Emotional Development Stages

Hi everyone today,

I would like to talk to you all about Michael

Lewis's stages of development of emotion through one's lifespan.

So, um in these stages, they include infancy, early childhood,

middle and late childhood adolescence and adult development.

Each of these stages are so integral as we develop emotional competence.

So during six months of a baby's life, the first six months, sorry,

um he's going through infancy.

Lewis defines primary emotion as emotions present in humans and animals,

such as surprise, interest, joy, anger, sadness and fear.

And they also begin making different types of cries and smiles.

If you think of a baby that's newly born,

kind of start thinking about how you hear their different cries and

how in the beginning they don't exactly know what they mean.

Um but during this infancy stage, they're starting to understand why.

So,

um in early childhood, which is around 18 months,

infants are able to distinguish between self conscious emotions of jealousy,

empathy, embarrassment, pride, things like that.

Um Children start to understand why they feel the way that they do, and

even a little bit of regulating emotions as well.

Okay,

in middle and late childhood

Children start to be

um improving emotionally, um more than any other stage.

So they have understanding in areas such as pride and shame more than ever,

and they also begin um understanding how they

can conceal their emotions and how they can

redirect them while also learning to cope with

stress and problem solving during this stage.

Um additionally, an adolescent stage.

Uh this is known as the period of emotional turmoil.

Um the experience extreme highs and lows caused

by changing emotions and have difficulties managing them.

Um Lastly, and keep forgetting to move the slide. Sorry about that.

Um Lastly, an adult development, they

um obviously adults are the most emotionally intelligent group.

They can manage their emotions,

they've been through um a lot of um experience through all of that.

Um

So yeah, all of these stages are very,

very vital um and allowing psychologists to kind

of um put people in these stages before

treating them and understanding human emotion and how

to treat them through each of these stages.

So the next thing I'm going to talk about is kind of how these

stages relate to current media um research that's going on now and um something that

I found super interesting was how Covid has affected Kind of Children and their

development and how it's kind of slow them down and how teachers noticed it.

So um these and the research that I found

it was mostly affecting Children from ages 6-8,

which as I said earlier is one of the most important stages for development.

Um

due to the pandemic.

Um this has affected their learning,

their socializing and how they can regulate emotions.

Children are used to being away from their parents for as long as anymore.

Um this is setting them behind in their emotional development.

Um 77% of educators record negative impacts um as Children have returned back

to the classroom rather than positive um

parents pulled their Children out of school

feeling that they're at risk they're going to get covid um and they're not

getting that solid education that they need to be getting um every day.

Um Yeah, so um that was one of the most interesting research,

current things that's going on and I think

it's super important to everyone to realize how important

it is to go to school and interact with others and kind of um I don't know,

be around people that aren't just your parents.

Um And the next thing I'm going to talk about in my

article is other factors that can affect emotional development as well.

So the article that I found was a 2019 study titled Perinatal,

maternal mental health and infant socio emotional development.

Um This was conducted by authors Eliza Porter Andrew Lewis and Megan gal belly.

Um In this the psychologist aimed to study how anxiety and

depression and mothers affects the baby before during and after pregnancy.

Um This contributes to Lewis's stages because

mental illness and mothers affects the baby

um while she's pregnant with him and after. Um

So obviously Lewis's stages wouldn't exactly be followed a twice um

as you kind of parallels them when we're learning about them.

So um in this study,

282 Australian mothers and their babies were

examined in the third trimester of their pregnancies

And then six months and 12 months postpartum.

Um It was hypothesized that the mothers would

um

affect the baby with depression. So

um

the study included a control group and experimental group.

The experimental group included women um with

past mental illnesses and current mental illnesses.

Um

So

um in this study they used a scale

called the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale um where

women would self report um asking things to

like scale their experiences such as crying,

being worried, self harming thoughts,

um anxiety was measured through a similar scale

known as the state trait anxiety inventory,

um and then also using the brief infant toddler soc social emotional assessment,

parents report their child's behavior um anywhere from a year old, 23 years old.

Um The women that are being recorded um do not include women with bipolar disorder,

pregnancy complications or disabilities.

They tried to keep it very um straightforward.

So after all of this data was um

kind of brought and put together,

um it was discovered that mothers who experience more anxiety

and depression were more likely to cause their child to develop

um slowly slower through Lewis's stages um out of order,

sometimes or barely even um entering some of the stages at all.

Um So this confirmed their hypothesis that mental illness

and depression and anxiety, things like that.

Um They do affect the mother and they do affect the baby very negatively. So

um that also was examined that the child is

born is more likely to have worse physical health,

physical health or cognitive functioning.

Um the child is more likely to get sick,

the child has less maybe strength than his peers.

Um so that was another interesting to statistic,

um it was discovered that 19% of

emotional development issues were caused by mother's anxiety

and 23% from the mother's depression. So here we can see that the

oh my goodness,

here we can see that the depression um was more severe than the anxiety.

Um mothers of mental illnesses before they

became pregnant were more likely to have increased

depression and anxiety um due to kind of the mental and physical toll of pregnancy.

So,

um my thoughts on this,

after reading this article really made me realize how important the health

of the mother is um and how serious being pregnant really is.

Um if a woman gets pregnant at a dark place in her life,

it's not only going to take a toll on her and make her life a lot harder,

but it's also probably going to affect the child for the rest of his life

physically and mentally. Um

I think this study

um should be more broadly presented as so many people

out there think mental health is not a myth,

but they kind of undermine the importance of it and

don't take it as seriously as it should be taken.

Um so that is something that I um would like to

implement in my study um as I'll tell you about next,

So if I was to conduct my own study?

Um I think I would also use the experimental versus

control groups um that the article I researched use um

But I don't think I would have the participants record

their own data just because I think that that's um

I don't know, I think it's less accurate.

Um I would also like to take more intricate

details such as things like blood pressure asked,

but their sleep, their diet, their income, their alcohol usage,

things in the past that would affect um This data

I would also go through a series of questions um that kind of

put women in certain situations and ask them how they would respond.

Um I think it's super likely that

people that are depressed or anxious or suffer from things like that,

they don't accurately know how they feel,

They might think that there are a lot better off than they are

or they might think they're a lot more depressed than they are.

So that in that aspect I think it would be difficult to self record

um doing this situation like questionnaire

um

I think psychologists would be able to better um I kind of understand the

person better diagnose them and um see how accurate they are in their responses.

Um So

um a question um as an example I think would be like if

you're up all night with a crying child and get three hours of sleep

with an eight hour shift the next day and the following days, how would you respond?

Would you freak out? Would you need a day to yourself? What you need to take a nap?

Would you cry? Would you need to take a drink? Would you rely on medications for this

in my study? I think each women should be interviewed, ask a series of questions

um in responses by qualified psychologists.

Um I would also follow the baby a little bit further

into its life um just to kind of see like,

Yeah,

it would be interesting um to watch the baby and

how it's um responding as a three year old,

but how about as a 12 year old?

I think that would be very interesting to see if that affects his social life,

as a high schooler, as a middle school um and really see the true effects as he grows.

He would also be asked a series of questions um in comparison

to his peers and kind of how they react in certain situations.

So that is all I have for today. Um But I really enjoyed this topic.

I think it's really interesting and I think it's super important that um

we make it more widely known how important mental health is. So

thank you so much for watching and see you

Emotional Development Stages

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