journal

Emotional Development

Infancy and Toddlerhood

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Emotions play a powerful role in organizing the developments that Erik Erikson regarded as so important to relationships with caregivers, exploration of the environment, and discovery of self.

Erik Erikson’s view

• Basic conflict during infancy: Basic trust versus mistrust

• Dilemma is resolved positively if caregiving is sympathetic and loving.

Erikson’s view

• Basic conflict in toddlerhood: Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt

• Resolved positively if parents provide suitable guidance and appropriate choices

Milestones for Emotional Development during the First Two Years

Age Range Milestone

Birth Infants emotions are relatively undifferentiated, consisting of two global arousal states: attraction to pleasant stimulation and withdrawal from unpleasant stimulation.

2-3 Months Infants engage in social smiling and respond in kind to adults’ facial expressions.

3-4 Months Infants begin to laugh at very active stimuli. Expressions of sadness appear when the parent- infant interaction is seriously disrupted.

6-8 Months Expressions of basic emotions are well organized and clearly related to social events. Infants start to become angry more often and in many situations due to their expectations. Fear, especially stranger anxiety, rises. Attachment to a primary caregiver is evident, and separation anxiety appears. Infants use familiar caregivers as a secure base for exploration.

8-12 Months Infants perceive facial expressions as organized patterns, and meaningful understanding of them improves. Social referencing appears. Infants laugh at subtle elements of surprise.

18-24 Months Self-conscious emotions of shame, embarrassment, guilt and pride appear. A vocabulary of talking about feelings develops, and emotional self-regulation improves. Toddlers begin to appreciate that others’ emotional reaction may be different from their own. First signs of empathy appear.

Development of Basic Emotions

• Happiness

– Happiness binds parent and baby and fosters the infant’s developing competence.

– The social smile—the smile evoked by the stimulus of the human face—first appears between 6 and 10 weeks.

– Laughter first appears around 3 to 4 months in response to active stimuli.

Development of Basic Emotions

• Anger and Sadness

– From 4 to 6 months into the second year, angry expressions increase in frequency and and intensity.

– Cognitive and motor development both contribute to the increase in angry reactions with age.

– Expressions of sadness are usually less frequent than anger.

– Sadness is especially common when parent–infant interaction is seriously disrupted.

Development of basic emotions

• Basic emotions, such as happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust, are directly inferred from facial expressions.

• facial expression, bodily movements, and vocal cries are cues relied upon to infer child’s state

• these displays are universal

Early Emotions: Expression

Basic (Primary) Emotions

Anger, interest, fear, disgust, joy, sadness

Development of basic emotions

• Over time these become organized signals

• By 6 mos. face, voice, and posture form patterns related to social events

• Parent “evokes” a response from the child in interaction (social contingency lab), and vice versa

• Application: maternal depression – Watch the reaction of the infant when trying to

engage mom in interaction.

Development of Basic Emotions

Development of Basic Emotions

• Fear

– Like anger, fear rises during the second half of the first year.

– The most frequent expression of fear is to unfamiliar adults, a response called stranger anxiety.

– Stranger anxiety depends on several factors: temperament, past experiences with strangers, and the situation in which baby and stranger meet.

Development of Basic Emotions • Fear

– Culture can modify stranger anxiety through infant-rearing

practices. – The rise in fear after 6 months of age helps protect newly crawling and walking babies by keeping them close to caregivers and careful about approaching unfamiliar people and objects.