Child Development Theories and Examples

Emotional Reorganizations

One of the most straightforward implications of the organization approach to cognitive development is that each major reorganization or level of development should produce a significant change in emotions. This hypothesis has been pursued most explicitly in infancy, for which data and theory have suggested reliable emotional concomitants of general behavioral reorganizations (Campos et al., 1978; Emde et al., 1976; McCall et al., 1977; Papousek and Papousek, 1979; Sroufe, 1979; Zelazo and Leonard, 1983). For example, the social smile, eye-to-eye contact, and the greeting response all seem to emerge at 2-4 months, which is also a time of major cognitive reorganization. Similarly, at 7-9 months, stranger distress, separation distress, and fear of heights appear to increase dramatically just as another cognitive reorganization is occurring.
Similar emotional reorganizations can be expected to occur for every new cognitive-developmental level during the school years, although virtually no research has examined such changes. Despite the dearth of research, the psychological literature suggests many possible examples of such reorganizations involving emotions.
With the emergence of simple relations of representations at approximately age 4, there appears to be a surge of new emotions accompanying the new understanding of social roles in the family. The emotions described in Freud's (1909/1962) analysis of the Oedipus conflict may well be a part of this reorganization (Fischer and Watson, 1981). The understanding of social roles may also lead to a change in the nature of friendships, since the child will now be able to understand the role relations in friendship (see Furman, 1982; Hartup, 1983). Any such change in important social relationships would seem almost inevitably to have emotional consequences.
For the development of concrete operations at age 6-7, a number of emotional changes have been suggested by Freud and others. At this point, children appear to develop a clear-cut conscience, with an accompanying surge in guilt (Freud, 1924/1961, 1933/1965). They develop the capacity for social comparison, so they can compare and contrast their own behavior with that of other people (Ruble, 1983). Presumably, this capacity can lead to a surge in both anxiety and pride about one's relative social standing. One component of this new ability for social comparison may also be a spurt in identification with parents and other significant adults, since identification requires the comparison of self with the adult (Kagan, 1958). Any change in how children understand themselves is likely to have emotional implications.
Formal operations and the ability to understand single abstractions emerge at age 10-12 with serious emotional consequences. The confusion and turmoil of early adolescence may result in part from this new capacity (Elkind, 1974; Inhelder and Piaget, 1955/1958; Rosenberg, 1979). With formal operations, children can construct new, general concepts about themselves and other people, but they remain unable to compare one such abstraction with another. Consequently, they have difficulty thinking clearly about abstract concepts. One 16-year-old, looking back on the time when he was 12-14, described it as a fog from which he was just now emerging (Fischer et al., 1983). Erikson (1974) has suggested that the formal operations level gives the ability to form an identity—another major change in the sense of self, with inevitable emotional concomitants.
The development level that first appears at age 14-16, relations of abstractions, presumably has emotional consequences, too. The ability to relate abstractions would help the individual move out of the confusing fog of early adolescence. Likewise, it might lead to a substantial change in emotions about intimate relationships, because the person could begin to relate an abstraction about his or her own personality to an abstraction about the personality of a loved one (Fischer, 1980).
Such hypotheses about emotional reorganizations during childhood have been almost entirely unexplored. Plainly, this is a promising direction for research and one in which there is no lack of stimulating hypotheses to guide the investigator. The methods outlined above for studying developments in the organization of behavior can be used in the study of such emotional changes and will substantially enhance the usefulness of such research.