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.