Joana Bastardas

Seminar A

Reactions to the reading Emotional development Berk part 2

This reading has been really interesting for me to know the emotional development that every
human being experiments and the different factors that influence in it. It is divided into
different parts or topics: the understanding and responding to the emotions of others, the
temperament and the development and the development of attachment.
Regarding the emotional development, I would highlight a concept that its important to take
into account: the social referencing, which is relying on another persons emotional reaction to
appraise an uncertain situation. It is developed between the 8 and 10 months, and toddlers
react to others emotional messages. Consequently, we can observe that since that age
toddlers more or less start to understand a bit the emotions of those that are in contact with
them.
It is astonishing how during preschool years childrens emotional understanding expands so
fast. They start from detecting the meaning of others emotional signals to being aware that
people can have mixed feelings and that their expressions may not reflect their true feelings in
a relatively short time. The main aim of these changes is to reach the fullest understanding and
the capacity of being able to respond to the emotions of others.
Responding to others emotions implies an interaction with people, so that knowledge about
emotions helps children in their efforts to get along with others. This involves the empathy (a
complex interaction of cognition and affect, which means a prosocial behavior that starts at
preschool) and the sympathy (feelings of concern or sorrow for anothers plight).
Although, these two concepts will not be the same in every person, they depend on different
factors, as biological factors or education factors as the values taught or the example of the
fathers, for instance.
Then, another factor related to the development of emotions is the temperament, that are all
these individual differences in reactivity and self regulation. It is early appearing and
considering it there are 3 types of child: easy, difficult and slow to warm up child. So we can
observe variations in each child and ways of being ad managing emotions, for example when
some kid is more sociable and the other is shyer. That part of the text has helped me to
wonder about when I was a child, in which type of kid I would classify myself.

Joana Bastardas
Seminar A
Another concept I would to highlight from the reading is the attachment, which is the strong,
affectionate tie we have with special people in our lives that leads us to experience pleasure
and joy when we interact with them and to be comforted by their nearness in times of stress.
This attachment is produced with the caregiver, that could be a member of the family or not.
And this caregiver influences a lot the child because as the text says: from early care giving
experiences, children construct an internal working model that serves as a guide for all future
close relationships.
A thing that I didnt know and has surprised me is that infants develop strong affectionate ties
to fathers, because they tend to engage in more exciting physical play than do mothers. That
means that kids are stimulated through physical play.
To sum up, as we have observed, the quality of care of the children is very important for their
emotional development. It contributes to emotional understanding, self-conscious emotions,
empathy and sympathy. So that means that the persons and other factors that surround the
kid when they are growing up would be crucial for their development.