Chapter 9 - EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EMOTIONAL EDUCATION

Abstract

This chapter outlines a readout model of emotion that assumes that emotion involves an ongoing progress report of the state of primary motivational/ emotional systems located in subcortical and paleocortical systems in the brain. The independent evolution of three kinds of readout systems is considered: readout via autonomic or endocrine systems (Emotion I), spontaneous ritualized displays (Emotion II), and direct subjective experience (Emotion III). The ways in which these different emotional responses are experienced by the child in self and others, and the implications of differences in the accessibility of different responses to the social learning of emotion, are considered. The chapter then considers the course of emotional development and education, first using animal and infant studies to illustrate how communication mechanisms, social experience, and primary motivational/emotional systems have evolved to develop hand-in-hand. This involves discussion of what emotions are innate in humans and the developmental sequence of their appearance. It then considers the differences in emotion in humans and in animals. Specifically, the relationships between cognitive and emotional development are discussed, as well as the concept of emotional education, which involves the acquisition of knowledge of emotion via experience and instruction. Emotional education involves making different aspects of emotion accessible via the education of attention, and the acquisition of knowledge about the meaning of emotional behaviors. It is suggested that the quality of this emotional education may have important personal and social implications.