Furthermore, cognitive processes, such as decision making, are affected by emotion (Barrett and others 2007). Together, emotion and cognition contribute to attentional processes, decision making, and learning (Cacioppo and Berntson 1999). “The rich interpenetrations of emotions and cognitions establish the major psychic scripts for each child’s life” (Panksepp 2001). Most learning in the early years occurs in the context of emotional supports (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine 2000). Emotion and cognition work together, jointly informing the child’s impressions of situations and influencing behavior. Specifically, “recent cognitive neuroscience findings suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation may be the same as those underlying cognitive processes” (Bell and Wolfe 2004, 366). Professionals working in child care settings can support the social-emotional development of infants and toddlers in various ways, including interacting directly with young children, communicating with families, arranging the physical space in the care environment, and planning and implementing curriculum.īrain research indicates that emotion and cognition are profoundly interrelated processes.
Experiences with family members and teachers provide an opportunity for young children to learn about social relationships and emotions through exploration and predictable interactions. In other words, high-quality relationships increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for young children (Shonkoff 2004). Early relationships are so important to developing infants that research experts have broadly concluded that, in the early years, “nurturing, stable and consistent relationships are the key to healthy growth, development and learning” (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine 2000, 412). Responsive caregiving supports infants in beginning to regulate their emotions and to develop a sense of predictability, safety, and responsiveness in their social environments. Through nurturance, adults support the infants’ earliest experiences of emotion regulation (Bronson 2000a Thompson and Goodvin 2005). They also prefer their mothers’ voices to the voices of other women (DeCasper and Fifer 1980). Even newborns appear to attend more to stimuli that resemble faces (Johnson and others 1991).
Young children are particularly attuned to social and emotional stimulation. Healthy social-emotional development for infants and toddlers unfolds in an interpersonal context, namely that of positive ongoing relationships with familiar, nurturing adults. These growing capacities help young children to become competent in negotiating increasingly complex social interactions, to participate effectively in relationships and group activities, and to reap the benefits of social support crucial to healthy human development and functioning. In learning to recognize, label, manage, and communicate their emotions and to perceive and attempt to understand the emotions of others, children build skills that connect them with family, peers, teachers, and the community. Infants experience, express, and perceive emotions before they fully understand them. (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child 2004, 2) The core features of emotional development include the ability to identify and understand one’s own feelings, to accurately read and comprehend emotional states in others, to manage strong emotions and their expression in a constructive manner, to regulate one’s own behavior, to develop empathy for others, and to establish and maintain relationships. It encompasses both intra- and interpersonal processes.
Social-emotional development includes the child’s experience, expression, and management of emotions and the ability to establish positive and rewarding relationships with others (Cohen and others 2005).
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