This research will complete a major longitudinal study of the role of patterns of emotion expression and emotion-related behaviors in the development of temperament/personality and competencies in childhood. The stability and predictive efficacy of indexes of infants' emotion-related responses, including patterns of cardiac activity, will be evaluated across the first 5-1/2 years of life. The project will have five aspects relating to emotional development from birth to 5 years of age. It will study (1) stability and change in expressive behavior, (2) the construct validity of emotion variables, (3) developmental changes in emotion responses to pleasant and mildly stressful conditions. (4) development al changes in relations among emotion expression variables and patterns of cardiac activity under pleasant and mildly stressful conditions, and (5) early emotion variables as predictors of later socioemotional and affective- cognitive competence. Results from the first two years of the research showed that early-infancy emotion variables were significant predictors of the quality of infant-mother attachment at 13 months (an important index of socioemotional competence) and of infant temperament at 13, 18, and 24 months. Early emotion variable s predicted significant aspects of the development of personality and social behavior. This research will further our understanding emotional development.
