Adobe Scan Feb 22, 2025

Emotional and Social Development During Infancy

Psychosocial development involves forming relationships, interacting with others, and managing feelings.
Important social milestone: forming healthy attachments.
Attachment: a long-standing bond with others that is crucial for healthy development.

At birth: Two basic responses - attraction to pleasant situations and withdrawal from unpleasant stimuli.
By 2 months: Increase in social engagement (social smiles).
By 3-5 months: Laughter as an expression of pleasure.
By 6-8 months: Development of specific feelings (fear, sadness, anger).

Infants transition from simple instincts to complex socio-emotional awareness.
Fear: Linked with presence of strangers (stranger wariness) and separation from caregivers (separation anxiety).
Development timeline for anxiety: Begins around 6-8 months, peaks at 14 months, then decreases.
Jealousy may manifest as early as 6 months.

Basic Emotions: Interest, happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust.
Self-Conscious Emotions: Envy, pride, shame, guilt, doubt, embarrassment; requires social interaction and self-concept for development.

Defined in two components:
1. Emotions as Regulating: Changes elicited by emotions.
2. Emotions as Regulated: Processes used to change activated emotions (self-soothing, distraction).
Infants rely heavily on caregivers for co-regulation of emotions.
Emotional regulation strategies by caregivers include distraction and sensory inputs.
Infants can self-regulate as early as 4 months.

Sensitive responses to children's emotions lead to better emotional regulation and social skills in later years.
Caregivers help toddlers label and understand emotions and model coping strategies.

The process where infants seek information from caregivers to clarify situations (e.g., visual cliff experiments helped demonstrate this).

Begins during the second year, marking recognition of self as distinct from others.
Rouge Test: Identifies self-awareness by noticing makeup on one’s face in the mirror.
Self-awareness development correlates with understanding social emotions like guilt, pride, and empathy (around ages 3-5).

Attachment Theory: Defined by John Bowlby as a powerful bond necessary for normal social and emotional development.
Key Studies:
- Harry Harlow: Monkeys preferred soft, comforting surrogates over wired maternal figures for nourishment, highlighting the importance of comfort in attachment.
- John Bowlby: Proposed secure base concept that defines healthy attachment.
- Mary Ainsworth: Studied different attachment styles using the Strange Situation.

Secure Attachment: Prefers caregiver over strangers; uses them as a secure base.
Avoidant Attachment: Shows no preference for caregiver; indifferent to their presence or absence.
Resistant/Ambivalent Attachment: Clings to caregiver but rejects their interaction; shows distress on separation and is hard to comfort.
Disorganized Attachment: Behaviors are disorganized and erratic; common in abused or neglected children.

Approximately 65% of U.S. children are securely attached, 20% avoidant, 10-15% resistant, and 5-10% disorganized.

Temperament: Innate traits observable from birth, leading to individual differences in behavior—not the same as personality.
Nine dimensions include activity level, regularity, sensitivity, mood, and others.

Easy Babies (40%): Positive disposition and adaptable.
Difficult Babies (10%): Negative moods and slow to adapt.
Slow-to-Warm-Up Babies (15%): Withdraw from new situations, adapt gradually.
Undifferentiated (35%): Mixed characteristics, harder to categorize.

Success in development depends on the fit between infant temperament and caregiving style.
Caregivers' responses to children's temperament significantly affect emotional and behavioral outcomes.

Establishing trust based on caregivers' consistency in meeting physical and emotional needs.

Focus shifts to independence as toddlers explore their environment; anxiety from caregivers can lead to shame and doubt.