TR

Emotional Development

Early Emotional Responses

  • Crying: the most immediate and important mechanism newborns have for communication.
  • Basic cry: a rhythmic pattern, often associated with hunger.
  • Angry cry: a variation of the basic cry, with more air forced through the vocal cords.
  • Pain cry: a long initial loud cry followed by breath holding.
  • Smiling: a key social signal
  • Reflexive smile: occurs in the first month and is not a response to external stimuli.
  • Social smile: a response to external stimuli such as faces, occurring as early as 4 to 6 weeks.
  • Anticipatory smile: infants smile at object and then gaze at adult while continuing to smile – 8 to 10 months

Infancy

  • Infants experience basic (primary) emotions within first year, as early as 6 months
  • Primary emotions include joy, anger, interest, sadness, fear, and disgust.
    • Seen in humans and animals
    • Have a universal component, similarity in display and understanding of basic emotions across cultures
    • Mediated by culture, language, contextual factors
    • cultural norms for when, where, to whom displayed; intensity
  • Emotions become more complex, increasingly social-based. Include self-conscious emotions such as pride, shame, jealousy, and embarrassment
    • begin to appear around ~ 18 months
    • exact timeline debated

Development of Basic Emotions

  • Happiness:
    • Social smile is evoked by the parent’s communication (6–10 weeks)
    • Laughter reflects faster processing of information (3–4 months)
    • Anticipatory smile (8- 10 months) – infants smile at an object and then gaze at adult
  • Anger and sadness:
    • Angry reactions increase with intentional behavior
    • Sadness often occurs when deprived of familiar caregiver
    • Get agitated by “still face”
  • Fear:
    • Fear is one of a baby’s earliest emotions, typically first appearing at about 6 months.
    • Abused, neglected infants show it much earlier.
    • Stranger anxiety in response to unfamiliar adults, intense at 9-12 months
    • Infants use the familiar caregiver as a secure base, distressed at being separated from the caregiver.
    • Occurs at 7 to 8 months and peaks at about 15 months.