4.5 Summary

Emotional Development

1. Two emotions, contentment and distress, appear as soon as an infant is born. Smiles and laughter are evident in the early months. Anger emerges with restriction and frustration, between 4 and 8 months of age, and becomes stronger by age 1.

2. Reflexive fear is apparent in very young infants. Fear of something specific, including fear of strangers and of separation, appears toward the end of the first year.

3. In the second year, social awareness produces more selective fear, anger, and joy. As infants become increasingly self-aware, emotions emerge that encourage an interface between the self and others—specifically, pride, shame, empathy, jealousy, embarrassment, and disgust. Self-recognition (on the mirror/rouge test) emerges at about 18 months.

Brain and Emotion

4. Stress impedes early brain and emotional development. Some infants are particularly vulnerable to the effects of early mistreatment.

5. Temperament is a set of genetic traits whose expression is influenced by the context. Inborn temperament is linked to later personality, although plasticity is also evident.

The Development of Social Bonds

6. Sometimes by 2 months, and clearly by 6 months, infants become more responsive and social, and synchrony begins. Infants are disturbed by a still face because they expect and need social interaction.

7. Attachment, measured by the baby’s reaction to the caregiver’s presence, departure, and return in the Strange Situation, is crucial. There are four types of attachment: insecure-avoidant or indifferent (A); secure (B); insecure-resistant/ambivalent or overly dependent (C); and disorganized (D). Secure attachment provides encouragement for infant exploration. Some children never form an attachment at all, even an insecure one.

8. As they play, toddlers engage in social referencing, looking to other people’s facial expressions and body language to detect what is safe, frightening, or fun.

9. Infants frequently use fathers as partners in synchrony, attachment, and social referencing, developing emotions and exploring their world within the context of paternal caregiving.

Theories of Infant Psychosocial Development

10. According to all major theories, caregiver behaviour is especially influential in the first two years. Freud stressed the mother’s impact on oral and anal pleasure; Erikson emphasized trust and autonomy.

11. Behaviourists focus on learning; parents teach their babies many things, including when to be fearful or joyful. Cognitive theory holds that infants develop working models based on their experiences.

12. Humanism notes that some adults are stuck in their own unfinished development, and this impairs their ability to give infants the loving responses that they need.

13. Evolutionary theorists recognize that both infants and caregivers have impulses and emotions, developed over the centuries, that foster survival of each new member of the human species.

14. The impact of non-maternal care depends on many factors; it varies from one nation to another and probably from one child to another. Although each theory focuses on a different aspect of this controversy, all agree that quality of care (responsive, individualized) is crucial, no matter who provides that care.