Chapter 6 + Allen: Emotional development and temperament Flashcards
What are 3 stages of emotional development?
- Recognize facial emotional expressions + making them yourself
- Understanding emotions
- Regulate own emotions
Which 6 basic emotions are universal?
Happiness, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, surprise
What is ethology?
Approach that emphasizes evolutionary origins of behaviors that are important for survival
What are two ways of investigating if facial expressions are innate?
- Are they universally understood
- Do new-borns spontaneously produce them
What are complex emotions?
Emotion that consists of 2 or more emotions and they require sophisticated understanding
What is script knowledge with regard to understanding emotions?
Children may not understand the emotion but know how to react to it
What is emotional ambiguity?
Realization that a person’s feelings may not be clear-cut or may be different than yours
What is mind-mindedness and of what is it a good predictor?
Caregiver’s tendency to view child as an individual with a mind
–> predictor of secure attachment
Why is Freud’s theory controversial but also important?
Controversial: unfalsifiable
Important: role of unconsious drive, early experiences have impact later in life
What is the difference between the id, ego and superego?
Id = emotions, impulses, desires
Ego = mediator between id and superego
Superego = conscience
What are the 5 psychosexual stages and when do you pass on to the next stage?
In every stage a conflict has to be resolved to go to the next stage
- Oral stage: sucking, exploring
- Anal stage: potty training
- Phallic stage: oedipus/electra complex, differences boys-girls
- Latency stage: rest of sexual feelings, practice future roles with same sex peers
- Genital stage: start fertile life
What are the Oedipus and Electra complexes?
Oedipus in boys, electra in girls
Child is attracted to opposite sex parent and wishes to exclude the same sex parent
Why was Anna Freud important for developmental psychology?
Founder of psychoanalytic child psychology
What’s the similarity and the difference between Freud’s and Erikson’s theory?
Similar: developmental stages with conflict
Different: Erikson focused on the social conflicts rather than sexual ones
What are Bowlby’s 4 attachment styles?
- Secure: health communication, good regulation emotions
- Anxious: clinginess, fear abandonment
- Avoidant: little emotion expression, withdrawal
- Disorganized: anxious + avoidant, fear of rejection
What is infant attachment and why is it evolutionary relevant?
Universal need for close emotional bond between caregiver and child
–> Innate and universal
How has infant’s understanding of facial expressions been assessed? What were the results?
Habituation-dishabituation technique
- 3 mths: distinguish smiling/frowning
- 4-7 mths: distinguish happiness/surprise
- Neonates also distinguish, doesn’t mean they know the meaning
Can young infants empathize?
They can imitate expressions, but it’s unclear if it shows an understanding of emotion
What is measured with the visual cliff paradigm?
If infant can use caregiver’s facial expression for guiding a potentially dangerous situation
What is social referencing in infants?
Infants look at caregiver for advice when faced with difficult situation and search social cues
What are three tasks for assessing emotion understanding?
- Denham test
- Harris’s false belief emotion task
- Harris’s test of emotion comprehension
What is the Denham test? What were the results?
Puppet did the exact opposite thing of what the children liked/disliked. The child had to predict which emotion the puppet would feel
Results: 2/3 year olds perform well
Which conclusion was derived from results of the Denham test?
Children who thought the puppet was happy more often showed better emotion understanding
–> Emotion understanding can be related to ability to form harmonious relationships with others
What is a false belief emotion task and what were the results?
Like a Sally-Anne task
Age 4: able to represent false beliefs, but can’t predict response
Age 6: able to reason with false beliefs
What is the developmental timeline of emotion comprehension?
<5: understand public aspects of emotions
7y: understand emotion and mental states and a bit of ToM
9-11: one can feel 2 emotions in response to same event, regulating emotions with cognitive strategies, morals relate to emotional responses
What is the relationship between family interaction quality and emotional understanding?
Children could understand false belief and emotion more if mothers focused on mental characteristics when talking
What is the relation between emotion understanding and theory of mind?
Emotion understanding comes before and can help facilitate acquisition of the theory of mind
What is maternal mind-mindedness a good predictor of?
Secure attachment
What are callous-unemotional traits (CU)? What is a high level of CU associated with?
General lack of affect, lack of remorse, disregarding accepted values
High level –> problems in emotion processing and empathy, no difficulty ToM tasks
What is a good intervention for children with callous-unemotional traits?
Training children to recognize/interpret emotions
What is emotion regulation?
Adjusting one’s emotional state to a suitable intensity
What is mutually responsive orientation (MRO)? What is it related to?
Positive affect and shared cooperation between parents and child
Related to a developed sense of conscience and it compensates for children’s temperamental characteristics
How is emotion regulation learned?
Through social cues
What is temperament? How does it develop?
Individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation
Development: emerge early in life and stable over development
What are 4 characteristics of temperament?
- Genetic component
- Stable across time/situations
- Influenced by experience/maturation
- Context dependent
What is the strange situation task (Ainsworth) and what is measured?
Test for attachment styles where mother walks a way for some time after playing together with child
What are 4 types of attachments that can arise from an adult attachment interview about their attachment to their caregivers?
- Autonomous attachment = open, clear valuing relationship
- Dismissing attachment = deny importance of attachment experiences
- Preoccupied attachment = unable to move on from childhood experiences
- Unsolved attachment: not been able to resolve feelings relating to the death of a loved one or a trauma
What are the 5 dimensions of personality?
1 Openness
2 Conscientiousness
3 Extraversion
4 Agreeableness
5 Neuroticism
What does a high or low score mean for openness trait?
High: curious, independent
Low: practical, routine
What does a high or low score mean for conscientiousness trait?
High: hard working, organized
Low: impulsive, careless
What does a high or low score mean for extraversion trait?
High: outgoing, adventurous
Low: quiet, reserved, withdrawn
What does a high or low score mean for agreeableness trait?
High: helpful, empathetic
Low: critical, uncooperative
What does a high or low score mean for neuroticism trait?
High: anxious, unhappy
Low: calm, even-tempered, secure
Which 6 types of temperament are there?
- Unregulated
- Regulated
- High reactivity
- Bold
- Average
- Well-adjusted
What is the unregulated temperament? Which OCEAN traits fit with it and from what treatment do they benefit?
High activity, low inhibition, difficult to deal with
–> Low conscientiousness, high extraversion
Benefit: gentle discipline, positive interactions
What is the regulated temperament? Which OCEAN traits fit with it and from what treatment do they benefit?
Low activity and anger, high inhibition, well behaved, over controlled
–> High conscientiousness, low extraversion
Benefit: try new things
What is the high reactivity temperament? Which OCEAN traits fit with it and from what treatment do they benefit?
Low activity, inhibition and attention, high anger, easily overwhelmed, intense life experience
–> High neuroticism
Benefit: consistent positive interaction
What is the bold temperament? Which OCEAN traits fit with it and from what treatment do they benefit?
High activity, low fear/shyness
–> High extraversion and openness
Benefit: organization and structure
What is the average temperament? Which OCEAN traits fit with it and from what treatment do they benefit?
Easy going, unmotivated, uninterested
–> Average ocean qualities
Benefit: extra attention (fly under the radar) and don’t let them disengage from activities
What is the well-adjusted temperament? Which OCEAN traits fit with it?
Easy going, high inhibition and attention. Get along well at school and home
–> average ocean, high conscientiousness
What was Kagan’s prediction for children with high reactivity temperament?
Great risk of anxiety in adolescence
What is the influence of genetics on temperament?
- Passive: child can’t choose environment
- Evocative: evoke reactions in environment with your temperament
- Active: when older, you shape your own environment
What is differential susceptibility and which two groups are distinguished?
Difference in susceptibility of environmental factors
1. Dandelions
2. Orchids
What is effortful control? What is low effortful control associated with?
The ability to effectively regulate emotion
Low: internalizing and externalizing problems
What is the diasthesis-stress model?
Child may be more vulnerable or resilient to poor parenting due to his or her temperament
This doesn’t make predictions about how this same child would respond to positive parenting
What is the main point of bidirectional/trans-directional models?
Child development is an outcome of reciprocal relations between child temperament and environment
What is the vantage sensitivity model?
General tendency of a child to benefit from wellbeing and good features of parenting
What is the difference between goodness and poorness of fit? What are the consequences of each?
Goodness: optimal match between child’s temperament and expectations of environment –> promotes social competence
Poorness: suboptimal match between temperament and environment –> behavioral problems/poor adjustment
Give 2 reasons why it’s important to do an intervention in childhood
- Many disorders emerge in childhood
- Cost effectiveness for treating now instead of later
What is reactivity of a child?
Responses to internal and external environments
What is the aim of the INSIGHTS intervention program? Which 3 components are there?
Help parents understand type of positive parenting and discipline strategies that are likely to be optimal for the child’s temperament
- Recognize, reframe, respond
- Gaining compliance
- Fostering self-regulation
What are the 3 R’s of INSIGHTS programme?
Recognize: identify
Reframe: understand strenghts/concerns
Respond
What is meant with gaining compliance in INSIGHTS? What are 2 aspects of it?
Identifying and implementing strategies matched to child’s temperament
- Positive parenting: preventing challenging behaviors, strenghtening bond
- Discipline strategies: discourage child from repeating undesirable behavior
What are 2 aspects of fostering self-regulation in INSIGHTS?
- Scaffolding: help child with problem-solving
- Stretching: stretch child’s emotional, attentional, behavioral capabilities
What is BI (behavioral inhibition) and what are (neurological) characteristics of children with high BI?
Heightened motor and emotional reactivity to novelty, timid children, avoidant of new situations
Neuro: hyperexcitable amygdala –> overreact
Which types of parental behaviors are associated with behavioral inhibition?
- Maternal overinvolvement
- Negative parenting
For which children is the cool little kids program designed?
On which aspect does it emphasize?
Children with high behavioral inhibition (BI)
Emphasis on external influences and selective prevention
