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
