Emotions & Temperament Flashcards
(37 cards)
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
