Socio-Emotional Competence

Denham’s 3 components:

• Emotional expression — expressing emotions.
• Emotional understanding — recognising/understanding own + others’ emotions.
• Emotion regulation — modifying emotional responses appropriately.

Emotional Expression

Development in infancy

• Emotions are present from birth:
  • Interest
  • Distress
  • Contentment
  • Reflexive/neonatal smile
  • Startle response
• 3 weeks–3 months: social smile emerges.
• 3–4 months: joy, surprise, anger, disgust, sadness emerge.
• Emotional expression increasingly becomes a form of communication. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Preschool years

• Emotional expression becomes more complex.
• Children begin using:
  • Gestures to communicate emotion (e.g. hugs).
  • Empathy.
  • Self-conscious/social emotions: guilt, pride, shame, contempt.
• These require developing:
  • Self-recognition/self–other awareness.
  • Joint attention.
  • Social referencing.
  • Social comparison.
  • Theory of mind.
  • Understanding/internalising social standards and rules.

Role of parents/social environment

• Children learn emotional standards through:
  • Parents’ reactions to success, failure and wrongdoing.
  • Parents’ values.
  • Talking about feelings/mental-state language.
  • Observing siblings/others.
  • Stories about emotions.
• Culture matters: emotional expectations and valued behaviours vary culturally. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Experience vs Expression

• Children gradually learn that what they feel ≠ what they have to display.
• 2–5 years: increasing voluntary control over facial expressions.
• Positive emotions are generally easier to pose than negative emotions.
• Children learn social display rules.
  • E.g. politely smiling after receiving an unwanted gift.
• Emotional expression can also be self-protective.
  • E.g. hiding fear or pain.
• By primary school, emotion can strategically be:
  • Minimised
  • Maximised
  • Substituted
  • Masked

Individual Differences in Emotional Expression

Children differ in:

• Balance of positive vs negative emotion.
• Frequency of emotional displays.
• Intensity.
• Latency — how quickly an emotion appears.
• These differences affect how the child is experienced by parents and peers.
• Emotional patterns show some stability, but correlations across time are only modest.
• Expression is shaped by:
  • Temperament/biology.
  • Learning.
  • Enculturation.
  • Context.

Emotional Understanding

Preschoolers increasingly learn to:

• Identify their own emotional states.
• Identify others’ emotional states.
• Use an emotional vocabulary.
• Parents help children attach language and meaning to emotional experiences. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Emotion Regulation

Definition: conscious + non-conscious strategies used to increase, maintain or decrease components of an emotional response.

• Up-regulation = increase an emotional response.
• Down-regulation = decrease an emotional response.
  • Requires understanding causes/consequences of emotion.

Biological mechanisms

• Amygdala → reactivity
  • Volatility, irritability, proneness to distress.
• Prefrontal cortex → regulation
  • Facilitates/inhibits emotional reactivity. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Development

Infancy

• Attention regulation.
• Gaze aversion/looking away.
• Object engagement.
• Self-soothing.

Toddlerhood

• Effortful control emerges.
• Increasing ability to control:
  • Thoughts
  • Feelings
  • Actions
• Strongly influenced by parenting/social environment.

Preschool onward

• Increasing ability to calm down.
• Reduce tantrums.
• Delay gratification.
• Behave according to social expectations.

Regulation problems

Under-regulation → externalising

• Explosive behaviour.
• Oppositional behaviour.
• Conduct problems.

Over-regulation → internalising

• Inhibition.
• Fear/anxiety.
• Social anxiety.
• Peer relationship difficulties.

Both too little AND too much regulation can cause problems.

Temperament

Definition

Temperament = biologically based individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation that tend to be stable across time and context.

• Describes the “how” of behaviour, rather than what/why.
• Appears early in life.
• Often considered an early biological basis of later personality. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Main qualities

• Reactivity — strength/intensity of reactions.
• Self-regulation — ability to control behaviour, emotion and attention.
• Sociability — comfort with new people/experiences.

Temperament influences:

• Development.
• Attachment.
• Parent responsiveness. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Nature + Nurture

Temperament is not purely genetic.

Nature

• Genetic influences.
• Evidence from twin studies.
• Biological mechanisms.

Nurture

• Prenatal environment:
  • Teratogens.
  • Stress → placenta → HPA axis.
• Birth experiences (e.g. anoxia).
• Caregiving/soothing.
• Cultural values.

Temperament emerges through biological × environmental interaction.

Thomas & Chess

Key question:

Why do children develop differently despite similar caregiving environments?

Important concepts:

• Biopsychosocial model.
• Evocative gene–environment correlation
  • Child characteristics elicit particular parental responses.
• Goodness of fit
  • Outcomes depend partly on how well the child’s temperament fits their environment. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Nine Dimensions of Temperament

Thomas & Chess identified:

• Activity level.
• Rhythmicity.
• Approach/withdrawal.
• Adaptability.
• Threshold of responsiveness.
• Intensity.
• Quality of mood/negative affectivity.
• Distractibility.
• Attention span + persistence.

These broadly reflect:

Reactivity

• Excitability, speed + intensity of response.

Self-regulation

• Processes that modulate reactivity through attention, inhibition and approach/avoidance. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Temperament Types

“Easy”

• Regular sleep/feeding.
• Positive approach to novelty.
• Highly adaptable.
• Mostly positive, mild–moderate emotional intensity.
• 40% NYLS / 39% ATP.

“Slow-to-warm-up”

• Relatively inactive.
• Mild reactions to novelty.
• Slowly adapts after repeated exposure.
• May be overlooked → risk of understimulation.
• 15% NYLS / 8% ATP.

Historically called “Difficult”

• Irregular biological functions.
• Withdrawal/inhibition toward novelty.
• Slow adaptability.
• Intense, often negative emotional expression.
• 10% NYLS / 12% ATP.
• Lecturer prefers reframing this as “unsettled” or “stressed”, rather than assuming the child is intentionally difficult. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Difficult to classify

• Combination of characteristics that does not fit neatly into the three categories.

Temperament ↔ Parenting

Bidirectional relationship:

• Temperament affects how parents respond to children.
• Parenting responses can influence how temperament is expressed/develops.

Example:

• Adaptable infant → easier to take places/soothe → may increase parental confidence.
• Highly distressed/unsettled infant → harder to soothe → may increase parental stress and reduce self-efficacy.

Parents need to respond to the individual child, rather than use identical parenting for every child.

Stability of Temperament

• Temperament shows moderate–high stability, but is not fixed.
• Australian Temperament Project:
  • Stability ≈ .7–.8.
  • Parent agreement ≈ .7–.8.
  • Parent–teacher agreement ≈ .4–.5.
• Lower cross-context agreement may reflect:
  • Reporter bias.
  • Different environmental demands.
• Caregiving can moderate temperament.

Biological predisposition ≠ destiny. There is room for change.

Temperament & Long-Term Outcomes

Dunedin Study

Early under-control/impulsivity associated with increased later risk of:

• Mental-health difficulties/suicidality.
• Hostility/alienation.
• Substance dependence.
• Financial difficulties.
• Criminal offending.

High behavioural inhibition / low approach associated with:

• Greater harm avoidance.
• Reduced social potency.
• Less positive emotionality.
• Increased depression risk.

NOTE: These are predictive associations, NOT deterministic/causal outcomes.

LSAC

Preschool temperament = modest risk factor for later psychopathology.

• High reactivity → ADHD, conduct problems, anxiety, depression symptoms.
• Very high approach/sociability → conduct + ADHD symptoms.
• Low approach/sociability → anxiety.
• Low persistence → conduct + ADHD problems. PSY2235_2026_Week6_Temperament

Temperament as Risk OR Protective Factor

Temperament’s effects depend on context.

Protective

• “Easy”/adaptable temperament may promote resilience.
• May elicit more positive responses from parents, teachers and others.
• Can be particularly protective under high psychosocial stress.

Risk

• A temperament poorly matched to the environment can increase difficulties.
• E.g. behavioural inhibition + overprotective parenting:
  • Child gets fewer opportunities to develop independent regulation.
  • Fearful temperament may remain stable.
  • Increased risk of anxiety problems.

This is goodness of fit: the same trait can be adaptive or maladaptive depending on the environment.