How Does Human Interaction Affect Infant Development?

Children are very complex, unique and varied individuals whose genetics, connections and backgrounds all perform significant roles in their emotional development (Wilson, 2003). The genetic blueprint a child inherits from its parents may plot a course for development but the environment and the influences within can affect how the child is shaped, how they connect with and are perceived by others and how their emotions are or are not expressed. Wilson (2003) points out emotions as an experience that is linked to cognitive interpretation, context, subjective feeling, physical reaction and behavioural expression. Campos, Campos, and Barrett (1989) suggest emotions are processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relations between the person and the internal or external environment, when such relations are significant to the individual.

This literature review of the emergence of empathy does not adhere to any particular theoretical models, but to summarize research findings about what contributes to empathic responses. Firstly, we will focus on infants’ early social interactions. We focus on imitation, emotion matching, and emotional contagion as precursors of empathy. These support the formation of strong bonds of attachment with primary caregivers. This relationship promotes reciprocal responsiveness in the infant. Following a section on emotional attunement, we discuss research relating to infants’ abilities to discriminate emotions. Responses to other people’s displays of emotion are discussed and associated with prosocial behaviour and the cognitive skills that support its development. While there is little research addressing the neurobiology of empathy during infancy, links are proposed between studies of infant behaviour and neurospscyhology studies.

Emotional- Babies at this age are not unable to communicate so show their emotion by crying or laughter and may use some facial expressions to show how they feel about what’s going on around them. As they get older say around two years old they show their emotion by having tantrums. When they reach three they begin to care about the people around them and tend to share toys with them and play with them.

Emotion regulation involves intrinsic and extrinsic processing of monitoring and modifying emotional reactions in both positive or negative situations (Martins, 2012). In order for individuals to have the ability to regulate emotions, they must beware of their emotions. Although infants are unaware and lack the ability to regulate their emotions, it then becomes the role of a primary carer to nurture the infant, thus acting as a model for regulating emotions. Evidently, infants grow to reflect the ways in which their carers control and modify their emotions as well as social boundaries. Furthermore, emotion regulation is considered an important aspect of an individuals life as it 'can moderate emotions and keep them in a manageable range

Stranger wariness: Infant no longer smiles at any friendly face but cries or looks frightened when an unfamiliar person moves too close.

At 6 weeks infants develop a social smile, at 3 month laughter and curiosity develop, at 4 months full responsive smiles emerge, from 4-8 months they develop anger, from 9014 months they develop a fear of social events, at 12 months the are fearful of unexpected sights and sounds, and at 18 months they are self-aware, feel pride, shame, and embarrassment. In the first two years, infants develop from reactive pain and pleasure to complex patterns of social awareness. Emotions in infants are produced from their body as opposed to their thoughts. Therefore fast and uncensored reactions are common in infants. During their toddler years, the strength of their emotions will increase.

Saxe identifies this group as preverbal babies. By studying the behaviors of these infants, psychologists are able determine that basic instinct that humans share. These babies, aged between four and twelve months, are much too young to be influenced by the institution around them. The infants are also too young to communicate their thought processes, so psychologists analyze the only responses these infants can communicate, looking and crawling. In the experiment involving these preverbal infants, babies were shown videos of one man being “nice” to a girl while another was “mean” to the girl.

Babies have learned how to express a wide variety of emotions by the time they are nine months old. Their emotions are all over the place. They can go from intense happiness to intense sadness extremely quickly. By the time they are twelve months, babies are aware of other people’s expressions and their emotional states. At this time they are making the connection that expressions match feelings on the inside and show on the outside. By age two, toddlers can show a wide range of emotions and are becoming more aware and are able to cope with their emotions. Their ability to use language becomes more apparent, learning words that mean something to them. They are known to use a single word with an emotional emphasis to express a complete thought, question or request. During the second year their language becomes more sophisticated. Toddlers began to put 2 to 3 words together forming easy phrases. Their vocabulary grows from there. From infancy to toddler and onward, language and emotional development are

There are six milestones to understand the emotional role in the cognition development the begin life cycle. The first one is making sense of sensations. This is the first time the infant makes sense of the world around them. The next milestone is Intimacy and Relating. This is when they start to react to other feeling by their emotional cues and actions. The third milestone is Buds of Intentionality. This is when te infant uses gesture and expressions to initiate and respond to a

At a certain age infants begin to resist the unfamiliar and are very vocal in expressing their feelings (Brazelton, 1992).

Social interaction plays an important role in people’s life starting from the early childhood as infants interact with their caregivers and build the emotional attachment that is the base for future relationships. By social interaction with others children learn how to communicate, play and behave in particular situation. Berk (2009) proposed the overview of the literature that concentrates upon the early attachment and its importance. Knowing the influence of social interaction on child development in the first few years, the essay is going to elaborate upon the implication of social interaction on the development of cognition. Cognitive development as Lee & Gupta (eds.) claimed is the term that refers to acquisition and development of

On the other hand, in Howlett’s study, the parents were not randomly assigned to either the gesture group or the non-gesture group. Thereby, as he noted, the stress the parents experienced were not resulted from the gesture class but it was created because of the expectation these parents have from the class. Hence, there were a pre-existing difference between the parents who preferred to attend the gesture class and the ones who were not interested in the class, which could influence the result of the study. Nonetheless the gesture class did not reduce the level of stress. Mueller believed that the class strategies were responsible for this result, which means that because of the restrictive type of the class, parents felt pressure and consequently became more anxious. In the gesture class, parents learned a small number of signs and were obligated to teach all of them to their infants, while in Mueller’s studies, the parents learned a wide range of signs and were not under pressure to use all of them (Mueller, Sepulveda & Rodriguez, 2014).

Developmental Psychology has widened my perspective and knowledge of the nature of development from humans’ infancy to adolescence and emerging adulthood. Although I have learned about biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes and periods of development, I am especially interested in socioemotional development in infancy because it is the foundation for a child’s future development. That is to say, if children have a healthy socioemotional development from infancy, they will have a healthy life later on. By understanding the developmental process in infancy, I will be fully prepared when I have children or when my family’s members do.

Pons et al 2004 found that; a series of nine stages should happen during the developmental stages of infancy to middle childhood. Infant’s at3–4 years of age begin to notice and put a name to feelings (e.g. calm, content ,anxious, shy) from expressive gestures. Infants around 3–5 begin to understand how reflectivity affects not only their emotions but others. At 3 -6 years children start to process that memories of events which are linked to how they feel. Also, they understand that emotional potency eases with time. However, between 4- 6 years old,

From the beginning, babies are born with their own personalities. Crying is the first sense of emotion and is used to communicate many different things. Psychosocial development increases, as they are able to express more emotions. Between zero to three months of age, babies can smile. They start to become curious and show interest in certain things. By three to six months, infants can