Chapter 5: Emotions: Thoughts & Feelings Flashcards
1
Q
Emotional expression
A
- children express a wide array of emotions from infancy
- emotional expression is the 1st form of communication
- children communicate feelings, needs and desires by means of these expressions and influence other people’s behaviour
2
Q
attentive
A
deceleration fo heart rate; inferred to be underlying feeling state
3
Q
stressed
A
elevation of heart rate; inferred to be underlying feeling state
4
Q
What are emotions
A
- subjective rxn to something in environment
- accompanied by physiological arousal
- communicated by expression or action
- experienced as pleasant/unpleasant (valence)
- arousal (calm vs intense)
5
Q
emotional space
A
crossing of valence x arousal
allows to understand diff types of emotions
6
Q
Primary emotions
A
- not a lot of cognitive processing required
- fear, joy, disgust, surprise, sadness, interest
- emerge early in life and do not require introspection or self-reflection
7
Q
Secondary or self-conscious eotions
A
- 18-24 months
- shame, pride, guilt, jealousy, embarrassment, empathy
- 2nd year of life
- depend on sense of self and awareness of other people’s reactions
8
Q
Why are emotions important
A
- let others know how we feel
- window into children’s likes/dislikes
- views of world
- liked to children’s social success
- linked to children’s mental and physical health
9
Q
Perspectives on emotional development
A
- Biological perspective
- learning perspective
- functional perspective (survival + adaptation)
10
Q
Biological perspective of emotional development
A
- emotional expressions are innate and universal, rooted in human evolution, based on anatomical structures
- facial expressions of basic emotions same in diff cultures
- all infants begin to smile 46 weeks post conception
- each emotion expressed by distinct group of facial muscles
- L hemisphere controls joy, right fear
- identical twins more similar in age at which they smile, amount, onset of fear rxns, degree of emotional inhibition vs. fraternal
11
Q
Learning perspective of emotional development
A
- useful for explaining individual diffs in emotional expression
- baby’s rate of smiling increases when adults respond to a baby’s smiles with positive stimulation
- children become classically conditioned to fear doc who gives painful shot during first visit
- children acquire fear through operant conditioning (reward + punishment)
- learn fears by observing others’ rxns (environment shapes emotional development / their expression)
12
Q
Functional perspective of emotional development
A
- purpose of emotions to achieve social and survival goal
- emotions impel children toward goal
- emotional signals provide feedback that guides other people’s behavior
- memories of past emotions shape how ppl respond to new situations
13
Q
Development of emotions
A
- use of coding systems to discern emotional expressiveness: brows, eyes, nose, mouth, lips, chin
- changes in facial muscles in response to task/incentive
- dysregulated = increase in heart rate, coincident with what is happening in the face
- infer psychological significance from physiological signals
14
Q
Joy (primary emotion)
A
- primary emotions
- girls smile more than boys from birth
- european M/F differ more in smiling than african M/F, suggests african american parents treat M/F more alike
15
Q
Reflex smile
A
- newborns display upturned mouth spontaneous and depends on some internal stimulus
- adaptive value, ensures caregiver attention and stimulation
- ensures caregiver proximity
16
Q
3-8 week smile
A
- smiles in response to external stimuli
17
Q
social smile
A
- 2-6 months
- upturned mouth in response to human face or voice
- more at familiar faces and when mother reinforces smile
18
Q
Duchenne smile
A
- smile reflecting genuine pleasure, crinkles around eyes and upturned mouth
- reserved for caregivers
19
Q
Individual diffs in smiling
A
- how much infants smile depends on social responsiveness of their environment
20
Q
Babies laughter
A
- auditory stimuli elicit few laughs at any age during infancy
- tactile stimuli elicit substantial laughter in infants 7-9mo
- visual and social stimuli elicit more laughter overall and likelihood of laughter increases with age
- laughing continues to increase in frequency and becomes more social as children mature
21
Q
Fear (primary emotion)
A
- 2 phases in emergence
- 3-7 months: wariness, events they do not understand
- 7-9 months: genuine fear, stranger distress (neg emotional rxn to unfamiliar people, emerges in infants around 9mo)
- cultural differences
- functionalist perspective ->around 9mo, frontal lobe development, motor activity emerging, walking, opportunities of separation from caregiver, encountering unfamiliar people
- all show fear by 12 months to presence of stranger
22
Q
Social referencing
A
process of reading emotional cues in others to determine how to act
- younger infants act first, look later
- older infants check with mother
- what happens with mother can regulate behaviour even when feeling fear
23
Q
Universal fears
A
- separation anxiety - apart from familiar caregiver
- peaks at 15 mo
- coincides w age of walking, may be inbuilt mechanism that primes to detect unfamiliarity resulting in stranger fear
- 13-15 mo infants cry when mother leaves
- some universality in peak but individual diff in cultures, onset and variation
24
Q
Visual clif
A
fear of heights
- 6mo refusal to crawl over it
- individual differences
25
Q
Anger (primary emotion)
A
- first neg emotions not anger but startle, disgust, distress
- 2-3 mo facial expressions of anger
- babies respond to emotional provocations in predictable ways and anger elicited by pain and frustration
26
Q
Sadness
A
- occurs less often than anger in infancy
- sad when parent/infant communication breaks down
- older infants, separation can lead to sadness
- signal used to control partners
- effective emotional signal for eliciting care and comfort
27
Q
Secondary emotions
A
- second year of life
- pride, shame, jealousy, guilt, empathy, embarrassment
- depend on children’s ability to be aware of, talk about and think about themselves in relation to other/take other perspective
28
Q
Pride and shame
A
- pleased with accompishments = pride
- succeeding on difficult task elicits pride
- 7 y/0 use word proud to reflect good outcomes whether or not own efforts; 10 y/o differentiate this
- perception of deficiency -> shame; acceptable in eyes of others; failing easy task elicits shame
29
Q
Jealousy
A
- as early as 1 year
- when mother directs attention away from them toward another child, newborn, doll
- younger children show jealousy with expressions of distress, older with anger and sadness
30
Q
Guilt
A
- younger children (22 mo) show more outward expressions of guilt (frowning, fretting) than older children (33-56 mo), more subtle (head hanging)
- 9 y/o but not 6 y/o understand guilt and relation to personal responsbility; 6 y/o describe feeling guilty when little control over outcome
31
Q
Empathy
A
- shared emotional response that parallel’s another person’s feelings
- infancy and toddlerhood
- newborn - rudimentary empathic repsonding
age 1 - egocentric empathic distress
13-14 mo - quasi-egocentric empathic distress
end of 2nd year - true empathic distress
32
Q
Empathy in childhood and adolescence
A
- younger children experience empathy only in presence of distressed other
- mid-late childhood respond w empathy to another’s general condition
- adolescents respond to difficulties experienced by groups of ppl
33
Q
individual differences in emotional expressiveness
A
- clear individual differences exist in children’s emotional expressiveness beginning early infancy
- diffs related to temperament
- associations w temperament suggest biological factors play a central role in how intensely children react to emotionally arousing situations and how well they regulate their rxns
- individual diffs in pos/neg emotionality related to overall adjustment
34
Q
Recognizing emotions in others
A
- 3-6 months, babies exposed to parents’ and caregivers’ facial expressions 32,000 times
- infants learn to recognize some emotions
- recognize positive emotions more often and earlier than negative
- functionalist perspective: positive emotion rewarding, strengthens infant-caregiver bond & negative emotions call on coping abilities infant does not have
- learning perspective: early experience affects children’s abilities to recognize emotions; most recognize mother’s emotional expression earlier; quality of parent-child interactions matters, abused or neglected poorer at emotional recognition (more sensitive at detecting negative faces if exposed to abuse)
35
Q
Development of emotion recognition
A
- most children recognize and correctly label happiness, sadness, anger and fear by 3-4
- children from diff cultures follow similar developmental timetable
- school-age children increase their understanding that diff events elicit diff emotions and that enduring patterns of personality affect individuals’ emotional reactions
36
Q
Emotion regulation
A
- managing, monitoring, evaluating and modifying of emotional rxns to reduce intensity and duration of emotional arousal; makes children feel better
- increases likelihood other ppl will respond positively
- changes in regulatory abilities associated with maturation of prefrontal cortex
- infants sooth by putting thumb in mouth
- young infants: turn away, self-distract to regulate
- elementary school: cognitive and behavioral coping strategies
37
Q
Display rules
A
implicit understanding in culture of how and when emotion should be expressed
- children acquire knowledge before they are regulators of their own displays
- young preschoolers exaggerate or minimize emotional displays
- age 8-10 can display emotion other than one experienced or felt
38
Q
individual differences in emotion regulation
A
biological advantages - temperament
- children who are temperamentally reactive and poor at controlling attention are poor emotion regulators
- emotion regulation abilities predict children’s later adjustement -> associated w less aggressive and disruptive behavior, social competence and peer acceptance
39
Q
Socialization by parents
A
Children learn about emotion expression and regulation by observing/interacting w parents
- correlation bw parent and child expressiveness
- when parents scold/punish for expressing emotion, esp negative, children have difficulty regulating emotions
- reminiscing helps
- children whose mothers discuss feelings more able to recognize others’ emotions
- mothers who are good at regulating their own emotions offer more lessons and display a better balance bw positive and negative emotions
40
Q
Socialization by other children
A
- peer reactions teach children consequences of expressing neg and pos emotions
- peers can help children improve emotional understanding and knowledge
- engaging in pretend play with siblings and friends helps children understand other people’s feelings
41
Q
socialization by teachers
A
- toddlers; teachers use physical comfort and distraction to help regulate their neg emotions
- preschoolers, teachers use verbal mediation and explanations that help children understand the causes of and ways of expressing their neg emotions
- emotional learning is as important as academic learning for school readiness
42
Q
When emotional development goes wrong
A
excessive anger -> aggression and violence
excessive fear -> considerable discomfort
43
Q
childhood depression
A
- most common emotional problem
- mood disorder: despondent mood, loss of interest, irritability and crankiness, difficulty concentrating/focusing
- diagnosis: child seemed depressed/lost interest for at least 2 weeks; dominant mood may be irritability and crankiness rather than sadness/dejection ; somatic complaints (headache, stomach), ability to think, concentrate
- 2x as often as girls than boys
2% in frequency
difficult to diagnose
increase in diagnosis in adolescence
44
Q
Causes of childhood depression
A
- biological: clinically depressed parents, more likely, identical twins association is stronger; depression and brain functions: greater R activity even at baseline and during remission; difficult to tease apart genetics vs. family environmental contributions
- social: impaired relationships . w depressed parents, peer influences (rejection), life stressors
- cognitive causes: learned helplessness (belief that one cannot control events), attribution of failures in controlling world to personal shortcomings
