Abstract
This chapter offered a quite detailed account of the development of emotions in infants from birth to about 12 months, using the theoretical frameworks both of Jean Piaget and Alan Sroufe. In the work of both authors, it is evident that emotions begin with reactions that still are quite automatic and, in part, based by spontaneous fluctuations of the Central Nervous System. From about the third week on, however, babies begin to orient towards emotion-laden situations more actively, displaying alertness and interest and turning attentively towards interesting social stimulation. Their increasing alertness to and joy in the presence and actions of adults begin to evoke grins, smiles, and cooing, and they begin to turn actively to stimulation in an effort to assimilate it. Reactions become more rapid over the first 12 weeks, and from the age of 4 months, infants engage in genuine laughter with its energetic bursts of sounds. At first laughter is elicited by gentle stimulation only, but gradually, more vigorous stimulation that at first may have caused crying becomes more effective. Laughter is increasingly related to understanding incongruities and understanding of joking on the part of mother.
A very crucial concern of researchers has been to document the great importance of sensitive caretakers in guiding emotional development. The chapter adds ample evidence to show that caretaker insensitivity or even neglects begin to show early and dramatic consequences for emotional development, consequences that may be carried into later developmental stages, including adulthood. These negative consequences are mediated by the interactional patterns between infants and parents/caretakers, interactions which are crucial in building positive feelings and in synchronizing brain activity of the infant and mother. If such well-attuned interactions are missing, the infant is set on a cause of faulty emotion regulation and vulnerability to poorly regulated negative emotions).
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- 1.
As noted in chapters to come, genuine integration remains an issue throughout the total span of life.
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As, for example, when one feels pleasure at a thought.
- 3.
A “scheme” refers to an organized set of experiences about some aspect of reality; an organized conceptual structure.
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Phonation refers to the production of sounds.
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An excellent presentation of this work can be found on YouTube under the title “New Insights about attachment in rhesus monkeys.”
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- 7.
An informative and empassioned presentation by Dr. Gunnar can be found on YouTube by entering “Megan Gunnar, Hennepin University Partnership 2013.”
- 8.
The procedural memory system contains memories of actions stored in an imagistic implicit, visceral-automatic, and nonconscious fashion that in some sense can be compared to Piaget’s “sensorimotor skills.”
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Labouvie-Vief, G. (2015). Cognitive–Emotional Development in Infants. In: Integrating Emotions and Cognition Throughout the Lifespan. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09822-7_4
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