The Importance Of Self-Regulation In Early Childhood And Late Adolescence

In David Eagleman’s documentary, “Why Do I Need You?” he describes the importance of social interaction in the development of our brain. It is fundamental to interact with others and work holistically because it helps our brain to grow ultimately benefiting both the individual and society. Understanding people’s facial expressions, something so quick it is almost done unconsciously, is a vital aspect in communication. Eagle man demonstrates how individual from a young age, as early as twelve months, can understand the importance of socialization from their “inborn instincts” and through the observation of others to decide who to play and not play with. We thrive from understanding people’s social signal and without it it can become very hard

A psychologist in the 1950’s by the name of Harry Harlow did a study on the parent-infant bond using a baby monkey and two artificial mothers. To make the experiment proper, Harlow removed the infant from its biological mother early on and was raised with individual cages (Myers, 2010, p. 188). The experiment was set up so that there were two “mothers”; one with the monkey’s blanket and the other had a bottle attached to a wire skeleton. This experiment was to test if a soft, caring mother, or one that provided food whenever pleased would more comfort an infant monkey.

The development of attachment bonds to other biological figures plays an important role in emotional development. Throughout life, an individual will form several relationships, some of which will be sincere and intimate while others will be superficial. However, collectively these relationships provide the foundation of our communities, families, and friendships and become essential to our survival as a species. A secure attachment bond can be classified as the interactive emotional relationship between a caregiver and infant involving the emotional responses of the caregiver to the infant 's cues (Bowlby, 1969). These emotional responses can be expressed in a variety of forms including gestures, sounds, or even movements. Thus, this interactive emotional relationship between the caregiver and infant brings the two closer together creating an environment that allows the infant to feel safe and secure, further developing their ability to communicate and interact with others (Bowlby, 1969).

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.

Firstly, researchers conducted impulse control studies on chimps and humans. They placed two trays of M&Ms on a table in front of a chimp and the chimp would point to which one they wanted. Then the that bowl would be given to the chimp in the cage close by and the chimp that was pointing would get the remaining one. Every single time the chimp chose the bowl with more M&Ms and always got the one with less. They were not able to control their impulse to pick the opposite dish. In the study on four-year olds, the proctor of the experiment explained that they were leaving the room with the bigger bowl of candy and told the child that they could have it when the proctor returned if they didn't eat the small bowl. The child could also ring the bell and the proctor would come back sooner, but then the child would only get the small bowl. Results showed that the longer the child resisted temptation, the higher their SAT scores were later. This reveals that humans do possess at least some level of impulse control by age four, unlike that of chimpanzees. Humans also became much less emotionally reactive through evolution meaning that we developed some control over our emotions. Additionally, the experiment on chimps was expanded by teaching the chimps how to count and then using the number symbols instead of physical candy. In that experiment the chimps were able

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

Uniquely cognition and emotional development appear to be connected by jointly working together. Furthermore, cognitive processes, such as decision making, are affected by emotion (Barrett and others 2007). Brain structures involved in the neural circuitry of cognition influence emotion and vice versa (Barrett and others 2007). Emotions and social behaviors affect the young child’s ability to persist in goal-oriented activity, to seek help when it is needed, and to

When, I started doing the observation, the infant was playing with a toy. He played with the toy for about five minutes and after that he decided to grab another toy. One of the things that I notes while I was doing the observation was that the infant did not have much problem reaching the objects because, he eider crawled or pointed to what he wanted, and made a sound to the mother in order to had her attention. I also could notice that when the mother talked to the infant the most of the time he was awarded of what his mother was telling to him. There were times that the infant did not put attention of what the mother was telling to him, but it was at the time when he was crawling or trying to walk.

Infants begin experimenting different sounds and actions through a trial-and-error pattern in order to be exhibited to the parent’s attention often. During this stage, infants show goal-directed behavior displaying purposeful responses to other people. For instance, a crawling baby will show goal-directed behavior by crawling to a covert in the kitchen, where his sippy cups are stored, taking one out holding it up and grunt to his father as if to say, “I’m thirsty!” Their actions are purposeful. Another important thing happening in the secondary circular reactions sub stage four is that infants achieve object permanence. Object permanence is when an infant is watching an object which then disappears, the infant is still thinking about it or can try to look for object. Even if it is out of sight, it is still on

The author described the four main functions, providing a sense of security; regulation of affect and arousal; promoting the expression of feelings and communication; and serving as a base for exploration. In providing a Sense of Securities, in this article, he explained the purpose of this function is to keep in mind that the infant needs to feel secure, because when the infant gets upset both the parents and the infant act to re-establish the sense of security (Bowlby, 1969). Regulation of affect and Arousal, the emphasis here is the state of mind of the infants, and both the infants and the parents develop transactional patterns of relieving the infant’s states of imbalance.

This literature review analyses the relationship between self-regulation and psychological well-being. It explores a personal account of a self-regulation intervention plan and compares it to others in the same field as well as applying a similar regulation plan in a clinical psychological setting. The issue with all of these studies was that, though correlation can be found this may have to do with other factors within the studies therefore it is hard to predict if wellbeing was directly influence by self-regulation. Despite this there was a significant enough correlation to state that there is a likely relationship between the two factors.

Motor behaviors aimed at self-regulation include: leg and foot bracing, hand and foot grasping, putting hand to mouth, and non-nutritional sucking. State subsystem attempts at self-regulation include: Infant preserving energy by lowering the state of arousal or by energy release through strong lusty crying. Attention-interaction attempts at self-regulation include looking around and sustained social interaction. An infant’s success in these attempts is dependent on many factors including gestational age. Self-regulatory behaviors do not fully develop until the infant matures at about 40 weeks gestation. The more preterm an infant, the less self-regulatory behaviors that are available to the infant, and the more the dependent the infant is on

The infant will by accident engage in some form of behavior and if the child finds it enjoyable the child will repeat it. An example is an infant sucking their thumb. It may not have been intentional the first time, but they may repeat the action because it comforted them. At this stage the child learns how to help console themselves. These types of reactions are called primary circular reactions. This stage is about coordinating feelings and new patterns.

The human mind is designed with the innate ability to achieve anything. The interesting part of this paper is how we all use different triggers and motivations to goad us into gear. Motivation is an area of psychology that has gotten a great deal of attention, especially in the recent years. There are several distinct theories of motivation we will discuss in this section. Some include basic biological forces, while others seem to transcend concrete explanation. All creatures are born with specific innate knowledge about how to survive. Animals are born with the capacity and often times knowledge of how to survive by spinning webs, building nests, avoiding danger, and reproducing. These innate tendencies are preprogrammed at birth,

Maturation is especially important for individuals as it provides several competitive evolutionary advantages (Locke & Bogin, 2006). Through this process, individuals develop and acquire control over their emotions and behaviours. This ability to monitor and adapt our emotions, cognition and behaviours in accordance to the social and intellectual demands of particular contexts is often referred to as self-regulation (Demetriou, 2000; Zimmerman, 2000). Various complex cognitive skills are required for self-regulation. These skills encompass the constant observation of our thoughts and behaviours, knowledge of the demands of any situation, the capability to alter conditions of our current behaviour as required to achieve a goal or suit a situation and attention to how favourably the demands of a context are met (Evans & Rosenbaum, 2008).