What Develops in Emotional Development? / Edition 1

by Michael F. Mascolo, Sharon Griffin

Overview

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 developmental process.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306457227
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	04/30/1998
Series:	Emotions, Personality, and Psychotherapy
Edition description:	1998
Pages:	354
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.04(d)

Table of Contents

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 Cognition—Emotion 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.

Editorial Reviews

Psychologists and educators offer their views on the three fundamental questions of what they refer to when they talk about emotion, what it is that changes during emotional development, and what roles developing emotions play in the lives of individuals. The perspectives they use are biological and differential emotions, functionalist, systems, and social and cultural. The goal of the collection is to clarify points of agreement and disagreement among theorists and researchers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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