Emotional Development Flashcards
What is emotional Awareness
- Being aware of one’s own emotions
- Reacting to the emotions of others (this can be done implicitly)
- Being sensitive to the effects of one’s own emotions or behaviour on others
- Adhering to social conventions of emotional expression
- Regulating our own emotions
- Coping with negative emotions
Why is it important
Appropriate emotional expression, emotional understanding, and empathy essential for effective social and communication
Case of autism
emotion recognition difficulties lead to difficulties with social functioning and relationship formation
Case of alexithymia
difficulties in effectively describing one’s own internal emotional experience associated with difficulties in empathy
Expression of emotions in Infancy
•Basic/primary emotions (Darwin,
1872) – happiness, anger, disgust,
sadness, fear and disgust)
•General agreement that positive
emotions are expressed in response
to positive events from a young age (e.g. Izard, 1992)
•Less agreement as to whether negative emotional expressions match underlying states
Early reactions to the emotions of others
Meltzoff and Moore 1977
Infants as young as 12 days old copy facial expressions
Early reactions to the emotions of others
Caron et al, 1986
Infants can discriminate between the emotional expression of others-habituation paradigm
Early reactions to the emotions of others
Haviland & Lelwicka (1987)
10 week olds respond with happy/angry expressions when their mother is happy/angry
Social referencing
Gibson and Walk 1960
Evidence for innate expression and understanding of emotions early in development
–Infants imitate facial expressions
–Infants show appropriate facial expressions in response to situations
–Infants more likely to cross ‘visual cliff’ in response to smiling than scared caregiver
Appropriate expression and understanding of others’ emotions important for
Communication
Smith 2006; Baron-Cohen et al. 2013
Empathy
●Affective empathy – ability to react implicitly to others emotions
●Cognitive empathy – ability to understand others emotions and where they occur
●Autism – lack cognitive empathy
●Psychopathy – lack affective empathy
Affective empathy
ability to react implicitly to others emotions
●Cognitive empathy
ability to understand others emotions and where they occur
Autism
lack cognitive empathy
●Psychopathy
lack affective empathy
Dunn (1988);
Empathy
●Toddlers attempt to comfort siblings in distress
●Deliberate teasing and hurting
●Suggest basic understanding of their ability to affect the emotional states of others
Acquiring emotional knowledge
Basic understanding of emotions acquired in the
1st 2 years then has to become mentalistic
Wellman, 1990
Acquiring emotional knowledge
One of the first concepts to be integrated into a child’s Theory of Mind
Talking about emotions
Smiley & Huttenlocher, 1989
At about 2 years
Smiley & Huttenlocher, 1989
Conversations about emotions result in
quick accumulation of knowledge (link to language and learning)
Dunn, 1991
Talking about emotions
By age 3 children ask questions about mental states and emotions
Not until much later (6ish) do children fully appreciate the link between
emotions and internal states (they relate emotions to external events)
Understanding the relationship between situation and emotion
Harris, 1987
5 year olds have a basic understanding of the relationship between situations and emotions - but only basic ones (those obviously related to facial expressions
Understanding the relationship between situation and emotion
Graham, 1988
An understanding of less physically obvious emotions is dependant on conversation
So, those that are talked about more are understood earlier
Acknowledging mixed feelings includes
Certain situations result in emotional ambivalence
Acknowledging mixed feelings
Harter (1983) - Asked children
(6,8,10)
if it would be possible to experience two emotions simultaneously and describe example situations
•6 Years – Only those in which one emotion followed another
•8 years – Situations that would give rise to two emotions of the same valence (e.g. sadness and anger)
•10 years – Acknowledge the possibility of feeling two opposing emotions
Acknowledging mixed feelings
Meerum Terwogt et al (1986)
Reversed demands of procedure (explain emotional reactions) – same results
Why?
Early ToM construction is based on simple perceptions of cause and effect relationships between events and emotional reactions
Conflicting emotion cues
Gnepp, J. (1983)
•When presented with conflicting emotional and situational cues, young pre-schoolers base judgements on facial expression alone
–They are unaware of the conflict
•Bias decreased with age
Display rules
•Children subsequently
become aware of display
rules
•Display rules refer to when we need to put on a socially desirable response and suppress an undesirable response
•Needs emotion understanding, empathy
•BUT also emotional regulation, inhibition
–Executive function
Unwanted gift paradigm
Kiera’s et al (2005)
•Children 3-5 years asked to rate different toys
–1st given their favourite toy
–2nd given their least favourite
–Emotional responses video taped and rated
•Measures of effortful control
Slowing down motor response
Display rules
•Children 4-6 years •Inhibition of prepotent response: –Only copy when I say “Simon says” –Don’t touch the “magic robot” until I get back! –Don’t peak while I’m wrapping your well done present! •Emotion regulation: –The well done present is …. –Don’t tell anyone the gold-fish Can talk!
Display rules
Carlson, S. M., & Wang, T. S. (2007)
- Emotion regulation and inhibitory control related
- Even after controlling for age and verbal ability
•Executive control of attention, action, and emotion are skills that develop in concert in the preschool period
Recap – ToM and EF
- Theory of Mind refers to ability to understand others emotional and mental states, and use these to predict behaviour
- Inhibitory control shown to be important for passing Theory of Mind tasks
- Also important for emotion regulation and social skills
Coping with negative emotions
Lazarus & Folkman (1984)
To do this effectively we need to develop strategies
What is strategy use dependant on?
2 types of coping behaviours;
•Problem-focused – aim to remove the actual problem
•Emotion-focused- aim to cope with the resultant emotion
Lazarus & Folkman (1984) -2 types of coping behaviours;
- Problem-focused – aim to remove the actual problem
* Emotion-focused- aim to cope with the resultant emotion
Problem-focused
aim to remove the actual problem