What Develops in Emotional Development?

The problem of development is central in the study of emotional life for two basic reasons. First, emotional life so clearly changes (dramatically in the early years) with new emotional reactions emerging against the backdrop of an increasing sensitivity to context and with self-regulation of emotion emerging from a striking dependence on regulatory assistance from caregivers. Such changes demand developmental analysis. At the same time, understanding such profound changes will surely inform our understanding of the nature of development more generally. The complexity of emotional change, when grasped, will reveal the elusive nature of development itself. At the outset, we know that development is complex. We must take seriously what is present at any given phase, including the newborn period, because a developmental analysis disallows something emerging from noth ing. Still, it is equally nondevelopmental to posit that new forms of new processes were simply present in their precursors. Rather, development is characterized by transformations in which more complex structures and organization "emerge" from new integration of prior components and new capacities. These new forms and organizations cannot be specified from prior conditions but are due to transactions of the evolving organism with its environment over time. They are not simply in the genome, and they are not simply conditioned by the environment. They are the result of the develop mental process.

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This timely volume asks the fundamental questions: What are emotions? What do we really mean by emotional development? Theorists and researchers examine the subject from a variety of perspectives- biological, structuralist, functionalist, systems, and social constructionist-and examine such facets of emotion as emotional appraisal processes, feeling states, action-tendencies, cognitive-emotion interactions, psychological defense, and emotional representations. Each author addresses the editors' call for conceptual definitions of emotion and emotional development, and answers their question concerning the role of emotion in socio-cultural context. The book's ample summary tables and index are sure to be especially useful for researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in developmental psychology and social psychology.

Contenu
I. Introduction.- 1. On the Nature, Development, and Function of Emotions.- 2. The Development and Structure of Emotions.- II. Biological and Differential Emotions Perspectives.- 3. Toward a Neuroscience of Emotion: The Epigenetic Foundations of Emotional Development.- 4. Differential Emotions Theory and Emotional Development: Mindful of Modularity.- III. Functionalist Perspectives.- 5. A Functionalist Perspective to the Development of Emotions.- 6. Emotion and the Possibility of Psychologists Entering into Heaven.- IV. Systems Perspectives.- 7. A Dynamic Systems Approach to CognitionEmotion Interactions in Development.- 8. Toward a Component Systems Approach to Emotional Development.- 9. Alternative Trajectories in the Development of Anger-Related Appraisals.- V. Social and Cultural Perspectives.- 10. The Development of Emotion from a Social Process View.- 11. The Analysis of Emotions: Dimensions of Variation.- 12. The Narrative Construction of Emotional Life: Developmental Aspects.- VI. Conclusion and Integration.- 13. Alternative Conceptions of Emotional Development: Controversy and Consensus.