0.11 Emotional, social and personality development  (Page 3/4)

• In the first weeks of life, infants can notice each other and respond to cries.
• 6 month olds can touch each other and toys held by peers. Hay, D. F., Nash, A.,&Pedersen, J. (1983). Interaction between six-month-old peers. Child Development, 52 , 1071-1076.
• Conflicts over toys and intrusions on physical space emerge in the last quarter of the first year of life. Caplan, M., Vespo, J. E., Pederesen, J.,&Hay, D. F. (1991) Conflict and its resolution in small groups of one- and two-year-olds. Child Development, 62 , 1513-1524.
• By the end of the first year of life infants can communicate, share, participate in conflict, and form friendships. They can look at, gesture toward, and touch their peers. They can share things of interest with peers by pointing out, showing, and offering objects other children. Eckerman, C. O., Whatley, J.&Kutz, S. L. (1975). Growth of social play with peers during the second year of life. Developmental Psychology, 11 , 42-49. Infants at the end of the first year can participate in shared activities (spontaneous games) where distinctive actions (rolling a ball or hitting blocks together) in sequence, and alternating turns. Ross, H. S. (1982) Establishment of social games among toddlers. Developmental Psychology, 18 , 509-518.

How does interaction in the first year of life contribute to the infants development? The conflicts over toys and intrusions on physical space in the last quarter of the first year is significant because it shows that infants are actively engaged with other infants. They are aware enough of their space and other people to feel intruded if their space is endangered. That means they have developed some sort of ego and attitude towards other infants – which must mean that the infants invoke noticeable emotion in each other in order to stimulate a response. The response to cries in the first weeks of life is the beginning of interaction, they begin to notice each other a little then. By 6 months they engage more heavily by touching each other and the other infants toys. Those interactions help to develop and form the infants sense of self, which would cause them to want to defend their space by the last quarter of the first year. By the end of the first year then, they must become cognitively aware of their peers (gesture toward and touch their peers) and cognitively aware of how to participate in trivial games (alternating turns) at the same time. The experience in play before teaches them so they become more intellectual and aware (cognitive) and become capable of more advanced games which involve knowledge and awareness of cooperation (such as alternating turns), and just more advanced games with distinctive actions (like rolling a ball or hitting blocks together).

• During around the pre-school years, it is theorized that play provides a forum for children’s self-regulation and emotion regulation. It was theorized early that play can reestablish homeostasis by helping to deplete surplus or replenish expended energy. Patrick, G. T. W. (1916). The psychology of relaxation . Boston: Houghton Mifflin. , Spencer, H. (1873). Principles of psychology (Vol. 2, 2 ^nd ed.). New York: Appleton. It was suggested by later theorists that play modulates arousal associated with excessively high or low levels of stimulation. Berlyne, D. E. (1960). Conflict, arousal and curiosity . New York: Mcgraw-Hill. Freud suggested that play could be a medium for children to reconstruct and gain mastery over emotionally arousing experiences. Freud, S. (1961). Beyond the pleasure principle. New York: Norton. That idea is important in the study of the development of children’s emotion regulation, which is a set of skills that help people to modify, monitor and evaluate their emotions to produce behavior that is adaptive for situations. Walden, T. A.,&Smith, M.C. (1997). Emotion regulation. Motivation and Emotion, 21 , 7-25. Self-regulation is an important skill in the promotion of positive peer interactions. Thompson, R. A. (1994). Emotion regulation: A theme in search of definition. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 59 , 25-52. Play can help children master situations that involve intense emotional arousal, and help children regulate emotions and that can help reduce anxiety.