educational and developmental psychology

How does emotional development occur in childhood?

April 25, 2024

In the last decade, the rise in the study of emotions and their influence on the psychological well-being of the human being has revolutionized the conception of these, giving them a role as fundamental as cognitive processes had at the end of the last century.

But... How is the maturation of this capacity in the human being during the first years of life?

What is meant by emotional development?

Since emotional development is a phenomenon that consists of many components, therefore when its description and conceptualization is made must be attended to the following axes :

How emotions arise
What it is and how emotional reactivity occurs in relation to one's temperament.
The evolution of emotional expression according to the stages of development.
How the development of self and hetero-emotional consciousness occurs.
What mechanisms are put in place in emotional self-regulation.

Since the human being is a social being, Both emotional and social development are linked in their nature ; by means of the first the second one is reached, since from the identification, experimentation and communication of emotions (expression and comprehension) and through empathy and training in social skills (both key elements of emotional development), the establishment of the social relations between the individual and the rest of the beings that surround him.

All this is also possible as language development takes place , which is essential to achieve this interpersonal link through communication processes.

Related article: "10 amazing psychological facts about feelings and emotions"

Emotional development in early childhood

As previously mentioned, the ultimate purpose of emotions refers to issues related to communication between the individuals. It could be said, therefore, that it has an adaptive function to the environment and motivates the behavior of the individual to achieve certain objectives.

In the process of emotional development, so complex and multifactorial, the child initiates in the first months of life some incipient associations between the external situations that occur and the emotional reactions that are derived observed in the caretakers figures. At six months a baby can respond to the signs of affection with positive emotions, as well as potentially dangerous situations with other less pleasant emotions.

Even so, their understanding of the relationship between behavior and emotional state is very limited: their emotional reactivity maintains a very close relationship with the child's temperament, with which the level of internal emotional self-control is very low during this stage, being the caregivers those that make it possible

The symbolic game and the affective bond

The most relevant milestone that will mark a before and after in the emotional development of the child will be the achievement of symbolic play ability, usually towards two years of life. At this time they begin to represent their own and others' emotional states through language , which implies the previous step to the development of empathy.

The affective bond established between the figure of attachment and the child becomes a fundamental factor in the emotional development of the child during this first evolutionary stage. That the child perceives security, trust, affection, care and protection by parents (or caregivers) is going to be fundamental to avoid the formation of a functioning of rejection and avoidance towards these figures. This type of resistant or ambivalent bonding pattern becomes a risk factor in the subsequent appearance of psychopathologies or future emotional disturbances.

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... and in adolescence

Although the beginning of adolescence indicates the consolidation of the individual's emotional development , where the understanding of one's own and others' emotional states is carried out in a more satisfactory and deeper way, its application is not completely complete since the processes involved in this vital stage make the manifestations of the first one difficult.

During adolescence, children perform cognitive reasoning through the hypothetico-deductive logic, from which they compare and base their understanding and emotional expression on previous personal experiences that provide them with enough information to interpret correctly the new situation they face. .

On the other hand, although sharpen their empathic capacity They also characterize a psychological egocentricity for which they are very focused on the image of themselves that is transmitted to others and the type of assessments that other respects of their personal characteristics can make. Therefore, one of the main goals lies in the work and maintenance of a positive self-concept to offer themselves and others.

In addition, because at the neuroanatomical level, the adolescent brain is not yet fully completed (especially as far as structures and prefrontal synapses are concerned), which are responsible for making decisions and ensuring the expression of mature behavior or adult) in adolescence a great variability in quality and intensity of emotional expression takes place , as well as a lack of flexibility in endogenous emotional self-regulation, which is why it is common to transition to opposite states of mind in very short periods of time, the so-called emotional lability.

The role of the school environment

Parallel to the family context, the school also becomes a very important socializing agent of the child and plays a very important role in the emotional development of the child.

Thus, the current school not only is understood as a transmitting entity of instrumental and technical knowledge , but also among its main functions is to educate the student in the acquisition of ethical and moral values and principles, in promoting the achievement of a critical reasoning, in the assumption of some modes of behavior and appropriate attitudes to live in society ( achieving their understanding), in the learning of a series of social skills and abilities that allow them to establish satisfactory interpersonal bonds and even in the resolution of vital problems.

In order to consolidate all these aspects, it is fundamental to achieve an adequate emotional development, since in every psychological process both the cognitive and the emotional aspects intervene.

On the other hand, achieving an adequate emotional development also allows the child to adopt an optimistic attitude in the achievement of academic objectives and a self-perception of more adaptive school competition, which results in the promotion of a more manifest achievement motivation that facilitates the maintenance of that state of motivation and volition to improve their learning ability. All this makes them more resistant and less vulnerable to criticism and social comparisons that, even if they are carried out unconsciously, are established in relation to the results obtained by the child and by the peers.

The attributional style

Another very important aspect in which school has a considerable responsibility is in establishing the attributional style of the students. The attributional style is defined as the process by which the individual grants the cause to the situations he or she faces.

An internal attributional style indicates that the person knows himself as an active agent of what happens in his environment and understands as controllable the motivations that these arouse. An external attributional style is identified with more passive subjects, who have the conception that factors such as luck are what motivate the situations they experience. Undoubtedly, the first one is psychologically more adequate and the one that has more relation with a satisfactory emotional development.

Maybe you're interested: "Fundamental Error of Attribution: pigeonholing people"

Emotional intelligence

In recent times there has been a paradigm shift in the importance of the promotion of emotional intelligence. It begins to have empirical evidence, therefore, that emotional intelligence has a very intense influence when making everyday decisions , on the nature of interpersonal relationships or on the acquisition of a deeper and fuller self-knowledge about oneself.

Being such a complex competition, its development takes place gradually and slowly, covering approximately the first two vital decades. Therefore, the achievement of an adequate establishment during childhood and adolescence will be decisive in emotional (psychological) functioning in adult life.