Chapter 10: Emotional Development Flashcards
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What emotions do infants show at birth?
- interest (in things and people)
- distress (crying)
- contentment (diaper is changed, full of food, cuddling with them)
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What are basic emotions?
discrete emotional expressions of anger, sadness, joy, surprise, and fear
- emerge between 2-7 months
- appear so early in life, therefore they are probably biologically predetermined
- tend to emerge in all infants at the same time
- tend to be interpreted similarly across all cultures
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is social smile?
smile in response to seeing familiar people, therefore time has to pass before those familiar people become familiar
- emerges between 2-3 months
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is emotion regulation
ability to manage one’s emotions
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What are strategies for emotion regulation in infants?
infant is anxious:
- suck vigorously on something (pacifier, blanket, toy, thumb)
- look away from what’s bothering them (trying to detach, but can’t walk away)
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What are strategies for emotion regulation in toddlers?
toddler is anxious:
- suck on things
- rub things on their face
- find ways to distract themselves (play with toys, walk away and leave the room)
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What parental interactions and techniques help infants learn to manage their emotions?
- cuddling
- patting on the back, stroking their head/back to calm them down
- remove infants from the situation
- selective reinforcement
- model positive emotions by not yelling/screaming/getting angry
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is selective reinforcement?
when infant expresses positive emotions, the parent encourages those emotions
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What parental interactions and techniques help toddlers learn to manage their emotions?
- talk to them about emotions
- give verbal instructions on how to calm down
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What happens if a caregiver does not accurately interpret a child’s emotional displays?
caregiver may misinterpret it as manipulation rather than what the child is actually feeling
results in insensitive reaction that can interfere with infant’s emotional development
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What are maladaptive (negative) social contexts?
parental stress, depression, and conflict makes it difficult for child to learn how to manage their emotions
- mothers who are depressed tend to be less responsive to their child, show less affection, use more negative forms of touch, show more negative emotions and behaviours
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is the Test of Wills?
something that challenges the parent-child interaction and tests who is stronger emotionally
ie. if the toddler can crawl and walk, you have to stop them from going onto the street, which the child does not like
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is the result of a Test of Wills?
development of motor skills that introduces a new set of challenges, because the caregiver has to limit the child’s exploration to keep them safe
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is social referencing?
looking to caregivers’ emotional expressions for clues to interpret ambiguous (unclear) events
when child finds themselves in a situation they’ve never been in before, they often look to caregiver to see how they are reacting, to figure out how they should react themselves
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is stranger wariness (stranger anxiety)?
fear of unfamiliar people
- emerges at 6 months, peaks at 12 months, decreases in 12-15 months
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What does the variation amongst stranger wariness (stranger anxiety) in children depend on?
varies depending on ______ in which they meet a stranger
- temperament
- past experience (met very few unfamiliar people, they are more likely to express stranger wariness)
- situation (loud location, they are more likely to express stranger wariness because they are already overstimulated)
Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
What is stranger wariness (stranger anxiety) influenced by?
culture and caregiver’s anxiety
ie. Eastern cultures: babies are more exposed to different people
ie. Western cultures: babies aren’t exposed to new people except parents, sometimes for a few months
Emotional Development in Childhood
What happens to emotion regulation skills as a child ages?
emotion regulation skills improve
Emotional Development in Childhood
What influences the improvement of emotion regulation skills?
developmental advances and interactions with others
- the more you interact with others, the more likely they’ll understand and identify a variety of emotions, and anticipate the emotions of others
Emotional Development in Childhood
What are emotional display rules?
socially desirable responses that children should make in certain situations
- younger children (age 2-5) are not good at following this
- school-aged children are (6-12)