The article presents a theoretical analysis of socio-psychological aspects of emotional response development in childhood. It considers Russian and foreign authors’ scientific approaches to understanding of the emotional response phenomenological nature, identification of socio-psychological factors and mechanisms determining its emergence, formation and development in the framework of cultural and historical tradition. It covers scientific concepts, theoretical approaches and doctrines that reveal the improvement of emotional response as a process of hierarchical differentiation in ontogenesis, mediation of emotional reactions by social and content areas, progressive development of regulation, control and management mechanisms initiated by maturation, cognitive and psychosocial development and socialization. The article also focuses on theoretical approaches to outlining of periodization patterns of emotional response formation in childhood, regarding the emotional response as a process that ascends from elementary forms of emotional reflection to higher socially determined, consciously regulated and controlled forms of emotional behavior. In the process of the child’s ontogenetic development, these processes turn from externally directed, materialized forms to the level of internal regulation of behavior.

Based on the analysis of existing scientific approaches, the article reveals the deficiencies and identifies the prospects for the research in the field under consideration. It states the necessity of the development of universal complex classification and periodization schemes, reflecting ontogenetic features of progressive development, accumulation and complication of psychological new formations in a multicomponent structural and hierarchical organization of emotional response. The article determines theoretical and practical importance in the development of the conditions for psychological support for the child’s emotional response formation and development, implying the introduction of monitoring, forecasting and management technologies for the purposeful formation of the younger generation’s emotionally competent behavior.