Emotional Development Flashcards
emotions
Subjective reactions to the environment that are usually experienced cognitively as either pleasant or unpleasant, generally accompanied by physiological arousal, and often expressed in some visible form of behaviour.
why are parent-child interactions important?
Parent- child interactions in infancy are important not only for a child’s emotional development, but also for the development of language and communication skills
reflex smile
A smile seen in the newborn that is usually
spontaneous and appears to depend on some internal stimulus rather than on something external such as another person’s behaviour.
what is it important that infant s perceive to develop socially?
Being able to perceive
faces is an important skill
for infants and serves an important function in the early development of social interactions.
what is an important factor in the development of ethnic group prejudice from a young age?
Fear of strangers has been proposed as an important factor in the development of ethnic group prejudice from a young age.
social referencing
social referencing The process of ‘reading’ emotional cues in others to help determine how to act in an uncertain situation.
separation protest
An infant's distress reaction to being separated from his or her mother, which typically peaksat about 15 months of age.
emotional display
rules
Rules that dictate
which emotions one may appropriatelydisplayin
particular situations.
emotional script
A complex scheme that enables a child to identify the emotional reaction likely to accompany a particular sort of event.
emotional control and regulation
Being able to control and regulate emotions is
important for the control of
aggression,
EKMAN, SORENSON & FRIESEN (1969)
- Undergraduates in Brazil, Japan and US
- The Fore in Papua New Guinea
- The Sadong in Borneo
- High agreement for the facial expressions of emotion
- Ekman- videos of Fore emotional expressions shown to US students
- Caroll Izard (1969)- similar results with other cultures
DISCRETE EMOTION THEORY (IZARD, 1972)•
- Biologically determined
- Expression and recognition universal
- Each emotion is innately packaged with a specific set of physiological, bodily, and facial reactions
DARWIN ON EMOTIONS
“His nurse pretended to cry, and I saw that his face instantly assumed a melancholy expression, with the corners of the mouth strongly depressed; now this child could rarely have seen any other child crying, and never a grown-up person crying, and I doubt whether at so early an age he could have reasoned on the subject. Therefore it seems to me that an innate feeling must have told him that the pretended crying of his nurse expressed grief; and this through the instinct of sympathy excited grief in him”
Darwin (1872)
Expressing emotion
Recognising emotion
Discerning meaning of emotion
CONTRAST - CONSTRUCTIVIST THEORIES
- Emotions are linked to appraisal processes
- Different emphasis on whether emotions emerge largely as a function of physiological maturation or through learning
some cognitive processing, social experience learning, is required - not innate, constructed through social experiences - different from discrete emotion theory
CHILDREN’S EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- Expressing emotion
- Recognising emotion
- Discerning meaning of emotion
GANCHROW ET AL. (1993)
- 23 infants hours after birth given different formulas
- Neutral, sweet and bitter tastes
- Varied with stimulus intensity; no response to neutral stimuli
- “Blind” observers could identify facial expression - different facial responses to different taste
IZARD ET AL. (1980)
- 5 studies to investigate 1-9 month old infants’ ability to produce identifiable emotion expressions
- Filmed babies in various activities and showed still images of facial expressions to:
- Judges trained in microanalytic coding systems
- Untrained participants
RESULTS (IZARD ET AL., 1980)
Both groups could reliably identify facial expressions of emotional states
Untrained participants’ recognition rates:
joy - 81% sadness - 72% surprise - 69% fear - 52% anger - 41% sadness - 72% interest - 67% contempt - 44% Disgust - 37%
Trained judges achieved higher rates
BUT DO THESE EXPRESSIONS JUST RESEMBLE CERTAIN ADULT FACIAL EXPRESSIONS?
SOCIAL SMILE
- Social smile emerges between 6-12 weeks
- Different situations elicit different types of smiles (Messinger & Fogel, 2007)
intensity varies
AUDIENCE EFFECT (JONES ET AL., 1991)
- Mothers and 10mo infants in lab
- Mother either attentive or non-attentive - 3m away on chair - reading magazine instead vs responding in normal way
- Infant plays with toys
- Infants purposefully look toward mother
- Mother looking – infant smiles
- Mother not looking- no smiles
- Less smiles to toys than to mother
smiles to mother and matching their smiles to environment
blind babies produce these expressions so innate and requires little input in environment
INFANT VISUAL PREFERENCE (JOHNSON ET AL.,1991)
- 24 newborn babies - lay on knee, paddleboard above face - one with face, scrambled face, blank
- Test of preferential looking
- More following for face-like display on picture vs scrambled face or blank face
eyes open rather than closed
eyes looking forwards vs averted
INFANTS’ PREFERENCE FOR CAREGIVER (BUSHNELL, 2001)
- 2-7 hour old infants were observed for 72 hrs
- Mother-stranger discrimination task (visual preference) was carried out at 72 hours old
- Little exposure is required for newborn infants to develop preferences to their mother’s face to that of a stranger
Attachment-enabling
HAVILAND & LELWICA (1987)
- Mothers displayed 3 emotions to 10-week old babies
- Happiness, sadness and anger
- Facial expressions were rated similarly for expressiveness and animation
- Infants discriminated each expression
match, contingent, interest to happiness
anger - cry, matching
crying - mirroring, sucking rate increase
•in other research - Effects carried over to a play period
(Termine & Izard, 1988)
if they were exposed to a sad ace, they play with toys with a sad face
INFANTS’ NEGATIVE EMOTIONS (CAMRAS ET AL., 2007)
- 11-month-old infants from the US, Japan and China
- Situations designed to elicit anger/ frustration and fear
- Facial coding system
- Non-facial body movements differed across situations
- No distinction for facial expressions across emotions
The context caused the parent to project an interpretation
GENERAL DISTRESS
- Prior to 7 months, anger often blended with sadness (Sternberg et al., 1983)
- General state of distress
CHILDREN ACQUIRE EMOTION CATEGORIES GRADUALLY
Widen & Russell (2008): Young children produce only positive, negative and neutral piles (e.g., ‘mad’, ‘sad’ & ‘scared’)
FURTHER EVIDENCE
- Children with language impairment (difficulty naming faces) more likely to confuse emotions (Delaunay-El Allam et al., 2013)
- Dementia patients perform similarly to young children (Lindquist et al., 2014)
- Do infants think? (Kagan, 1972)
SUMMARY SO FAR
- Infants make meaningful expressions and recognitions
- Debate over origin and level of differentiation
- Both theories agree that infants are sensitive to emotional information and that experience shapes emotional development.
EMOTIONAL CONTAGION (WATERS ET AL., 2014)
- Mothers were exposed to negative or positive evaluation during a stressful task
- Mothers’ stressful experiences were contagious to their infants
measure in heart rate, mother’s HR increases, the infant’s increases, too
but positive made no difference
SEPARATION ANXIETY
Seen across cultures (Kagan et al., 1978)•By 4 months, infants wary of unfamiliar objects/ events (look to mother)•By 7-8 months, show distress due to separation
SOCIAL REFERENCING
Strong test of infant’s sensitivity to meaning of emotional information
•Adult expresses an emotional stance toward an object or event but does not communicate directly with the infant
•Can the baby read the stance
SORCE ET AL. (1985)
visual cliff again
•74% of infants crossed when mother expressed joy or interest
•Infants did not cross the deep side when mother displayed fear or anger (0% and 11%)
•Few infants reference mother in absence of depth
•Those who did while mother posed fear crossed anyway
DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL REFERENCING
- ~ 18 months: social referencing involving indirect emotional signals
- Understanding that others’ emotional reactions may differ from their own and use this to guide their actions
broccoli and cracker test - not at 14 months do they offer the preferred broccoli to mother
EXPERIENCE AND DEVELOPMENT
- Emotion socialisation
- Maltreatment and emotion recognition
- Culture and Self-conscious emotions
EMOTION SOCIALISATION
MALTREATMENT AND EMOTION RECOGNITION (POLLAK ET AL., 2009)
Study of abused children, exposed to high levels of anger
•Presented with unfolding facial expressions
•Recognised anger early in the formation of the expression
CULTURE AND EMOTIONS
- Parental practices related to guilt and shame (Tangney & Dearing, 2002): Bad behaviour vs. bad person. - same for positive behaviours meaning you are a good person - wha
- Japanese children less likely to report experiencing pride about personal success than American children (Furukawa et al., 2012).
- More guilt and shame in children of Asian cultures.
SELF-AWARENESS
Mirror and rouge test
A DIFFERENT TEST OF SELF-AWARENESS
“Body as object/obstacle test”
CULTURE AND THE SELF (ROSS ET AL., 2017)
- 15 -18-old-month-olds from rural Zambia and urban Scotland
- Mirror test ( do they recognise themselves - a red dot on forehead?) and body as object test (can they reconginse they can;t push a cart if their bodt that is preventing it from moving as standing on rug standing on it - as they get older they know they need to move their body)
45% urban scottish vs.
15 % rural zambia mirror self recognition
25% urban scottish vs. 50 % rural zambian
SUMMARY
- Infants are sophisticated emotional beings
- Produce and respond to emotional signals
- Serves important functions
- Experience shapes emotional development
