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Chapter 6: Problem 9

Describe individual differences that distinguish an infant's personality. The origins of personality, the sum total of the enduring characteristics that differentiate one individual from another, arise during infancy.

Short Answer

Expert verified
The individual differences distinguishing an infant's personality are based on traits like physical activity levels, emotional reactivity, self-regulation, and response diversity. Additionally, the environment, including parental interactions and cultural influences, plays a significant role in shaping this personality.

Step by step solution

01

Understand the Concept of Personality

Personality is the combination of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that makes a person unique. It is the way we view, understand, and relate to the outside world as well as how we see ourselves. Personality forms during childhood, shaped through an interaction of two factors: inherited tendencies or genes, and the environment.
02

Identify the Unique Individual Differences in Infants

Even in infancy, individual differences in the physical, emotional, and perceptual aspects are noticeable that signify their unique personality. These include particular behavior traits like physical activity levels, emotional reactivity, and self-regulation. Infants' ways of responding to their environment may also vary, i.e., some react with intensity, some are more withdrawn, while others quickly adapt to new situations. Observable variables such as these form the foundations of personality.
03

Understanding the Role of the Environment

The role of the environment, including parent-child interactions and cultural influences, is equally important in shaping an infant's personality. Environmental factors can further enhance or suppress the inherited behaviors, which also contribute to the uniqueness of an infant's personality.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Discuss the development of social referencing and nonverbal decoding abilities. Through social referencing, infants from the age of eight or nine months use the expressions of others to clarify ambiguous situations and learn appropriate reactions to them. Early in life, infants develop the capability of nonverbal decoding: determining the emotional states of others based on their facial and vocal expressions.

Describe the sense of self that children possess in the first two years of life. Infants begin to develop self-awareness at about the age of 12 months.

Discuss how the gender of a child affects his or her development in the first two years of life. As infants age, gender differences become more pronounced, mostly due to environmental influences. Differences are accentuated by parental expectations and behavior.

Summarize the theory of mind and evidence of infants' growing sense of mental activity by the age of two. Infants also begin to develop a theory of mind at this time: knowledge and beliefs about how they and others think.

Discuss how children express and experience emotions in the first two years of life. Infants display a variety of facial expressions, which are similar across cultures and appear to reflect basic emotional states.
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