Emotional Development Flashcards
What are emotions?
combinations of physiological and cognitive responses to experiences:
- neural response
- physiological factors
- subjective feelings
- emotional expression
- urge to take action
What is the discrete emotions theory?
- neurological and biological systems have evolved to allow humans to experience and express a set of innate, basic emotions
What are basic emotions?
- innate emotions that were important for survival and communication and thus as largely automatic
What are the most popular basic emotions?
- happiness
- fear
- anger
- sadness
- disgust
- surprise
What are emotions other than the basic ones?
- other emotions develop later and/or are not culturally universal
- other emotions are variations in intensity of basic emotions and a combination of basic emotions
What is the evidence for the discrete emotions theory?
- basic emotions are universal across cultures
- basic emotions are present from infancy
How do you know what a babu is feeling?
- 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 emotions
What emotions do infants experience from birth?
- 2 general emotional states
- positive, indicated by approach behaviour
- negative/distress, indicated by crying or withdrawal behaviour
When does happiness emerge?
- birth: smiles are reflexive and evoked by biological states
- 2-3 months: social smiles emerge
- 5 months: first laugh
Why is happiness important?
- adaptive because motivates us to approach situations that are likely to increase chances of survival
When does anger emerge?
- 4 months
When do infants peak in their tendency to react with anger?
- 2 years
- tantrums in terrible twos
- frequency of anger declines after this due to greater ability to express self with language and improved emotion regulation skills
Why is anger important?
- adaptive because helps us defend ourselves against threats and to overcome obstacles to our goals
When does fear emerge?
- 7 months: begin to express fear
- 8 months: fear of strangers and separation anxiety emerge
When does separation anxiety decline?
- 15 months
Why is fear important?
- expressions of fear are adaptive because motivates escape from danger or solicits protection from caregivers
When do surprise, sadness and disgust emerge?
- in the first year
Why is surprise important?
- indicates that the world is working contrary to expectations and is thus important for learning
Why is sadness important?
- 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
Why is disgust important?
- adaptive because helps us avoid potential poisons or bacteria
- first expressions of disgust often directed towards food
What are self conscious emotions?
emotions that emerge once
- a child has a sense of self separate from other people
- an appreciation of what adults expect of them
- guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, empathy
When do self conscious emotions emerge?
- around 2 years
What is guilt?
- feelings of regret about one’s behaviour associated with desire to fix the consequences of that behaviour
What is shame?
- self-focused general feeling of personal failure associated with desire to hide and avoid
Is guilt or shame healthier?
- guilt is healthier than shame
How do parents influence whether a child experiences guilt or shame?
- child is more likely to feel guilt, if parent emphasizes the badness of the action
- child is more likely to feel shame, if parent emphasizes the badness of the child
How does culture influence self conscious emotions?
- culture influences the frequency and type of self conscious emotions that are most likely to be experienced
- individualistic cultures are more likely to experience pride
- collectivistic cultures are more likely to experience guilt and shame
When does emotional recognition in others emerge?
- 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
- 7 month olds can distinguish expressions of fear and sadness
What is social referencing?
- use of parents’ facial expressions and tone of voice to decide how to deal with novel/ambiguous situations
What does the experiment with social referencing and the visual cliff demonstrate?
- parent’s facial expression matters
- children can distinguish between emotional expressions
- children rely on parents’ reactions to figure out how to react to a situation themselves
When can infants label emotions?
- 3 years
- rudimentary ability to identify and label emotions in others and self
- initially describe feeling good vs bad
- ability to label emotions improves over early childhood
When do infants understand mixed emotions?
- 5 years
- understand that people can experience more than one emotions at a time
When do infants understand fake emotions?
- 5 years
- begin to understand that a person’s facial expressions do not necessarily match what they’re really feeling
- understanding false emotions also allows children to fake emotion themselves
What are display rules?
- social norms about when, where, and how much one should show emotions and which emotions are appropriate in a given context
- crucial for successful social interactions
What is emotion regulation?
- set of conscious and unconscious processes used to manage emotional experiences and expressions
- develops gradually during childhood
What is co-regulation?
- parents regulate infant’s distress through soothing or distraction
- necessary because infants cannot regulate their own emotions
When do infants show rudimentary emotion regulation skills?
- 5 months
What are the rudimentary emotion regulation skills?
- self comforting behaviours
- self distraction
What are self comforting behaviours in babies?
- repetitive actions that create a mildly positive sensation
What is self distraction in babies?
- looking away from the upsetting stimulus
Which rudimentary emotion regulation skill to infants rely more on?
- over the course of the first few years of life, children learn to rely more on self distraction
What are more advanced emotion regulation skills?
- cognitive strategies
- problem solving
Why is emotion regulation important?
- children that have good emotion regulation skills have higher well being
- they are more socially skilled and are liked better by their peers and teachers
- do better in school
Why does emotion regulation improve?
- motor development: greater ability to control bodily movements enables self-soothing and distraction in infancy
- increased parental expectation that child should be able to manage their own emotional arousal, children internalize expectation and comply
- cognitive development: improved attention and inhibition enables better emotion regulation skills
Are adolescents more moody?
- 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 more moody than adults
What are the emotional changes in adolescents?
- happiness decreases over adolescence
- sadness and anxiety increase, especially for girls
- anger increases and then decreases towards the end of adolescence
What are the implications of adolescents being more moody and having emotional changes?
- 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
Risk taking in adolescents?
- impulsivity increases during early adolescence, peaks in middle/late adolescence, and then declines in adulthood
- found across cultures and historical time
- risk taking is associated with increased injury, death, and criminal behaviour
- but risk taking is also a good thing; promotes independence by trying new experiences
What are the reasons for emotional changes in adolescense?
- cognitive changes
- social changes
- neurobiological changes
What are the cognitive changes in adolescence?
- due to advances in abstract thinking which allow adolescence to interpret ambiguous events in several ways
What are the social changes in adolescence?
- 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
What are the neurobiological changes in adolescence?
- 2 important brain regions undergo significant changes in adolescence
- limbic system
- prefrontal cortex
What is the limbic system?
- involves in emotional and reward processing
What is the prefrontal cortex?
- involved in executive functions and self-awareness
What are the changes to the limbic system in adolescence?
- 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
What are the changes to the prefrontal cortex in adolescence?
- synaptic pruning and myelination in PFC until mid 20s
- immature PFC associated with difficulties with inhibition, impulse control, and planning
What is the implication in the changing limbic system and PFC?
- emotional changes in adolescents are partially due to the maturational mismatch between the limbic system and prefrontal cortex
What is the influence of family in emotional development?
- family, especially parents, play a huge role in children’s emotional development
- indirect and direct influence on emotional development
What is an indirect influence on emotional development?
- parent’s expression of emotions
What is an direct influence on emotional development?
- parent’s reactions to children’s emotions
How do parents’ expression of emotions influence the child?
- parents’ emotional expression serve as a model of when and how to express emotions
What do children tend to do when they grow up with parents who do not show emotions?
- not express emotions themselves
- learn to see emotions as bad
- have trouble identifying and understanding emotions in self and others
- struggle with regulating intense emotions
What do children tend to do when they grow up with parents that express a high level of positive emotions?
- express more positive emotions themselves
- be well-adjusted
- be socially skilled
What do children tend to do when they grow up with parents that express a high level of negative emotions?
- experience and express more negative emotions themselves
- be less socially competent
- have poorer emotion regulation skills
How do parents’ reactions of emotions influence the child?
- parents’ reactions to their children’s emotions directly influence children’s emotional development
How can parents’ react to children’s emotions?
- mirroring
- emotional coaching
What is mirroring?
- behaviours in which a parent reflects the emotions of their child back to them
- conveyed through verbal and non-verbal cues
- contingent responding to the infant
- quick responsiveness to the child’s behaviour
- characterized by warmth
Why is mirroring important?
- validates and normalizes the child’s emotions
- helps the child identify and understand their emotions
What is the still-face paradigm?
- 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
What is emotional coaching?
- the use of discussion and other forms of instruction to teach children how to cope with, regulate, and appropriately express emotions
What is supportive/sensitive reaction?
- characterized by mirroring and emotional coaching
- is ideal way to react to children’s emotions
Why is supportive/sensitive reaction important?
- validates child’s emotions
- helps the child understand their emotions
- fosters emotional regulation
- associated with higher self-esteem
- fosters social competence
- associated with better performance in school
What are the four ways a parent can react to children’s emotions?
- supportive/ sensitive
- dismissive
- over-validating
- critical
What is the dismissive reaction?
- emotional coaching but no mirroring
What is the over-validating reaction?
- mirroring but no emotional coaching
What is the critical reaction?
- no mirroring or emotional coaching
What are the implication of lack of effective emotional reaction?
- children who grow up with parents that habitually provide little/no mirroring and/or little/no emotional coaching tend to be less socially competent and less emotionally competent
Why do parents react the way they do?
- cultural differences
- generational differences in norms for emotional expression
- family reactions to emotions when parents themselves were children
- parents’ mood and emotions in the moment
What is temperament?
- individual different in emotion, self-regulation, activity level, and attention that are consistent over time and across contexts
- biological basis of personality
- present from infancy
What is the type approach to temperament?
3 types of babies:
- easy babies
- difficult babies
- slow to warm up babies
What are easy babies?
- adjust easily to new situations
- quickly establish daily routines such as sleep and eating
- generally are cheerful in mood and easy to calm
- 40% of babies
What are 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
What are slow to warm up babies?
- somewhat difficult at first but become easier over time as they have repeated contact with new object, people, and situations
- 15% of babies
What is the dimensional approach to temperament?
- dimensional, non categorical approach
- 5 key dimensions of temperament
How are the dimensions of temperament asseses?
- parent and/or teacher responses to questions assessing each dimension
- observing how kids react to lab tasks designed to assess each dimension
What are the 5 dimensions to temperament?
- positivity
- distress (in infancy) / anger (in childhood)
- fear
- attention span
- activity level
What is the positivity dimension?
- positive emotional response, like smiling and laughing, to a change in stimulus
What is the distress/anger dimension?
- negative emotional response related to having an ongoing task interrupted or blocked
What is the fear dimension?
- tendency to experience unease or nervousness to new situations
What is the attention span dimension?
- attention to an object or task for an extended period of time
What is the activity level dimension?
- rate and extent of gross motor body movements
How consistent is temperament?
- temperament is strongly genetically based
- largely consistent and stable over time
- identical twins have more similar temperaments than fraternal twins
- but some change in temperament is also possible, especially the younger the child is, reflects role of caregivers in shaping emotional development
What are the implications of temperament?
- children contribute to their own emotional development through their temperament
- some children are easier to parent than others
What is goodness of fit?
- the degree to which an individual’s temperament is compatible with the demands and expectations of their social environment
What is a good fit?
- match between a child’s temperament and the expectations of the environment
- associated with better social outcomes and higher self esteem
What is a poor fit?
- mismatch between a child’s temperament and the expectations of the environment
- puts the child at risk for social and self esteem difficulties
- can make kid feel like something is wrong with them, that they should be different, feel unlikable
What are the implications of goodness of fit?
- 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
- the goodness of fit between a child’s temperament and parenting is highly influenced by the parent’s own temperament and expectations
How is a good fit created?
parent can foster a good 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
What is the differential susceptibility hypothesis?
- some children are highly sensitive to both negative and positive environmental conditions
- sensitive temperament + negative home environment = negative outcomes
- sensitive temperament + positive home environment = positive outcomes
What is the dandelions and orchids metaphor?
- dandelions are weeds, they are resilient and grow in every condition
- orchids are finicky and picky, they need the perfect environment (more sensitive)
- orchids are only 10-15% of the population
What is the relationship between negative temperament and childcare?
children with more difficult/negative (sensitive) temperaments have:
- more behavioural problems if raised with low quality childcare
- but have the lowest levels of behavioural problems if raised with high quality childcare
What is the relationship between impulsive temperament and parenting?
children with impulsive (sensitive) temperaments have:
- higher levels of alcohol abuse in adolescence if raised in harsh families
- but have the lowest levels of alcohol abuse if raised in positive family environments
What are the implications of differential susceptibility?
- children’s temperaments and the environment they grow up in jointly determine their outcomes
- while all kids benefit most from sensitive parenting, it is particularly important for children that are more temperamentally sensitive to their environment
