Emotional Expression Development

Question 1

What is differential emotions theory?

Answer 1

Theories and views compiled into a theory by Izzard

Question 2

What are the key assumptions of differential emotions theory?

Answer 2

10 fundamental emotions which are the principle motivational systems in humans. Each fundamental emotion has particular organising/motivating functions and unique experiential properties. Fundamental emotions lead to different inner experiences and have different effects on cognition and action. Emotional processes interact and influence homeostatic, drive, perceptual and motor processes. In turn, these processes influence emotions

Question 3

Where does differential emotions theory draw ideas from?

Answer 3

There is an evolutionary focus linked to neural substrate

Question 4

How do emotions emerge?

Answer 4

Pre-adapted according to a predictable time-table. Interest and joy from birth. Sadness and anger from 2-4 months. Fear from 7-9 months

Question 5

Which emotions develop after infancy?

Answer 5

Some emotions are dependent upon a sense of self (a higher cognitive function) which infants lack, eg shame, guilt and contempt

Question 6

Are MAX coded infant facial expressions understood by mothers?

Answer 6

Looked at sad, anger and physical distress. Found that mothers actions were appropriate to the coded emotion (Huebner and Izard 1988)

Question 7

Does a facial expression mean the infant is feeling an emotion?

Answer 7

Often poor relationship between situation and expression, eg fear is rarely shown to strangers, surprise is rarely shown to violation of object permanence, sadness/anger/pain expressions are undifferentiated

Question 8

Are infant facial expressions universal?

Answer 8

Variation between infants from different cultures in facial expressions used and in behaviour

Question 9

What emotions are focused on in the updated differential emotion theory?

Answer 9

Now only 6 discrete emotions: interest, joy (or happiness), sadness, anger, disgust, fear

Question 10

What type of approach does the updated differential emotion theory take?

Answer 10

Socio-cultural approach. Focus on the role for emotional schemas

Question 11

What are emotional schemas?

Answer 11

After early development, emotion schemas are the most prominent source of human motivation. With maturation and learning, emotional schema take over. Emotion socialisation, cognitive development and social learning allow complex emotion blends. There is an emotion eliciting stim ulus, which triggers an emotional schema, and then an emotion

Question 12

According to the updated differential emotions theory, what is the process of emotions in infancy?

Answer 12

The direct route is prominent in infancy where an emotion eliciting stimulus leads straight to the emotion. This is hardwired and leads to typically brief and intense emotions

Question 13

What is the functionalist model of emotion?

Answer 13

Core affect. Basic emotional knowledge, which is hardwired at birth, and shared with other mammalian species. Conceptual-act model: discrete emotions may emerge from core affect

Question 14

What is the dynamic systems approach?

Answer 14

Camras and Witherington 2005 review. Emotions emerge as results of a self organising system. Development is therefore constant, fluid, emergent or non-linear, and multi-determined. Similarity to connectionist ideas

Question 15

How do infant brains develop physically?

Answer 15

Rapid head growth after birth accompanying a rise in brain volume. Knickmeyer et al 2008

Question 16

What type of studies can be used to look at face recognition?

Answer 16

Benton face matching task. The Thatcher illusion (affects identity recognition and emotion recognition)

Question 17

How does the face inversion effect support configural processing?

Answer 17

Inversion disrupts the processing of faces to a far greater extent than it disrupts the processing of other objects. The effect is thought to be due to the difficulty of processing the spatial relationship between features when face is inverted. Similar effects for recognition of identity and expression suggest similar/same underlying processing

Question 18

Does configural or featural processing develop first according to infant studies?

Answer 18

Newborn infant vision is poor and cannot resolve individual features, therefore configural processing is used first

Question 19

How does coding develop in infants?

Answer 19

Little development in featural condition (Jane task) but steep development in spacing condition. Development seems to involve better processing configuration

Question 20

Is there a crucial period for configural coding?

Answer 20

Patients born with cataracts which were not removed until after infancy, then assessed on Jane test, found deficit in configural but not featural processing when tested as adults. Support for notion of critical period for configural processing development

Question 21

What is the argument that featural processing is used first?

Answer 21

Young children are poorer at configural vs featural processing than adults, therefore featural used first, but this does not really inform about infant face processing

Question 22

How does face processing develop?

Answer 22

4 days old can recognise mother from stranger (preferential looking). Older infants seem to lose this (Johnson et al 1991). Different face recognition mechanisms which might map onto Johnson’s notion of CONSPEC and CONLERN

Question 23

What is CONSPEC?

Answer 23

Used from birth and then usage declines

Question 24

What is CONLERN?

Answer 24

Present from birth and used in adulthood

Question 25

How does the specificity of infant face processing develop?

Answer 25

6 month infants express novelty preference for monkey faces. This preference is lost by 9 months. Notion that face recognition system becomes tuned into recognising human faces

Question 26

How is plasticity of language demonstrated in infants?

Answer 26

Exposure to spoken Chinese in real social interaction situation during first year of life, maintains ability to discriminate sounds from this language by American infants at 12 months old (Kuhl et al 2003), but the same amount of exposure via TV is not helpful

Question 27

How is the notion of perceptual narrowing demonstrated in infants?

Answer 27

Evidence for onset of own-race bias between 6 and 9 months old. Similar effect in sample of Chinese infants (Kelly et al 2009). Results of faces seen within visual environment. Possible precursor of the own-race bias

Question 28

What type of studies examine whether infants recognise facial expressions?

Answer 28

Visual cliff experiments. Work on social referencing (Sorce et al 1985)

Question 29

What is the involvement of subcortical structures in the development of emotional expression?

Answer 29

Since Johnston, subcortical structures SC and Pulvinar have been influential ideas. Suggested that these structures may be involved in fast and early detection of threat. Subcortical influenced models of emotion development emphasise threat related expressions

Question 30

What two mechanisms are discussed by Lleppanen and Nelson 2009?

Answer 30

Experience expectant and experience dependent mechanisms

Question 31

What is an experience expectant mechanism?

Answer 31

Evolved neural mechanisms and plasticity which expect certain inputs at certain stages of life

Question 32

What is an experience dependant mechanism?

Answer 32

Evolved mechanism for which experience is vital for system to work

Question 33

What did Montague and Walker-Andrews 2002 find in relation to infant recognition of expression?

Answer 33

3.5 month infants. Recorded facial and vocal expressions of mothers. Found infants recognised concordance between maternal vocal and facial expressions, but not fathers or unfamiliar adults expressions

Question 34

What is categorical perception in infants?

Answer 34

Demonstrate categorical perception of facial expressions from birth but mixed evidence before 5-7 months. After that perception seems robust to changes in identity of faces posing expressions (Lleppanen and Nelson 2006). Categorical perception is not necessarily informative about meaning and other objects can show categorical perception in infancy

Question 35

What are possible causes of categorical perception?

Answer 35

Linguistic categories. Peaks in numbers of neurons activated

Question 36

What is an example of infants showing categorical perception?

Answer 36

Infants preferentially look towards fearful rather than happy faces (Nelson et al 1979)

Question 37

Why are certain facial expressions of emotion universally recognised?

Answer 37

Evidence that these expressions belong to separate categorise, which may be a product of linguistics, neuronal activation patterns, or low level stimulus qualities. Categorical perception in infants suggest categories may be pre-linguistic

Question 38

How does attention relate to facial expressions?

Answer 38

Some expressions may demand more attention than others. Enhanced attention to facial threat emerges between 5-7 months (Peltola et al). Possibly due to attention being drawn by the eyes (although research by Peltola et al 2009 found it was not simply due to the eyes)

Question 39

When does infantile brain activity distinguish between facial expressions?

Answer 39

Di Lorenzo et al 2019. Functional NIRS to measure changes in blood oxygenation. 5 month olds faces vs houses and happy vs fear. Found a response to faces in right occipital region, but this did not distinguish between facial expressions

Question 40

How do infants respond to fear in other races?

Answer 40

Safar et al 2017. Study manipulated the tendency to look longer at fearful than happy faces in 6 and 9 month infants. 6 months showed larger fear preference for own vs other race, which was not present at 9 months. Preference for fear in other race faces at 6 months but significant preferences in all other conditions

Question 41

Do infants learn about emotion from their parents?

Answer 41

Altar et al 2018. Assessed mother and father negative emotions, and pupil dilation to different expressions. Infants of mothers with high levels of negative emotion showed less arousal to emotional facial expressions. Link between fathers’ negative emotions and infants’ fixations by infant negative temperament

Question 42

What is infantile facial expression processing like?

Answer 42

Initial lack of generalisability of facial expression processing. About 6-7 months generalisability but still limited by race. Evidence from caregivers. Tendency to focus on fearful faces

Question 43

How do older children label facial expressions?

Answer 43

Kellogg and Eagleston 1931. Different emotions seem to appear at different periods of development. Possibly the emotion labels are not known/used

Question 44

How foes facial recognition develop in childhood?

Answer 44

Disagreement about pattern, but facial expression image matching is improved between ages 6 and 8, remains static until around 13, and by 14 it has improved to adult levels (Kolb et al 1992). Other research shows adult levels at 10 *Goddelin and Pelissier 1996. Others show accuracy improves between 4 and 19 (Montirosso et al 2010)

Question 45

Does genetics influence emotional expression?

Answer 45

Lau et al 2009. Compared expression recognition in mono/dizygotic twins. Variation in overall expression recognition ability predominantly linked to genetic factors. Variability in ability between expressions seem to be related to individual factors

Question 46

Do social factors influence development of facial expression recognition?

Answer 46

Neglected children show poor emotional expression recognition and have lack of opportunity to learn about others’ facial expressions. Physically abused children are socialised differently and tend to see facial expressions as angrier

Question 47

What are the effects of institutionalisation on facial expression recognition?

Answer 47

Bick et al 2017. Children assessed at 12 years old. Effects of being randomly allocated to foster care at 5-31 months. Institutionalised children generally were poorer at identifying low levels of fear, and had higher thresholds generally to detect emotional ecpressions

Question 48

Are the gender differences in the development of recognition of expressions?

Answer 48

Overall very small tendency for female children to be better than male children from infancy onwards (McClure 2000). Effect size increases in teens to early adulthood but is still tiny at around 1.31% age 18-30 (Thompson and Voyer 2014)

Question 49

Do children recognise facial expressions of familiar people better?

Answer 49

Herba et al 2008. Children 4-14 were poorer at recognising facial expressions in familiar than unfamiliar, though there were experimental issues. Difficulty in matching familiar and unfamiliar expressions and a possibly ambiguous task