NAME GHAZALA SYED

CLASS BS 5 PSYCHOLOGY

SUBJECT COURSE DEVELOPMENTAL

PSYCHOLOGY

SUBMITTED TO MAM TAHIRA

SUBMITTED ON 9 NOVEMBER2022

ASSIGNMENT # 02

TOPIC ::

( SOCIO-EMOTIONAL
DEVELOPMENT IN THE INFANVY )
  Definition.
Social emotional development represents a specific domain
of child development. It is a gradual, integrative process
through which children acquire the capacity to understand,
experience, express, and manage emotions and to develop
meaningful relationships with others
It is the third domain of human development

 Emotional and Social Development

During Infancy
Psychosocial development occurs as children form relationships, interact
with others, and understand and manage their feelings. In emotional and
social development, forming healthy attachments is very important and is
the major social milestone of infancy. Attachment is a long-standing
connection or bond with others. Developmental psychologists are
interested in how infants reach this milestone. They ask such questions as:
how do parent and infant attachment bonds form? How does neglect affect
these bonds? What accounts for children’s attachment differences?

 Emotional Development and Attachment

At birth, infants exhibit two emotional responses: attraction and withdrawal.
They show attraction to pleasant situations that bring comfort, stimulation,
and pleasure. And they withdraw from unpleasant stimulation such as bitter
flavors or physical discomfort. At around two months, infants exhibit social
engagement in the form of social smiling as they respond with smiles to
those who engage their positive attention. Pleasure is expressed as
laughter at 3 to 5 months of age, and displeasure becomes more specific to
fear, sadness, or anger (usually triggered by frustration) between ages 6
and 8 months. Where anger is a healthy response to frustration, sadness,
which appears in the first months as well, usually indicates withdrawal
(Thiam et al., 2017).

As reviewed above, infants progress from reactive pain and pleasure to

complex patterns of socioemotional awareness, which is a transition from
basic instincts to learned responses. Fear is not always focused on things
and events; it can also involve social responses and relationships. The fear
is often associated with the presence of strangers or the departure of
significant others known respectively as stranger wariness and separation
anxiety, which appear sometime between 6 and 15 months. And there is
even some indication that infants may experience jealousy as young as 6
months of age (Hart & Carrington, 2002).

Stranger wariness
actually indicates that brain development and increased cognitive abilities
have taken place. As an infant's memory develops, they are able to
separate the people that they know from the people that they do not. The
same cognitive advances allow infants to respond positively to familiar
people and recognize those that are not familiar. Separation anxiety also
indicates cognitive advances and is universal across cultures. Due to the
infant's increased cognitive skills, they are able to ask reasonable
questions like "Where is my caregiver going?""Why are they leaving?" or
"Will they come back?" Separation anxiety usually begins around 7-8
months and peaks around 14 months, and then decreases. Both stranger
wariness and separation anxiety represent important social progress
because they not only reflect cognitive advances but also growing social
and emotional bonds between infants and their caregivers .

Expression of Emotion
Even early in infancy, children express their emotions through facial
expressions, vocalizations, and body language. The later ability to use
words to express emotions gives young children a valuable tool in gaining
the assistance or social support of others (Saarni and others 2006).
Temperament may play a role in children’s expression of emotion. Tronick
(1989, 112) described how expression of emotion is related to emotion
regulation and communication between the mother and infant: “the
emotional expressions of the infant and the caretaker function to allow
them to mutually regulate their interactions . . . the infant and the adult are
participants in an affective communication system.”

Empathy
During the first three years of life, children begin to develop the capacity to
experience the emotional or psychological state of another person (Zahn-
Waxler and Radke-Yarrow 1990). The following definitions of empathy are
found in the research literature: “knowing what another person is feeling,”
“feeling what another person is feeling,” and “responding compassionately
to another’s distress” (Levenson and Ruef 1992, 234). The concept of
empathy reflects the social nature of emotion, as it links the feelings of two
or more people (Levenson and Ruef 1992).

Emotion Regulation
The developing ability to regulate emotions has received increasing
attention in the research literature (Eisenberg, Champion, and Ma 2004).
Researchers have generated various definitions of emotion regulation, and
debate continues as to the most useful and appropriate way to define this
concept (Eisenberg and Spinrad 2004). As a construct, emotion regulation
reflects the interrelationship of emotions, cognitions, and behaviors (Bell
and Wolfe 2004). Young children’s increasing understanding and skill in the
use of language is of vital importance in their emotional development,
opening new avenues for communicating about and regulating emotions
(Campos, Frankel, and Camras 2004) and helping children to negotiate
acceptable outcomes to emotionally charged situations in more effective
ways.

Social Understanding
 During the infant/toddler years, children begin to develop an understanding
of the responses, communication, emotional expression, and actions of
other people. This development includes infants’ understanding of what to
expect from others, how to engage in back-and-forth social interactions,
and which social scripts are to be used for which social situations. “At each
age, social cognitive understanding contributes to social competence,
interpersonal sensitivity, and an awareness of how the self relates to other
individuals and groups in a complex social world” (Thompson 2006, 26).

 Attachment
, John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth conducted studies designed to
answer these questions. In the 1950s, Harlow conducted a series of
experiments on monkeys. He separated newborn monkeys from their
mothers. Each monkey was presented with two surrogate mothers. One
surrogate mother was made out of wire mesh, and she could dispense
milk. The other surrogate mother was softer and made from cloth: This
monkey did not dispense milk. Research shows that the monkeys preferred
the soft, cuddly cloth monkey, even though she did not provide any
nourishment. The baby monkeys spent their time clinging to the cloth
monkey and only went to the wire monkey when they needed to be feed.
Prior to this study, the medical and scientific communities generally thought
that babies become attached to the people who provide their nourishment.
However, Harlow (1958) concluded that there was more to the mother-child
bond than nourishment. Feelings of comfort and security are the critical
components of maternal-infant bonding, which leads to healthy
psychosocial development.

based on how the toddlers responded to the separation and reunion,

Ainsworth identified three types of parent-child attachments: secure,
avoidant, and resistant (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). A fourth style, known as
disorganized attachment, was later described (Main & Solomon, 1990).

Types of Attachments
  Secure
A secure attachment (type B) is one in which the child feels confident that
their needs will be met in a timely and consistent way. The caregiver is the
base for exploration, providing assurance and enabling discovery. In North
America, this interaction may include an emotional connection in addition to
adequate care. However, even in cultures where mothers do not talk,
cuddle, and play with their infants, secure attachments can develop
(LeVine et. al., 1994). Secure attachments can form provided the child has
consistent contact and care from one or more caregivers. Consistency of
contacts may be jeopardized if the infant is cared for in a daycare with a
high turn-over of caregivers or if institutionalized and given little more than
basic physical care. And while infants who, perhaps because of being in
orphanages with inadequate care, have not had the opportunity to attach in
infancy can form initial secure attachments several years later, they may
have more emotional problems of depression or anger, or be overly friendly
as they make adjustments (O’Connor et. al., 2003).

 Insecure Resistant/Ambivalent
Insecure-resistant/ambivalent (type C) attachment style is marked by
insecurity and resistance to engaging in activities or play away from the
caregiver. It is as if the child fears that the caregiver will abandon them and
clings accordingly. (Keep in mind that clingy behavior can also just be part
of a child's natural disposition or temperament and does not necessarily
reflect some kind of parental neglect.) The child may cry if separated from
the caregiver and also cry upon their return. They seek constant
reassurance that never seems to satisfy their doubt. This type of insecure
attachment might be a result of not having their needs met in a consistent
or timely way. Consequently, the infant is never sure that the world is a
trustworthy place or that he or she can rely on others without some anxiety.
A caregiver who is unavailable, perhaps because of marital tension,
substance abuse, or preoccupation with work, may send a message to the
infant they cannot rely on having their needs met. A caregiver who attends
to a child’s frustration can help teach them to be calm and to relax. But an
infant who receives only sporadic attention when experiencing discomfort
may not learn how to calm down.

 Insecure-Avoidant
Insecure-avoidant (type A) is an attachment style marked by insecurity.
This style is also characterized by a tendency to avoid contact with the
caregiver and with others. This child may have learned that needs typically
go unmet and learns that the caregiver does not provide care and cannot
be relied upon for comfort, even sporadically. An insecure-avoidant child
learns to be more independent and disengaged. Such a child might sit
passively in a room filled with toys until it is time to go.

 Disorganized
Disorganized attachment (type D) represents the most insecure style of
attachment and occurs when the child is given mixed, confused, and
inappropriate responses from the caregiver. For example, a mother who
suffers from schizophrenia may laugh when a child is hurting or cry when a
child exhibits joy. The child does not learn how to interpret emotions or to
connect with the unpredictable caregiver.

How common are the attachment styles among children in the United
States? It is estimated that about 65 percent of children in the United
States are securely attached. Twenty percent exhibit avoidant styles and
10 to 15 percent are resistant. Another 5 to 10 percent may be
characterized as disorganized

 Temperament,
Beyond the changes that occur across development, children differ in their
emotional “makeup,” and these differences are often described in terms of
temperamental variations. For example, highly reactive, irritable babies are
frequently described as “difficult,” while infants who are more prone to
positive emotions and less reactive are described as “easygoing.” While
temperament includes more than emotions, emotionality is considered to
be an important component. Later in this chapter, we consider a related
domain, emotion regulation, separately. Consistent with the gene–
environment interaction models, temperament has been understood as a
biologically based set of behavioral tendencies that influence how an
individual will approach, respond to, and interact with the larger social world
(Rothbart & Bates, 1998). In defining temperament, some researchers have
emphasized a narrow set of dimensions (e.g., activity level, emotionality
and socialibility; Buss & Plomin, 1984), while others have argued for a
broader array, including proneness to distress and fear, soothability,
attention span, persistence, and positive emotionality (Rothbart &
Derryberry, 1981; Thomas & Chess, 1977). However, there is general
consensus that emotional reactivity is a critical feature of temperament.
Reactivity refers to the excitability or arousability of the individual’s
response system (Rothbart & Derryberry, 1981), such as how quickly the
infant expresses distress in response to an unfamiliar stimulus, how intense
the distress is, and how long the infant takes to recover. Over the past
several decades, studies have yielded mixed evidence regarding the
stability of temperamental features over time. Evidence for modest stability,
at least after infancy, includes the seminal longitudinal research of Thomas
and Chess (1977), who investigated several temperamental dimensions in
infancy and defined groups of “easy,” “difficult,” and “slow-to-warm”
children, with the

“difficult” group (approximately 10% of infants) showing high levels of

negative mood, irregularity in body functions, and slow adaptation to the
environment. Subsequent longitudinal research demonstrated that those
children who presented with high levels of negative emotional behaviors
early in life, indexed as negative affect and aggression, had more behavior
problems in middle childhood (age 5 years) and adolescence (ages 14–17).
Yet although early childhood negative affect and aggression were
significantly intercorrelated (r = .63), only those children who displayed
aggression at age 3 years were more aggressive in middle childhood, and
in turn, had more behavior problems in adolescence (Lerner, Hertzog,
Hooker, Hassibi, & Tomas, 1988
  Social Development in Infants
Infants are born into complex social networks, and enter the world with
strong propensities for forming social–affective bonds with others. From the
first primary attachment relationship to increasingly complex social relations
with extended family, peers, and others, the young child is immersed in a
world of social relatedness. Social developmental milestones across the
first 3 years are strongly rooted in cognitive and neurological advances,
and are embedded in the broader social context. The social context of
these advances progresses from primarily the parent–infant relationship to
include other significant relationships, including peers, extended family, or
child care relationships. The coordination of these advances initially reflects
primarily parent-led sequences, but with time incorporate greater infant
initiative and back-and-forth interactions. With continued development,
these interactive encounters reflect the establishment of goal-corrected
partnerships, in which the infant and adult negotiate their exchanges with
an awareness of each other as separate, yet interdependent, selves. While
attachment relationships are not the only context for infant social
development (Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2000), attachment theory is a
predominant model for understanding early infant–parent relationships. In
the following section we provide an overview of how parent–infant
attachment relationships develop, moving from a discussion of universal
processes to a review of individual differences in the quality of attachment
relationships. We consider the caregiving context of attachment security,
and how early experiences serve as relational templates for later social
relationships. Infant–Parent Attachment Relationships Attachment theory
(Bowlby, 1969/1982) emphasizes the fact that human infants exist for an
extended period of time in a state of dependency, wherein proximity to a
caretaker is essential for both physical survival and the development of
psychological health (e.g., security, emotion regulation) (Simpson, 1999).
The primary evolutionary function of this proximity is to promote survival of
the dependent infant, but with development, attachment relationships
evolve to include more complex functions. The infant is increasingly able to
use the attachment figure as a secure base, deriving the security needed to
allow for exploration of the environment when safe, and the protection and
comfort needed in times of fear or distress (Sroufe & Waters, 1977).

 Individual Differences in Attachment

Relationships Whereas, from an evolutionary perspective, infants are
biologically driven to form attachment relationships, individual
differences in the quality of these relationships have been the focus
of abundant research over the past decades. Ainsworth, Blehar,
Waters, and Wall (1978) developed a laboratoryadministered
procedure, the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), to assess
individual differences in the quality of attachment relationship
patterns. Through the induction of stressful challenges, the SSP
provides an opportunity to observe the process of interactive repair;
challenges include exposure to an unknown environment, interaction
with an unknown adult, and two separations from and reunions with
the parent. These challenges are intended to activate the infant’s
attachment strategy, and the infant’s behavior during this procedure
is observed, with special attention paid to the ways the infant uses
the parent to regulate his or her emotional states following
separation. Ainsworth described three organized patterns
characterizing how infants (and parents) negotiate this attachment-
behavior-eliciting task: secure, anxious–avoidant, and anxious–
ambivalent attachment patterns (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Ainsworth’s
pioneering work validated patterns of attachment based on many
hours of home observation during the first year of life. Infants
demonstrating secure attachments to their caregivers were able to
openly and genuinely display their emotions and use their parents to
help regulate their distress. Once comforted, these infants returned to
exploratory play. Their balanced and open regulatory strategy was
not surprising in light of home observations that suggested these
infants had mothers who were generally sensitive and tender in their
caretaking interactions.
 Conclusion
The first years of life are remarkable for the rapid transformations in both the
social and emotional domains. New capacities emerge with regularity, and with
the development of newly acquired skills, the infant moves toward greater levels
of social–emotional competence. When developmental milestones are met and
supported, social–emotional competence is evident in the young child’s emerging
awareness and understanding of his or her own and others’ emotions; capacity
for empathic involvement; ability to cope adaptively with aversive emotions and
challenging circumstances; open and trusting emotional communication within
relationships; ability to rely on others for safety and support; and ability to
explore, play, and carry forward a sense of effectance and trust (Saarni, 1999;
Sroufe et al., 2005). When developmental milestones for competence in social–
emotional domains are not met, or when the developmental trajectory is set awry,
later deficits in the social–emotional domains are more likely to unfold. The field
of infant mental health has long recognized that social–emotional competence
emerges from a dynamic developmental interplay of complex transactions across
maturational, environmental, biological, and interpersonal contexts. Assessment
and intervention that attend to the infant within this dynamic developmental
context are central to returning to or maintaining the young child on this powerful
track toward increasing social–emotional competence

REFRENCES
 https://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/
itf09socemodev.asp#:~:text=Infants'%20social
%2Demotional%20development%20includes,name
%20members%20of%20their%20families
 https://cod.pressbooks.pub/ecec1101/chapter/chapter-6-
social-and-emotional-development-in-infancy-and-
toddlerhood/