Chapter 4 Socioemotional Development in Infancy

Emotional Development 1

Emotion: the feeling, or affect, that occurs when a person is in a state or interaction that is important to self and well-being.

Emotions have important roles in:

•Communication with others.

•Behavioral organization.

Classified as positive (pleasant) or negative (unpleasant).

Emotional Development 2

Emotions influence infants’ social responses and adaptive behaviors as they interact with others in their world.

Infants communicate important aspects of their lives through joy, sadness, interest, and fear.

Emotional Development 3

Biological, cognitive, and environmental influences:

Certain brain regions play a role in distress, excitement, and rage.

Infants only gradually develop the ability to regulate their emotions.

Attention toward or away from an experience can influence infants’ and children’s emotional responses.

Emotion-linked interchanges provide the foundation for an infant’s developing attachment to the parent.

Social relationships and culture influence diversity in emotional experiences.

Emotional Development 4

Early emotions:

Emotions expressed in the first 6 months include surprise, interest, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust.

Later-developing emotions include jealousy, empathy, embarrassment, pride, shame, and guilt.

•These have been called self-conscious or other-conscious emotions because they involve the emotional reactions of others.

Emotional Development 5

Emotional expressions and relationships:

Crying is the most important mechanism newborns have for communicating.

•Basic cry: a rhythmic pattern usually consisting of a cry, a briefer silence, a shorter whistle, then a rest before the next cry.

•Anger cry: a variation of the basic cry, with more excess air forced through the vocal cords.

•Pain cry: a sudden long, loud cry followed by breath holding.

Emotional Development 6

Smiling is a key social signal and important to social interaction.

Reflexive smile: a smile that does not occur in response to external stimuli.

•Usually appears in the first month, often during sleep.

Social smile: a smile in response to an external stimulus.

•Occurs as early as 2 months of age, typically in response to a face.

Emotional Development 7

Fear is one of babies’ earliest emotions.

The most frequent expression of fear is stranger anxiety:an infant’s fear and wariness of strangers.

•Appears during the second half of the first year of life.

Separation protest: the distressed crying of an infant when the caregiver leaves.

Social referencing: “reading” the emotional cues in others to help determine how to act in a particular situation.

•Infants become better at social referencing in the second year of life.

Emotional Development 8

Emotion regulation and coping:

Infants develop an ability to inhibit, or minimize, the intensity and duration of emotional reactions.

Caregivers’ actions and contexts influence emotion regulation.

•Soothing a crying infant helps the infant develop an adaptive emotion regulation, a sense of trust and secure attachment to the caregiver.

Temperament 1

Temperament: individual differences in behavioral styles, emotions, and characteristic ways of responding.

Reactivity involves variations in the speed and intensity with which an individual responds to situations with positive or negative emotions.

Self-regulation involves variations in the extent or effectiveness of an individual’s control over emotions.

Temperament 2

Describing and Classifying Temperament:

Alexander Chess and Stella Thomas’ classification:

•Easy child: generally in a positive mood, quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, and adapts easily to new experiences.

•Difficult child: reacts negatively and cries frequently, engages in irregular daily routines, and is slow to accept change.

•Slow-to-warm-up child: has a low activity level, is somewhat negative, and displays a low intensity of mood.

Temperament 3

Kagan’s concept of behavioral inhibition:

•Focuses on differences between a shy, subdued, timid child—an inhibited child—and the sociable, extraverted, bold child.

•Shyness with strangers is one feature of a broad temperament category called inhibition to the unfamiliar.

•Inhibited children react to many aspects of unfamiliarity with initial avoidance, distress, or subdued affect.

Temperament 4

Effortful control (self-regulation):

•Mary Rothbart and John Bates stress effortful control as an important dimension of temperament.

•Infants who are high in effortful control have strategies for soothing themselves.

•Those who are low in effortful control are easily agitated and become intensely emotional.

Temperament 5

Biological foundations and experience:

•Specific physiological characteristics have been linked with different temperaments.

•Temperament dimensions such as adaptability, soothability, and persistence develop and change with the growth of the neurobiological foundations of self-regulation.

Gender, culture, and temperament:

•Parents may react differently to an infant’s temperament depending on gender.

•Caregivers’ reactions may also depend in part on culture—where behavioral inhibition is more valued in China, for example, than in North America.

Temperament 6

Goodness of fit and parenting:

Goodness of fit: the match between a child’s temperament and the environmental demands with which the child must cope.

Decreases in infants’ negative emotionality occur when parents are more involved, responsive, and sensitive in their interactions.

Ann Sanson and Mary Rothbart recommend:

•Attention to and respect for individuality.

•Structuring the child’s environment.

•Avoid applying negative labels to the child.

Temperament 7

The recent differential susceptibility model and biological sensitivity to context model both reveal: 

•Certain characteristics make children more vulnerable to setbacks in adverse contexts.

•These same characteristics also make them more susceptible to optimal growth in very supportive conditions.

Personality Development

Trust and the development of self and independence are often seen as central to personality development in infancy.

According to Erikson, the stage of the first year of life is trust versus mistrust—an issue that arises again at each successive stage of development.

Infants begin to develop self-recognition as early as 3 months, but it becomes more central and complete in the second year.

•Later forms reflect a sense of “me.”

Independence also becomes important in the second year, in Erikson’s stage of autonomy versus shame and doubt.

•Autonomy builds as mental and motor abilities develop.

Social Orientation and Attachment: Topics

•Social orientation and understanding.

•Attachment.

Social Orientation and Understanding 1

From early in their development, infants are captivated by the social world, especially facial expressions and voices.

Face-to-face play starts at 2–3 months of age, with vocalizations, touch, and gestures.

•Responses to people and objects are different.

•Between 18 and 24 months, with increasing peer interaction, children markedly increase imitative and reciprocal play.

Locomotion skills allow infants to independently initiate social interchanges, increasing independence.

•The ability to move in goal-directed pursuits leads to further efforts to explore and develop skills.

Social Orientation and Understanding 2

Infants are socioemotional beings who show a strong interest in their social world and are motivated to orient themselves toward it and to understand it.

Intention, goal-directed behavior, and meaningful interactions with others begin to occur toward the end of the first year.

•Joint attention and gaze-following help the infant understand that other people have intentions.

•Infants come to perceive others’ actions as intentionally motivated and goal-directed, and they are increasingly motivated to share and participate in that intentionality.

Attachment 1

Attachment: a close emotional bond between two people.

Freud: infants become attached to the person who provides oral satisfaction.

Harlow: contact comfort is preferred over food.

Erikson: trust arises from physical comfort and sensitive care.

Attachment 2

Bowlby’s four phases of attachment:

•Phase 1: From birth to 2 months: infants direct their attachment to human figures.

•Phase 2: From 2 to 7 months: attachment becomes focused on one figure (primary caregiver).

•Phase 3: From 7 to 27 months: specific attachments develop. With increased locomotion, babies actively seek contact with regular caregivers.

•Phase 4: From 24 months on: children become aware of others’ feelings and goals and account for them in their own actions.

Bowlby argued that infants develop an internal working model of attachment.

Attachment 3

Individual differences in attachment:

Strange Situation: an observational measure of infant attachment, created by Mary Ainsworth.

•The infant moves through a series of introductions, separations, and reunions with the caregiver and an adult stranger in prescribed order.

Based on how babies respond in the Strange Situation, they are described as being securely attached or insecurely attached to the caregiver.

Attachment 4

Securely attached babies: use the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore the environment.

Insecure avoidant babies: show insecurity by avoiding the caregiver.

Insecure resistant babies: cling to the caregiver, then resist the caregiver by fighting against the closeness.

Insecure disorganized babies: appear disoriented, showing strong patterns of avoidance and resistance.

Attachment 5

For some children, early attachments seem to foreshadow later functioning.

•Research links secure attachment to positive emotional health, social competence with peers, and better resilience.

•Insecure attachment was linked to less effective emotion-regulation strategies in later life.

•The best predictor of an insecure attachment classification at 18 was occurrence of parental divorce in the intervening years.

Attachment 6

Results of some studies refute the idea that infancy is a critical or sensitive period for the influence of attachment.

•Consistently positive caregiving is likely key.

•Developmental cascade model: connections across domains overtime influence developmental pathways and outcomes.

Some argue secure attachment does not adequately consider certain biological factors, such as genes and temperament.

Another criticism is that the theory ignores the diversity of socializing agents and contexts in infants’ worlds.

Attachment 7

Caregiving styles and attachment:

•Caregivers’ sensitivity is linked to secure attachment.

•Caregivers of avoidant babies tend to be unavailable and rejecting.

•Caregivers of resistant babies tend to be inconsistent and tend not to be very affectionate.

•Caregivers of disorganized babies often neglect or physically abuse them.

Social Contexts: Topics

•The family.

•Child care.

The Family 1

The family can be thought of as a constellation of subsystems defined in terms of generation, gender, and role.

•These subsystems have reciprocal influences on each other.

•For example, the marital relationship, parenting, and infant behavior and development can have both direct and indirect effects on each other.

The transition to parenthood requires adaptation.

•Marital satisfaction may be affected.

•A gender gap in the parenting work–load tends to emerge.

•Successful transition to motherhood was linked to children having better emotion regulation in early childhood.

The Family 2

Reciprocal socialization is bidirectional.

•Children socialize parents, just as parents socialize children.

•Scaffolding: parents time interactions so that infants experience turn-taking with parents.

Managing and guiding infants’ behavior includes:

•Being proactive and childproofing the environment.

•Engaging in corrective methods.

As infants become more capable, parental management often triggers more corrective feedback and discipline.

•A special concern is that such corrective discipline tactics do not become abusive.

The Family 3

Maternal and paternal caregiving:

Mothers are more likely to engage in a managerial role with children:

•Coordinating their activities.

•Making sure health care needs are met.

Paternal interactions tend to be play-centered.

Fathers have the ability to act as sensitively and responsively as mothers.

When fathers are positively engaged, developmental outcomes are better.

Child Care 1

Many U.S. children today experience multiple caregivers.

Most do not have a parent staying at home full-time.

In the United States, approximately 15 percent of children aged 5 years and younger experience more than one child-care arrangement.

Parental leave:

Child-care policies around the world vary.

In much of Europe, paid leave averages about 16 weeks, while the United States currently grants up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

•In some countries, benefits are not strictly connected to prior employment, and both mothers and fathers are eligible.

Child Care 2

Variations in child care:

Child care in the United States is a major concern.

Factors that influence the effects include the age of the child, the type of child care, and the quality of the program.

The type of child care varies extensively:

•Large centers and private homes.

•Commercial operations and nonprofit centers.

•Professional operations, and untrained adults earning extra money.

Child Care 3

Infants of low-income families receive lower-quality child care.

•These children benefit in terms of school readiness and language development if higher-quality care can be secured.

High-quality child care:

•Provides a safe environment, age-appropriate toys, and age-appropriate activities;

•Has a low caregiver-to-child ratio;

•Quality physical activity; and

•Good nutrition.

Child Care 4

The National Longitudinal Study of Child Care:

Longitudinal study found that quality of care, amount of child care, and family and parenting influences impact development.

Recognize that the quality of your parenting is a key factor in your child’s development.

Monitor your child’s development.

Make decisions that will improve the likelihood of being good parents.

Take some time to find the best child care.

•Not all parents can afford the care they want.