LearninganddevelopmentLauraGimnez

UnderstandingandResponding
totheEmotionsofOthers

First of all I have to say that Berks reading seemed very

interesting to me. The emotional
world has always
appealed me so the fact that the author explains how we, as humans,
develop emotionally, how we perceive and express emotions when we are infants, is
very
captivating.

One of the first images that came to my mind when reading it is my baby cousin Erika
smiling. My cousin is 4 month old and ,as in the text it is said,
when they gaze, smile, or
vocalize, they now expect their social partnertorespondinkind,andtheyreplywithpositive
vocalandemotionalreactions(Markova& Legerstee,2006Rochat,Striano,&Blatt,2002).
I
find it incredible how such a little and small person can be so happy and expressive when
you talk to her/him. And indeed, her smile
transmits me a lot of happiness and
tenderness
anditisanamazingfeeling.

Also, I remember having watched a very interesting video on

www.upsocl.com (
Mira lo que
ocurre

cuando

esta

madre

ignora

su

beb,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grhiu55vbSc)

,which is highly related to this topic.

It is a short video about a research carried out which shows how mothers not paying
attention to their babies reactionscan havebadconsequencessuchashuffsandcriesfrom
thebaby.

When reading the partof

empathy
,IrecalledthatinourCAU(scouts)wewanttoworkwith
this aspect a lot with children of 8, 9 and 10 years old. We, the monitors, have noticed that
our children do not respect each other and instead they say meanthingstotheirmatesand
developing an empathic spirit through different activities or dynamics is one of our main
objectives. Also, interestingly, our theme this course isthefilmInsideoutwhichworkswith
content related to psychology and emotions. We have divided the big group in 5 small
groups and they are called : Anger, Happiness, Sadness, Fear and Disgust, and starting
here we want to teach them to be empathic emotionally, we want that they take care of
others emotions. Sp that is why I consider that, in one way or another, this reading have
beenquiteusefulandinteresting.


LearninganddevelopmentLauraGimnez

After reading the text and having watched some videos, I have drawn some conclusions.
First, it has to be said that caregivers emotional states have ahugeimpactonchildrenand
their future lives. In fact, it is very important that parents keep a positive mood when they
address to their infants because children can notice the negative emotions and this fact
surely affects them in a bad way. The voice it is also a very important aspect when
communicating with our children as itconveysbothemotionalandverbalinformation.So,all
in all, when we want to communicate either with babies or with kids we have to take care
about our emotional state. Indeed, when we talk we do not only transmit verbal information
butalsoemotional.

Themore motherslabelemotions,explainthem,and expresswarmthandenthusiasmwhen

conversing with preschoolers, the more emotion words children use and the better
developedtheiremotionalunderstandingLauraBerk