EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION cary with a person's developing capacities, goals, and context, meaning that researchers must interpret multiple cues in order to understand babies' emotions.

Sensitive, contingent caregiver communication, where parents selectively mirror aspects of the baby's diffuse emotional behavior, which helps construct emotional expressions that more closely resemble those of adults.

SOCIAL SMILE: appears at 6-10 weeks old, typically as response to parent's communication

LAUGHTER appears around 3-4 months and reflects faster processing of info than smiling does

Babies laugh and smile more when interacting with familiar people, strengthening bonds, several smiles develop for different reasons.

Frequency and intensity of infants increases with age. Babies want to control actions, and are more persistent about obtaining desired objects; get upset when this gets blocked, especially when it comes from caregivers who typically provide comfort. Anger can also be adaptive - when new motor capacities allow angry babies to defend themselves to overcome obstacles, and motivates caregivers to alleviate infant distress.

Babies often demonstrate this in response to pain, removal of an object, separation, or being deprived of a familiar, loving caregiver

Factors that influence responses to strangers: temperament, past experiences with strengths, current situation

Infants use familiar caregivers as a SECURE BASE or point from which to explore, venturing into the environment and then returning for emotional support. Encounters with strangers follow 2 approaches: (1) approach with interest and friendliness or 2) avoidance due to fear

EMOTIONAL CONTAGION - babies first respond to others' emotions through this automatic process where they match the feeling of the caregiver in face to face communication

OPERANT CONDITIONING - the other mechanism that researchers believe infants gradually develop emotional responses

3-4 months: babies gaze, smile, or vocalize; expect socail partner to respond in kind; reply with positive faces and voices; more aware of emotional range

4-5 months: babies distinguish between positive and negative emotion; become better at matching specific factial and vocal displays of emotion

SOCIAL REFERENCING - babies begin to actively seek emotional info from a trusted person in an uncertain situation. Reading the adult tells the baby how to respond if they are uncertain. They compare their own and others' assessments of evens and can adjust accordingly.

REACTIVITY - refers to the quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor activity.

SELF-REGULATION - refers to strategies that modify that reactivity

DIFFICULT CHILD - irregular in daily routines; reacts negatively and intensely; highest risk for adjustment problems

SLOW TO WARM UP CHILD - inactive; reacts mildly to environmental stimuli

EASY CHILD - quickly establishes regular routines in infancy; adapts to new experiences

FEARFUL DISTRESS - wariness/distress in response to intense or novel stimuli

IRRITABLE DISTRESS - extent of fussing, crying, and distress when desires are frustrated

ATTENTION SPAN/PERSISTENCE - duration of orienting or interest

POSITIVE AFFECT - frequency of expression of happiness or pleasure

EFFORTFUL CONTROL - capacity to voluntarily suppress a dominant, reactive response in order to plan and execute a more adaptive response; predicts favorable development

Advantages: convenient, take advantage of parents' depth of knowledge about their child across many stimuli

Difficult to measure in lab settings - may be difficult to capture all relevant information, children may respond differently when being observed or in the lab setting

Dispositions become less extreme over time - genetic makeup and child-rearing experiences jointly influenced stability and changes in temperament

AMYGDALA is believe to be the structure that contributes to individual differences in arousal. It is the inner brain structure that controls avoidance reactions, inhibited children (aroused easily) and uninhibited children (little arousal)

Cold, intrusive parenting increases anxiety, or overprotective parenting makes it difficult to overcome an urge to retreat. Can lead to long term excessive cautiousness, low self-esteem and loneliness.

GOODNESS-OF-FIT MODEL: Explains how temperament and environment can together produce favorable outcomes involves creating child-rearing environments that recognize each child's temperament while encouraging more adaptive functioning.

Children with difficult temperaments are at high risk for future adjustment problems: they are less likely to receive sensitive caregiving, so parents resort to more punitive discipline (decreasing development of effortful control), so children respond with defiance and disobedience. The practices sustain themselves and increase children's irritable, conflict ridden style.

Feeding is thought to be an important context where infants and caregivers build a close emotional bond, but it is not dependent on it.

"ATTACHMENT IN THE MAKING" PHASE: Infants start to respond differently to a familiar caregiver than to a stranger.

"CLEAR-CUT" ATTACHMENT PHASE: Attachment to the familiar caregiver is evident, and infants display SEPARATION ANXIETY.

PREATTACHMENT PHASE: Infants are not yet attached to their mother and do not mind being left with an unfamiliar adult.

FORMATION OF A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP: Separation anxiety declines as children gain an understanding of the parent's comings and goings and can predict his or her return.

Eventually becomes a part of personality by serving as a guide for all future close relationships.

ATTACHMENT Q-SORT: alternative to Strange Situation, valid from 1-5 years of age

AVOIDANT: Before separation, these infants seem unresponsive to the parent. When she leaves, they react to the stranger in much the same way as to the parent. Upon her return, they are slow to greet her.

RESISTANT: Before separation, these infants seek closeness to the parent and fail to explore. When she returns, they display angry behaviors, may continue to cry after before picked up and cannot be easily comforted.

SECURE: Before separation, infants use parent as secure base. They are upset by the parent's absence, and they seek contact and are easily comforted when she returns.

DISORGANIZED: When the parent returns, these infants show confused, contradictory behaviors, such as looking away while being held.

Increased stressors and decreased lack of supports are associated with decreased SES and decreased attachment

Exception is DISORGANIZED ATTACHMENT - they experience negative caregiving, disrupting emotional self-regulation so severely that they are ambivalent to parents; very stable attachment state

SENSITIVE CAREGIVING: responding promptly, consistently and appropriately to infants and holding them tenderly; leads to secure attachments

Caregiving of insecurely attached infants: less physical contact, handle babies awkwardly or in a "routine" manner, sometimes resentful/rejecting in the face of infant distress

Flexible and relaxed style of communication where emotional mismatches are accepted and repaired; increased likelihood of returning to synchronous state.

Among maltreated infants, disorganized attachment is especially high.

Stressors can undermine attachment indirectly by interfering with parental sensitivity, by altering family's emotional climate and by disrupting familiar daily routines.

The way that we VIEW our childhoods affects how we raise our children. Being able to discuss with objectivity and balance tends to produce parents with securely attached children.

American infants placed in full time child care before 12 months are more likely to display insecure attachment

Caregivers educated about child development and child rearing