Emotional Development Flashcards
What is an emotion?
General agreement is that an emotion is a combination of a personals physiological activity, phenomenology (experience of emotion), cognition (memories/thoughts) and triggering of behaviour. Some are physiological activity is enough to explain emotion. When think of emotions in young children important to consider what age they begin thinking: some suggests infants as young as 2 months build mental representations (this is difficult to verify).
What is the origin of our emotional life?
Number of different perspectives:
1. Discrete (differential) emotion theory: come into the world with the ability to experience discrete emotions. Suggests should be able to see evidence of emotional expression in young infants.
2. Functionalist theory
3. Dynamic systems theory
Both suggests that infants emotional capacities are not advanced when they come into the world: they develop over time.
How are emotions relational phenomena?
We experience emotion in relation to something: the context often tends to be other people, but can also be related to other things or memory. Therefore cannot think of emotional development without thinking of social development.
What did Darwin suggest about emotion?
Darwin suggested that infants emotional capacities are not dependent on learning: most are innately there, and have an innate ability to recognise emotions in other people, allowing them to feel those emotions themselves. Seen in Gancrow et al. - babies given taste stimuli hours after birth: neutral, sweet or bitters. Blind observers could identify which expression suggested which emotion (pleasure or displeasure). Followed up by Izard (1980) - infants capacity to express emotion. 1-9 month old. Filmed babies in various activities, showed to two groups (judges trained in microanalytic coding systems, untrained participants). Both groups were able to identify facial expressions of emotional states,
What are objections for saying that babies show emotional expressions?
Some suggest that facial expressions of young infants just happen to resemble adult facial expressions. By chance happen to pick up expressions that to some may portray emotions.
What is evidence for meaningfully tied emotions in young infants?
Messinger & Fogel - social smile emerges after 6 weeks. Different situations elicit different types of smile: the more aroused the infant is, the more vivid their expression will be.
Jones et al - invited young infants & their mothers to play lab. When mother is looking at infant, the infant is much more likely to smile.
Hiatt et al - games elicit expressions of happiness - these facial movements much less common during experiences of fear/surprise.
Stenberg et al - 7-month old infants expressed anger when a teething biscuit is suddenly withdrawn.
Ekman - babies born blind express emotions using the same muscle movements.
What is evidence for infants sensitivity to emotional stimuli?
Graham, Fisher & Pfeifer - suggested babies process emotional information while they sleep. Hippocampus & limbic system were activated (because they were distressed).
Johnson et al - take newborns, show them a board with a face, one with features of a face but scrambled features, one that has no features. Interested in eye gaze and rotation of head. Mean degree of rotation was higher when seeing a face.
Bushnell - little exposure is required for newborn infants to develop preferences for their mother’s face to that of a stranger.
What is social referencing?
Strong test of the infant’s understanding of emotion. Adult expresses an emotional stance toward an object or event but does not communicate directly with the infant - if the baby can interpret the stance correctly, this should influence its reaction to the object.
What studies support social referencing?
Source et al - 12-month old infants use social referencing to guide behaviours. Infants seek out & use facial expressions to disambiguate situations. Few infants reference mother in absence of depth.
What is the human nest?
Soothing perinatal experiences (no separation from mother), breastfeeding on request for 2-5 years, affectionate touch, responsivity, free play, social embeddedness. Goes back to how ancestors raised children. Not only have parents, but are also raised by those around them. Brings out secure attachment.
What is evidence to support the human nest?
‘Human nest’ practices in infancy predict children’s socio-emotional and cognitive competency over next 3 years (Narvaez et al). Human nest predicts emotional adjustment later on in life.
What is self-awareness?
Capacity to reflect on the self: hypothesised to come out by 24 months (Rochat), lays the basis for self-conscious emotions (Lewis et al): embarrassment but not wariness is associated with self-recognition ability.
