The Nature of Infant Emotions and Emotional Expressions

1.Are emotions determined by nature and pre-programmed biologically,are an infant’s emotions developed through stimulation andconditioning or do you believe it is a combination of the two?
( the Nature of Infant Emotions and
Emotional Expressions
When in everyday conversation we talk about emotions, we are usually referring to the feelings aroused by an experience–feelings of happiness and excitement on unexpectedly winning a prize, of sadness on saying good-bye to a loved one whom we will not see for some time, of frustration and anger on being prevented from achieving a goal. But when we think deeply about what it is like to truly feel an emotion, it becomes clear that we are dealing with a process of enormous complex- ity. Our heart pounds; we catch our breath; our palms sweat; we shout or moan; we run away from or rush toward the source of our arousal. Recognizing the com- plexity of emotion, developmentalists typically define it in terms of the following features (Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2006):
A physiological aspect. Emotions are accompanied by identifiable physiological reactions such as changes in heart rate, breathing, and hormonal functioning.
A communicative function. Emotions communicate our internal feeling states to others through facial expressions, vocalizations, and other distinctive forms of behavior.
A cognitive aspect. The emotions we feel depend on how we appraise what is happening to us.
An action aspect. Emotions are a source of action. When something causes joy, for example, we laugh or cry or do both at once. When we are scared, we withdraw.
Technically speaking then, emotion can be defined as a feeling state that involves distinctive physiological responses and cognitive evaluations that motivate action (Saarni et al., 2006). But even this technically comprehensive definition of emotion fails to capture the complexity of the phenomenon fully. Emotions, for example, can emerge slowly, as when a feeling of pleasure blossoms into full- blown elation, or they can emerge rapidly, as in an explosive rage. Emotions can vary in their intensity, as indicated by the different smiles shown in Figure 6.1. Sometimes emotions mix together, as in the excitement and apprehension that many parents feel when their children go off to college. Complicating things further is the fact that people have ways of controlling the emergence and intensity of their own and others’ emotions. When an older brother tries to distract his fussy baby sister with a toy, he is attempting to control her emotions; when the baby sister soothes herself by sucking on her pacifier, she is controlling her own emotions, although probably not intentionally. Emotion regulation is the term used by developmentalists to describe how people act to modulate and control their emotions. In the sections below, we explore develop- mental changes in infants’ emotions, their expression, and how they are regulated.
theories of emotional Development
Most developmentalists agree that there are universal basic emotions–joy, fear, anger, surprise, sadness, and disgust–that are expressed in similar ways in all cul- tures. For example, adults from vastly different cultures, including isolated, pre- literate cultures, generally agree on which facial expressions represent happiness, sadness, anger, and disgust. In addition, research finds that, across cultures, babies’ smiles, expressions of distaste, and cry faces are comparable to those of adults (Cam- ras et al., 2007).
Taken together, such findings are considered strong evidence for the widely held belief that the basic emotions represent universal adaptive responses that are generated by, and contribute to, the biological and cultural evolution of our spe- cies (Panksepp, 2010). From a biological perspective, the basic emotions and their expression both protect children from potential sources of danger and ensure that their basic needs are met, largely by eliciting care and protection. From a cultural perspective, these emotions facilitate social connections to family and community members–connections that are vital to learning about the world and acquiring cultural knowledge and values (Trevarthen, 2009; Tronick & Reck, 2009). Indeed, according to Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, introduced in Chapter 1 (pp. 21–22), all complex forms of reasoning and understanding develop as a consequence of the connections formed between individuals (1978).
Although there is consensus on the biological and cultural significance of human emotions generally, developmentalists disagree on several fundamental issues re- garding the nature of emotion and its development during infancy. One contro- versy concerns whether infants’ emotions are, from early on, similar to those of adults, or whether they become increasingly adultlike over time. In other words, do infants, like adults, experience distinc