Social-emotional development

 

What develops?

Newborn infants do not seem to experience fear or have preferences for contact with any specific people. In the first few months they only experience happiness, sadness, and anger. A baby’s first smile usually occurs between 6 and 10 weeks. It is called a ‘social smile’ because is usually occurs during social interactions. By about 8–12 months, they go through a fairly rapid change and become fearful of perceived threats; they also begin to prefer familiar people and show anxiety and distress when separated from them or approached by strangers. The capacity for empathy and the understanding of social rules begin in the preschool period and continue to develop into adulthood. Middle childhood is characterized by friendships with age-mates, and adolescence by emotions connected with sexuality and the beginnings of romantic love. Anger seems most intense during the toddler and early preschool period and during adolescence.

 

Speed and pattern of development

Some aspects of social-emotional development, like empathy, develop gradually, but others, like fearfulness, seem to involve a rather sudden reorganization of the child's experience of emotion. Sexual and romantic emotions develop in connection with physical maturation.

 

Mechanisms of social and emotional development

Genetic factors appear to regulate some social-emotional developments that occur at predictable ages, such as fearfulness, and attachment to familiar people. Experience plays a role in determining which people are familiar, which social rules are obeyed,and how anger is expressed.

 

 Individual differences

Individual differences in the sequence of social-emotional development are unusual, but the intensity or expressiveness of emotions can vary greatly from one normal child to another. Individual tendencies to various types of reactivity are probably constitutional, and they are referred to as temperamental differences. Atypical development of social-emotional characteristics may be mildly unusual, or may be so extreme as to indicate mental illness. Temperamental traits are thought to be stable and enduring throughout the life span. Children who are active and angry as infants can be expected to be active and angry as older children, adolescents and adults.

Population differences

Population differences may occur in older children, if, for example they have learned that it is appropriate for boys to express emotion or behave differently than girls, or if customs learned by children of one ethnic group are different from those learned in another. Social and emotional differences between boys and girls of a given age may also be associated with differences in the timing of puberty characteristic of the two sexes.