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Emotions, we have said, develop as we grow. What changes occur in emotional experiences from the developmental angle?
From the developmental point of view two changes occur in our emotional experiences. There are changes in excitants or conditions that arouse the child’s emotions and changes in emotional responses or changes in the manner in which he expresses his emotions.
In the early one or two years, only those conditions aroused emotional responses which affected the child’s immediate well-being, but as he grows, his world grows larger, and he becomes responsive to a variety of stimuli.
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With growth in experience, training, in needs and goals, his emotions get linked up to new things, persons and situations. Old stimuli no longer stimulate any emotional reactions. New social experiences attain importance as fresh effective stimuli. New perceptions, new understanding, new subtleties and intricacies of life acquired through experiences and new interests now make a demand on the emotional life of the child who enters adolescence of maturity.
Changes in the emotional expression also imply the development of emotions. In the beginning the emotional expression is diffused, generalised and more physical than otherwise. Gradually, the expression becomes greatly differentiated, selective, moderate and graded. The range of emotional response becomes restricted and narrowed according to the turn and place of the situation.
Motor activity may be replaced by verbal and symbolic expression. Emotions become less overt and more subtle. The selection of the modes of expression is determined by the training at home the moves of the society and by the demands of culture.
It is determined even by the social – economic status of the family to which the child demands. The child who cried aloud when in pain or discomfort or in misery, now only cries in the presence of specific groups of people or merely withdraws himself buries his face or keeps quiet and solemn.