The Role of Parenting in the Emergence of Human Emotion: New Approaches to the Old Nature-Nurture Debate

SYNOPSIS

Emotions are complex processes that are essential for survival and adaptation. Recent studies of children and animals are shedding light on how the developing brain learns to rapidly respond to signals in the environment, assess the emotional significance of this information, and in so doing adaptively regulate subsequent behavior. Here, I describe studies of children and nonhuman primates who are developing within emotionally aberrant environments. Examining these populations provides new insights on the ways in which the social or interpersonal contexts of parenting may influence development of the neural systems underlying emotional behavior.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing of this article was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (grant number R01-MH61285). The author thanks Alison Fleming, Joan Grusec, and Gary Kraemer for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript and Barbara Roeber and Anne van Grondelle for their assistance with the preparation of this manuscript.