Development and Consequences of Affect Expression and Experience for Infants and Toddlers

Auburn University, Auburn AL

Investigators

Abstract

Developmental scientists agree that affects and emotions are elements of virtually every aspect of both personal and interpersonal experiences across the lifespan. This consensus on the centrality of affect in children's lives has led to many studies on the emergence, understanding, and regulation of affect states during the first years of life. These studies have suggested that most of the primary affects are present in the repertoires of infants and toddlers by the end of the second year of life, and children begin to acquire labels for these internal states over the third to fifth years of life. Furthermore, many investigators have assumed that affective states tend to be disruptive, especially when they are experienced at higher intensities, and that the primary task of the developing child is to acquire behavioral and cognitive tactics to "regulate" these states. This assumption is contradicted by a functional explanation of affects, which claims that these internal states are adaptations designed to signal the infant/child about the state of the immediate context as it has relevance for the child and to prepare the child to act in a manner appropriate to the context. The traditional view on the meaning of affect for young children is also at odds with a recent perspective from positive psychology, which suggests that experiences of positive and negative affects per se are critically related to concurrent experience and are predictors of future adaptive behaviors. Finally, most currently available research considers parents as the critical social elements of the child's social context and few data are available for non-parental adults and peers as social contextual features of very young children. Given that 50% or more of infants under 12 months of age are now being cared for by adults other than their parents for significant amounts of their waking day (with the proportion of children in care increasing between 12 and 60 months of age), it seems prudent to examine both developmental trajectories and the correlates/consequences of affect experiences for children in group care. This study was designed to address a range of questions concerning the emergence, change, and developmental outcomes associated with the experience of both positive and negative affective states. To accomplish this broad goal, an observational study of infants and young children, recruited between 3 and 30 months of age, will be mounted, with participants being observed for 30 minutes in each week (up to 80 consecutive weeks of observation). At selected ages, children will be tested using standard developmental assessments to document individual differences in general psychomotor development, temperament, adult-child interactions relevant to understanding intentionality, attachment security, and peer social competence. Growth models will be used to examine the trajectories of change in affect expression and in several developmental domains. Associations between affect and various developmental outcomes will be assessed using both correlation and structural equation model techniques. Results of this research will document the developmental pathways of affect experience from 3-6 months through 36-42 months of age (examining multiple cohorts, each recruited at different age levels). This is the first such study involving children in extensive non-parental childcare experience from early in the first year. The study will examine central assumptions from positive psychology, namely that the experience of positive emotions constitutes the very young child's first level of awareness about the support for subjective well-being available in the immediate social context (and conversely, that the experience of negative affects signals contexts that undermine well-being). The research will estimate the overall level and the nature of changes in affect experience over time. The design allows for testing of critical assumptions from theories of attachment and temperament regarding the social vs. innate influences on tendencies to experience and express different categories of affect. Finally, this study is designed to test the nature of relations between affect experience and peer social competence. Results of this study will be useful for design and implementation of curricula for infants and preschool children and will have implications for caregiver preparation.