Developmental psychology/Chapter 4/Emotional Development

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Not only do the toddlers develop physically, but emotionally as well: from the basics to more complicated emotions. These innate emotions/reactions will evolve into subscribing to cultural norms and staying away from taboos, such as nakedness.

• Birth - Distress
• 6 weeks - Smile
• 3 months - Laughter; curiousness
• 4 months - Responsive cheek-to-cheek smiles
• 4-8 months - Anger
• 9-14 months - Fear of strangers
• 12 months - Fear of sudden actions/sounds
• 18 months - Self-awareness, pride, shame

The Early Emotions

Crying

• Comfort - Happy and soothed when fed/put to sleep
• Pain - Cry when hurt
• Colic - Bouts of constant crying most likely due to digestion issues [2nd week], or
• Reflux - Cry constantly due to immature swallowing [2nd week]

Smiling/Laughing

• Crying decreases and other emotions emerge, including:
• Social Smile: 6 weeks after conception (pre-term babies sleep later), babies smile when they see a human face. ("Maturation of the cortex and connections between parts of the brain" lead to this).
• Curiosity also grows. It is a normal emotion and is a sign of intelligence.

Anger and Sadness

• Anger is seen 6 months later (or during the 4-8 months timeframe).
• Anger is a healthy response vs. sadness - this is seen if the toddler is crying for help/wanting a change of things [anger] vs. withdrawing from the activity [sadness]. Sadness produces more coritsol.
• All social emotions affect the infant's brain, so angry/depressed caregivers play a neurological impact on their children.

Fear

• Fear is seen around the 9-14 month mark.
• There are two kinds of fear: Separation anxiety is when an infant gets scared when their caregiver isn't around. This is evident at age 1, becomes more apparent at age 2 and then normally decreases. If it's still intense by age 3, it is most likely an emotional disorder (and can last all the way up to age 18!). Stanger wariness is when an infant gets scared of strangers, especially quick ones. Both of these emotions are normal at age 1, with the latter being normal up until month 14.

The Toddler's Emotions

As memory and mobility advance, emotions take on new forms. Emotions become more discriminating.

Temper Tantrum/Disgust

• Adults teasing/getting angry at toddlers for their tantrums worsens them.
• Usually what follows through with tantrums is sadness. Comfort is what solves the tantrums.
• These are normal at age 2, but if they persist beyond and lead to worsen results - this may result in an issue with the child or parenting skills.
• Disgust is already recognizible to the infant vs. anger at 10 months.
• At 18 months (1 1/2 years), toddlers are disgusted at dead animals.
• Culture affects what toddlers are disgusted by (disgusted varies when it comes to kissing in cultures).
• Parents who express disgust on a regular basis may spawn extreme reactions. OCD, phobia and anxiety may be appearant in adults with this.

Self and Others

• The emotions of pride, shame, jealousy, embarrassment, disgust, temper, and guilt all involve social awareness and are a sign of selfhood. This starts with a mother and her toddler. For example, a toddler feels jealousy when a mother attends to another infant and ignores their own.
• Toddlers naturally want to help others, but this may be conditioned when they grow up: Not all adults give money to every beggar!
• They also develop self-awareness, realizing that one's body, mind, emotions and actions are of their own body and not others. The biggest test for this is the mirror test. This is developed at 15-24 months, not within their first 12 months [1 year]. Along with the understanding of the mirror test is the understanding of first-person pronouns (I, me, mine, myself, my). All the abilities of emotion and understanding one's emotions leads to self-awareness. There is a difference in self-awareness in an 8 month old vs. 18 month old.

Temperament

• Temperament - Biologically based core that contains individual differences to different situations and events in life.
• Those who yell the loudest lead to more temperament.
• Temperament is not the same as personality, although termperament may lead to differences in personality.
• Personality traits [honesty/humility] = Learned
• Temperamental traits [shyness/aggression] = Genetic
• Though remember, for every trait, nurture and nature take effect.

As it progresses

• The New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS), by 3 months, infants master traits that fall into these 4 groups: easy (40 percent), difficult (10 percent), slow-to-warm-up (15 percent), and hard-to-classify (35 percent). Replicated studies have only found 3 traits instead of all 9 traits, which are:
  • Effortful control (control attention/emotion, to self-soothe)
  • Negative mood (fearful, angry, unhappy)
  • Exuberance (active, social, not shy)
• Longitudinal studies revealed that change is most likely to be shown in the fearful babies vs. the cheerful, exuberant babies. This may be because parents like the exuberant babies the way they are vs. the negative babies and encouraged the latter to change vs. the former.
• A sex difference has been noted with shy boys taking drugs as a mask-up vs. shy girls not needing to take drugs as it is presumably accepted to be a shy girl vs. a shy boy in society.
• Again, the caregiver's responses are very important: Antisocial behaviour is seen in teenagers who were met with harshness by their mothers when in distress as a toddler. On the flip side, if the aggression of the baby is met with loving care from the mother - they are less likely to show these antisocial traits when they grow up.