EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLAGED CHILDREN

Socio affective development:

-Development and regulation of emotions
-Personal and gender identity construction
-Interpersonal relations, friendships and groups
-Moral development, thinking and critical judgment
How do feelings influence our lives?
-Do unconscious impulses leads as? (Freud)
-can we regulate our behavior, only by reasoning?
-can we regulate our behavior and drive our feelings only following social rules and
moral norms (we have to inhibit some feelings)?
-Do circumstances (feelings emerge) force us to react in certain ways?
Different emotional states
Mood (sensation)
-More ambiguous than emotions or sentiments
-More connected with physical or emotional perceptions
-Less elaborated than sentiments.
-Less cognitive implication than sentiments or emotions.
Emotions (emotion-types)
-Far more automatic than mood or sentiments
-Associated to a specific cause in a much more direct
-Considerably more intense than mood.
-Quite temporal than sentiments, linked to a concrete situation.
In different CULTURES there are rules that regulate the emotions expression, which
implies the possibility of a difference between the felt emotion and the apparent
emotion.
Sentiments (feelings)
-Emotions became on sentiments due to cognitive processes and time.

-It is an emotion made CONSCIOUS, which we identify, classify and evaluate thanks to
the LANGUAGE mastery
-They are related to an accumulation of experiences
-They are connected with motivation and interests.
-we can realize, when this emotion will appear and why we feel that way, we can
anticipate our feelings in a similar situation.
-Implies the past, the present and the future (virtual)
Categories of emotions
Types of emotions
Basic/primary
When do they start First months of life
developing
What is their function Survival
Human and animal
What implications do Joy: smile, laugh, bond with caregiver.
they have
Anger: defend and protect yourself, overcome obstacles.
Fear: maintain safety, avoid risks, increase attention,
paralyze.
Sadness: encourages caregivers to relieve stress, it can
develop an introspective, regulatory and curative process in
front of the frustration or the sadness provoked by a lost.
Disgust: encourages caregivers to stop what causes disgust.

Types of emotions
Complex/Secondary/self-conscious
When do they start 2-12 years
developing
What is their function
They involve injury to or enhancement of our sense of
self (just humans).
What implications do they Pride: feeling responsible of a situation positive evaluated
have
(higher self-esteem) (face=happiness)
Shame: when one evaluates that hasnt done what was
expected (feelings of personal inadequacy-can cause
depression, anger) (face=fear/sadness).
Anxiety: worry that lingers in time (no provoking stimulusdif. fear)
Jealousy: threat to continuing receiving affect of an
emotional important person (psychologically: rage,
behaviorally: rivalry)
Guilt: related to empathy, it helps resisting harmful
impulses and it motivates to repair the damage. It helps
to reconstruct our morality.
Envy: it can help to obtain what we want, to increase our
goals and expectations

Types of emotions
When do they
developing

Ambiguous
start 10 years old

What is their function

Emotional ambivalence: depending on the regulation

process they will help us moving forward or not.
What implications do they Surprise: provoked by something unexpected or weird,
have
usually comes with other emotions (fear, happiness,
sadness, anger)
Hope: our situation is not the one we wish, we hope it
changes.
Compassion: feeling same emotions than others.

Other categories

Esthetic
Positives (joy, humor, love and happiness)
Negatives (anger, fear, anxiety, sadness,
aversion)

shame,

Emotional Types: the enneagram (Naranjo)

Being attentive to self is not total selfishness. Self-respect is the ultimate emotional
goal in life .

Hypothesis:
triune brain

Remarks: Enneagram

the

Issue: Why do we do, say, think the ways we do, even though we wish to do, say, think
otherwise?
Subjective experience cant be judged
Ego types: we construct a mask to defend ourselves, we loose our real self.
Dismiss the wrong idea that you have to earn love
Goal of education is to recover our authenticity, to love yourself, to deconstruct your
ego (self-awareness, mindful processes), to educate in real love (admirative, romantic,
maternal)-.
How do feelings influence our lives?
-emotions influence every facet of our life, including, decision making, objective and
subjective thinking; as a result of our interactions with other individuals.
-All interactions affect us immensely. Every second of the day we all experience a
combination of emotions; both positive and negative.
-All learning processes are always influenced by emotions.-To regulate our emotions
we need self awareness, rational thinking, social control.
-Not inhibit our feelings but recognize it, express it (canalize the energy).
Objective of education

Developmental aspects
Direction of development

Children needs a progressive cognitive development to recognize emotions.

Due to that, the child can describe his/her pshychologic, cognitive and conductual
responses.
As well he/she can define the subjective emotional experience (expression) I am
sadI am happyI am concern
Comprehension of social labels of emotions.
Expectation of support from the bonding figure.
Differentiation, transformation and expansion of the experienced emotions
With adults help, the child starts to understand the verbal and no-verbal language of
emotions.
-Expansion of emotional vocabulary
-Recognition and comprehension of others emotions.
Empathy
Emotional development
8-10 months: Social reference
2-3 years old: emotional comprehension (language), emotional perspective (symbolic
game), empathy (differentiate owns emotions from others) complex emotions
4-5 years old: theory of mind:
Recognize others mental states (perceptions, desires, thoughts, intentions and
beliefs), which are different from owns;
Same situation can have different meanings for different persons according to their
previous mental states (expectations/beliefs, previous knowledge, goals intentionally or
accidentally intentional lye);
6-7 years old: admit two ambivalent emotions consecutively
7-8 years old: admit two ambivalent emotions simultaneously.
2. How do social factors (bonding figures, parental styles, educational action,
culture, etc.) influence in the socio-affective development?
The emotional development of the children is analogue to the nuances of their affective
bonds.
Functions of the affective bond
Adaptive function (survival)
Emotional security

Components
Behavior: search of proximity
Mental representation of the relation: memories, attributions and expectations related
to the attachement figures availability and ability to give support.
Feelings: security and well-being.
Attachment
-First semester: preference for members of the same specie.
-2n semester: preference of interaction with the adults that take care of him/her,
attachment and fear to strangers.
-Global experiences of attachment in the first infancy derives in the formation of an
internal model of affective relations
It tends to be stable.
It will be the basis for the posterior affective relations.
-The attachment styles are associated to certain emotions and with their expression
and regulation; therefore the strategies used to express and regulate emotions are
coherent with the attachment style.
SECURE ATTACHMENT
-Reciprocal interaction mother-child
-Trust in the efficacy and availability of the mother
-Democratic educative styles
No need of constant contact, the security build in the relation allows/potentiates
autonomy and trust.
ANXIOUS-AMBIVALENT ATTACHMENT
-Incoherent attachment figures, emotionally unstable
-It generates anxiety for the fear of loosing the relation, and rage for the fault of
availability.
-Overprotective and/or permissive educative styles.
Difficulty to build up autonomy (immature), affective relations more unstable (low
persistence) and less secure.
EVITATIVE ATTACHMENT
-Hostile attachment figures or with difficulty to express affect
-Impatience, intrusiveness

-Cold educative styles, oscillating between the authoritarism and the abandonment
Loneliness feelings, social isolation behaviors, distant relations with few intimacy,
aggressive (low self-control).
DISORGANISED ATTACHMENT
-Negligent attachment figures and/or physical abuse
-Cycles of protection (control), refusal and aggression
-Bond and fear to the attachment figure (approximation/avoidance)
-Educative styles negligent or indifferent
Feelings of confusion (identity problems), social isolation or antisocial behavior (no
sensitive to others), complicated relation with approximation and disengagement,
abuse.
Emotional Regulation development

Parents educative actions

Regulation strategies: distraction, favor positive emotional states and reduce the
negatives.
This regulation first is done by the parents and then it is interiorized by the child as a
self-regulatory strategy (8-10 years old)
Parents philosophy about emotions and affections

Other regulative actions

Relaxation
Distancing: behavioral and cognitive distraction (delayed gratification experiment)
Cognitive restructuration
Accept responsibility
Reframing and planning problem resolution
Humor