First 2 Years: Psychosocial Development

Emotional Development - Infant Emotions

  • Early Emotions

    • High emotional responsiveness

    • Reactive pain and pleasure to complex social awareness

  • Smiling + Laughing

    • Social Smile (6 weeks) evoked by viewing human faces

    • Laughter (3-4 months) is often associated with curiosity

  • Anger

    • First expressed at around 6 months

    • Is a healthy response to frustration

  • Sadness

    • Appears in the first months

    • Indicates withdrawal and is accompanied by increased production of cortisol

    • Is a stressful experience for infants

  • Fear

    • Emerges at about 9 months in response to people, things, or situations

  • Stranger wariness

    • Seems as infant no longer smiles at any friendly face but cries or looks frightened when an unfamiliar person moves too close

  • Separation anxiety

    • Tears, dismay, or anger occur when a familiar caregiver leaves

    • If it remains strong after age 3, it may be considered an emotional disorder

Toddler Emotional Development

  • Toddlers’ emotions…

    • Anger and fear become less frequent and more focused

    • Laughing and crying become louder and more discriminating

    • Temper tantrums may appear

  • New emotions

    • Pride

    • Shame

    • Embarrassment

    • Disgust

    • Guilt

  • Self-awareness

    • Person’s realization that he or she is a distinct individual whose body, mind, and actions are separate from those of other people

  • Mirror Recognition

  • Temperament

    • Inborn differences between one person and another in emotions, activity, and self-regulation

    • Temperament is epigenetic, originating in the genes but affected by child-rearing practices

Development of Social Bonds

  • Attachment

    • Involves a lasting emotional bond that one person has with another

    • Begins to form in early infancy and influences a person’s close relationships throughout life

    • Overtakes synchrony

    • Demonstrated through proximity-seeking and contact-maintaining

  • Secure Attachment

    • Relationship (type B) win which infant obtains both comfort and confidence from the presence of his or her caregiver

  • Insecure-avoidant attachment

    • Pattern of attachment (type A) in which infant avoids connection with caregiver, as when the infant seems not to care about the caregiver’s presence, departure, or return

  • Insecure-resistant attachment

    • Pattern of attachment (type C) in which anxiety and uncertainty are evident, as when an infant becomes very upset at separation from the caregiver and both resists and seeks contact on reunion

  • Disorganized attachment

    • (Type D) that is marked by an infant’s inconsistent reactions to the caregiver’s departure and return

  • Social Referencing

    • Seeking emotional responses or information from other people

    • Observing someone else’s expressions and reactions and using the other person as a social reference

    • Utilizing referencing in constant and selective ways

All Partners

  • Synchrony, attachment, and social referencing are evident with caregivers of all gender identities

  • Gender division is a general trend found in every nation

  • Gender roles are less restrictive in the 21st century than they were earlier

Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development

  • Psychodynamic theory

    • Freud: Oral + Anal stages

      • Oral: 1st year

      • Anal: 2nd year

  • Potential conflicts

    • Oral fixation

    • Anal personality (disputed by current developmentalists)

  • Psychosocial Theory

    • Trust versus mistrust

    • Autonomy versus shame and doubt