Expressing and Understanding Emotion

Question 1

Smiling

Answer 1

First clear sign of happiness that infants express at 3-8 weeks

Question 2

Positive preference for humans (Ellsworth et al., 1993)

Answer 2

Infants smile when human is engaged with infant - socially responsive

Question 3

Negative emotions

Answer 3

Hard to distinguish between different types of negative emotions in babies

Question 4

Fear

Answer 4

First signs of fear at 6-7 months, towards loud noises and sudden movements

Question 5

Longitudinal study of fear development

Answer 5

Steep change in fear at 8 months

Question 6

Separation anxiety

Answer 6

Starts at 8 months and starts to decline at around 15 months

Question 7

Anger

Answer 7

Often mixed with sadness at infancy so is hard to differentiate

Question 8

Longitudinal study of anger development

Answer 8

Moderate anger at 4 months with a steady increase in intensity

Question 9

Self conscious emotions

Answer 9

Includes embarrassment, pride, guilt and shame emerging in 2nd year of life

Question 10

Reasons for developing self-conscious emotions

Answer 10

• Increased sense of self
• External standards of behaviour

Question 11

Guilt

Answer 11

Thinking you have done wrong and feeling remorseful about behaviour (empathy)

Question 12

Shame

Answer 12

Thinking you have done wrong and feeling exposed about it (focus on self)

Question 13

Broken doll study (Barrett et al., 1993)

Answer 13

• 2 year old children left alone in room with doll whose leg falls off
• Children feeling guilt try to repair leg
• Children feeling shame avoid contact with experimenter

Question 14

Individual differences - guilt vs shame

Answer 14

Influenced by parenting strategies

• Guilt emphasises badness of behaviour
• Shame emphasises badness of child

Question 15

Discrimination of emotion

Answer 15

4-6 month olds can discriminate facial displays of happiness, anger, fear and surprise in habituation experiments - but they don’t understand them

Question 16

Social referencing

Answer 16

Understanding others’ emotional reaction to an event guides own behaviour

Question 17

Visual cliff study (Sorce et al., 1985)

Answer 17

Infants more likely to cross when referencing positive emotional signals from parent

Question 18

Social referencing (Moses et al., 2001)

Answer 18

Children move closer to a toy when experimenter made positive noises and vice versa

Question 19

Causality of emotion

Answer 19

• Labelling helps with communicating about own and others’ emotions
• This enables socially appropriate and adaptive responses

Question 20

Memories as causing emotions (Lagattuta et al., 1997)

Answer 20

By age 4-5 children understand that reminders of past events can cause emotion