SOCIOEMOTIONAL%20DEVELOPMENT%20IN%20INFANCY

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CHAPTER 8

• SOCIOEMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY

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EMOTIONAL AND PEROSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
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Emotional Development

• Defining emotion Feeling or affect that can
  involve physiological arousal, conscious
  experience, and behavioral expression.
• Affect in parent-child relationships Emotions
  are the first language between parents and
  infant infants react to their parents facial
  expressions and tone of voice initial aspects of
  infant attachment to parents are based on
  interchanges a mothers facial expression
  influences whether an infant will explore an
  unfamiliar environment.
• Developmental timetable of emotions The
  Maximally Discriminative Facial Movement Coding
  System (MAX) (Carroll Izard) codes infants
  facial expressions related to emotion. MAX tells
  us that interest, distress, and disgust are
  present at birth and the following reactions
  appear at later junctions continued

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• Social smile appears at four to six weeks.
• Sadness appears at about three to four months.
• Fear appears at about five to seven months.
• Shyness appears at about six to eight months.
• Contempt and guilt appear at around two years of
  age.

• Crying is the most important mechanism newborns
  have fro communicating. There are at least three
  types
• Basic cry rhythmic pattern cry followed by
  silence
• Anger cry variation of the basic cry with more
  excess air forced through vocal chords
• Pain cry sudden loud crying without preliminary
  noises followed by an extended period of breath
  suspension

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• Fear There are two related fears for infants
• Stranger anxiety Infant shows a fear and
  wariness of strangers, usually second half of
  first year. By age nine months, it becomes more
  intense.
• Separation anxiety Fear and distress of being
  left by the caregiver, who will protect them from
  harm.
• Social referencing The infant reading emotional
  cues from others to assist in how to act in a
  given situation.
• Emotional regulation Managing arousal to adapt
  and reach a goal.

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• Adaptive Functions
• Control of arousal Safeguards against
  uncomfortably high levels of excitement or
  distress.
• Establishment and maintenance of social
  relationships Infants learn to manage their
  emotions by distracting themselves.
• Provision of state this is conducive for learning
  Learning occurs best when individuals are not
  overly aroused.
• Contextual functions Infants are affected by
  fatigue, hunger, and time of day and eventually
  learn to adapt to different contexts that require
  emotional regulation.
• Coping strategies Infants learn how to regulate
  through coping strategies such as sucking on a
  thumb.

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Temperament an individuals behavior style and
ways of emotionally responding to stimuli.

• Defining and classifying temperament There may
  be dimensions of temperament
• Chess and Thomas Temperament Styles
• Easy child positive mood, quickly establishes
  regular routines in infancy, and adapts easily to
  new experience
• Difficult child negatively reacts and cries
  frequently, irregular daily routines, and is slow
  to accept new experiences
• Slow-to-warm-up child low activity level,
  somewhat negative, low adaptability, and low
  intensity of mood
• Shy and inhibited children inhibited children
  tent to react to unfamiliarity with initial
  avoidance, distress, or subdued affect.

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• New Classifications
• Positive affect and approach the extent to
  which a child is sociable and outgoing.
• Negative affectivity child is easily
  distressed, closely related to introversion
• Effortful control (self-regulation) high on
  effortful control means the infant is capable of
  managing arousal, while low control has the
  opposite outcome.

• Heredity and environment An infant is born with
  some static characteristics that are impacted by
  the environment.
• Goodness of fit A match between the childs
  temperament and the environmental demands with
  which the child must cope.
• Parenting and childs temperament Nature as
  well as nurture influence the childs
  development children differ from each other from
  very early in life and these differences have
  important implications for parent-child
  interactions.

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Personality development individual
characteristics of the child

• Trust Eriksons first stage of psychosocial
  development trust vs. mistrust if the infant
  is not well fed and kept warm on a consistent
  basis, a sense of mistrust develops.
• The developing sense of self and independence
  sense of self is a strong motivating force
• The self By 18 months the infant can recognize
  his or her reflection in a mirror.
• Independence Eriksons second stage of
  psychosocial development autonomy vs. shame and
  doubt as the child explores through climbing,
  opening, closing, etc., overprotective or
  critical parenting can cause the child to develop
  an excessive sense of shame and doubt.

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ATTACHMENTWhat Is Attachment? Restricted to a
relationship between particular social figures
and a particular phenomenon a close emotional
bonding between infant and caregiver. Work with
monkeys indicates that not food, but proximity
and comfort are key integers of secure attachment.
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Individual Differences The work of the late
Mary Ainsworth.

• Secure attachment Infants use the caregiver as
  a secure base from which to explore the
  environment Ainsworth believed it forms an
  important foundation for psychological
  development in later life.
• Strange situation An observational measure of
  infant attachment that requires the infant to
  move through a series of introductions,
  separations, and reunions with caregiver. The
  following resulting definitions emanate from
  these observations
• Insecure avoidant babies Show insecurity by
  avoiding the caregiver often display distress by
  crying when she leaves the room.
• Insecure resistant babies Cling to caregiver
  then resist by fighting dont explore the
  playroom.
• Disorganized babies Disoriented, strong
  patterns of avoidance and resistance child leans
  away.

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Care-giving Styles and Attachment Classification
Securely attached babies have caregivers who
are sensitive to their signals and are
consistently available to respond to their
infants needs.
Attachment, Temperament, and the Wider Social
World Some developmentalists believe that too
much emphasis is placed on the importance of the
attachment bond researchers have found cultural
variations in attachment (i.e., German and
Japanese babies often show different patterns of
attachment from American babies).
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SOCIAL CONTEXTSThe Family

• The transition to parenthood When people become
  parents through pregnancy, adoption, or
  step-parenting, they face disequilibrium and must
  adapt. During the early years of the childs
  life, parents must juggle their roles as parents
  and self-actualizing adults.
• Reciprocal socialization Children and parents
  socialize each other in infancy, mutual gaze or
  eye contact play and important role in early
  social interaction. Scaffolding is parental
  behavior that supports childrens efforts through
  positive reciprocal frameworks.
• The Family as a system Divisions of labor among
  family members define particular subunits and
  attachments define others. Each family member is
  a participant in several subsystems.
• Mothers and fathers as caregivers The main
  responsibility usually falls on the mother.
  Mothers do more family work than fathers, but
  observations of fathers with their infants
  suggest that fathers have the ability to act
  sensitively and responsively with their infants.

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Day Care Approximately 2 million children are
in formal, licensed day care, and more than 5
million attend kindergarten, with untold millions
in informal, unlicensed babysitting situations.
A great deal of research has been completed on
this topic.