Infant Emotional Development

Development of Emotions in Infants

• Infants progress from simple reactive experiences of pain and pleasure to complex socio-emotional awareness by 2 years.
• Primary emotions, such as colic, manifest as uncontrollable crying, typically subsiding by 3 months.
• Social smiles, evoked by human faces, begin to appear and are influenced by the infant's age since conception.
• Anger usually emerges around 6 months, while sadness can indicate withdrawal rather than a call for help in early months.

Factors Affecting Fear

• Fear is influenced by awareness of discrepancies in expectation, individual temperament, and social context.
• Social fear peaks during the middle of the first year and later diminishes.

Specific Phobias and Anxiety

• Separation anxiety starts at age 1, intensifies by age 2, and eventually subsides.
• Stranger wariness develops as fear of unfamiliar people. If persistent beyond age 3, it can lead to disorders like generalized anxiety or social phobia.
• One-year-olds become wary of unexpected events but can overcome fear with repeated experiences and reassurance.

Emergence of Self-Awareness and Secondary Emotions

• Self-awareness develops between 15 to 24 months, marking the realization that one's body, mind, and activities differ from others.
• Secondary emotions require an awareness of others’ feelings and actions.

Understanding Temperament

• Temperament reflects variations in emotions, activity levels, and self-regulation, rooted in genetic and prenatal factors.
• It affects an individual’s typical responses to their environment, influencing personality development.

Temperament Traits

• Effortful control: Ability to regulate attention and emotions, including self-soothing.
• Negative mood: Characterized by fearfulness and unhappiness.
• Exuberance: Associated with being active and socially engaging.

Impact of Stress on Development

• High levels of stress and fear can slow brain growth and reduce dendrite development.
• Chronic stress also impairs the immune system.

Importance of Caregiver Interactions

• Caregiver behavior during infancy significantly influences emotional responses in adulthood.
• Synchrony: Early parent-infant interactions aid the development of social skills; lack of synchrony can negatively impact emotional and brain development.
• The still-face technique highlights that synchrony is fundamental to expected developmental experiences.

Explore the fascinating world of infant emotional development during their first two years. This quiz covers primary emotions, their progression, and factors that influence emotional responses, including pain, pleasure, and social contexts. Test your knowledge and understanding of how infants express and experience emotions.