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.

在敏感时期，个人的发展特别容易接受来自环境的信息，而这在早期和后期的发展阶段都是不同的。在这里，我们描述了将敏感期概念应用于社会情感发展领域的挑战，回顾了这种方法的应用已经取得的成就，并指出了有希望的未来方向。我们还认为，由于情绪发展由高阶认知过程组成，它可能涉及与不同机制（例如面部识别、奖励处理、恐惧条件反射）相关的多个重叠敏感时期。此外，我们注意到敏感时期的构建与早期经验影响的识别之间的区别——这两个概念在文献中经常被混淆。