Emotional Development

Question 1

What are emotions?

Answer 1

Combination of physiological and cognitive experience

Question 2

What are five factors of emotions?

Answer 2

1. Neural response (e.g. amygdala firing)
2. Physiological response (e.g. heart racing)
3. Objective feeling (e.g. fear)
4. Emotional expression (e.g. eyes wide)
5. Urge for action (e.g. run)

Question 3

What is the discrete emotion Theory?

Answer 3

Idea that biological systems have evolved to allow humans to experience and express a set of innate, basic emotions

Question 4

What are the basic emotions?

Answer 4

Innate emotions are important for survival and largely automatic. Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise.

Question 5

Beyond basic emotions, what are the others made of? Why are they not innate?

Answer 5

Other emotions developed later and are not culturally universal or are not biologically preprogrammed. They are rather combination of basic emotions that vary in intensity

Question 6

What are two pieces of evidence for discrete emotion theory?

Answer 6

1. Basic emotions are universal
2. Basic emotions are present from infancy

Question 7

How do we know what infants feel?

Answer 7

Coding of facial expression to interpret infant’s emotions

Question 8

What are the two general emotional states at birth?

Answer 8

1. Positive/happiness (approach behavior)
2. Negative/distress (withdrawal behavior)

Question 9

What is happiness?

Answer 9

Motivates us to approach situations that increase survival. At birth, smiles are only indicators of biological state (e.g. eating). Starting at 2-3m, children will smile for social reasons and by 5m they start laughing

Question 10

What is anger/distress?

Answer 10

State that helps us defend ourselves against threats and overcome obstacles. By 4m, ability to express anger and at 2y, peak in anger

Question 11

What is fear?

Answer 11

Adaptative response to motivates us to escape from danger. By 7m, infants starts to express fear, from 8-15m, they have a lot of seperation anxiety. From 3-5y, they fear imaginary creatures, but by 7y they begin to fear everyday event

Question 12

At what age does surprise, sadness and disgust start?

Answer 12

by 1 year old

Question 13

What is surprise?

Answer 13

Violation of expectation

Question 14

What is sadness?

Answer 14

Reaction to loss, begins with object permanence

Question 15

What is disgust?

Answer 15

Helps avoid toxins and bacteria, especially in food.

Question 16

What are self-conscious emotions?

Answer 16

Emotions that emerge when a child has sense of self separate from others and understands adults’ expectation.

Question 17

Name 5 self-conscious emotions.

Answer 17

Guilt, shame, pride, empathy and embarrassment

Question 18

What is the difference between guilt and shame?

Answer 18

Guilt is the feeling of regret over one’s behavior and desire to fix it. Shame is a self-focused feeling of failure

Question 19

Children will feel guilt when parents…?

Answer 19

Emphasize the ‘badness’ of the actions (you did a bad thing)

Question 20

Children will feel shame when parents…?

Answer 20

Emphasize the badness of the child (you are bad)

Question 21

Are self-conscious emotions similar across cultures?

Answer 21

No, collectivist cultures feel more guilt and shame, while individualist cultures experience more pride

Question 22

What is emotional recognition like in infancy? What age?

Answer 22

Ability to recognize and identify adults’ emotional faces before being able to identify your own (3m)

Question 23

What study was done on infants and emotional recognition?

Answer 23

Habituation paradigm with 3 month olds who were habituated to pictures of smiling faces then shown pictures on sad and surprise faces. They were able to distinguish between emotions

Question 24

At what age can infants recognize fear and sadness?

Answer 24

7m

Question 25

What is social referencing? What study was done?

Answer 25

Ability to recognize parent’s emotions, which helps decide how to deal with ambiguous situations. Using the visual cliff test, infants were much more likely to cross when parents were smiling than when they were still-faced

Question 26

By 3 years, infants can label…?

Answer 26

Happiness, anger, fear and sadness

Question 27

By 5 years, infants can label…?

Answer 27

Surprise and disgust

Question 28

By 6 to 8 years, infants can label…?

Answer 28

Self-conscious emotions, gets better at it throughout adolescence

Question 29

Did COVID impact emotional recognition?

Answer 29

No, because masks were not worn at home, where emotional recognition is most important and because eyes are also quite expressive

Question 30

By what age can children understand mixed emotions? What study was performed?

Answer 30

By 5 years old, because of improved executive functioning, infants understand we can experience more than 1 emotion at once. When watching Arielle, 5 years old could identify that she was both sad and happy, while 3 years old only said happy

Question 31

By what age do infants start to understand fake emotions? What study was done?

Answer 31

By 5 years old, children understand that a person’s facial expression is not always their real feelings. Story of the girl who lost her doll but didn’t want her friends to find out: 5 years old would say that she is sad, but looks happy. 3 years olds would say she looks sad.

Question 32

What improves children’s understanding of real vs. fake emotions?

Answer 32

Better understanding of display rules, which are the social norms about when and how to display emotions

Question 33

By what age are children good at faking emotions?

Answer 33

By 6 to 8 years old, they understand display rules well enough to fake emotions

Question 34

What study was done on children and fake emotions?

Answer 34

Children were given a bad toy, at 4y, they could not masked disappointment. But by 6y, they faked happiness, and by 8y they had mastered it.

Question 35

What is emotional regulation?

Answer 35

Set of strategies to manage emotional experience, developed in childhood

Question 36

What is co-regulation?

Answer 36

Children before 5m aren’t able to regulate their distress, so parents do so through soothing or distraction.

Question 37

What is self-regulation?

Answer 37

By 5m, infants can engage in (1) self-comforting behaviors (e.g. sucking thumb) or self-distracting behaviors (e.g. play distraction)

Question 38

Which sel-regulation strategy becomes more prominent over time?

Answer 38

Self-distraction is much more effective

Question 39

By 6 to 8 years old, what regulation strategies are used?

Answer 39

Cognitive strategies and problem-solving—looking at situation from a different perspective

Question 40

What are 4 reasons emotion regulation improves?

Answer 40

1. Motor development: greater ability to control body
2. Increased parental expectation: less tolerance for outbursts
3. Cognitive development: improved executive functioning, better attention control and increased language skills
4. Neurological development: development of prefrontal cortex

Question 41

What are the benefits of emotional intelligence?

Answer 41

Better social relationship, decreased loneliness, better academically (better attention and favored by teacher) and better mental health

Question 42

Are teens moodier?

Answer 42

Based on the questionnaire, teens report more frequent high-intensity emotions than adults and they last for shorter period of time = yes, they are more moody

Question 43

What are emotional changes that happen over adolescence?

Answer 43

Based on the questionnaire, teens are happy 70% of the time, but that number decreases over time. Increased in anger, peaking at 15 and increased sadness and anxiety, especially for girls

Question 44

Are teens more risk-takers?

Answer 44

Yes, teens are more impulsive across time and culture which is associated with more accidents/crime, but also more independence and experience

Question 45

Why do teens experience more emotional change (3)?

Answer 45

1. Cognitive change: better abstract thinking leads to new ways to interpret situations
2. Social changes: school becomes harder, strong desire for independence, and more time spent with peers.
3. Neurobiological change: developmental gap between maturation of limbic system/reward center at 15-16y, but underdeveloped prefrontal cortex/impulse control until 25y.