Emotional Development in Early Infancy

Abstract

ling and Baby Hospital was carefully observed and recorded daily over a period of three or four months. The circumstances attendant upon these reactions were noted, and the whole data was studied from the point of view of development from age to age. A summary of the findings will be presented in the following paragraphs. They will be seen to lend support to the writer's (2) (3) theory of the genesis of the emotions and to add further illuminating detail. The babies under observation were in separate wards more or less according to age. In different rooms were infants under one month, one to three months, three to six months, six to nine months, nine to twelve months, and twelve to fifteen months. An older group of children between fifteen and twenty-four months of age played together in the nursery. Table 1 shows the number of children at the different ages whose behavior was observed for this study. Development in the emotional behavior of the young child comprises 3 main classes of change. From birth onward there is a gradual evolution of the emotions taking place. The earliest emotional reactions are very general and poorly organized responses to one or two general types of situation. As weeks and months go by the responses take on more definite form in relation to more specific situations. It seems to the writer, as already mentioned elsewhere, that in the course of genesis of the emotions there occurs a process of differentiation. Coincident with the partial isolation of certain responses is a combining of the simpler reactions within the unit responses and the formation of bonds of