SLO's ch. 6 Flashcards
Discuss how children express and experience
emotions in the first two years of life
Infants display a variety of facial expressions, which are similar
across cultures and appear to reflect basic emotional states
Differentiate stranger anxiety from separation
anxiety
By the end of the first year, infants often develop both stranger
anxiety—wariness around an unknown person—
and separation anxiety—distress displayed when a customary
care provider departs
Discuss the development of social referencing
and nonverbal decoding abilities
Through social referencing, infants from the age of eight or
nine months use the expressions of others to clarify ambiguous
situations and learn appropriate reactions to them.
Early in life, infants develop the capability of nonverbal
decoding: determining the emotional states of others based
on their facial and vocal expressions.
Describe the sense of self that children possess
in the first two years of life
Infants begin to develop self-awareness at about the age of
12 months
Summarize the theory of mind and evidence of
infants’ growing sense of mental activity by the
age of two.
Infants also begin to develop a theory of mind at this time:
knowledge and beliefs about how they and others think
Explain attachment in infancy and how it
affects a person’s future social competence
Attachment, a strong, positive emotional bond that forms
between an infant and one or more significant persons, is
a crucial factor in enabling individuals to develop social
relationships.
Infants display one of four major attachment patterns:
securely attached, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganizeddisoriented.
Research suggests an association between an
infant’s attachment pattern and his or her social and emotional
competence as an adult.
Describe the roles that caregivers play in
infants’ social development.
Mothers’ interactions with their babies are particularly
important for social development. Mothers who respond
effectively to their babies’ social overtures appear to
contribute
to the babies’ ability to become securely
attached.
Discuss the development of relationships in
infancy
Through a process of reciprocal socialization, infants and
caregivers interact and affect one another’s behavior, which
strengthens their mutual relationship. From an early age,
infants engage in rudimentary forms of social interaction
with other children, and their level of sociability rises as
they age.
Describe individual differences that
distinguish an infant’s personality
The origins of personality, the sum total of the enduring
characteristics that differentiate one individual from
another, arise during infancy
Define temperament, and describe how it
affects a child in the first two years of life
Temperament encompasses enduring levels of arousal
and emotionality that are characteristic of an individual.
Temperamental
differences underlie the broad classification
of infants into easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm categories
Discuss how the gender of a child affects his or
her development in the first two years of life
As infants age, gender differences become more pronounced,
mostly due to environmental influences. Differences
are
accentuated by parental expectations and behavior.
Describe twenty-first century families and their
consequences for children
The varieties of families, ranging from traditional two-parent
to blended to same-sex couples, mirrors the complexity
of modern-day society
Summarize how nonparental child care affects
infants.
Child care, a societal response to the changing nature of the
family, can be beneficial to the social development of children,
fostering social interaction and cooperation, if it is of
high quality.
