Anna Batalla Rubio

Seminar A (group 71)

"Active Reading"
The section of this text is divided into two main blocks, both related with our emotions.
The first one find out the effect or influence that the emotions can produce on us
(always looking at it from a child's perspective), relating with our memory, behaviour,
and health. But, before connecting the emotions with these concepts, there's an
introduction clarifying that each child is different, and that is so true. Our behaviour
when we are kids could be defined by our parents education, for example, by our
environment, our instruction and education. But, also, can be affected by our biological
nature, our own way of being, and that's a thing that we don't choose and it's really
difficult to change. It is true that depending on the security of the child, s/he will be
more or less independent and interested on explorations. Sometimes we may can find
a "reason" of why a child acts this way or another, but otherwise this child may act this
way because of her/his own personality.
As the first block explains, emotions and memory have a strong relation between them,
and this relation is bidirectional. As we all know, we tend to remember all those
experiences with an important emotional feeling. And the remembering of this certain
experience can makes us to "re-feel" this emotion. Depending on if this experience was
good or not, it will make us repeat or not. So, we can say that our emotions represent a
really important influence on our actions, most actions are determined by our feelings
or emotions.
It also says that babies tend to give importance to the still-face reactions, they cannot
talk and they can only express with their facial expression or movements, so they also
want to see a physical response from their parents. But, when they get older, they tend
to pay attention to the adults reactions and "copy" how to respond. So, the behaviour of
the parents is really important to give children a good example of action. It is because
Parental Depression produces a very bad effect on children's adjustment. Children
tend to copy the parents mood, and if it is not good, this can involve a bad behaviour
on children that can be increased as they grow up. Bad emotions (such as persistent
psychological stress) can affect the child's health. So, it's an important factor to take
into account.

Moreover, emotions helps to the development of self-awareness, and when this one is
sufficiently developed, the child starts to express new and more complex emotions
(such as pride and embarrassment). Then, comes the own regulation of emotions.
To see how the emotions are developed, we have to them through the child's
development. How these emotions change as the child grows. This will be the process
and development:
Babies: two global states (attraction to pleasant stimulation and withdrawal from
unpleasant stimulation).
Infancy:
Early Childhood (after age 2): they tend to express more their feelings, they start to use
the language as a tool to control them. Also, they take the adults behaviour with their
feeling as a reference to copy. And, starts to appear adult-child conversations that help
children to face emotions.
Middle Childhood and Adolescence: they starts to control the expression of their
emotions. They start to learn to control what they communicate to others. However, as
the text says, each society has its own "emotional display rules", that specify when,
where, and how it is appropriate to express emotions.
Finally, I have to add, that there's the gender factor that can produce some differences
between girls and boys. As we know, there's the tendency from girls to be more
expressive than boys, which are more emotionally reserved.