6. Emotional Development

Question 1

Emotions

Answer 1

• Combination of physiological and cognitive responses to experiences
  –> Neural response
  –> Physiological factors
  –> Subjective feelings
  –> Emotional expression
  –> Urge to take action

Question 2

Physiological

Answer 2

• Heart racing
• Nusea

Question 3

Subjective Feeling

Answer 3

• Recognition of danger
• Feeling of fear

Question 4

Emotional Expression

Answer 4

• Eyes wide, eyebrows raised
• Mouth pulled back

Question 5

Urge for Action

Answer 5

• Run away
• Defend home

Question 6

Neurological

Answer 6

• Amygdala activation
• Release of cortisol and adrenaline

Question 7

Discrete Emotions Theory

Answer 7

• Biological systems have evolved to allow humans to experience and express a set of innate, basic emotions
• Basic emotions: innate emotions that were important for survival and communication and thus as largely automatic

Question 8

Basic Emotions

Answer 8

• Happiness
• Fear
• Anger
• Sadness
• Disgust
• Surprise

Question 9

Beyond Basic Emotions

Answer 9

• Other emotions develop later and/or are not culturally universal
• Other emotions are:
  –> Variation in intensity of basic emotions
  –> Combination of basic emotions
  *Anger + sadness = betrayal/disappointment

Question 10

Evidence for Discrete Emotions Theory

Answer 10

• Basic emotions are universal across cultures
• Basic emotions are present from infancy

Question 11

How do you know what a baby is feeling?

Answer 11

• Systems of coding facial cues have been developed to make interpretations of infants’ emotions more objective
  –> Developed based on the facial expressions of basic emotions in adults
  –> Link particular facial expressions and facial muscle movements with particular emotion

Question 12

Facial Cues to Basic Emotions in Infancy

Answer 12

• Happiness: Smiling, raised cheeks, eyes squinting
• Anger: Strongly furrowed brow that comes down in the center, open square-shaped mouth sometimes baring teeth, flared nostrils

Question 13

Basic Emotions in Infancy

Answer 13

• At birth, infants experience 2 general emotional states:
  –> Positive/ happiness: indicated by approach behaviour
  –> Negative/ distress: indicated by crying or withdrawal behaviour
  *Negative emotions are not well-differentiated initially
• Basic emotions emerge in a predictable sequence over the first year of life
  –> Based on when an infant starts to show the facial expression associated with each basic emotion

Question 14

Happiness

Answer 14

• Adaptive because motivates us to approach situations that are likely to increase chances of survival
• From birth: Smiles are evoked by biological states
  –> e.g. being satiated or during sleep
• 2-3 months: Social smiles emerge
  –> Usually in interactions with parents
  –> Foster bonding
• 5 months: Infant’s first laugh
• What makes children happy changes with cognitive and language development
  –> At 5 months old, laugh at bodily noises but at 4 years old laugh at jokes

Question 15

Anger

Answer 15

• Adaptive because helps us defend ourselves against threats and to overcome obstacles to our goals
• 4 months: infants begin to express anger
• 24 months: Peak in tendency to react with anger
  –> Tantrums in “terrible twos”
  –> Related to limited language abilities and note being well-understood
  –> Frequency of anger declines after this due to greater ability to express self with language and improved emotion regulation skills

Question 16

Fear

Answer 16

• Expressions of fear are adaptive because motivates escape from danger or solicits protection from caregivers
• 7 months: Infants begin to express fear
• 8 months: Fear of strangers and separation anxiety emerge
  –> Separation anxiety declines around 15 months of age
• What scares children changes with cognitive development
  –> 3-5 years old: fear imaginary creatures
  –> 7+ years old: fears related to everyday situation

Question 17

Surprise, Sadness, and Disgust

Answer 17

• All emerge in some time in the first year
• Surprise: Indicates that the world is working contrary to expectations and is thus important for learning
• Sadness: Elicits care and comfort from others in reaction to a loss
  –> Emerges once object permanence has been acquired
  –> Usually in reaction to being separated from parents
• Disgust: Adaptive because helps us avoid potential poisons or bacteria
  –> First expressions of disgust often directed towards food

Question 18

Self-Conscious Emotions

Answer 18

• Emotions that emerge once:
  
  1. A child has a sense of self separate from other people
     –> Emerges around 18 month of age
  2. An appreciation of what adults expect of them
• Include: Guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, empathy
• Emerge around 2 years of age

Question 19

Guilt and Shame

Answer 19

• Guilt and shame are often elicited by similar situations but are distinct emotional reactions
  –> Guilt: Feelings of regret about one’s behaviour associated with desire to “fix” the consequences of that behaviour
  –> Shame: Self-focused general feeling of personal failure associated with desire to hide
• Generally, guilt is healthier than shame
• Expressions of guilt and shame can be distinguished at 2 years of age
• When 2 year olds play with a doll that has been rigged so that one leg falls off during play, they showed different reactions:
  –> Guilt: trying to fix the doll and quickly told the adult about the “accident”
  –> Shame: didn’t try to fix the doll, avoided the adult and delayed telling them about the “accident”
• Parental reactions to children’s actions influence which emotion a child experiences:
  –> Child is more likely to feel guilt, if parent emphasizes the “badness” of the action
  *“You did a bad thing”
  –> Child is more likely to feel shame, if parent emphasizes the “badness” of the child
  *“You’re a bad kid

Question 20

Self-Conscious Emotions Across Cultures

Answer 20

• Culture influences the frequency and type of self-conscious emotions that are most likely to be experienced
  –> Individualistic cultures: more likely to experience pride
  –> Collectivistic cultures: more likely to experience guilt and shame

Question 21

Emotional Recognition in Infancy

Answer 21

• Identifying emotions in adults’ faces comes before identifying own emotions
• Rudimentary recognition of others’ emotions emerges very early in life
  –> 3 month olds can distinguish facial expressions of happiness, surprise, and anger
  *E.g. Habituated to pictures of happy faces and then dishabituate when presented with a picture of a surprised face
  –> 7 month olds can distinguish expressions of fear and sadness

Question 22

Social Referencing

Answer 22

• Recognizing parents’ emotions enables social referencing
• Social referencing: use of adults’ facial expressions and tone of voice to decide how to deal with novel/ ambiguous situation

Question 23

Social Referencing and Visual Cliff

Answer 23

• Parent’s facial expression matters:
  –> 0% of babies cross if parent looks scared
  –> 75% of babies cross if parent looks happy
• Demonstrates that:
  –> Children can distinguish between emotional expressions
  –> Children rely on parents’ reactions to figure out how to react to a situation themselves (social referencing)

Question 24

Timeline of Emotion Labelling

Answer 24

• 3 years old: Able to label happiness, anger, fear and sadness
• 5 years old: Begin to label surprise and disgust
• 6-8 years old: Begin to label self-conscious emotions
• Ability to accurately label emotions improves into adolescence

Question 25

COVID and Emotion Recognition

Answer 25

• Masking during the pandemic did not seem to have an important effect on preschoolers’ ability to recognize emotions
  –> Still able to recognize anger, happiness, and sadness on masked faces with reasonable accuracy
• Why?
  –> Able to develop emotion recognition skills at home with unmasked families
  –> Can rely on eyes to recognize emotion

Question 26

Understanding Mixed Emotions

Answer 26

• 5 years old: understand that people can experience more than one emotion at a time
  –> 3 year olds don’t understand this
• Due to improved executive functioning

Question 27

Understanding Real vs. Fake Emotions

Answer 27

• 5 years old: begin to understand that a person’s facial expressions do not necessarily match what they’re really feeling
  –> Study: Children hear story about child forgetting her favourite toy for a sleep over but that she doesn’t want to show how she feels
  –> 5 year olds know that the child will be sad but will be showing happiness on her face
  –> 3 year olds think that the child will be showing sadness
• Improvement in understanding false emotions due to greater understanding of display rules
  –> Social norms about when, where, and how much one should show emotions and which emotions are appropriate in a given context
  –> Strongly influenced by culture
  –> Crucial for successful social interactions

Question 28

Faking Emotions

Answer 28

• Understanding display rules allows children to mask and fake emotions themselves
  –> Steep increase in this ability between ages 6-8
• Study:
  –> 4 year olds struggle to mask disappointment when they receive a toy that they don’t like
  –> 6 year olds are able to mask disappointment and show joy instead, and 8 year olds are even better at this

Question 29

Emotion Regulation

Answer 29

• Involves strategies for initiating, inhibiting, or modulating emotional experiences and expressions
• Develops gradually during childhood

Question 30

Co-Regulation

Answer 30

• From birth, parents regulate infant’s distress through soothing or distraction
  –> Necessary because infants cannot regulate their own emotions

Question 31

Emergence of Self-Regulation

Answer 31

• 5 month olds: infant show rudimentary emotion regulation skills
  –> Self-comforting behaviours: repetitive actions that create a mildly positive sensation
  –> Self-distraction: looking away from the upsetting stimulus

Question 32

Development of Emotion Regulation

Answer 32

• As children get older, they learn to rely more on self-distraction rather than self-comforting behaviours
  –> E.g. play as a distraction
• 6 –8 years old: learn to use cognitive strategies and problem-solving to regulate emotions
  –> Cognitive strategies = thinking of a situation in a different w

Question 33

Why does emotion regulation improve?

Answer 33

• Motor development
  –> Greater ability to control the body enables self-soothing and distraction
• Increased parental expectation that child should be able to manage their own emotional arousal
• Cognitive development
  –> Improved executive functions enables more mature emotion regulation skills
  *E.g. able to control attention better to enable self-distraction
  –> Improved language skills allow children to discuss and negotiate problems rather than engage in an emotional outburst
• Neurological development, especially the prefrontal cortex

Question 34

Implications of Emotional Intelligence

Answer 34

• Emotional intelligence: Ability to identify emotions in self and others and to use these to appropriately regulate emotions and respond appropriately to others
• Children with higher emotional intelligence tend to:
  –> Have better social relationships
  *Difficulties identifying emotions in others is associated with loneliness
  *Poor regulation skills put kids at risk for bullying
  –> Do better academically
  –> Have better psychological well-bein

Question 35

Are adolescents more moody?

Answer 35

• Study: Experience-sampling method
  –> Reported on mood at random times throughout the day
• Results:
  –> Adolescents report more frequent high-intensity emotions than adults
  *BOTH more intense negative and positive emotions
  –> Intense moods last less long compared to adults
• Shows that adolescents are indeed more “moody” than adults

Question 36

Emotional Changes in Adolescence

Answer 36

• Longitudinal study:
  –> 394 adolescents rated emotions during each day of the school week for 3 weeks
  –> Did this every 5 year
• Results:
  –> On average, teens reported experiencing happiness 70% of the time, but its frequency also decreased over adolescence –> Anger increases and then decreases towards the end of adolescence
  –> Sadness and anxiety increase, especially for girls

Question 37

Implications

Answer 37

• Happiness is the most frequently experienced emotion for teens
• Increase in negative emotions during adolescence is normal
  –> Struggles to cope with these changes can lead to the development of depression and anxiety disorders
• Can be difficult to distinguish between normal changes in adolescent emotional experience vs. mental health issues - Gender differences in emotional experience in adolescents

Question 38

Risk-Taking in Adolescents

Answer 38

• Impulsivity increases during early adolescence, peaks in middle/late adolescence, and then declines in adulthood
• Found across cultures and historical time

Question 39

Cost and Benefits of Risk-Taking in Adolescence

Answer 39

• Risk taking is associated with increased injury, death, and criminal behaviour
• BUT risk-taking is also a good thing
  –> Promotes independence by trying new experience

Question 40

Reasons for Emotional Changes in Adolescence

Answer 40

Cognitive changes
–> Due to advances in abstract thinking which allow adolescents to interpret ambiguous events in several ways
- Social changes
–> Adolescence coincides with school becoming more challenging
–> Adolescents have a stronger desire for autonomy than younger children
*Can lead to more conflict with parents
*Adolescents spend more time with peers and less time with family which lead to new situations that trigger new emotional reactions
- Neurobiological change

Question 41

Neurobiological Changes in Adolescence

Answer 41

• 2 important brain regions undergo significant changes in adolescence:
  
  1. Limbic system: involved in emotional and reward processing
  2. Prefrontal cortex: involved in executive functions and self-awareness

Question 42

Changes to Limbic System in Adolescence

Answer 42

• Reward processing in limbic system is heightened in adolescence
  –> Due to synaptogenesis of dopamine receptors
• Degree of nucleus accumbens activation during reward anticipation is positively correlated with self-reported risk-taking in daily life

Question 43

Changes to Prefrontal Cortex in Adolescence

Answer 43

• Synaptic pruning and myelination in prefrontal cortex (PFC) until mid-20s
  –> Myelination: Thickening of myelin sheath surrounding axons which increases speed of neural signal transmission
• Immature PFC associated with difficulties with inhibition, impulse control, and planning

Question 44

Implications

Answer 44

Emotional changes in adolescents are partially due to the maturational mismatch between the limbic system and prefrontal cortex

Question 45

Temperament

Answer 45

• Consistent individual differences in behaviour and emotional experience that are biologically based
• Present from infancy thus thought to be genetically-based
• The reason why kids show very different reactions to the same situation

Question 46

Type Approach to Temperament

Answer 46

• Easy babies: adjust easily to new situations, quickly establish daily routines such as sleep and eating, and generally are cheerful in mood and easy to calm
  –> 40% of babies
• Difficult babies: slow to adjust to new experiences, tend to react negatively and intensely to novel stimuli and events, irregular in their daily routines and bodily functions
  –> 10% of babies
• Slow-to-warm-up babies: somewhat difficult at first but become easier over time as they have repeated contact with new objects, people, and situations
  –> 15% of babies

Question 47

Dimensional Approach to Temperament

Answer 47

• Many children did not fit into one of Thomas et al.’s categories
  –> Prompted a need for a dimensional, non-categorical approach
• 5 key dimensions of temperament
• Assessed using:
  –> Parent and/or teacher responses to questions assessing each dimensions
  –> Observing how kids react to lab tasks designed to assess each dimension

Question 48

Dimensional Approach to Temperament

Answer 48

• Smiling and laughter: Positive emotional response to a change in a stimulus
• Distress (in infancy)/ anger (in childhood): Negative emotional response related to having an ongoing task interrupted or blocked
• Fear: Tendency to experience unease or nervousness to new situations
• Attention span: Attention to an object or task for an extended period of time
• Activity level: Rate and extent of gross motor body movement

Question 49

Consistency of Temperament

Answer 49

• Temperament is largely consistent/stable over time
  –> Reflects influence of genetics
  –> Identical twins have more similar temperaments than fraternal twins
• BUT some change in temperament over time is possible
  –> Temperament in younger children is more malleable than older kids
  –> Reflects role of caregivers in shaping emotional development

Question 50

Implications of Temperament

Answer 50

• Children contribute to their own emotional development through their temperament
• Some children are easier to parent than others
  –> E.g., children with difficult temperament require more patience from a parent

Question 51

Goodness of Fit

Answer 51

• The degree to which an individual’s temperament is compatible with the demands and expectations of their social environment
• Good fit = match between a child’s temperament and the expectations of the environment
  –> Associated with better social outcomes and higher self-esteem
  –> Poor fit between the child’s temperament and the environment put the child at risk for social and self-esteem difficulties

Question 52

Implications of Goodness of Fit

Answer 52

• A good fit between a child’s temperament and their environment, especially with caregivers, fosters better well-being in kids
• What is a good environmental fit for one child may be a bad fit for another child
  –> Partially explains why siblings may have very different experiences in a family
• The goodness of fit between a child’s temperament and parenting is highly influenced by the parent’s own temperament and expectations

Question 53

How to Create a Good Fit

Answer 53

• A parent can foster a better “fit” with their child by:
  –> Knowing and understanding a child’s temperament and how it’s different from the caregiver’s
  –> Adjusting expectations that are more realistic for a child’s temperament
  –> Selecting activities that are more in-line with a child’s temperament
  *E.g. active hobbies for an active kid and quiet hobbies for a less active kid

Question 54

The Influence of Family in Emotional Development

Answer 54

• Family, especially parents, play a huge role in children’s emotional development
  –> Parent’s expression of emotions
  *Indirect influence on emotional development
  –> Parent’s reactions to children’s emotions
  *Direct influence on emotional development

Question 55

Parents’ Expression of Emotions

Answer 55

Parents’ emotional expression serve as a model of when and how to express emotions

Question 56

Parents’ Lack of Emotional Expression

Answer 56

• Children who grow up with parents that tend to not show emotions tend to:
  –> Not express emotions themselves
  *Learn to see emotions as “bad”
  –> Have trouble identifying and understanding emotions in self and others
  –> Struggle with regulating intense emotion

Question 57

Parents’ Expressions of Positive Emotions

Answer 57

• Children that grow up with parents that express a high level of positive emotions tend to:
  –> Express more positive emotions themselves
  –> Be well-adjusted
  –> Be socially skilled

Question 58

Parents’ Expressions of Negative Emotions

Answer 58

• Children that grow up with parents that express a high level of negative emotions tend to:
  –> Have heightened awareness to emotional cues of conflict, if there is frequent conflict at home
  –> Experience and express more negative emotions themselves
  –> Have poorer emotion regulation skills
  –> Be less socially competent

Question 59

Parents’ Reactions to Children’s Emotions

Answer 59

• Parents’ reactions to their children’s emotions directly influence children’s emotional development
  –>Mirroring
  –> Emotional coaching

Question 60

Mirroring

Answer 60

• Behaviours in which a parent reflects the emotions of their child back to them
  –> Conveyed through verbal and non-verbal cues
• Contingent responding: timely and appropriate reactions
• Characterized by warmth
• Important because:
  –> Validates and normalizes the child’s emotions
  –> Helps the child identify and understand their emotions

Question 61

Examples of Mirroring

Answer 61

• A baby looks upset. The parent also furrows their eyebrows and frown.
• A child is pouting. The parent says, “You have tears in your eyes. You look sad.”
• A child feels very anxious about an upcoming test. The parent says “You seem anxious about the test. I sometimes feel the same way when I have a big thing to do at work.

Question 62

Still-Face Paradigm

Answer 62

• Lab procedure in which a parent repetitively alternates between being responsive to an infant and not reacting to them
• Infants quickly become distressed in reaction to still-face and this distress increases with each still-face “episode”
• Shows that infants are attuned to parents’ emotions and distress when a parent behaves contrary to expectations

Question 63

Implications of Still-Face Paradigm

Answer 63

• Two real-world examples of “still-face” that may interfere with infant emotional development
  –> Depressed parents
  *Tend to show less emotional expression when responding to their infants
  –> Parents’ frequent cell phone use
  *May distract parents away from responding to infants’ emotional cues

Question 64

Emotional Coaching

Answer 64

• The use of discussion and other forms of instruction to teach children how to cope with, regulate, and appropriately express emotions
  –> What is seen as appropriate depends on culture
  *E.g. in East Asian cultures, emotional restraint is more highly valued vs. in Latin American cultures, emotional expression is more highly valued

Question 65

Examples of Emotional Coaching

Answer 65

• “You seem anxious about the test. Let’s take a breath and then work through some practice questions so that you feel more prepared.”
• “I know you’re frustrated that your sister took your toy without asking, but it’ not okay for you to pull her hair. That hurt her. Use your words instead to tell her that you’re frustrated.”

Question 66

Importance of Supportive Reaction

Answer 66

• Supportive/sensitive reactions, characterized by mirroring + emotional coaching, is ideal way to react to children’s emotions:
  –> Validates child’s emotions
  –> Helps the child understand their emotions
  –> Fosters emotional regulation
  –> Associated with higher self-esteem
  –> Fosters empathy and social skills
  –> Associated with better performance in school

Question 67

Supportive/sensitive (mirroring + emotional coaching)

Answer 67

“You seem worried and upset about the test. I sometimes feel the same way when I have a deadline at work. Let’s take a breath and then work through some practice questions so that you feel more prepared.”

Question 68

Critical (no mirroring or emotional coaching

Answer 68

• In an angry tone. “What’s wrong with you? Stop being dramatic. It’s just a test.”
  –> Repeated responses like this may lead the child to be self-critical and to believe that their feelings are wrong

Question 69

Dismissive (coaching but no mirroring)

Answer 69

• “Oh it’s just a test—no big deal.” “You’re fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
  –> Repeated responses like this may lead to child doubting the validity of their feeling

Question 70

Over-validating

Answer 70

• Parent looks anxious. “OMG! The test is next week! Tests are so stressful. I don’t know how you handle the pressure.”
  –> Repeated responses like this may lead child to feel overwhelmed by challenges as they believe that their feelings are insurmountable

Question 71

Implications of Lack of Effective Emotional Reaction

Answer 71

• Children who grow up with parents that habitually provide little/no mirroring and/or little/no emotional coaching tend to be:
  –> Less socially competent
  –> Less emotionally competent

Question 72

Why do parents react the way they do?

Answer 72

• Cultural differences
  –> Emotional expression is more encouraged in North America vs. East Asian cultures
  –> Reactions to specific emotions differ by culture
  *E.g. reactions to shame in independent vs. collectivistic cultures
• Generational differences in norms for emotional expression
• Family reactions to emotions when parents themselves were children
  –> Intergenerational transmission of emotional reactions and regulation
• Mood and emotions in the moment
  –> Harder to be supportive if parent is having a bad day