L5 - Expressing and Understanding Emotion

Question 1

What is the developmentalist view of emotion? (SEND P)

Answer 1

• Neural responses
• Physiological factors e.g heart rate
• Subjective feelings
• Emotional expressions
• Desire to take action e.g escape

Question 2

What are the 6 basic emotions?

Answer 2

• Fear
• Sadness
• Happiness
• Anger
• Surprise
• Disgust
• Using computational means to see what probability someone is showing a particular emotion, can also do this manually

Question 3

How do you detect positive emotions in infants?

Answer 3

• Smiling = first clear sign of happiness that infants express
• 3-8 weeks = smiling to external stimuli e.g voice, touch, meant to be motivating for parents - adaptive
• 6-10 weeks = social smiles i.e. directed towards people
• 3-4 mo = infants laugh & smile
• After 2 yo, children can clown around are happy to make others laugh

Question 4

Study on preference for humans:

Answer 4

• 3-6mo infants
• Spent 5 mins interact with their mother, a stranger or a puppet (object)
• Split into 3 90 sec: active, static, active
• Active period: no touching but talk to child for the first 90 secs, static condition = standing still no talking

Question 5

Results of study for preference for humans:

Answer 5

• More smiling to mother (upto 20%) than the puppet in the active condition
• In the static condition, babies stop smiling both to mother and puppet
• Response to stranger was no different with the way they interacted with the mother

Question 6

Implications of study for preference for humans:

Answer 6

• Preference for humans over human-like objects
• Smiling when human is engaging with infant, not when static - socially responsive
• Similar smiling to parent and stranger
• 7 mo = infants smile at familiar people rather than general people

Question 7

How to detect negative emotions in infants?

Answer 7

• Hard to distinguish different types of negative emotions
• By second year, differentiating between negative emotions is no longer difficult
• First to be observed is generalised distressed

Question 8

Describe fear: (stages in infants)

Answer 8

• 4mo = Wary of unfamiliar objects/events
• 6-7mo = first signs of fear e.g loud noises, new toys, sudden movements, strangers
• 2yo = fear of strangers ends but depends on infant’s temperament and context e.g if parent present = may not be scared of strangers

Question 9

What is a longitudinal study of fear development?

Answer 9

• Infant met a stranger at 4, 8, 12 and 16 months
• Stranger made a graded approach; ended up holding infant e.g im going to hold you and then take a step closer and closer and wait
• Positive because controlled, but negative not naturalistic
• Steep change from 4-8mo

Question 10

What is the discrete emotions theory?

Answer 10

• Neurological and biological systems evolve to allow humans to experience and express a basic set of emotions through adaptations
• Cultures vary in how they label these expressions but vocalisations of basic emotions are recognisable across cultural groups

Question 11

What is the functionalist perspective?

Answer 11

• Individuals experience emotions in order to manage the relationship between themselves and the env = goal-driven
• Is why infants fake emotions e.g fake crying to get something to stop

Question 12

Describe separation anxiety?

Answer 12

• Starts at 8mo
• Fear following or expectation of separation from their primary caregiver
• 15 mo = starts to decline = but observed across cultures (childcare differences)

Question 13

Describe Anger

Answer 13

• Mixed with sadness in infancy: don’t know if they are sad/angry
• 12 mo = clear expressions of anger because they know
• Peak expression of anger = 18-24 mo
• Declines after relates to increased communication skills and increased emotional regulation

Question 14

Longitudinal study of anger:

Answer 14

• Mother held arms of child while toys in reach
• Moderate anger at 4 mo and steady increase in intensity
• A lot more variance in expression of anger than fear (are they better at showing fear)

Question 15

What are the self-conscious emotions?

Answer 15

• Embarrassment, pride, guilt, shame
• Emerge later during 2nd year of life
• Depends on critical changes in cognitive development

Question 16

Why do self-conscious emotions develop?

Answer 16

• Sense of self
• External standards of behaviour e.g need to know what’s right or wrong externally

Question 17

When do infants experience Surprise and what was a study on this?

Answer 17

• Surprise is brief and is mixed with another emotion
• Extent to which infants express surprise to novel events is influenced by emotional env provided by parents
• e.g Infants whose mothers had depressive symptoms had less surprise with a Jack-In-The-Box toy

Question 18

How do infants experience disgust?

Answer 18

• Sticking tongue out as it helps humans avoid poisons/bacteria
• Children learn from adult behaviour what they react to disgust e.g particular foods like insects

Question 19

Describe Guilt and Shame

Answer 19

• Guilt is thinking you have done wrong and feeling remorseful about behaviour and associated with empathy and the desire to undo consequence
• Shame is thinking you have done wrong and feeling exposed/conscious about it, focus is on the self and who you are
• Desire to withdraw from social interaction

Question 20

What is the broken doll study?

Answer 20

• 2 yo children left alone in the room with a doll who’s leg falls off
• Those experiencing guilt: repair leg and tell exp straight away
• Those experiencing shame: Avoid contact with exp and delay telling them
• Guilt is more adaptive as it stops self feeling negative

Question 21

What are the influences of parenting strategy?

Answer 21

• Guilt if emphasise and discuss badness of behaviour
• Shame is emphasise badness of child

Question 22

What is influence of culture? (Example)

Answer 22

Greater shame experienced by japanese than american and korean children

Question 23

What is the study of discrimination of children? (Of emotions)

Answer 23

• 4-6mo kids discriminate facial displays of happiness, anger, fear and surprise in habituation experiments
• Child was habituated to expression showing emotion
• Then exposed to either same expression on new person or different expression
• Look more to a different emotion rather than the same one
• However the ability to discriminate emotions is not the same as understanding them

Question 24

What is social referencing?

Answer 24

• Use facial expression & voice of parent to decide how to react to a novel situation
• Understanding someone else’s emotional reaction acts as a guide your own behaviour
• If child behaviour is appropriate = correctly understand the emotional expression
  e.g wine bottle dropped = distressed, infant knows social message related to a specific object, and the emotier determines the event/object as the referent AND referential cues to determine what the cue

Question 25

What was the visual cliff study?

Answer 25

• Tested 12 mo old infants
• Infants significantly more likely to cross when referencing positive emotional signals

Question 26

Disadvantages of referential understanding?

Answer 26

• Assume that infants are reading the referential signals of the parent to identify the target of the reference
• But infants could be linking the emotional message with an object just because they co-occur

Question 27

What was the Moses et al study? (Social Referencing)

Answer 27

• 12-18mo children were shown a toy
• Social referencing condition: exp said either Nice or Ew whilst looking at the toy, when child fixated on toy, exp said Wow or Yuck still looking at toy
• Control condition: exp was no visible said Nice/Ew, when child fixated on toy, exp said wow/yuck

Question 28

Results of Moses:

Answer 28

• Children got closer to toy when exp made positive noises
• Children stayed further from the toy when exp made neg noises
• Control: noises did not make a difference to how close children got to the toy

Question 29

What was a study looking at children understanding emotion?

Answer 29

• Children were shown an object and video of a facial expression at the same time
• Specific toys expressing the basic emotions were shown
• Children were presented with emotion-paired toy and neutral toy and checked which the child reached for
• 12-14mo = reached for toys at same rate
• 16-18mo = strongly preferred toys associated with positive emotions and avoided toys with association of anger/fear

Question 30

What are display rules?

Answer 30

• Social/cultural group’s informal norms about when/where and how much one should show emotion
• Children may express an emotion not matched with their felt emotion e.g birthday when getting a bad gift but saying thank you

Question 31

What was a study looking at display rules?

Answer 31

• Encouraged children of 4,6,8 yo to fake emotions to win a prize
• Children were shown 3 boxes with lids: attractive/unattractive/no gift
• Kids had to trick the experimenter by convincing them that they one box they had was the unattractive toy
• 4yo struggled to hide disappointment and fake happiness but 8yo managed to (linked to cognitive capacities)