Reactivity Hypothesis adult reactivity versus child reactivity
The phenomenom of reactivity is such that if one tells a person that the person is recorded each time the person says the word 'like' the person is saying it less than if the person would have not known the word is going to be recorded, i.e. the person being monitored. A good example is described in the book David H. Barlow & V. Mark Durand, 2012, 2009 Abnormal Psychology An Integrative Approach, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, p.77, ISBN-13: 978-1-111-34520-4: • "A phenomenon known as reactivity can distort any observa-tional data. Any time you observe how people behave, the mere fact of your presence may cause them to change their behavior (Haynes et al., 2009). To test reactivity, you can tell a friend you are going to record every time she says the word like. Just before you reveal your intent, however, count the times your friend uses this word in a 5-minute period. You will probably find that your friend uses the word less often when you are recording it. Your friend will react to the observation by changing the behavior. The same phenomenon occurs if you observe your own behavior, or self-monitor. Behaviors people want to increase, such as talking more in class, tend to increase, and behaviors people want to decrease, such as smoking, tend to decrease when they are self-monitored (for example, Hufford, Shields, Shiffman, Paty, & Balabanis, 2002). Clinicians sometimes depend on the reactivity of self monitoring to increase the effectiveness of their treatments." Now we can wonder if this is a salience response of the adult, since the person now is aware of being monitored. In contrast to that if young children, receive a external no, an external salience response, they are intensifying whatever they aret old not to do. Now could it be possibly true that this is due to the same salience network, being fully matured in the grown ups and being not yet fully developed in the children and therefore even an external salience, a ‘no’ creates a contra response? And is the behavior of the adult being watched or documented also the same type of contra response (intesifying self-salience)? Could it be that it is not simply being aware of the word being recorded, but also subconciously a contra response (intesifying self-salience)? Then this would imply that the reply is opposite in diffrent stages of maturation, the adult contra response is internally intensifying self-salienve, probably caused in the subconcious and the child contra response is external intensification, probably also caused in the subconcious.
Institutions
- University of Bergen (NO)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2025-06-27
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15754688
- Primary Topic
- Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00