Emotions & Temperament Flashcards
Emotion vs. affect
- an internal, affective response about something in environment
- general positive or negative feeling
2 broad categories of emotion
- primary/basic: joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, interest, surprise
- secondary/self-conscious: requires development of sense of self and other; can be evaluative or non-evaluative
- evaluative: shame, pride, guilt (involves societal standards)
- non-evaluative: embarassment, envy
Discrete emotions theory
- different emotions reflect discrete systems that evolved as universal biological reactions to common challenges
- each emotion has an expression, neural signature, physiological state
- universally experienced and detected
- emerge at particular times in infancy
Emergent theory of emotions
- emotions are the outcome of a process involving changes in body and cognition about what’s happening in environment
- emotions are global early in infancy (e.g. positive/negative affect) then become more, but not completely, discrete
- different people experience different emotions differently (e.g. crying due to sadness, happiness, anger)
2 ways to measure emotion
- behavioral changes: facial expressions, vocalizations, approach/avoidance
- physiological changes: heart rate changes, sweating, brain responses
Emotional expressions vs. display rules
- emotional expressions: observable behavioral responses associated with emotions
- display rules: how and when one should express emotions
- babies/kids notoriously bad at display rules (though some differences observable in infancy)
- display rules vary by culture, gender, and must be learned
When is the first cry-face seen?
from ~20 weeks gestation
Evolution of happiness from 2-5 months
- neonatal smile: due to internal sensations, mainly during REM sleep
- smiling due to external stimuli (3-8 wks): due to touching, high-pitched voice, etc.
- social smile (6-8 wks): typically to familiar people and one-to-one interactions (cross-cultural differences)
- laughing (2-5 mos): during interesting/positive sensations and stimuli (also have cross-cultural differences)
When and how can you elicit anger in infants?
2-4 mos: removing interesting objects/events, arm-holding, preventing them from reaching goals, contingency disruption paradigms (perhaps because requires means-ends reasoning)
- newborns have general distress (e.g. hunger, pain, cold) when under/overstimulated
- peaks between 18-24 mos as infants increasingly want control over environment
- sadness elicited in similar situations, including when caregivers leave/become non-responsive
When do babies first show signs of fear?
- by ~7 mos, same time as when they recognize (and focus on) fear expressions in others
- fear bias: preferentially look to/fail to disengage from fearful faces (ERP brain responses selective to fear)
also when they begin to match vocal and facial emotion!
Stranger vs. separation anxiety
fear
stranger anxiety: fear of strangers
* clearly in place by 7-8 mos, peaks at 8-12 mos, less by age 2
* individual differences (temperament, experience, situation) and cultural differences
separation anxiety: fear of caregiver leaving
* begins ~8 mos, declines by ~15 mos
* cross-cultural universal despite differences in child-rearing practices
- stranger anxiety is greater outside home, if not in parents’ laps, and to males
- little stranger anxiety among Efe people in Congo where group caregiving is common
How do babies experience surprise?
a reaction to the unexpected (~6 mos)
* not same as startle (present from birth)
* relatively infrequent (e.g. not clearly observable in violation of expectation experiments)
How do babies experience disgust?
- distaste for bitter tastes present at birth
- babies generally don’t get disgusted by gross things
- broader disgust emerges aroung age 4
How do babies experience secondary/self-conscious emotions?
begin by ~18-24 mos (require sense of self)
* shame/embarrassment: eyes lowered, head hung, hiding face
* guilt: reparations (positively-oriented compared to shame)
* pride after success (not until age 2)
individual and cross-cultural differences in tendency to experience these emotions (cultures also value them differently!)
Broken toy procedure
self-conscious emotions
trick 24-month-olds into thinking they broke experimenter’s favorite toy; respond with:
* shame (avoid experimenter, deny guilt) or
* guilt (fix toy, admit they broke it)
When do babies begin distinguishing emotions?
different from understanding!
by 3 mos, babies distinguish between clearly different expressions based on habituation (e.g. teeth vs. no teeth)
Social referencing
by 10-12 mos, babies use others’ emotional reactions to appraise a novel situation
- negativity bias: negative signals are more likely to change babies’ behavior
- younger babies need facial and, especially, vocal cues
- more likely to retain messages with age
Emotion regulation
strategies for adjusting our emotional states to a comfortable level of intensity
e.g. attention focusing/shifting, inhibiting thoughts/behaviors, planning
Evidence for self-regulation in babies
but still need parents help!
- young babies fall asleep if overwhelmed
- 4 mos: look away from aversive stimuli
- 4-6 mos: self-soothe via physical sensations (e.g. learn through sleep training)
toddlers generally not well-regulated (e.g. tantrums from communication difficulties) though highly culturally-variable
Co-regulation
parents regulate babies’ emotions because they are unable to do it on their own by slowly increasing stimulation over first months (e.g. skin-to-skin holding, rocking, shushing, feedin)
- touching premature babies in NICU has long-lasting benefits
- US babies who were held/cuddled more had better emotional functioning as adults
Consequence of failure to co-regulate
incorrect development of stress systems (e.g. can develop colic)
Still-face paradigm
- alternatingly, mother interacts normally with baby (2 mins) then adopts a neutral expression
- infants show distress during “still-face” phases (e.g. attempts to get mother back or self-regulate, less attentive)
Effect of depressed mothers on infants
- flat affect, sleep issues, less attentive to surroundings and sad faces (suggests happy faces are novel)
- negative interactions with mom and strangers (attachment issues)
- more right frontal EEG asymmetry (withdrawal) and more cortisol
Effect of anxious mothers on infants
- more wary of strangers over time (if also inhibited)
- less able to disengage from angry faces
Temperament
- stable individual differences in emotional reactivity and regulation
- present from infancy and tied to biology but also influenced by environment
emotional reactivity: quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, regulation
6 dimensions used to measure temperament in babies
NY longitudinal study (Thomas & Chess) vs. Rothbart
- Thomas & Chess: activity level, adaptability, intensity, regularity, approach/withdrawal, mood
- Rothbart: activity level, attention span/persistence, fearful distress, irritable distress, positive affect, effortful control/inhibition
resulted in similar temperament range across cultures (with some proportional differences)
3 types of babies according to temperament
Thomas & Chess
- easy (40%): happy, adaptable, regular routines, not under/over-sensitive
- slow to warm up (15%): negative, unadaptable, low activity and intensity, withdrawn
- difficult (10%): unhappy, unadaptable, irregular, intense reactions
Predicts functioning as adults: shyness in slow to warm up infants and high risk for adjustment problems in difficult infants
Inhibited infants
Kagan, Fox, et al.
15% of 4-month-olds
* inherit a physiology that predisposes them to fear
* overstimulated/upset by novelty
* helped by warm, supportive parenting (without overprotection)
e.g. “fostering” rhesus studies: reactive babies with laid-back parents became less fearful
Predictions for inhibited infants
Kagan, Fox, et al.
- predispositions only retained 20-30% of time
- tend to become shy with peer difficulties and 4-6x more likely to develop anxiety (a cascade!)
compared to uninhibited infants who tend to become sociable
Physiological symptoms of inhibited infants
in response to novelty,
* greater amygdala reactivity
* higher heart rates
* higher cortisol
* greater pupil dilation
* higher blood pressure
* greater cooling of fingertips
Baseline EEG activity to a neutral stimulus
inhibited vs. uninhibited infants
- inhibited infants show greater activity on the right (right frontal asymmetry), associated with negative stimuli
- uninhibited infants show greater activity on the left (left frontal asymmetry), associated with positive stimuli
How stable is an infant’s temperament?
not very stable
* increase in attentional control with age (e.g. BI babies may learn to self-regulate by focusing on other stimuli)
* develop personality (temperament + environment), where environmental influences (e.g. parenting, culture) can either promote stability or change
* stability is greater later in life
Goodness of fit
despite different temperaments, most children can flourish if placed in the right environment (and can suffer in wrong one), so must alter environment to best suit each child
e.g. children that inherit “difficult” genes from parents may induce harsher parenting
Temperament of East Asian infants
compared to North American/European infants
calmer but more wary of strangers
* less active, irritable, vocal, and emotionally expressive
* more easily soothed by self and others
* more fearful
likely due to focus on gentle soothing of infants and close family ties vs. active stimulation and independence
Which temperament is valued in East vs. West?
West
* inhibited is bad, independence/boldness is good
* shyness associated with negative outcomes and decreases over time
vs. East (opposite!)
differences diminishing over time as Western ideals take over (e.g. shyness now more associated with negative outcomes in China)
How does self-concept develop?
sense of oneself as a physical body, separate from others
* observations that some parts of the world always stick with you as you go (e.g. self vs. attachment figure)
* experiencing your effect on the environment
Evolution of self-concept
- 2-4 mos: learn contingency with environment and display positive/negative emotion (e.g. mobile task)
- 8 mos: show separation anxiety
- 1 yr: joint attention and directing others’ attention
- 2 yrs: recognize self in photographs and show self-conscious emotions
- mobile task: show anger when contingency (e.g. ability to control mobile) is removed
- young infants prefer those who imitate (interact contingently) them but distinguish those inividuals from themselves
