Psychosocial Development

Early Childhood
Emotional Development

New Challenges appear as a result of:

 Developing sense of self
 Relationships with peers
 Limits set by parents and teachers
Emotional Regulation
 The ability to regulate emotions, especially
in stressful or highly charged situations
 Positive psychosocial development requires
children to be able to recognize and regulate
emotions appropriately
Young children recognize some emotional
expressions and experiences better than
Others:
 Three year olds place emotional expressions
into one of two categories
 Happy
 Angry or Sad
 Five year olds can also identify
 Surprised
 Scared
 And eventually, disgusted
Developing the capacity for emotional
regulation is an important task of early
childhood and is the result of the integration of
the brain that supports self regulation –
 ‘Hot’ executive function skills come into play when
children must react to something. -Go
 ‘Cold’ executive function skills come into play when
children must use self regulation when completing
cognitive tasks. -Know
 Emotional Regulation describes processes
designed to control emotional experience.
 The ability to do the following in the
process of accomplishing one’s goals:
Enhance
Inhibit
Maintain
Modulate emotional arousal
Children with this capacity are more socially competent and show
more prosocial behaviors.
 Young children often need assistance from
others to help them control their behavior
in stressful situations.
 Extrinsic emotional regulation refers to processes used
by others to help children become less aroused and
control their behavior
 Intrinsic emotional regulation refers to processes
children develop to control their own responses.
 Effortful control –when children voluntarily choose an adaptive response
Self Concept

Self concept relates to an individuals view of

himself or herself in terms of traits,
personality and values.
 Three year olds have a narrower view of self.
 Young children develop a sense of self slowly,
based on interactions with objects, activities and
others.
Self Representation

Self Representation emerges as the brain

matures.
 Left hemisphere is most active in tasks involving self
representation
 Right hemisphere is more active in tasks involving
comparisons of the self to others
How do Children Describe
Themselves?
3-4 year olds provide concrete examples of
 what they look like
 What they can do, or
 The friendships they have
Three year olds usually see themselves positively –indicating that
they have positive self esteem or judgment about their own
worth.
In fact, their self esteem may be inflated –I can jump as high as
that mountain! This is because they cannot compare themselves
to others yet.
 5-7 year olds begin to make comparisons to
their own past performance which
promotes even more positive self esteem.

 School age children are better able to

recognized differences between themselves
and others and to compare their
accomplishments to another’s.