Perhaps one of the most influential areas of development is the social and emotional domain. This involves processes by which children gain understanding of themselves, their emotions, and the connections between themselves and others. Social and emotional development is impacted by cognitive and language domains since the capacity for complex thinking and information integration is needed to develop and maintain relationships.

Social and emotional skills are built through everyday interactions. This means that there are many daily opportunities for children to learn about themselves and others. This also means that there are many opportunities for challenges as children learn how to regulate their emotions and build new skills. The interactions we have with our primary caregivers set the foundation for our social and emotional development. The role of caregivers during the first 3 years of a child’s life is that of a role model. Children learn by what they see, and they imitate what they learn. This is why it is important for caregivers to model positive and prosocial behaviors and to be responsive to their child’s individual needs.

While many biological and genetic factors influence our growth, we can all agree that the early interactions we have with the adults that care for us set the stage for lifelong social and emotional learning. In the following sections, we will examine how attachment and bonding form the foundation for future relationships and a child’s sense of self. We will also look at temperament and emotional expression and discuss how they influence parent-child interactions. Lastly, we will discuss the importance of play and explore how various cultural and social factors impact parenting and behavior in infancy and toddlerhood.

Temperament

Temperament is an important area of social and emotional growth. Temperament refers to the innate characteristics of a child, such as mood, activity level, and emotional reactivity. One’s temperament is often a precursor to their future personality. Temperament characteristics are often noticeable soon after a child is born. While every child differs in their temperament, children want nothing more than to connect meaningfully to others.

According to the Harvard Center for the Developing Child, “young children naturally reach out for interaction through babbling, facial expressions, and gestures” (Center on the Developing Child, 2007). The primary caregiver should reciprocate this interaction by responding positively to the child, either with the same kind of vocalizing or gesturing. “In the absence of such responses—or if the responses are unreliable or inappropriate—the brain’s architecture does not form as expected, which can lead to disparities in learning and behavior” (Center on the Developing Child, 2007). Adverse experiences, or those that are harmful or negative, can disrupt the formation of healthy skills, knowledge, and social interactions.

Healthy social and emotional development is dependent on a good match between the child’s temperament, the caregivers’ responses, and the presence of a safe environment. This is known as goodness-of-fit, or simply, the child’s surrounding environment is a good match for their temperament and needs. For example, a highly active child will need space to move their bodies, as well as a caregiver who can move about with them and ensure their safety. A child who is more hesitant in new situations may need more time to adjust or more time being physically close to their primary caregiver before they feel comfortable interacting with others.

Bidirectionality refers to the reciprocal relationship between two variables. In the case of the parent-child relationship, this implies that not only does the adult have an impact on the child but the child also has an impact on the adult. For example, a child’s temperament can influence parenting practices. If they are an “easy” child, the parents may feel more effective in their caregiver role and show more positive attitudes toward the child. Conversely, a parent who is stressed or emotionally unavailable may elicit negative reactions, crying, or withdrawal from their child (Shafer et al., 2014).

A longitudinal study evaluated the temperament of 141 children in New York (Figure 6.1). The children’s temperament was measured using 10 dimensions of temperament: activity level, rhythmicity, approach/withdrawal, adaptability, intensity of reactions, threshold of responsiveness, quality of mood, distractibility, attention, and persistence (Thomas & Chess, 1957). Once evaluated, children were categorized into three types of temperament categories. About 65 percent of the children were easily classified into one of the three categories. The remaining 35 percent were a mixture of the temperaments.

It is important to note that categorizations of temperament are socially and culturally specific. In the study noted above, American children from a specific region were used. While we may see similarities in how we classify and measure temperament across cultural groups, we must recognize that all children are unique in the way they process new stimuli and how they interact with their caregivers (figure 6.2).

Early Emotional Development

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 2 months, infants exhibit social engagement in the form of social smiling as they respond with smiles to those who engage their positive attention (Lavelli & Fogel, 2005).

Social smiling becomes more stable and organized as infants learn to use their smiles to engage their parents in interactions. Pleasure is expressed as laughter at 3–5 months of age, and displeasure becomes more specific as fear, sadness, or anger at 6–8 months. Anger is often the reaction to being prevented from obtaining a goal, such as a toy being removed (Braungart-Rieker et al., 2010). In contrast, sadness is typically the response when infants are deprived of a caregiver (Papousek, 2007). Fear is often associated with the presence of a stranger, known as stranger wariness, or the departure of significant others, known as separation anxiety. Both appear sometime between 6 and 15 months after object permanence has been acquired. Furthermore, there is some indication that infants may experience jealousy as young as 6 months of age (Hart & Carrington, 2002).

Emotions are often divided into two general categories: basic emotions (primary emotions), such as interest, happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness, and disgust, which appear first, and self-conscious emotions (secondary emotions), such as envy, pride, shame, guilt, doubt, and embarrassment (figure 6.3). Unlike primary emotions, secondary emotions appear as children start to develop a self-concept, and require social instruction on when to feel such emotions. The situations in which children learn self-conscious emotions vary from culture to culture. Individualistic cultures teach us to feel pride in personal accomplishments, while in more collective cultures children are taught to not call attention to themselves unless they wish to feel embarrassed for doing so (Akimoto & Sanbinmatsu, 1999).

Facial expressions of emotion are important regulators of social interaction. In the developmental literature, this concept has been investigated under the concept of social referencing, which is the process whereby infants seek out information via facial cues from others to clarify a situation and then use that information to act (Klinnert et al., 1983).

To date, the strongest demonstration of social referencing comes from work using a visual cliff, a special table that was created to see if children would cross the portion of the table with the clear glass, made to mimic a cliff or edge.

In the first study to investigate this concept, Campos and colleagues (Sorce et al., 1985) placed mothers on the far end of the “cliff” from the infant. Mothers first smiled at the infants and placed a toy on top of the safety glass to attract them; infants invariably began crawling to their mothers. When the infants were in the center of the table, however, the mother adopted an expression of fear, sadness, anger, interest, or joy. The results were clearly different for the different expressions. No infants crossed the table when the mother showed fear, only 6 percent did when the mother showed anger, 33 percent crossed when the mother showed sadness, and approximately 75 percent of the infants crossed when the mother showed joy or interest.

Other studies provide similar support for facial expressions as regulators of social interaction. Researchers showed babies neutral, angry, or disgusted facial expressions as they moved toward an object and measured the amount of inhibition the babies showed in touching the object (Bradshaw, 1986). For both 10– and 15-month-old babies, an angry expression produced the greatest inhibition, followed by a disgusted expression, with a neutral expression prompting the least inhibition. This study was later replicated using expressions of joy and disgust, altering the method so that the infants were not allowed to touch the toy (compared with a distractor object) until 1 hour after exposure to the expression (Hertenstein & Campos, 2004). At 14 months of age, significantly more infants touched the toy when they saw joyful expressions, but fewer touched the toy when they saw disgusted expressions.

A final emotional change is in self-regulation. Emotional self-regulation refers to strategies we use to control our emotional states so that we can attain goals (Thompson & Goodvin, 2007). This requires effortful control of emotions and initially requires assistance from caregivers (Rothbart et al., 2006). Young infants have a very limited capacity to adjust their emotional states and depend on their caregivers to help them soothe themselves. Caregivers can offer distractions to redirect the infant’s attention and comfort to reduce emotional distress. As areas of the infant’s prefrontal cortex continue to develop, they become able to tolerate more stimulation.

By 4–6 months, babies can begin to shift their attention away from upsetting stimuli (Rothbart et al., 2006). Older infants and toddlers can more effectively communicate their need for help and can crawl or walk toward or away from various situations (Cole et al., 2010). This aids in their ability to self-regulate. Temperament also plays a role in children’s ability to control their emotional states, and individual differences have been noted in the emotional self-regulation of infants and toddlers (Rothbart & Bates, 2006).

Licenses and Attributions for Social and Emotional Development

“Social and Emotional Development” by Christina Belli is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

“Early Emotional Expression” from Lifespan Development – A Psychological Perspective by Martha Lally and Suzanne Valentine-French is licensed under CC BY 4.0 with minor edits, title change.

Figure 6.1. Thomas & Chess, 1957.

Figure 6.2. Image by Cecilia Beltran/USFWS is in the Public Domain.

Figure 6.3. Image by Brytny.com on Unsplash.

Figure 6.4. Image by U.S. National Institute of Health in Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.