Emotion and Emotional Development Flashcards
Defenition
-
Emotion: an evolutionarily adapted set of physiological, neural, cognitive reactions, triggered by the detection of a personally significant event
–Functional: Avoid threat and approach benefits -
Emotional Regulation: processes that change the occurrence, valence, intensity, duration, and timing of emotional reactions
–Processes within self, actions from caregivers -
Temperament: biologically based individual differences in emotional, attentional, and motor reactions & their regulation
– Are other individual differences, & environment can modulate - All deeply interwoven
emotion vs affect
- emotion: an affective response, a general feeling or some change in the enviroment
vs
affect(affective response): general feeling of positive or negative
we have affects early on but emotions come with development
Milestones
- Social Smile 6-7 weeks : smile at faces(any faces) - no real reason
- Fear of Strangers 5-8 months
- Separation Distress 7-14 months
- Social Referencing 9-10 months on
Theories on the Nature and
Emergence of Emotion
- Discrete Emotions Theory
- The Functionalist Approach
- Text suggests: Emergent Theory
Discrete Emotions Theory
– Emotions are innate and are discrete(one vs the other)
from one another from very early in
life.
ex : crying means sedness no other emotions invoveld
- some of the emotions come with maturation/appear later
– Each emotion is packaged with a
specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions.
The Functionalist Approach
- Emphasizes the role of the
environment in emotional
development - Proposes that the basic
function of emotions is to
promote action toward
achieving a goal - Maintains that emotions are
not discrete from one
another and vary somewhat
based on the social
environment
ex: crying means sadness and/or anger and/or fear (one can come after the other or at the same time) - same for emergent thory
Emergent Theory more like a
Functionalist Approach
- Emotions are the outcome of a
process that happens when
someone encounters changes in the
environment
focused more how these emotions development based in the enviroment vs functionalist talk about emotions to achive a goal
Different ways to measure
emotions
- Ask people how they feel – not w/infants!
-
Measure behavioral responses
– Approach/Avoidance
– Facial Expressions -
Measure physiological responses
– Brain changes (EEG)
– Heart rate
– Sweating
Research Tools
- To make their interpretations of infants’ emotions objective, researchers have devised highly elaborate systems for coding and classifying the emotional meaning of infants’ facial expressions.
- Code facial cues and analyze the combination in which these cues are present (e.g. Baby FACS; ; AFFEX).
– Nonetheless, it is often hard to determine exactly which
emotions infants are experiencing.
– It is particularly difficult to differentiate among the various
negative emotions that young infants express.
Goal connected with the
emotion
Happiness
Social Smile Around 6-9 weeks
Laughter about a month later
- children who lived in a culture where independence and autonomy is stressed (germany) tended to smile more then in cultures that were interdependent ( camerron). mothers in germany smile more to their children and their children also smile more.
neonate smile
hours after birth or sleeping
Anger
4-6 months
Negative affect when
goal is blocked
the ability to understandthe relation between your own body and an inteded goal- for they to feel anger first they need to understand this (thats why it takes a bit longer)
Sadness
4-6 months
Negative affect when
attention, care lost
still face paradigam
child plays with mother (mother being responsive )
later mother stop being responsive and puts a blank expression
the child becomes upsat (cries or frown)
Fear
8-12 months
(some say as early as 6 mos)
Often see it first in negative affect
to a stranger
fear of strangers depend on context (are they at home ? with their mothers? are they adults or other children? are they a man? etc.
But perhaps also to visual cliff
Disgust
text says 3-12 years
The facial expression of
disgust is produced much
earlier – even in the first
months of life – and results
in spitting out the food,
turning away, etc.
Children don’t say things
like “Yuck” until 3-4 years,
so many argue that they
can’t really have that
emotion until then
Surprise
Text doesn’t list it
as a basic emotion
Paul Eckman and
Discrete emotion
theorists do
By 4-6 months
Controversial as
very brief, and often
resolves into a
different emotion
and different
courses of action
Positive Emotions
- Smiling : first clear sign of
happiness
– Young infants smile early, but
initially just to internal states
- Social Smiles - directed
toward people
– first emerge by 6 to 7 weeks
– by 7 mos mostly to familiar
people
- Laughter – by 3-4 mos
- Clowning around – 2nd year
Negative Emotions
- The first negative emotion that
is discernible is distress. - By 2 mos, facial expressions of
anger or sadness can be
differentiated from distress/pain
in some contexts.
– But disagreement as to whether
really differentiated and felt as
distinct emotions at this time
- By 2nd year, differentiating
between anger and other
negative emotions easier!
Fear
first clear signs of fear ~ 6 -8
mos, when unfamiliar people
no longer provide comfort
and pleasure similar to that
provided by familiar people.
- The fear of strangers
intensifies and lasts
until ~ 2 but variable - Other fears also evident
at ~ 7 mos - 12 months - Separation protest: May
start and peak later
-depending of the fear it can increse or decrese (high (increse), noise (decrese)
Separation Fear/Anxiety
- Refers to feelings of distress that children, especially infants and toddlers, experience when they are separated, or expect to be separated, from individuals to whom they are attached
- It is a salient and important type of fear and distress that tends to increase from 8 to 13 or 15 months and then begins todecline.
– This pattern is observed across many cultures
Anger
- stay high in boys then girls
- peak 1-2 years of age and it declines with age
Self-Conscious Emotions
– Shame
– Embarrassment
– Guilt
– Envy
– Pride
- Emerge middle of second year
- Need sense of self & social conventions
- Need adult instruction about when to
feel them - rouge test (below 18 months they dont pass), is not universal
Perceiving & Understanding
Emotions of Others
-
Emotional Contagion
– Early infancy - one baby starts crying the other start crying
-
Recognize Other’s
Facial Expressions
– 7–10 months
– Match emotion in face &
voice, 8-10 months -
Social Referencing
-10months
-when babies dont know how to act, what to say, what to fear so they use face expressions in others for a cue of what to do
the factors that influence emotional expression
- role of genetics:
- temperament
-different chomsoms can create different emotional expresssions- less then one chromasome have social axiety/ extra chromasone (down syndrom) tend to smile more - the role of parenting
- parents behaviours with children impact said children
- if they are withdrawled
- if its a boy or a girl(they tend to be more expressive with girls)
- -if theire are other care givers
- if they live in a independent socity they show more emotions then interdepenent socity (showing emotions can be disruptive to others)
discrimination of different categories of sterotipcal emotional facial expression
(3-6months)
bias to look at fearful faces
7 months
matching faces and voices to steryotical emotion categories
5-7 months
social refercing/using other expressions to influence behaviour
12 month
recognize the emotional expression of others as a cause of consequences of their bhevaiour(their own ?)
18 months
before 12-18 infants can distisgsh differences between expressions but not what they actually mean
emotional/expressions labeling is acurrate by
2 to 3 years old
Emotional Self-Regulation
- Young infants rely on
caregivers to soothe
them. - Self-regulation grows
over fist year, with brain
development. - Caregivers contribute to
child’s self- regulation
style
Emotional Regulation
- Yes, caregivers play a big role
- But builds on joint attention
- Growing language skills
- Reading emotional expressions
- Displaying emotional expressions
individual Differences in
Emotion and its Regulation
These individual
differences
related to
temperament
Parent-infant interaction: When parent scaffolding stops
Temperament
- The constitutionally based
individual differences in
emotional, motor, and
attentional reactivity and self-
regulation that demonstrate
consistency across situations,
as well as relative stability over
time. - Differences in the various
aspects of children’s emotional
reactivity that emerge early in
life are labeled as dimensions of
temperament.
Infant Temperament mesurment:
Between person approach
- Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas conducted pioneering longitudinal research on infant temperament.
- Three categories (based on parents’ reports):
– Easy babies (40%): adjusted readily to new experiences, quickly established routines, and generally were cheerful in mood and easy to calm
– Difficult babies (10%): were slow to adjust to new experiences, likely to react negatively and intensely to stimuli and events, and irregular in their bodily functions
– Slow-to-warm-up babies (15%): were somewhat difficult at first but became easier over time
– The remaining infants did not fit into these categories.
- Some dimensions of temperament showed stability over time and
predicted how children were doing years later.
Infant Temperament
Within-person approach
In contrast to Thomas and Chess’s approach, many contemporary psychologists believe that it is important to:
– Assess positive and negative emotion as separate components
of temperament
– Differentiate among types of negative emotionality
– Assess different types of regulatory capacity
- Recent research suggests that infant temperament is captured by six dimensions:
– Fearful distress, irritable distress, attention span and persistence, activity level, positive affect, and rhythmicity
– It’s the combination of extent to which each is expressed that
determine temperament
Mary Rothbart’s Temperament
Scales
score a child fearful distress,irritability,attetion span,activity level,positive affectivity
from never to always
done by parents , which can lead to biases
lab-tap
like Rothbart’s test is in a scale format but differently then her the test does not use parent report rather child bheviour observation
children across cultures showed the same rangeof temperaments but difference in how much they are shown
Stability of Temperament Over Time
- Children who as infants
showed behavioral inhibition with novel stimuli also showed elevated levels of fear in novel situations at age 2 and elevated levels of social inhibition at age 4 ½. - It is important to note,
however, that some
aspects of temperament
tend to be more stable
than others.
fairly stable
So is temperament stable?
- Yes & no…
– Relatively high correlations across age, from .2 to .6, and actually
gets higher across age
– Neurobiological & Physiological evidence for stability
- Calmer, more positive, lower activity babies, > RH activity to sudden change in stimulus
- More active, negative, higher activity babies, > LH activity to sudden change in stimulus
- Behaviorally Inhibited infants have larger vagal response than Outgoing Infants
– Behavioral evidence for change - Researchers rate higher levels of similar temperament in MZ over DZ twins
– But parental ratings of similiarity in MZ twins not as high… - And, even in MZ twins; if given warmer parenting, fewer emotional problems later
Goodness of Fit Models:
Some children more vulnerable than others
-
Diathesis Stress Model
– Negative input particularly harmful: Positive input not really helpful -
Differential Susceptibility Model
– Negative input harmful: Positive input helpful
– Particularly for vulnerable children
– W. Thomas Boyd (MD): - ”The Orchid & the Dandelion”
- “Orchid” differentially susceptible(short allels)
- Dandelion can thrive anywhere (long alleles)
- Different alleles of the serotonin
transporter gene
reactive temperament
these infants became physically and emotionally stressed upon seening new mobiles (they were presented with different size mobiles)
they would cry and trash their arms with how much excitment they were experincing
these children were more likely to bcame bahvioural inhibited: shy and withdrawl in social situations (when they got to pre school) this also impact some of them alter on in adulthood
children with this temperament later on became social anxious
Determinants of temperament: Biological
- being stable over time
- diferent brain activities in the prefrontal cortext (EEG)
-how they respond to images
Determinants of temperament: attetion
behavioral inhabits tend to pay more attation to negative emotional informationa and later on have anxiety
Determinants of temperament: parenting
goodness of fit
parents of children with inhabit behaviour but are layed back can make the child more layed back
but if the parents are to over protective or push their child to much it can prolong the temperament
children who are layed back can also turn anxious if parent are to overprotective
Does infant temperament predict psychopathology
risk?
Behaviorally inhibited (BI) infants are at
greater risk for later ‘internalizing’
psychopathology, e.g. depression, anxiety
- Yet babies with high negative reactivity at 4 months, are also at greater risk for later social anxiety (internalizing); and at risk for later
‘externalizing’, e.g. high impulsivity and anger - Parenting can play a role: supporting better coping skills
A sense of “self”
Given or only foundations at
birth?
- Foundations argue:
– Comes from both self exploration
– And experience with
others
Built in evidence…
- Neonates: > “rooting” when someone
else strokes their cheek than when their
own fingers do - 3 months: look longer and kick more to a
TV display of their own legs kicking (but
from a discrepant view) than at the legs of
another baby kicking from that view - Shows distinguish own body from other
- And have some knowledge of own body
Mirror Understanding
- 6 months: > looking at a mirror image of
another same-aged infant than of self
(some perceptual recognition) - 18 months and up: classic sign of
recognition of self as constant – and as
being represented by the reflection in the
mirror, using the MSR (mirror self
recognition task) - rouge test
- This is when child begins to articulate
sense of who they are - Fleeting and inconsistent at first
- Initially 3rd person stance
- Even up to age 3, can alternately identify
self in mirror (say, “its ‘own name’ ”) and
then get confused (“but why is she wearing
my shirt?”) (Povinelli, 2001) - Only by age** 4** do they consistently say, its
“me” – 1st person stance
emotion regulation
the ability to respond with a wide viarity of emotions to events in the enviroment in a social acceptable way
the marshmallow esperiment showed that children in the usa are much less able to control/emotion regulate then in other cultures like japan and camaroon
infants cant do by themselves so they nned their caregivers to assist them ( shusshing,rocking,touching them-skin to skin contact) - for them to stop crying
skin to skin contact
childrn who had slin to ski contact had healthier strss response this was seen 10 years later
childrn who are carried by their mother cry less then babies who dont
the terrible 2’s - children a t this age are able to express their emotions but not controll it
What did you learn from your reading…
Does the mirror self recognition (MSR)task
reveal similar findings across cultures?
- Were the findings the same across all the
non-Western cultures? - If not, why not? What does this tell us?
- Can toddlers/young children perhaps show
self recognition in a different way? What is
that?
