Emotional Development in the First Two Years.

Concerning the issues of emotional development, general agreement can only be reached on the definition of "emotional" behavior. Behavior is emotional when it varies from an individual's behavioral baseline by the addition of three components: (1) an action component, (2) an arousal component, and (3) a subjective "feeling" component. In all areas of infantile emotion researchers have attempted to delineate such basic groundwork as "primitive, unlearned emotions," but subsequent study has indicated that their conclusions are more the result of situational and subjective factors than of measurable, objective data. Infant emotions are divided into negative and positive categories in this paper. Discussion of specific emotions includes fear of strangers and maternal attachment, other fears and anxiety. A broad developmental outline of responses to fear-inducing stimuli is given. Other negative emotions, such as anger, depression, and shame are discussed. The paper also outlines some of the work that has been done with positive emotions and concludes with comments on the functional significance of emotions in early development. (MH)