Emotional Development

Emotional Reactivity and Expression

Emotional reactivity refers to an individual's response to a stimulus change, or an alteration in the environment, which is reflected in physiological changes in the individual and is observed in the excitability or arousability of response systems, in terms of temporal features (e.g., how quickly the behaviors appear following the stimulus, how rapidly they escalate, how long they last, and how quickly or slowly they go away) and intensity features (e.g., how strongly the behaviors are expressed, how sensitive they are to stimuli). High emotional reactivity would be reflected in a child who begins crying and yelling vigorously at the first hint of a disagreement occurring between his or her parents, gets over aroused quickly, and remains so for an hour after the disagreement.

Early in infancy, basic emotions such as anger, sadness, and happiness begin to emerge. As children leave the toddler phase and enter preschool and grade school age periods, their emotional expression becomes more context dependent. For example, anger and happiness are expressed more than sadness and distress in peer settings. Furthermore, their emotional expressions become more complex over time, and they may begin to show blends of various emotions [Page 329]and other secondary emotions, such as pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt. These later-developing emotions reflect more self-consciousness and awareness and develop, not coincidentally, at the same time that children are beginning to have a sense of self and to be able to discriminate, compare, and appraise the self in relation to others.

Emotional Regulation

The second basic process involved in emotional development is emotional regulation, which is defined as the ability to modulate, control, or reduce the intensive and temporal features of an emotion. Regulation can occur at the neurophysiological, hormonal, attentional, and behavioral levels. Behaviorally, it is observed through approach or avoidance and inhibition responses. It is reflected in the ability to effectively maintain, enhance, or inhibit emotions appropriately. The term coping is sometimes used interchangeably with emotion regulation, as effective coping is inseparable from effective emotion regulation and vice versa.

As infants and toddlers, children require parental help in regulating their emotions, but as they grow older, they begin to develop their own strategies for regulation. Regulation strategies that children typically use, in order from most adaptive to least adaptive are problem solving (attempting to change the situation), support seeking from caregivers or peers (either for seeking solace or help), distancing-avoidance or distraction, self-calming behaviors (e.g., taking deep breaths), internalizing (e.g., keeping feelings to self), and externalizing or antisocial behaviors (e.g., hitting others or picking a fight). Using more adaptive strategies, such as seeking solace from others or self-calming strategies, is associated with more positive outcomes for children, such as greater self-worth. Although some children attempt externalizing or antisocial behaviors as means of emotion regulation, in fact those behaviors may actually reflect a lack of managing one's emotions. Although there is not a systematic empirical literature indicating what coping strategies emerge at what age, it is known that (a) as children age, they can generate more coping alternatives, and (b) older children are better able to utilize cognitively oriented coping strategies for situations in which they have no control.

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