10.2 Understanding Emotions

Question 1

At what age do children begin to distinguish emotions in facial expressions?

Answer 1

by 3 months of age, infants can distinguish faceial expressions showing:

1. happiness
2. surprise
3. anger

Question 2

Which facial expressions can infants distinguish only later, by 7 months of age?

Answer 2

1. fear
2. sadness
3. interest

Question 3

When do children learn to distinguish different tones of voice of different emotions?

Answer 3

between 14 and 16 years of age

Question 4

What is social referencing?

Answer 4

when a child uses their parents’ and other adults’ facial expressions and/or voices to decide how to react in new situations

Question 5

When does the ability to label emotions in other people’s faces appear?

Answer 5

It depends on the emotion:

1. 2 years — happiness
2. 3–4 years — anger, fear, sadness
3. 4–5 years — surpise, disgust
4. 6–8 years — pride, shame, guilt

Question 6

How does children’s ability to read others’ emotions depend on their environments?

Answer 6

Children who grow up in violence or without adults can more easily read emotions related to conflict, like anger, but can less easily read sadness

Question 7

How is autistic children’s ability to read others’ emotions different, and how can we help them?

Answer 7

Autistic children have difficulty reading the six basic emotions in others’ faces, and we can help them by giving them Google Glass smart glasses that show them when other people are expressing different emotions.

Question 8

How did the CoVID-19 pandemic affect children’s ability to read emotions in others’ faces?

Answer 8

Not a large difference, so children can still develop emotion recognition abilities even when faces are hidden by masks.

Question 9

How can an inability to recognize emotions affect children?

Answer 9

This can hurt their mental health because they have higher levels of lonliness.

Question 10

When do children begin to understand that they can pretend about their emotions?

Answer 10

From the age of 3, children will pretend not to be disappointed with a gift they don’t like. From the age of 5, children can discuss how they and others can express one emotion while actually feeling another.

Question 11

What are dispaly rules and how are they used?

Answer 11

Dispaly rules tell us which emotions society “allows” to express, when, and in which situations. Sometimes they tell us to pretend to express an emotion that is different from the way they actually feel.

Question 12

Which two strategies are there for following display rules?

Answer 12

1. simulating the allowed emotion (pretending to feel a certain way)
2. masking the unallowed emotion

Question 13

When do children learn that other people might be exaggerating or faking their emotions?

Answer 13

from 1.5 years old

Question 14

When do children gain the ability to fake or pretend their own emotions?

Answer 14

sometime between 4 and 6 years of age

Question 15

What factors affect children’s ability to understand real vs false emotions?

Answer 15

1. cognitive capacities
2. different display rules in different cultures
3. display rules different for boys and girls