Infant Emotions

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 two months, infants exhibit social engagement in the form of social smiling as they respond with joy 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 to 5 months of age, and displeasure becomes more specific and differentiated as fear, sadness, or anger between ages 6 and 8 months. Anger or frustration is often expressed in 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. Further, 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, such as interest, happiness, anger, fear, surprise, sadness and disgust, which appear first, and self-conscious emotions, such as envy, pride, shame, guilt, doubt, and embarrassment. Unlike primary emotions, secondary emotions appear as children start to develop a self-concept and receive social instruction on when to feel such emotions. The situations in which children learn self-conscious emotions varies 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 you 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 has been investigated under the concept of social referencing; that is, the process whereby infants seek out information 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 on the visual cliff. In the first study to investigate this concept, Sorce et al. (1985) placed mothers on the far end of the “cliff” from the infant. Mothers first smiled to 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 then intentionally displayed an expression of fear, sadness, anger, interest, or joy. The results were clearly different for the different facial expressions; no infant crossed the table when the mother showed fear; only 6% did when the mother showed anger, 33% crossed when the mother showed sadness, and approximately 75% of the infants crossed when the mother expressed joy or interest.

Other studies provide similar support for facial expressions as regulators of social interaction. Experimenters displayed facial expressions of neutral, anger, or disgust toward babies as they moved toward an object and measured the amount of inhibition the babies showed in touching the object (Bradshaw, 1986). The results for 10- and 15-month olds were the same: Anger produced the greatest inhibition, followed by disgust, with neutral the least. This study was later replicated using joy and disgust expressions, altering the method so that the infants were not allowed to touch the toy (compared with a distractor object) until one 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 the infants saw disgust.

Emotional 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 very limited capacity to adjust their emotional states and depend on their caregivers to help soothe themselves, referred to as co-regulation. Caregivers can offer distractions to redirect the infant’s attention and comfort to reduce the emotional distress. As areas of the infant’s prefrontal cortex continue to develop, infants can tolerate more stimulation. By 4 to 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).

In older children, emotional self-regulation refers specifically to an individual’s ability to recognize and name how they are feeling, and to express their emotions constructively. Adaptive emotion regulation involves staying in touch with how you are genuinely feeling while at the same time making intentional decisions about how you are going to express those feelings. Three- and four-year-olds learn new ways of expressing their feelings verbally. They also learn how to cope with negative emotions in ways that make themselves feel better—they put their heads down to reduce sensory input that may be overwhelming or unpleasant, they talk out loud to reassure themselves that things will be okay, and they recalibrate their goals or desires to match the options that are available to them, rather than to continue asking for something they cannot have (Thompson & Goodvin, 2007). These strategies, and others, reduce the frequency and severity of tantrums, feelings of loneliness, and other unpleasant emotional responses. They can also help children remain calm when they are very excited or happy.

The same cognitive processes related to self-control and executive function (response initiation, response inhibition, delayed gratification, effortful control, and cognitive flexibility) are responsible for regulating children’s emotions. However, caregivers can help facilitate adaptive behavior regulation by labeling their child’s emotions, using goal-focused language (e.g., want, need, don’t like) in everyday conversations, by validating children’s goals and preferences as real and important, prompting thought about emotion (e.g., “why is the turtle sad?”), by explaining prosocial strategies that allow everyone in a given transaction to have their goals and preferences taken into consideration (e.g. by taking turns or sharing), continuing to provide alternative activities/distractions, and by being patient. Caregivers who use such strategies and respond sensitively to children’s emotions tend to have children who are more effective at emotion regulation, are less fearful and fussy, more likely to express positive emotions, easier to soothe, more engaged in environmental exploration, and have enhanced social skills in the toddler and preschool years. Compared with children with poor behavioral regulation skills, those who learn adaptive behavioral and emotional regulation strategies learn more, like school better, and are disciplined less frequently. They are also less anxious and stressed, more empathetic, and get along better with parents, teachers, and peers (Chang et al., 2003; Colman et al., 2006; Eisenberg et al., 2005; Morris et al., 2011; Raikes et al., 2007; Rothbart et al., 2011).

Behavioral Self-Regulation

One of the places that the developmental task of initiative vs. guilt is negotiated involves preschoolers’ struggles to learn to control their behaviors and emotions. Behavioral self-regulation refers broadly to the self-control individuals use to modify their actions. Sometimes, behaviors need to be modified to so that they are socially appropriate to the context (e.g., minding parents or following preschool rules), and sometimes so that they better meet an individual’s own goals (e.g., getting a fort built or joining a pretend game). Adaptive behavioral regulation involves staying in touch with your genuine goals while at the same time making intentional decisions about the actions you are going to show in service of those goals.

Self‐regulation of behavior refers to both:

1. “Do” regulation: The performance of actions desired by others that we don’t really want to do  (“Put away your toys”), and
2. “Don’t” regulation: Stopping ourselves from doing something we really want to do (“Don’t eat that cookie!”).

During toddlerhood, we see the start of behavioral self-regulation, and it is one of the central tasks of early childhood, but these processes take many years to fully develop. Executive function refers to self-regulatory processes, such as the ability to inhibit a behavior or cognitive flexibility, that enable adaptive responses to new situations or to reach a specific goal. Executive function skills gradually emerge during early childhood and continue to develop throughout childhood and adolescence. Like many cognitive changes, brain maturation, especially the prefrontal cortex, along with experience influence the development of executive function skills. As executive function improves, children become less impulsive (Traverso et al., 2015). Children show higher executive function skills when parents are warm and responsive, use scaffolding when the child is trying to solve a problem, and provide cognitively stimulating environments (Fay-Stammbach et al., 2014).

When do children start self-regulating and what affects how it develops?

Children start regulating their behaviors in infancy, beginning with physiological regulation and consistency in patterns of behavior, such as sleeping and eating. However, as infants move into toddlerhood, they are faced with the challenge of regulating their behavior as it relates to others in social situations. This type of self-regulation is typically not seen with any degree of consistency until a child’s second year. However, the capacity to self- regulate may develop earlier or later depending on:

1. Developmental progress in other areas, such as cognition and working memory, which help children become aware of what constitutes acceptable social behavior.
2. The child’s temperament, both reactivity and effortful control.
3. The quality of parent-child interactions.
4. The quality of the general home and/or school (day-care) environment.

Why is self-regulation important?

Being good at behavioral self-regulation (compared to having difficulty regulating one’s behavior) is associated with numerous positive outcomes for children, including:

1. More success in the transition to school and better academic achievement once they start school.
2. Higher levels of social competence, as seen in greater success developing school-based peer relationships.
3. Fewer problems with externalizing behaviors such as anger and impulsivity.
4. Higher levels of pro-social behaviors as children move from infancy into toddlerhood and early childhood, and increases in prosocial behavior throughout childhood.

In the now classic “Marshmallow Test” (Mischel et al., 1972) children are confronted with the choice of a small immediate reward (a single marshmallow) and a larger delayed reward (several marshmallows). Walter Mischel and his colleagues over the years have found that the ability to delay gratification at the age of four predicted better academic performance and health later in life (Mischel, et al., 2011).

Internalization: How do self-regulation and compliance develop?

The developmental trajectory for self-regulation can be investigated by directly observing the nature and frequency of children’s compliant behaviors. Compliance, simply stated, is a child’s cooperation or “going along with” the rules and standards of behavior for their immediate environment (e.g., home or school). As a child’s ability to self-regulate develops, so does the nature of compliant behavior. Let’s use getting ready to eat a meal as an example:

1. When self-regulated behavior is beginning to emerge, compliant behavior requires a high degree of caregiver support: A very young child will need assistance with hand washing, putting on a bib, and getting seated.
2. Compliance needs less support as self-regulation continues to develop. A child of two may be able to perform these tasks with less or no assistance, but will likely require a reminder and perhaps direct supervision to do them.
3. Compliance needs very little direct support as children develop more and more self-regulatory skills.
4. Self-regulatory competence: An older child will be able to get ready for a meal without prompting or assistance.

In other words, as a child develops the ability to self-regulate their behavior, the nature of compliance shifts from assisted, externally motivated behavior to independent, internally motivated behavior. The development of independent, internally motivated compliance is referred to as “internalization” and represents a child’s acceptance and understanding of, and willingness to behave in accordance with, the rules and standards of their environment.