Recognizing and Using Others’ EmotionsEarly Emerging Abilities: Infants (a) from a young age, can differentiate faces expressing positive vs. negative emotions, match voices to faces, and show a bias toward negative emotions; (b) are capable of social referencing, actively seeking cues from their caregivers to guide their interpretation of and action in an unfamiliar or ambiguous situation; (c) continue to progress in their skills of recognizing emotions into adolescenceAchieving a Deeper Understanding: (a) Children begin to know that thinking of past can lead to certain emotional states, and that people can sometimes have “mixed feelings”; (b) such an understanding is contributed by a positive relationship with parents and talks about past emotions and related situations; (c) children acquire display rules for appropriate emotional expressions that specify the types of emotion to show, where, and to whom; such rules vary across culturesRegulating Emotion: (a) Suppressing direct emotional expressions relies on cognitive processes, including attentional strategies and cognitive reappraisal; (b) these abilities develop gradually and individual differences in effective regulation are apparent at any age and linked to peer relationship and adjustment to schoolTemperamentDefinition and Structure: (a) Biologically based behavioral styles that are stable across situations and evident soon after birth; (b) pioneered by Thomas and Chess’s study – infants rated by parents and professionals and different patterns were identified (easy; difficulty; slow-to-warm-up); (c) recent models emphasize the underlying dimensions – Rothbart’s model specified 3 dimensions: surgency (high activity, positive affect); negative affect; effortful controlHereditary and Environmental Contributions: (a) The influence of heredity is supported by twin studies and increases with age; (b) temperament is influenced by the environment in various ways, and some through heredity(e.g., the DRD4 gene, is not a temperament gene itself, but links to the sensitivity to environmental influences)