Describe how the developmental themes from the text (active-passive; continuity-discontinuity; holistic; and nature-nurture) are especially relevant to emotional development, temperament, and attachment

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

We have learned that children certainly play an active role in their emotional development and the formation of attachments. For example, children use social referencing by watching their caretakers' responses to novel situations to learn appropriate emotional responses in those new situations. Children learn to regulate the display of their emotions to comply with cultural display rules. And children form cognitive working models of social relationships that they may hold and apply to intimate relationships throughout their lives. But remember that children are active in their development in ways that don't involve conscious behaviors or choices. An excellent example of this is the effect that children's own temperament has on their development, such as in the formation of the attachment relationship they develop with their caretakers.

This chapter also highlighted the nature and nurture interactions in development. We saw that hereditary and environmental influences interact to shape children's temperament and attachment relationships. For example, children's temperamental profiles contribute to the attachment relationship, as do their experiences of using their caretakers as secure bases for exploration. The caretakers' responses to reunions after separations also contribute to the relationship.

A very clear example of qualitative changes in development was provided by the stages of attachment that children move through as they develop. We saw that children move from an asocial phase, to a phase of indiscriminate attachments, to a phase of specific attachments, to a phase of multiple attachments. Although quantitative changes most likely underlie these qualitative changes, the differences in form and function in each phase make these true qualitative differences.

Finally, throughout this chapter we saw examples of the holistic nature of child development. For each of the emotional aspects of development that we considered, children's cognitive development was shown to play a contributory role in the child's emotional development. Furthermore, children's physical development contributed to emotional development in the ways that caretakers responded to behaviors and appearance, and in the children's growing physical abilities that allowed them to explore and move away from caretakers but still use the caretaker as a secure base because of their attachment relationships.