The Importance of Biological Methods in Linking Social Experience with Social and Emotional Development

The ability to decode and express emotions allows the developing child to assess and change many aspects of the environment. When emotional development is unfolding in a normative manner, the child’s early experience within his or her family context promotes increasing abilities to successfully adapt to environmental demands. This is a critical developmental process as difficulties in emotional functioning can lead to problems in social adaptation and health. The issue of how adverse social experiences alter and shape children’s social and emotional development has become a center stage for the exploration of the relative contributions of nature and nurture in child development. Our research has examined the ways in which children’s developing biology is shaped in a manner that may be adaptive to their early environment but confers risk for a host of negative developmental outcomes. Here, we discuss some of the challenges that we have encountered in trying to address issues related to the influence of early social context on the development of biological processes underlying emotional development. When used thoughtfully, biological methods can enrich our understanding of emotional development by moving beyond a descriptive “biomaker” approach and excavating the mechanisms underlying developmental changes in these systems.