Woodard Kristina, Pollak Seth D
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Curr Opin Behav Sci. 2020 Dec;36:1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.05.004. Epub 2020 Jun 23.
During sensitive periods an individual's development is especially receptive to information from the environment in ways that it is not at earlier and later developmental stages. Here, we describe challenges in applying the concept of sensitive periods to the domain of socio-emotional development, review what applications of this approach have accomplished, and point to promising future directions. We also argue that since emotional development consists of higher-order cognitive processes, it likely involves multiple and overlapping sensitive periods tied to different mechanisms (e.g., facial recognition, reward processing, fear conditioning). Moreover, we note a distinction between the construct of a sensitive period versus the identification of an effect of early experience-two ideas that are often confused in the literature. Progress in the study of emotion will require understanding the mechanisms involved in developmental change and models that predict children's behavior based on their prior experience.
在敏感期，个体的发展对来自环境的信息特别敏感，其敏感程度不同于早期和后期的发育阶段。在此，我们描述了将敏感期概念应用于社会情感发展领域所面临的挑战，回顾了这种方法的应用成果，并指出了未来有前景的发展方向。我们还认为，由于情感发展由高阶认知过程组成，它可能涉及与不同机制（如面部识别、奖励处理、恐惧条件作用）相关的多个重叠敏感期。此外，我们指出了敏感期这一概念与早期经历影响的识别之间的区别——这两个概念在文献中经常被混淆。情感研究的进展将需要理解发育变化所涉及的机制以及基于儿童先前经历预测其行为的模型。
