Strangers
In everyday language, Fremdeln describes a behavioral pattern in the development of infants , which usually occurs between the 4th and 8th month of life and is known in technical terms as eight-month anxiety . It shows that a child begins to meet strangers with strong suspicion , aversion or fear , although this was previously not typical behavior of the child.
This fear is triggered more by men than by women and by adults more than by children or short stature. This is understandable from an evolutionary psychological point of view, because infanticide occurs in all primates , can affect up to 40% of the young animals that have not yet been weaned and is almost exclusively committed by adult males, mostly newly immigrated into the group.
Another type of strangulation is a child's panic reaction when they lose contact with the caregiver. The reaction is particularly violent in a strange environment. This behavior lies in the developing ability of the child to visually distinguish strangers from confidants and can also extend to previously supposedly familiar people. In addition, the first occurrence of strangeness coincides with the child's developing ability to explore his environment on his own (initially by crawling , later by running).
literature
- Hartmut Kasten: 0 - 3 years. Developmental psychology basics . Cornelsen, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 3-407-56265-9 .
- L. Alan Sroufe: Wariness of strangers and the study of infant development . In: Child Development , 48, 731-746 (1977), ISSN 0009-3920
Web links
- Fremdeln - kindergesundheit-info.de: independent information service of the Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerhard Roth (Ed.) Anxiety, fear and coping with them (Hanse studies; 2). BIS, Oldenburg 2001, ISBN 3-8142-0851-X .