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.