Emotional development

The theoretical perspective taken toward emotional development in childhood is a combination of functionalist theory and dynamical systems theory1: A child’s encounters with an environment can be seen as dynamic transactions that involve multiple emotion-related components (e.g., expressive behaviour, physiological patterning, action tendencies, goals and motives, social and physical contexts, appraisals and experiential feeling) that change over time as the child matures and in response to changing environmental interactions. Emotional development reflects social experience, including the cultural context. Elsewhere I have argued that emotional development should be considered from a bio-ecological framework that regards human beings as dynamic systems embedded within a community context.2 Table 1 summarizes noteworthy descriptive markers of emotional development in relation to social interaction.

Table 1.  Noteworthy Markers of Emotional Development in Relation to Social Interaction