streams. He died in 1982 after approaching a woman who was frightened by him, and who badly scalded Ramachandra with boiling water. Historian Mike Dash speculates that Ramachandra's uncharacteristically bold approach to the woman was sparked by a burgeoning sexual attraction coupled with his ignorance of cultural mores and taboos.
• Cambodian jungle girl (2007) – Alleged to be Rochom P'ngieng, who lived 19 years in the Cambodian jungle. Other sources questioned these claims. In August 2016, after immigration officials spent two weeks reviewing the case, the woman left Cambodia with her family and returned to Vietnam. Vietnamese media reported that her birth father discovered her through photographs on Facebook. The woman never learned to speak while living with her adoptive family in Cambodia, and according to her Vietnamese birth family, she has been that way since birth.
• Name Unknown, Uzbekistan (2007) – A teenage boy found acting like a wild animal and snarling in the mountains of Samarkand after being reported missing in 1998.
• Ng Chhaidy, Theiva near Saiha, Mizoram, India (2012) – She went missing in a jungle aged four, returning 38 years later. When she was first seen, she was naked, long-haired, and with long fingernails, which caused her to be seen as a "wild woman".

Alleged cases of feral children

Raised by pumas

Vicente Caucau (1948) – Chilean boy found in a savage state at age 12, allegedly raised by pumas.

Raised with sheep

The historian Herodotus wrote that Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus I (Psamtik) sought to discover the origin of language by conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly, he gave two newborn babies to a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people. When one of the children cried “bekos” (a sound quite similar to the bleating of sheep) with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was Phrygian because that was the sound of the Phrygian word for bread. Thus, they concluded that the Phrygians were an older people than the Egyptians.

Other alleged cases

The Lobo Wolf Girl of Devil's River (1845) – A figure in Texas folklore, was captured in 1846, but escaped. She was last spotted at age 17 in 1852.

Raised in confinement

• Isabelle (1938) was almost seven years old when she was discovered. She had spent the first years of her life isolated in a dark room with her deaf-mute mother as her only contact. Only seven months later, she had learned a vocabulary of around 1,500 to 2,000 words. She is reported to have acquired normal linguistic abilities.
• Anna (1938) was six years old when she was found, having been kept in a dark room for most of her life. She was born in March 1932 in Pennsylvania, United States. She was her mother's second illegitimate child. Her mother had tried to give Anna up for several months but no agency was willing to take the financial burden, as this was during the Great Depression. Anna was kept in a store room at least until she was five and half, out of the way of her disapproving grandfather, who was infuriated by her presence. Her mother also resented her, considering her troublesome. She was tied to a broken chair which was too small for her, and is believed to have also been tied to a cot for long periods of time. She was mostly fed milk and was never bathed, trained, or caressed by anyone. When she was found, she was suffering from malnutrition as well as muscle atrophy. She was immobile, expressionless, and indifferent to everything. She was believed to be deaf as she did not respond to others (later it was found that her deafness was functional rather than physical). She could not talk, walk, feed herself, or do anything that showed signs of cognition. Once she was taken away and placed in a foster home, she showed signs of improvement. At the age of nine she began to develop speech. She had started to conform to social norms and was able to feed herself, though only using a spoon. Her teachers described her as having a pleasant disposition. Anna died in August 1942 of hemorrhagic jaundice.
• Genie, discovered 1970 in Los Angeles. Confined to one room without external stimulation of any kind, strapped to a child's toilet and restrained in a makeshift harness for up to 13 hours per day. It was also theorized that Genie's father would beat her with a wooden plank kept in the room if Genie vocalized at all. This abuse continued for approximately 13 years and 6 months. Attempts were made to teach Genie language, but results were limited. Genie's living situation was mostly unstable, often moving between hospitals, foster homes and even an unsuccessful stay with her own mother. As of 2016, Genie is a ward of the state of California.
• Sujit Kumar (1979), named the "Chicken Boy of Fiji" by the media, was born with cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Sujit's mother committed suicide when he was a toddler and his father left him confined under the house to live with the chickens. Sujit was rescued while still a boy and committed to the Samabula Old People's Home where he was confined to his room and tied to his bed. He could not speak and his only verbalisation was clucking; his only interaction with people consisted of outbursts. Sujit remained at the old people's home for 20 years until he was found by Elizabeth Clayton, a wealthy Australian businesswoman who founded the Happy Home Trust to care for Sujit and other at-risk Fijian children. Sujit's behaviour has improved, but it is assumed that he will never learn to speak, and he remains profoundly disabled.
• Danielle Crockett, Plant City, Florida, United States (2007–2008), had been locked in her room and deprived of any human interaction for the first 7 years of her life, causing a variety of severe developmental delays. She was found and adopted and is currently undergoing efforts to acclimate her to human conditioning including learning English and effective communication. As of 2017, Dani now lives in a group home but was unable to learn how to speak.
• Vanya Yudin, ("Russian bird boy"), Russia, (2008), a seven-year-old boy was found who spent his entire life living in a tiny two bedroom apartment surrounded by birds. His mother never spoke to him and treated him as a pet, and when found he was unable to communicate except for chirping and flapping his arms like wings.
• Natasha, Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia (2009), a five-year-old girl who spent her entire life locked in a room with cats and dogs, and no heat, water, or sewage system. When she was found, she could not speak, would jump at the door and bark as caretakers left, and had "clear attributes of an animal".
• Sasha T., Russia (2012), a two-year-old boy who was kept in a room with goats his entire life by his mother. Having spent all his time in a room with goats and without human contact, he had not learned how to speak, and weighed only about two-thirds as much as a typical child his age when he was discovered by Russian social workers.

Hoaxes

Following the 2008 disclosure by Belgian newspaper Le Soir that the bestselling book Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years and movie Survivre avec les loups (“Surviving with Wolves”) was a media hoax, the French media debated the credulity with which numerous cases of feral children have been unquestioningly accepted. Although there are numerous books on these children, almost none of them have been based on archives; the authors instead have used dubious second- or third-hand printed information. According to the French surgeon Serge Aroles, who wrote a general study of feral children based on archives (L'Enigme des Enfants-loups or The Enigma of Wolf-children, 2007), many alleged cases are totally fictitious stories:

• The teenager of Kronstadt (1781) – According to the Hungarian document published by Serge Aroles, this case is a hoax: the boy, mentally handicapped, had a goitre and was exhibited for money.
• Syrian Gazelle Boy (1946) – A boy aged around 10 was reported to have been found in the midst of a herd of gazelles in the Syrian desert in the 1950s, and was only rescued with the help of an Iraqi army jeep, because he could run at speeds of up to 50 km/h. However, it was a hoax, as are the other gazelle-boy cases.
• Amala and Kamala – Claimed to have been found in 1920 by missionaries near Midnapore, Calcutta region, India, later proved to be a hoax to gain charity for Rev. Singh's orphanage. Scholars from Japan and France launched a new inquiry about Amala and Kamala, and validated the discoveries and conclusions done by Serge Aroles 20 years before: the story was a hoax.
• Ramu, Lucknow, India, (1954) – A girl taken by a wolf as a baby, and raised in the jungle until the age of seven. Aroles made inquiries on the scene and classifies this as another hoax.
• The bear-girl of Krupina, Slovakia (1767) – Serge Aroles found no traces of her in the Krupina archives.

Legend, fiction, and popular culture

Myths, legends, and fiction have depicted feral children reared by wild animals such as wolves, apes, monkeys, and bears. Famous examples include Romulus and Remus, Ibn Tufail’s Hayy, Ibn al-Nafis’ Kamil, Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan, George of the Jungle and the legends of Atalanta and Enkidu.

The Capitoline Wolf suckling Romulus and Remus

 

Roman legend has it that Romulus and Remus, twin sons of Rhea Silvia and Mars, were suckled by a she-wolf. Rhea Silvia was a priestess, and when it was found that she had been pregnant and had children, King Amulius, who had usurped his brother's throne, ordered her to be buried alive and for the children to be killed. The servant who was given the order set them in a basket on the Tiber river instead, and the children were taken by Tiberinus, the river god, to the shore where a she-wolf found them and raised them until they were discovered as toddlers by a shepherd named Faustulus. He and his wife Acca Larentia, who had always wanted a child but never had one, raised the twins, who would later feature prominently in the events leading up to the founding of Rome (named after Romulus, who eventually killed Remus in a fight over whether the city should be founded on the Palatine Hill or the Aventine Hill).

Legendary and fictional children are often depicted as growing up with relatively normal human intelligence and skills and an innate sense of culture or civilization, coupled with a healthy dose of survival instincts. Their integration into human society is made to seem relatively easy. One notable exception is Mowgli, for whom living with humans proved to be extremely difficult.

The book Knowledge of Angels involves a feral girl found on a fictional island based upon Mallorca. She is the subject of an experiment to see if the knowledge of God is learned or innate. Placed in a convent, while she is there the nuns are instructed not to teach her about God or even mention him in front of her. This is to see whether an atheist who washed up there should be condemned or not.

The 2006 novel "Magic Hour" by Kristin Hannah is about a six-year-old feral child living during her formative years inside a cave in the Olympic National Forest. The girl wanders one day into the fictional small town of Rain Valley, Washington, searching for food and carrying her pet wolf pup and unable to speak. The police chief calls in her psychiatrist sister to teach the girl how to speak and to find the girl's family.