Social Pathology and Prevention 2022, 8(2):49-63 | DOI: 10.25142/spp.2023.004

EARLY SOCIAL LEARNING AND CONSTANCY IN CLOSE RELATIONSHIP

Petra Winnette¹

¹ First Faculty of Medicine Charles University

Social development starts early in the prenatal period and continues intensively throughout infancy. An infant’s experiences with a caregiver, their first close relationship, are encoded, stored, and used for further social development and functioning later in life. In this article, I outline a new theoretical view: through repetitive, sustained interaction with a primary caregiver infants acquire an implicit knowledge and higher memory schema of constancy in close relationship. That guides their ability to form and maintain close relationships not just in childhood, but throughout the lifespan as well. Furthermore, absence of a primary caregiver in infancy results in specific impairments in social functioning. Thus, I propose that absence of constancy in close relationship should be considered a specific form of early social adversity.

Keywords: social groups, close and casual relationships, memory system, early social learning, memory schema primary caregiving, constancy in close relationship

Received: March 20, 2023; Revised: April 11, 2023; Accepted: April 11, 2023; Published: October 20, 2023  Show citation