Emotional Development in Infancy
• Specific Emotions
– At first there is pleasure and pain
– Curiosity is evident
– social smiles are evoked by a human face,
normally evident about 6 weeks after birth
– anger is evident at 6 months
– Sadness is presented as withdrawal and an
increased level of stress hormone.
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Emotional Development in Infancy
• Fear
– fully formed fear in response to some person,
thing, or situation emerges at about 9 months
• stranger wariness… infant no longer smiles at
any friendly faces, and cries if an unfamiliar
person moves to close, too quickly
• separation anxiety… expressed in tears,
dismay, or anger when a familiar caregiver
leaves
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Emotional Development in Infancy
– separation anxiety is normal at age 1
– intensifies by age 2, and usually subsides
after that
– 1-year-olds fear not just strangers but also
anything unexpected
– emotions that emerge in the first month
strengthen at about age 1
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Emotional Development
• New emotions appear toward the end
of the end year
• Pride, shame, embarassment and
guilt.
• Need awareness of other people.
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Emotional Development in Infancy
• Self Awareness
– ... emotional growth that has the infant
realizing that his or her body, mine,
and actions are separate from those
of other people
• around age 1 an emerging sense of “me” and
“mine”
– self-recognition emerges at about 18 months
• pretending and using first person pronouns also
emerges at that time.
– I, me, mine, myself, my
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Freud: Oral and Anal Stages
– the first year is the oral stage
• the mouth is the young infant’s primary
source of gratification
– the second year is the anal stage
• the infant’s main pleasure comes from
the anus… sensual pleasure of bowel
movement… the psychological pleasure
of controlling them.
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Erikson: Trust and
Autonomy
– first psychosocial crisis (trust
vs. mistrust)… infants learn
basic trust if the world is a
secure place where their basic
needs (for food, comfort,
attention, etc.) are met
– second stage crisis of
psychosocial development
(autonomy vs. shame and
doubt)… toddlers either
succeed or fail in gaining a
sense of self-rule over their
own actions and bodies
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Behaviorism
– emotions and personality are molded as parents
reinforce or punish the child’s spontaneous
behaviors
– Infants experience social learning… learning by
observing others
• apparent in families… from giggling to cursing…
much like their parents
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Cognitive Theory
– holds that thoughts and values determine a
person’s perspectives
• early experiences are important
– beliefs, perceptions and memories
– infants use early relationships to develop a
working model for future relationships.
• a set of assumptions that the individual uses to
organize perceptions and experiences
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Epigenetic Theory
– holds that every human characteristic is
strongly influenced by each person’s unique
genotype… inborn predispositions
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Temperament
– Inborn differences
between one person and
another in emotions,
activity, and self-control.
– Temperament is
epigenetic, originating in
genes but can be
modified by experiences.
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• The Parents’ Role
– infant temperament often changes with adult
guidance
– interaction between culture influences and
inherited traits tend to shape behavior by early
childhood.
– parents need to find a goodness of fit
• goodness of fit is a similarity of temperament
and values that produces a smooth interaction
between an individual and his or her social
context, including family, school, and
community
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Sociocultural Theory
– “…human development
occurs in a cultural context.”
– sociocultural theorists
argue culture:
• has a substantial
influence on infants
• has a major impact on
infant-caregiver
relationships, thus the
development of the infant
So the is question…
How much influence does culture have?
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
• Ethnotheories
• ethnotheory
–a theory that underlies the values and
practices of a culture and that becomes
apparent through analysis and comparison
of those practices, although it is not
usually apparent to the people within the
culture
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Theories About Infant Psychosocial Development
– Proximal and Distal Parenting
• proximal parenting
– parenting practices that involve close
physical contact with the child’s entire
body, such as cradling and swinging
• distal parenting
– parenting practices that focus on the
intellect more than the body, such as
talking with the baby and playing with an
object
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Synchrony
– is a coordinated interaction
between caregiver and infant
– an exchange in which they
respond to each other with splitsecond timing
– Infants learn to read others
emotions
– Develop skills of social interaction
– Adults echo infants emotions and
try and make them more positive
– Experience-expectant
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Attachment
– A lasting emotional bond the one person
has with another.
– Forms in infancy
– a tie that binds them together in space
and endures over time
– New, close relationships that arise later
in life are influenced by this attachment.
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Secure and Insecure Attachment
– secure attachment
• relationships in which an infant obtains both
comfort and confidence from the presence
of his or her caregiver
– insecure-avoidant attachment
• a pattern of attachment in which an infant
avoids connection with the caregiver, as
when the infant seems not to care about the
caregiver’s presence, departure, or return
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Secure and Insecure Attachment
– insecure-resistant/ambivalent attachment
• a pattern of attachment in which anxiety and
uncertainty are evident, as when an infant is
very upset at separation from the caregiver
and both resists and seeks contact on
reunion
– disorganized attachment
• a type of attachment that is marked by an
infant’s inconsistent reactions to the
caregiver’s departure and return
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Secure and Insecure Attachment
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Measuring Attachment
– strange situation
• developed by Ainsworth
• a laboratory procedure for measuring
attachment by evoking infants’ reaction to
stress
• Stranger and caregiver leave and enter
playroom
• Reaction to caregiver = attachment
• Reaction to stranger = matter of temperament
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Measuring Attachment
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Insecure Attachment and Social Settings
– infants shift in attachment status between
one age and another
– most troubled children may be those who
are classified as type D (table 7.4)
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Social Referencing
– seeking information
about how to react to
an unfamiliar
ambiguous object or
event by observing
someone else’s
expressions and
reactions—that other
person becomes a
social reference
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Referencing Mothers
– most social referencing occurs with mothers
– infants heed their mother’s wishes, expressed
in tone and facial expression
– Mothers tend to be more comforting,
protective and cautious.
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Referencing Fathers
– increases in maternal
employment have expanded
the social references available
to infants
– fathers now spend
considerable time with their
children
– Fathers tend to be more
encouraging than mothers
– More fun
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The Development of Social Bonds
• Infant Day Care
– more than ½ of all 1-year-olds in the U.S. are in
“regular scheduled” nonmaternal care
– family day care
• child care that occurs in another caregiver’s home—
usually the caregiver is paid at a lower rate than in
center care, and usually one person shares of
several children of various ages
– center day care
• child care in a place especially designed for the
purpose, where several paid providers care for
many children. Usually the children are grouped by
age, the day care center is licensed, and providers
are trained and certified in child development
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