maladaptive patterns of social behavior, difficulty in
forming close relationships, and indiscriminately
friendly behavior toward unfamiliar adults. The re-
sults of this early research contributed to the decline
of such forms of institutional care. Furthermore,
these results supported the notion of a critical period
for the formation of the attachment relationship.
Research published in the 1990s has contributed
to a modification of this notion of a critical period.
These research results have come from studies of in-
fants in Eastern Europe who were abandoned or or-
phaned and, therefore, raised in institutions prior to
adoption by families in North America and the Unit-
ed Kingdom. These results have indicated that these
adoptees were able to form attachment relationships
after the first year of life and also made notable devel-
opmental progress following adoption. As a group,
however, these children appeared to be at an in-
creased risk for insecure or maladaptive attachment
relationships with their adopted parents. This evi-
dence, then, is consistent with the notion of a sensitive
period, rather than a critical period, for the develop-
ment of the first attachment relationship, rather than
a critical one.
See also: AINSWORTH, MARY DINSMORE SALTER;
BOWLBY, JOHN; STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
Bibliography
Curtiss, Susan. Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern Day ‘‘Wild
Child.’’ New York: Academic Press, 1977.
Goldberg, Susan. Attachment and Development. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Marvin, Robert S., and Preston A. Britner. ‘‘Normative Develop-
ment: The Ontogeny of Attachment.’’ In Jude Cassidy and
Phillip R. Shaver eds., Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Re-
search, and Clinical Applications. New York: Guilford Press,
1999.
Newport, Elissa L. ‘‘Contrasting Conceptions of the Critical Period
for Language.’’ In Susan Carey and Rochel Gelman eds., The
Epigenesis of Mind: Essays on Biology and Cognition. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum, 1991.
Rutter, Michael. ‘‘A Fresh Look at ‘Maternal Deprivation.’’’ In Pat-
rick Bateson ed., The Development and Integration of Behaviour:
Essays in Honor of Robert Hinde. New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1991.
Ann L. Robson
CRYING
Crying is a phenomenon that has puzzled people
throughout the ages. People cry when they are sad,
afraid, angry, in pain, or depressed, and yet people
also cry when they are happy. Crying occurs in all
emotions—it even contributes to the physiological
well-being of an individual from birth to death. It is
this versatility that makes crying so difficult to under-
stand. Furthermore, tears are not always a function of
emotion. Crying is a very important aspect of infant
development that acts as a tool for communication.The Physiology of Crying
There are three types of tears. The first type is
basal tears. Because the eyeball’s surface is riddled
with irregularities, basal tears create a thin coat over
the eye which smoothes out the surface. This helps to
protect and lubricate the eye. Without this lubrica-
tion, a person would see a very distorted picture, and
it would be painful when the eyeball moves. The eye
needs this coating all the time so the body must con-
stantly replace these tears due to the loss caused by
evaporation. A typical person will produce five to ten
ounces a day. In addition, basal tears contain antibac-
terial chemicals.
The second type is irritant tears. Irritant tears
occur when a person is exposed to freshly cut onions
or has a foreign object in his or her eye. They are
called irritant tears because they are produced when
a foreign object, foreign chemical, or a simple poke
irritates the eye. The body will also produce more irri-
tant tears if the basal tears evaporate too rapidly and
the eye is left with an insufficient amount to properly
lubricate the eye. Ironically, a person with excessively
watery eyes suffers from having dry eyes. It is the irri-
tant tears that cause the watery eyes because the body
is compensating for the lack of basal tears.
The third type of tear is psychic or emotional.
These are the tears that well up inside and spill over
the eyelid because of specific emotional states. They
are definitely more voluminous than the two types of
tears previously mentioned, and they have been
found to have a different chemical make-up. William
Frey has shown that these chemicals are linked to de-
pression and stress. Frey believes that crying is the
body’s attempt of ridding itself of these pollutants,
thus reducing stress and avoiding depression.The Crying of Newborns
Newborn babies are not capable of crying for
emotional reasons, but they share the same physio-
logical properties of tears as mentioned above. For
newborns, crying is a fundamental means of commu-
nication. Crying is not a matter of frustration caused
by the baby’s inability to express itself verbally—that
would imply that the baby is aware of formal language
but doesn’t have the ability to use it. On the contrary,
for the first few weeks crying is a reflexive property
and is thought to have no emotional reasons. New-
borns do not have the psychological capacity to hold
an emotion such as fear or anger, so their cries are
not a result of emotional imbalances. They are anCRYING 103