Chapter 6, Emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

This chapter focuses on developing social aspects during the first two years, like making close ties with
other people, sense of self, temperaments, and early self-development.

Erikson's theory isn't mainstream anymore, but still, there is essential in it considering the first two
years of life. Erickson expended Freud's theory about the importance of caregivers in a baby's life by
resolving the problem of the nonexistence of ideal caregivers of essential trust versus mistrust on the
positive side. Another issue, autonomy versus shame and doubts, which occurs during toddlerhood, can
be resolved when caregivers provide suitable guidance and make sound and reasonable choices. On the
other hand, conflict can deepen itself when kids can't establish regular social connections, trust, and
autonomy during the first two years.

Babies' emotional development plays an essential role in social relationships, exploration of the
environment, and discovery of self. During the first six months, basic emotions such as happiness,
interest, fear, sadness, etc., become more and more apparent and well-organized. A social smile
emerges between 6 to 10 weeks and laughter at about 3-4 months. Primary emotion such as happiness
plays a vital role in strengthening parent-child relationships and supports the development of reflects,
motor, cognitive and social competencies. Such emotions as anger and fear usually emerge in strangers,
called stranger's anxiety, which increases from, 6 to 12 months, as the cause of improvement of
cognitive and motor skills. Usually, infants use a familiar person to explore emotions and attitudes
towards different people. Also, during the first year, babies' ability to understand the emotional
expressions of others increasingly improve. Around 8-10 months, babies involve themselves in social
referencing, which later, by the middle of the 2nd year, rise into understanding that people might have
different emotions than their own and to gather information about others' intentions. During
toddlerhood, babies develop self-conscious emotions such as guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, and
envy by improving self-awareness and adult words and actions. Around 18-24 months, babies become
self-conscious as individuals. Besides developing self-conscious emotions, babies begin to manage their
emotional experience, which is called emotional self-regulation. It emerges as the prefrontal cortex
functions more and more effectively, also when parents help to build tolerance for stimulation and show
emotional empathy but set limits, which then allows kids to stress management in the preschool years.

Also, as individuals, kids differ in their temperaments. In 1956, there was a New York longitudinal study
of babies' temperaments, which explored three paters such as the straightforward child (40% percent of
the sample), the difficult child (10%), and the slow-to-warm-up child (15%). Nowadays, by the Rothbart's
study, there are different dimensions of temperament like emotion, attention, action, effortful control,
and the ability to regulate own reactivity. Also, it's essential that character can modify itself within the
development. Some long-term predictions can be made around 3 when kids improve their effortful
control. Also, there are differences in temperament depending on ethnic and gender differences but are
mainly influenced by culture. Also, in 1977, a goodness-of-fit model explained how character and
environment could produce favorable outcomes.

Talking about the development of attachment, there is an ethological theory, which recognizes the
infant's emotional tie to the caregiver as an evolved response that promotes survival, and also is the
most widely accepted view. From birth, built-in signals help infants close contact with other people, and
then they can communicate more freely and reasonably, more quickly to familiar people than to
strangers. There 4 phases during which attachment develops: pre-attachment phase, "attachment-in-
the-making," "clear-cut," and formation of a reciprocal relationship. Also, children construct an internal
working model that guides their future relationships from early caregiving experiences.
 Talking bout measuring the security of attachment, there is a lab assessment called Strange situation
designed for 1-2 years of age to assess the quality of passion. Four attachment types were identified:
secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant, and disorganized/disoriented attachment. An alternative
method, Attachment Q-sort, suitable for children from1 to 5 years old, yields a score ranging from low
to high insecurity based on home observations. Different conditions influence the type of attachment,
such as living conditions, stability, cultural requirements, early availability of consistent caregiver, quality
of caregiving, the fit between baby's and parent temperament, and parents' internal working models. In
western societies, interactional synchrony characterizes securely attached babies. In non-western and
Asian cultures, sensitive caregiving is better.

Also, infants are capable of multiple attachments. For example, when the babies are more attached to
fathers, they tend to be engaged in more active, playful, exciting physical activities. In addition, starting
at 1, infants build close ties with their siblings connected with rivalry, reassessment, affection, and
sympathy.

Talking about babies' self-awareness, infants develop it from understanding their physical presence in
the environment and exploring their different body parts. Around 18 months, the awareness of self's
physical presence highly emerges, and around the age of 2, self-recognition is apparent by observing
how toddlers identify themselves in photos and by name. Nevertheless, toddlers make some scale
errors, attempting to do things that their body size is incapable of. Also, self-awareness helps toddlers to
make their first tries at showing empathy. Furthermore, with the strength of language development,
children develop a categorial self by identifying themselves and others based on various social criticisms.
Futhermore, between 12 to 18 months, compliance, which is the awareness of the caregiver's wishes
and expectations and can obey simple requests and commands, emerges. And between 18 months and
four years, children can better make the delay of gratification by waiting for an appropriate time and
place to engage in a tempting act.