6.emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Ch06

Exploring Child Development
First Edition
Chapter 6
Emotional and Social
Development in
Infancy and
Toddlerhood
Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

Learning Objectives (1 of 2)
6.1 Identify personality changes that

6.2 Describe the development of
take place during Erikson’s stages of
basic emotions over the first year,
basic trust versus mistrust and
noting the adaptive function of each.
autonomy versus shame and doubt.
6.3 Summarize changes during the

first two years in understanding of
6.4 Explain the meaning of
others’ emotions, expression of
temperament and how it is measured.
self-conscious emotions, and
emotional self-regulation.

Learning Objectives (2 of 2)
6.5 DISCUSS THE 6.6 DESCRIBE THE 6.7 EXPLAIN HOW 6.8 DESCRIBE 6.9 DESCRIBE THE
ROLES OF DEVELOPMENT OF RESEARCHERS INFANTS’ CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT OF
HEREDITY AND ATTACHMENT MEASURE FOR MULTIPLE SELF-AWARENESS
ENVIRONMENT IN DURING THE FIRST ATTACHMENT ATTACHMENTS. IN INFANCY AND
THE STABILITY OF TWO YEARS. SECURITY, THE TODDLERHOOD,
TEMPERAMENT, FACTORS THAT ALONG WITH THE
INCLUDING THE AFFECT IT, AND ITS EMOTIONAL AND
GOODNESS-OF-FIT IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL CAPACITIES
MODEL. LATER IT SUPPORTS.
DEVELOPMENT.

Psychosocial Stages During Infancy and Toddlerhood
Erikson’s Theory of Infant and Toddler Personality (1 of 8)
Erikson’s Stage Needed from Caregivers
• Responsiveness
Basic trust vs. mistrust
• Sympathetic, loving balance of
(first year)
care
• Suitable guidance and

Autonomy vs. shame and doubt reasonable choices
(second year) • Reasonable expectations for
impulse control

Psychosocial Stages During Infancy and Toddlerhood
continued
• Trust:
– Erikson’s theory: Trust vs. mistrust as central struggle
§ Important to develop sense of balance
§ Attachment «the glue» of early childhood development
• Autonomy: 2nd year of life children start seeking more autonomy

– Erikson: Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
§ Examples:
– Testing limits: demonstrating interest for things parents forbid
– Saying no to everything («terrible 2» )
– Insisting to dress themselves up alone, even if they still experience motor challenges
– Feeling of uniqueness, separation from parents
§ Exploring from a «secure base»
– Important to provide a small set of limits
§ With consequences
§ Encouraging children to assert themselves

Culture and Psychosocial Stages
During Infancy and Toddlerhood
• Cultural variations affect development
– Some cultures discourage autonomy
– Some emphasize control and restraint
– Some encourage interdependence
– Some encourage self-sufficiency
– Influence of gender: boys may be more

encouraged to be autonomous than girls

Basic Emotions
• Earliest emotions consist of two arousal states:
– Attraction to pleasant stimulation
– Withdrawal from unpleasant stimulation
• Emotional expressions gradually become
– organized and specific,

§ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embYkODkzcs
– supported by sensitive caregiving and mirroring
• Face, voice, and posture form patterns with age

Basic Emotions continued
• Joy
• Sadness Psychology crash course
emotions
• Anger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
• Fear v=gAMbkJk6gnE
• Disgust
• Surprise
• Contempt (satisfied)
• Critical in communication with infants
First Appearance of Basic Emotions
• Smile: from birth

Happiness • Social smile: 6–10 weeks
• Laughter: 3–4 months
• When do babies smile
• General distress: from birth

Anger and • Angry expressions: 4–6 months
sadness • Sadness: response to disrupted caregiver–infant
communication
• Clara gets upset when mommy leaves the room!
• First fears: 6 months, keeps exploration in check;

Fear caregiver as secure base
• Stranger anxiety: most frequent expression of fear

First Appearance of Basic Emotions
Continued
• Infants make certain facial contortions when angry and others when surprised
• Infants distinguish some facial expressions days after birth

– By six months, can use touch or sound to determine emotional intent
– By 10 months, can differentiate similar expressions that represent different
emotions
• Infants rely on contextual cues to guide their own feelings

– Less distress when mother has encouraging positive expression
– Social referencing: process by which infants refer to adults’ emotional
reactions (voices, facial expressions) to determine how they should feel about
persons, objects and situations
• Infants develop simple emotion regulation skills early

– But may still lose control
• Emotions may be influenced by attachment relationships

– Securely attached infants express more joy, less anger

Responding to Emotions of Others
• Baby Smiles Provide Clues to Healthy Development - Science Nation

• Baby SE Development
• Matching caregiver’s tone (initial months)

• Sensitivity to face-to-face interactions (3 months)
© Dragon Images/Shutterstock
– still face experiment:
§ What does the ‘still face’ experiment teach us about connection?
§ Mom
§ Dad
• Responding to emotional expressions as organized wholes (5months)

• Social referencing (8–10 months)

Social Referencing
• Social referencing :refers to the process

wherein infants use the affective displays
of a trusted person to regulate their
behaviors toward environmental objects,
persons, and situations
– https://study.com/academy/lesson/social-referencing-in-
psychology-definition-examples.html
• Helps toddlers appraise an uncertain situation

– evaluate surroundings
– guide their actions
– understand others
• How do adults model and teach emotions to children?

© alexpro9500/Shutterstock
– Exaggerated facial expression
– Describing the emotions

Self-Conscious Emotions
• Guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, and pride

• Appear middle of second year (18+ months)
• Injure or enhance sense of self
• Require self-awareness and adult instruction in
when to feel emotions

Emotional Self-Regulation
© Caroline
RW/Shutterstock
• The ability of infants to control and reduce intense feelings by
attending intensely to other things (example: a game, set of key) that
are unrelated to the source of those things.
• Improves rapidly during first few years due to brain development
and caregiver support
– Children who are able to direct their attention may be: more socially
competent in preschool years
• Caregivers teach socially approved ways of expressing emotion

• End of year 2: toddlers develop vocabulary for talking about
emotions but are not yet good at using language to manage them;
tantrums occur .

Emotional Regulation Continued
• Relationships and Egocentrism

– Young children often think their needs are the most important ones
§ Sometimes fail to recognize or care about others’ feelings or
needs
– Young children can also be empathetic
§ Sometimes are aware, kind, and sociable
• Setting Limits
– Very important even if toddlers are seeking autonomy
– Limited number of clearly established limits considering: culture,
family beliefs and traditions, environmental factors
– Keeping the child safe

Emotion and Culture
• Research suggests basic human emotions are

universal
– Subjective feelings and facial expressions
• Cultural differences in how and when emotions are
expressed
– Some cultures avoid outward expression of anger
– Some allow anger but discourage shame
– Not all cultures use a “talk it out” approach

Biology and Environment
Parental Depression and Child Development
• Parent–child relationship suffers
• Maternal depression (chronic or postpartum)
– affects infants’ sleep, attention, and stress hormones
– hinders motor and cognitive development and
emotion regulation
– leads to adjustment problems
• Paternal depression linked to child behavior problems
• Early treatment vital to prevent depression from interfering
with parent–child relationship, and to encourage
responsive caregiving

Temperament
Temperament and Development (1 of 5)
• Basic disposition that can be observed throughout a person’s lifespan

(inborn). Babies are born with temperaments that can influence their social
relationships and emotional health
– Early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-

regulation
• Thomas and Chess’s model:
– Easy children (40%)
§ Infant has sunny disposition, are friendly around strangers, and

are easily consoled
– Difficult children (10%)
§ Disposition in which infant cries easily, shows less positive affect,

reacts negatively to new circumstances and unfamiliar people
– Slow-to-warm-up children (15%)
§ Disposition in which an infant is wary of strangers, reluctant to

separate from parents, shows less overt emotions, positive or
negative © Gabriela Insuratelu/Shutterstock
– Unclassified children (35%)

Rothbart’s Model of Temperament
http://modules.ilabs.uw.edu/so/module/temperament/rothbarts-model-
of-temperament/
• Reactivity: +/-
– Activity level
– Attention span/persistence
– Fearful distress
– Irritable distress
– Positive affect
• Self-regulation:
– Effortful control: predicts
© ryanking999/Fotolia
favorable adjustment

Stability of Temperament
• Stability of temperament is low in infancy and

toddlerhood
• More stable after age 3
• Influential factors:
– Development of biological
systems underlying temperament
– Effortful control and emotional
reactivity © Serhiy Kobyakov/Shutterstock
– Child rearing (parent-child relationship)
• Seems to be persisting through adolescence and

adulthood! Seems to be related to personality traits

Heredity and Environment in Temperament
• Heredity and environment often jointly contribute to temperament

• Ethnic and gender differences:
– Differences in temperament between East Asian and
European-American children
– Gender differences evident as early as infancy
• Gene–environment interactions:
– Differential susceptibility to effects of parenting quality
– Example: unusually high early plasticity in young children with short
5-HTTLPR gene
• Siblings’ unique experiences within and beyond the family

Goodness-of-Fit Model
• Encourages effective match between child

rearing and child’s temperament
• Children have unique dispositions that adults
must accept
• Successful child rearing
– is responsive to child’s temperament
– encourages adaptive functioning
with sensitivity, support, clear
expectations © Sunny studio-Igor
Yaruta/Shutterstock
• Best accomplished early

Biology and Environment
Development of Shyness and Sociability
• Opposite extremes of temperament:
– Inhibited, or shy, children: withdraw from novel
stimuli
– Uninhibited, or sociable, children: approach novel
stimuli
• Neurobiological correlates of shyness and sociability:
heart rate, saliva concentration of cortisol, pupil dilation,
blood pressure, skin surface temperature
• Child rearing influences persistence of shyness

Attachment
Development of Attachment (1 of 12)
• Process of forming emotional bonds with other people

[caregivers]
– Attachment Theory
• Stages of attachment (Bowlby)

– Interest in all people
– Intense preference for familiar caregiver(s)
§ Stranger anxiety
§ Separation anxiety
– Common across cultures, but intensity depends on cultural practices and
beliefs

Stages Of Anxiety
• Stranger Anxiety – response to arrival of a
stranger.
• Separation Anxiety – distress level when
separated from carer, degree of comfort needed on
return.
• Social Referencing – degree that child looks at
carer to check how they should respond to
something new (secure base).

Bowlby’s Ethological Theory of Attachment
• Begins with innate signals that keep parent

nearby
• Affectionate bond forms over time:
– Preattachment
– Attachment-in-the-making
– Clear-cut attachment;
separation anxiety
– Formation of reciprocal relationship
• Internal working model:
expectations about availability of attachment
figures.
© oksix/Shutterstock

Attachment Theory:
Bowlby And Ainsworth’s Theory Explained
• Attachment is defined as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human

beings” (Bowlby, 1969, P. 194), and may be considered interchangeable with concepts
such as “affectional bond” and “emotional bond.”
• A person’s first attachment is often established with the primary caregiver

during infancy. However, it must be noted that attachment is not unique to infant-caregiver
relationships but may also be present in other forms of social relationships.
• Attachments of various kinds are formed through the repeated act of “attachment behaviors”
or “attachment transactions,” a continuing process of seeking and maintaining a
certain level of proximity to another specified individual (Bowlby, 1969).
• Because caregivers vary in their levels of sensitivity and responsiveness, not all infants attach
to caregivers in the same way.

Ainsworth Strange Situation
Ainsworth’s Strange Situation

• Procedure involves series of stressful
situations based on stranger and
separation anxiety
• Child with parent
• Child alone
• Child with stranger
• Child reunited with parent
The Strange Situation - Mary Ainsworth

Episodes in Strange Situation
1. Parent and baby introduced to playroom

2. Parent sits while baby plays with toys
3. Stranger enters, is seated, talks to parent
4. Parent leaves; stranger offers comfort if baby is upset
5. Parent returns, greets baby, offers comfort if necessary; stranger
leaves
6. Parent leaves
7. Stranger enters, offers comfort
8. Parent returns, greets baby, offers comfort if necessary, tries to
reinterest baby in toys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRejV6f-Y3c

Pattern of Attachment
– Secure
§ Attachment - secure
§ Joyous reunion with parent after stress
§ Likely to be popular, friendly kids
– Insecure/avoidant
§ Attachment - avoidant
§ Ignores or avoids parent on reunion
§ More likely to be aggressive, impulsive kids
– Insecure/ambivalent
§ Ambivalent Attachment
§ Alternates between clinging and rejecting on reunion
§ More likely to be timid or whiny, anxious
– Disorganized
§ Seem confused; more likely to become aggressive or hostile

Attachment Styles

Measuring Security of Attachment
• Strange Situation (ages 1–3):

– Secure: 60%
– Insecure–avoidant: 15%
– Insecure–resistant: 10%
– Disorganized/disoriented: 15%
• Attachment Q-Sort (ages 1–5): © Pavel L Photo and Video/Shutterstock
– Home observation of 90 behaviors

– Yields a score that ranges from high to
low in security

Figure 6.1
A cross-cultural comparison of infants’ reactions in the
Strange Situation
• In many cultures, distribution of patterns is:

– 70% secure attachment
– 20% to 25% insecure/avoidant attachment
– 5% to 10% insecure/ambivalent
attachment
• However, Strange Situation has a cultural bias

– Infants rarely left alone show ambivalent
patterns in the SSP
– Infants often left alone show avoidant
patterns

Factors That Affect Attachment Security
• Early availability of consistent caregiver

• Quality of caregiving
– Parenting influences secure attachment
§ Warmth (+ physical contact)
§ Responsiveness
§ The specific warm/responsive behaviors vary by culture
• Infant characteristics
• Family circumstances
• Parents’ internal working models (view of their own childhood
attachment experiences)

Relationship Between Infant Characteristics, Quality of
Caregiving, and Attachment Security
• Babies whose temperament is emotionally reactive

are more likely to develop later insecure attachments
• Babies with certain genotypes (5-HTTLPR (serotonin
transporter) gene, DRD4 7-repeat) are more susceptible to
negative impact of insensitive parenting
• Interventions that teach parents to interact sensitively
with difficult-to-care-for babies enhance both sensitive
caregiving and attachment security

Family Circumstances Affecting
Attachment Security
• Stressors with indirect impact (e.g., financial,

marital) can lead to insensitive caregiving
• Stressors with direct impact (e.g., angry adult
interactions) alter emotional climate and disrupt
routines
• Factors fostering attachment security:
– Reduce stress
– Improve parent–child communication
– Provide social support

Stages Of Attachment
• Asocial (0 – 6 weeks): Very young infants are asocial in that many kinds of stimuli, both social
and non-social, produce a favorable reaction, such as a smile.
• Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks to 7 months): Infants indiscriminately enjoy

human company, and most babies respond equally to any caregiver. They get
upset when an individual ceases to interact with them.
– From 3 months infants smile more at familiar faces and can be easily comfortable by a regular caregiver.
• Specific Attachment (7 – 9 months)

– Special preference for a single attachment figure. The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort, and
protection. It shows fear of strangers (stranger fear) and unhappiness when separated from a special person (separation
anxiety).
– Some babies show stranger fear and separation anxiety much more frequently and intensely than others, nevertheless,
they are seen as evidence that the baby has formed an attachment. This has usually developed by one year of age.
• Multiple Attachment (10 months and onwards): Many of the babies from the Schaffer
and Emerson study had multiple attachments by 10 months old, including attachments
to mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings and neighbors.

Multiple Attachments
• Mothers
• Fathers
• Siblings
• Grandparents
• Professional
caregivers
© MNStudio/Shutterstock

Figure 6.2
Average hours per week U.S. mothers and fathers reported
devoting to caring for children in 1965 and 2011

Emotional Relationships Between Siblings
• Arrival of new baby can be stressful for older siblings
• Children treat older siblings as attachment figures
• Siblings generally develop rich emotional relationship
• Certain temperamental traits (e.g., high emotional

reactivity) increase likelihood of sibling conflict
• Maternal warmth toward both children supports positive

sibling interaction
Social Issues
Does Child Care in Infancy Threaten Attachment Security
and Later Adjustment?
• Risk factors:
– Insensitive caregiving
– Long hours in child care
– More than one child-care arrangement
• Supportive factors:
– High-quality child care
– Fewer hours in child care
– Parental paid employment leave

Attachment and Later Development
• Long-term effects of early

attachment security are
conditional: depend on the
quality of future relationships
• Continuity of caregiving
promotes favorable
development
© michaeljung/Fotolia

What happens when there is no attachment?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9GYExnh1yU
Adult conditions make attachment more difficult:
• For ex.: depression, substance abuse, poverty
When children have severe disabilities

• Strong parent–infant bonds form, even when children have severe
disabilities. Parents must be warm and responsive however, some
disabilities make this more difficult for ex., brain damage can lead to
atypical and aversive crying

Early interventions
Attachment interventions that focus on warmth and

responsiveness are very effective
§ Training in childcare techniques
§ Weekly parent support group
§ Teaching how to read their babies signal
§ Carrying the baby (close –to-body interventions)
§ (more securely attached and performed higher in
cognitive development)
§ But must address cultural contexts or be culturally
neutral

Early interventions: Daycare Centre
• High-quality infant care:

– Day care centre- securely attached to educators
§ Responsive
§ Warm
§ Knowledgeable about child development
§ Extensive training in early childhood education
§ Adult-to-child ratio
§ Adequate play space and material
§ Small group size
• Researchers don’t all agree

• Some find that most infants in childcare have secure attachments
• Others find that children who begin childcare as infants are more likely to
have insecure attachments & be aggressive in school
• Quality of care makes a big difference
• May need a new way to study attachment relationships in daycare

Milestones in Developing Self-Awareness
Self-Development (1of 5)
• Newborn capacity for intermodal perception

Beginnings of • Discriminate own limb and facial movements
self-awareness
• Point to self in photos

Self-recognition • Refer to self by name or by pronoun “I” or “me”
• Communicate concern when others are

distressed
Empathy • Offer others what they consider comforting
Rouge test (self-recognition test)

Self-recognition test, aka the 'Rouge Test': Johnny and Eden at 15 months

Experiences Contributing to Self-Awareness
Self-Development (2 of 5)
• Infants act on environment, distinguishing self,

other people, and objects
• Joint attention lets toddlers compare their own and
others’ reactions to objects and events
• Cultural variations:
– Autonomous child rearing facilitates earlier mirror
self-recognition
– Relational child rearing facilitates earlier capacity
for compliance

Figure 6.3
Mirror self-recognition at 19 months in four cultures

Categorical Self
• Classifying self and others

based on
– age
– physical characteristics
– goodness vs. badness
© Andrew Taylor/Shutterstock
• Develops between ages 1½
and 2½
• Used to organize children’s own
behavior, including gender-typed
activity

Self-Control
• Depends on
– awareness of self as separate, autonomous being
– representational and memory capacities to recall
caregiver’s directives
• Compliance reflects clear awareness of
caregivers’ wishes and expectations
• Delay of gratification is influenced by quality
of caregiving

Fostering Toddlers’ Compliance and Self-Control
• Respond with sensitivity and encouragement

• Give advance notice of change in activity
• Offer many prompts and reminders
• Reinforce self-controlled behavior
• Encourage sustained attention
• Support language development
• Increase rules gradually
• Ruler Emotion Regulation: © BlueOrange Studio/Shutterstock
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H14NNUYwVc

Limits of Use
Readers may view, browse, and/or download

material for temporary copying purposes only,
provided these uses are noncommercial personal
purposes. Except as provided by law, this material
may not be further reproduced, distributed,
modified, adapted, performed, displayed, published,
or sold in whole or in part, without prior written
permission from the publisher.

6.emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Ch06

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

6.emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Ch06

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Exploring Child Development

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

6.1 Identify personality changes that

6.3 Summarize changes during the

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

Erikson’s Stage Needed from Caregivers

• Suitable guidance and

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Autonomy: 2nd year of life children start seeking more autonomy

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Cultural variations affect development

– Some cultures discourage autonomy

– Some emphasize control and restraint

– Some encourage interdependence

– Some encourage self-sufficiency

– Influence of gender: boys may be more

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Earliest emotions consist of two arousal states:

– Attraction to pleasant stimulation

– Withdrawal from unpleasant stimulation

• Emotional expressions gradually become

– organized and specific,

– supported by sensitive caregiving and mirroring

• Face, voice, and posture form patterns with age

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Smile: from birth

• General distress: from birth

• First fears: 6 months, keeps exploration in check;

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Infants distinguish some facial expressions days after birth

• Infants rely on contextual cues to guide their own feelings

• Infants develop simple emotion regulation skills early

• Emotions may be influenced by attachment relationships

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Baby Smiles Provide Clues to Healthy Development - Science Nation

• Matching caregiver’s tone (initial months)

• Responding to emotional expressions as organized wholes (5months)

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Social referencing :refers to the process

• Helps toddlers appraise an uncertain situation

• How do adults model and teach emotions to children?

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, and pride

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Caregivers teach socially approved ways of expressing emotion

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Relationships and Egocentrism

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Research suggests basic human emotions are

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.

• Basic disposition that can be observed throughout a person’s lifespan

– Early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-

• Thomas and Chess’s model:

– Easy children (40%)

§ Infant has sunny disposition, are friendly around strangers, and

– Difficult children (10%)

§ Disposition in which infant cries easily, shows less positive affect,

– Slow-to-warm-up children (15%)

§ Disposition in which an infant is wary of strangers, reluctant to

– Unclassified children (35%)

Copyright © 2019 Laura E. Berk. All Rights Reserved.