Lecture 6: Development of Emotional Experience Flashcards
1
Q
What are emotions?
A
- Emotions: combination of physiological and cognitive responses to experiences
- Neural response
- Physiological factors
- Subjective feelings
- Emotional expression
- Urge to take action
2
Q
Discrete Emotions Theory
A
- Biological systems have evolved to allow humans to experience and express a set of innate, basic emotions
-
Basic emotions: innate emotions that were important for survival and communication and thus as largely automatic
- happiness
- fear
- anger
- sadness
- disgust
- surprise
3
Q
Beyond Basic Emotions
A
- Other emotions develop later and/or are not culturally universal
- Other emotions are:
- Variation in intensity of basic emotions
- Combination of basic emotions
- Anger + sadness = betrayal/disappointment
4
Q
Evidence for Discrete Emotions Theory
A
- Basic emotions are universal across cultures –> present all over the world cross-culturally.
- We infer emotions from people’s facial expressions - Basic emotions are present from infancy.
5
Q
How do you know what a baby is feeling?
A
- Systems of coding facial cues have been developed to make interpretations of infants’ emotions more objective
- Developed based on the facial expressions of basic emotions in adults
- Link particular facial expressions and facial muscle movements with particular emotions
6
Q
Facial Cues to Basic Emotions in Infancy
A
We use indicators to tell us what they are feeling - facial expressions
7
Q
Basic Emotions in Infancy
A
- At birth, infants experience 2 general emotional states:
- Positive/ happiness: indicated by approach behaviour
- Negative/ distress: indicated by crying or withdrawal behaviour
- Negative emotions are not well-differentiated initially (can’t tell if they are sad, scared, can just tell they are distressed). - Basic emotions emerge in a predictable sequence over the first year of life
- Based on when an infant starts to show the facial expression associated with each basic emotion
8
Q
Happiness
A
- Adaptive because motivates us to approach situations that are likely to increase chances of survival
- Present From birth: Smiles are evoked by biological states
- e.g. being satiated (full) or during sleep
-
2-3 months: Social smiles emerge
- Usually in interactions with parents * Foster bonding
5 months: Infant’s first laugh
- Usually in interactions with parents * Foster bonding
- What makes children happy changes with cognitive and language development
- At 5 months old, laugh at bodily noises but at 4 years old laugh at jokes
9
Q
Anger
A
- Adaptive because helps us defend ourselves against threats and to overcome obstacles to our goals
- 4 months: infants begin to express anger (showing these facial expressions)
- 24 months: Peak in tendency to react with anger (they are constantly being misunderstood)
- Tantrums in “terrible twos”
- Related to limited language abilities and not being well-understood
- Frequency of anger declines after this due to greater ability to express self with language and improved emotion regulation skills
10
Q
Fear
A
- Expressions of fear are adaptive because motivates escape from danger or solicits protection from caregivers
- 7 months: Infants begin to express fear (we can only infer with a high degree of accuracy that infants are experiencing fear when we see these facial expressions - which is at 7 months). So we don’t know if they are experiencing fear before this.
- 8 months: Fear of strangers and separation anxiety emerge (stranger anxiety)
- Separation anxiety declines around 15 months of age (don’t want to be away from their parents) - 15 months is when these kids make the change to daycare.
- So we are not sure they don’t experience fear before this. - What scares children changes with cognitive development
- 3-5 years old: fear imaginary creatures (pre-operational stage :now that they have capacity for imaginary/symbolic thought)
- 7+ years old: fears related to everyday situations (ie: nervous about a test or comp)
11
Q
Surprise, Sadness, and Disgust
A
- All emerge in some time in the first year
- Surprise: Indicates that the world is working contrary to expectations and is thus important for learning (more likely to remember something when its coupled with an emotion/ when you are surprised about something = more likely to remember it) –> ie: violation of expectation paradigm is relying on a kid being surprised because they are seing something they did not expect
- Sadness: Elicits care and comfort from others in reaction to a loss
- Emerges once object permanence has been acquired (only way to experience sadness: need to be aware that it existed and that you lost it - object permanence)
- Usually in reaction to being separated from parents (mixture of fear and sadness)
- Disgust: Adaptive because helps us avoid potential poisons or bacteria
- First expressions of disgust often directed towards food (textures and flavours)
12
Q
Self-Conscious Emotions
A
- Emotions that emerge once:
1. A child has a sense of self separate from other people
* Emerges around 18 month of age (emmerge later in child once they have seperate sense of test - pass the rouge test)
2. An appreciation of what adults expect of them - Include: Guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, empathy
- Emerge around 2 years of age
13
Q
Guilt and shame
A
- Most studied emotion in children.
- Guilt and shame are often elicited by similar situations but are distinct emotional reactions
- Guilt: Feelings of regret about one’s behaviour associated with desire to “fix” the consequences of that behaviour
- Shame: Self-focused general feeling of personal failure associated with desire to hide (much more global feeling, more diffuse)
- Generally, guilt is healthier than shame
14
Q
Guilt and Shame
A
- Expressions of guilt and shame can be
distinguished at 2 years of age (self-conscious emotions) - When 2 year olds play with a doll that has been rigged so that one leg falls off during play, they showed different reactions:
* Guilt: trying to fix the doll and quickly told the adult about the “accident” –> “im sorry”
* Shame: didn’t try to fix the doll, avoided the adult and delayed telling them about the “accident”
15
Q
Guilt and Shame
A
- Parental reactions to children’s actions influence which emotion a child experiences:
* Child is more likely to feel guilt, if parent emphasizes the “badness” of the action
* “You did a bad thing” –> the healthier response - Child is more likely to feel shame, if parent emphasizes the “badness” of the child
* “You’re a bad kid”
16
Q
Self-Conscious Emotions Across Cultures
A
- Culture influences the frequency and type of self-conscious emotions that are most likely to be experienced
- Individualistic cultures (focus on individuals instead of group): more likely to experience pride (because pride is all about emphasizing your own success/accomplishments)
- Collectivistic cultures: more likely to experience guilt and shame (often the emotions that motivate and keep the group together)
17
Q
Summary
A
- Discrete emotions theory: Basic emotions are biologically based and have evolved to enable survival and communication
- 6 universal basic emotions: happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise disgust
- Emotions develop in a predictable sequence
- All basic emotions are present by the end of the first year
- Self-conscious emotions emerge around 2 years old once an infant has a sense of self and appreciation of others’ expectations of them
- The experience of self-conscious emotions is influenced by the social world
18
Q
Understanding emotions
A
19
Q
Emotional recognition in infancy
A
- Identifying emotions in adults’ faces comes before identifying own
emotions - Rudimentary recognition of others’ emotions emerges very early in life
- 3 month olds can distinguish facial expressions of happiness, surprise, and anger
20
Q
Emotional Recognition in Infancy
A
- Identifying emotions in adults’ faces comes before identifying own
emotions - Rudimentary recognition of others’ emotions emerges very early in
life- 3 month olds can distinguish facial expressions of happiness, surprise, and anger (we can figure this out by using habituation paradigms)
- E.g. Habituated to pictures of happy faces and then dishabituate when presented with a picture of a surprised face
- 7 month olds can distinguish expressions of fear and sadness (capable of distinguishing between most the basic emotions - not disgust)
21
Q
Social Referencing
A
- Recognizing parents’ emotions enables social referencing
- Social referencing: use of adults’ facial expressions and tone of voice to decide how to deal with novel/ ambiguous situations
22
Q
Social Referencing and Visual Cliff
A
wants to get across to get the toy - If mom does fear face, ababy does not cross. If mom looks happy, they will cross.
* Parent’s facial expression matters:
- 0% of babies cross if parent looks scared
- 75% of babies cross if parent looks happy
* Demonstrates that:
- Children can distinguish between emotional expressions
- Children rely on parents’ reactions to figure out how to react to a situation themselves (social referencing)
Real world example of this: baby falling - look at their parents immediately after they fall, parents facial expression influences the babies reaction.
23
Q
Timeline of Emotion Labelling
A
- 3 years old: Able to label happiness, anger, fear and sadness
- 5 years old: Begin to label surprise and disgust
- 6-8 years old: Begin to label self-conscious emotions
- Ability to accurately label emotions improves into adolescence
24
Q
COVID and Emotion Recognition
A
- Masking during the pandemic did not seem to have an important effect on preschoolers’ ability to recognize emotions
- Still able to recognize anger, happiness, and sadness on masked faces with reasonable accuracy
- Why?
- Able to develop emotion recognition skills at home with unmasked families (exposure at home)
- Can rely on eyes to recognize emotions
- Kids can pick up emotion based on tone or voice
25
Q
Understanding Mixed Emotions
A
-
5 years old: understand that people can experience more than one emotion at a time
- 3 year olds don’t understand this - Due to improved executive functioning
28
Q
Faking emotions
A
- Understanding display rules allows children to mask and fake emotions themselves
- Steep increase in this ability between ages 6-8
Study:
* 4 year olds struggle to mask
disappointment when they receive a toy that they don’t like
* 6 year olds are able to mask disappointment and show joy instead, and 8 year olds are even better at this
40
Q
Are adolescents more moody?
A
Study: Experience-sampling method
* Reported on mood at random times throughout the day
Results:
* Adolescents report more frequent high intensity emotions than adults
- BOTH more intense negative and positive emotions
* Intense moods last less long compared to adults
- Shows that adolescents are indeed more “moody” than adults
42
Q
Emotional Changes in Adolescence (results)
A
Results:
* On average, teens reported experiencing happiness 70% of the time, but its frequency also decreased over adolescence (most frequent emotion is joy, but it becomes less frequent over the course of adolescence)
* Anger increases and then decreases towards the end of adolescence
* Sadness and anxiety increase, especially for girls
* They only had to report on their feelings on mon-fri (did not include weekend) - so not fully accurate.
* also study is from a time when social media is used less.
44
Q
Risk-Taking in Adolescents
A
- Impulsivity increases during early adolescence, peaks in middle/late adolescence, and then declines in adulthood
- Found across cultures and historical time
45
Q
Costs and Benefits of Risk-Taking in
Adolescence
A
- Risk taking is associated with increased injury, death, and criminal behaviour (dramatically increases when people get their driver’s license)
- BUT risk-taking is also a good thing
- Promotes independence by trying new experiences
- less dependent on caregivers
48
Q
Changes to Limbic System in Adolescence
A
- Reward processing in limbic system is heightened in adolescence (limbic system reaches full maturity duing 15-16 years of life)
- Due to synaptogenesis of dopamine receptors - Degree of nucleus accumbens activation during reward anticipation is positively correlated with self-reported risk-taking in daily life (more nucleus-accumbens activation = more risk taking)
49
Q
Changes to Prefrontal Cortex in Adolescence
A
- Synaptic pruning and myelination in prefrontal cortex (PFC) until mid-20s
- Myelination: Thickening of myelin sheath surrounding axons which increases speed of neural signal transmission - Immature PFC associated with difficulties with inhibition, impulse control, and planning = greater impulsitivity
