Infancy - Social Emotional development

Question 1

Temperament

Answer 1

innate responses to the social and physical environment; biologically based raw material of personality: indicated by basic differences in emotionality like activity level, fearfulness, positive effect, attention span

Question 2

Thomas and Chess Conceptions of Temperament

Answer 2

• acitivity level: ratio of active: inactive time
• attention span: length of time devoted to an activity before moving on
• intensity of reaction: emotional responsiveness, crying or laughing
• rhythmicity: regularity of physical functions, sleeping/feeding
  distractibility: extent to which new stimulation stops current behavior
• approach/withdrawal: response to new object/person
  adaptability: adjustment to routine changes
• threshold responsiveness: stimulation required to evoke response
  quality of mood: general level of happy vs unhappy

Question 3

Thomas and Chess study

Answer 3

1. Easy babies (40%): moods were generally positive, adapted well to new situations and were generally moderate rather than extreme emotionally
2. difficult babies (10%): didn’t adapt well to new situations, moods were intensely negative more frequently
3. slow to warm up babies (15%): low in activity level, reacted negatively to new situations and had fewer positive/negative emotional extremes

Question 4

goodness-of-fit

Answer 4

children develop best if there is a good fit between the temperament of the child and environmental demands

Question 5

Mary Rothbart

Answer 5

Added dimensions of self-regulation - the ability to manage emotions/reactions

Question 6

Primary emotions

Answer 6

most basic emotions, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness

Question 7

Secondary emotions

Answer 7

sociomoral emotions; emotions that require social and cultural learning, embarrassment, shame, guilt

Question 8

social smile

Answer 8

appears around 2-3 months: expression of happiness when interacting with others

Question 9

Emotional contagion

Answer 9

Neonates who hear another neonate cry start crying too - recognize and respond to cry as distress signal

Question 10

Emotional perception

Answer 10

infants are better at perceiving emotions by hearing than seeing.
2-3 months: can discriminate between happy, sad and angry.
Researchers tested this using the habituation method: showing same pic of same facial expression until no interest and then showed a new emotion where they demonstrated more interest

Question 11

still-face paradigm

Answer 11

parents show no emotions to infants → distress in infants: shows that they learn to expect emotional response from those close to them

Question 12

Social referencing

Answer 12

infants becoming more adept to observing other’s emotional responses to ambiguous/uncertain situations + using info to shape their own emotional responses