Lecture 7: Development of Emotion

Question 1

Learning objectives:

Answer 1

Lecture overview:
1. Introduction to emotions
2. The emergence and development of emotions
3. Emotion-regulation
4. Individual differences in emotion and temperament
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Learning outcomes
- Define what emotions are
- Explain when infants learn to recognise emotions in others
- Explain how positive, negative and self-conscious emotions emerge and develop
- Describe emotion regulation and why it is an important skill
- Explain the three stages of emotion regulation development
- Define temperament and explain how it’s measured
- Recognise the strengths and weaknesses of questionnaire vs lab measures of temperament

Question 2

Part 1: Intro to emotions

What is an emotion?

Answer 2

Definition: Emotions are changes in the following domains in response to stimuli or a situation…

1. Physiological factors: including heart and breathing rate and hormone levels.
2. Subjective feelings linked to that emotional state.
3. Cognitions and perceptions that are associated with the feeling.
4. Expressive behaviour: An outward expression of the emotion.
5. The desire to take action: including escape, approach or desire to change things

Question 3

Part 1: Intro to emotions

Worked example of an emotion…

Answer 3

For example if someone experienced fear upon seeing a bear:

1. Physiological factors: heart rate, breathing and hormone levels would increase
2. There would be Subjective feelings of fearfulness
3. Cognitions and perceptions would arise, such as thoughts of how the bear might hurt them
4. Expressive behaviour would be apparent, including widened eyes and mouth
5. There would be a desire to run away!

Question 4

Part 1: Intro to emotions

Key emotions…

Answer 4

Chart on ppt.
(Type –> Common Action tendency)

Happiness/ Joy –> Approach; a desire to prolong the experience, moment or stimuli

Fear –> Flight or withdrawal – maintain self preservation

Anger –> Forward movement, eliminating obstacles to goal

Sadness –> Disengagement and withdrawal

Shame –> Withdrawal, avoiding others, hiding oneself

Guilt –> Movement to make amends, to inform others or punish self

Disgust –> Active rejection of the thing causing disgust

Question 5

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

Infants recognition of emotions

Answer 5

Infants are able to recognise positive and negative emotions early on:

• At 3 months of age, infants can distinguish between happy, surprised and angry faces.
• By 7 months of age they can distinguish between fear and sadness.

Question 6

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of positive emotions - Early positive emotions

Answer 6

Early positive emotions:

• Smiles are the first positive emotion infants express.
• During the first month, infants exhibit fleeting smiles primarily during a specific phase of sleep called REM (Rapid Eye Movement).
• These early smiles are often found to be reflexive rather than due to social interaction
• Between the 3rd and 8th week, infants begin to smile in reaction to external stimuli (touching, high-pitched voices)
• By the third month, infants exhibit social smiles – smiles directed towards people.

Question 7

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of positive emotions - Social smiles and laughs

Answer 7

Social Smiles and Laughs:

• 3-month-olds were more likely to smile at people then at animated puppets that talked to the infant
• At 7 months of age, infants smile primarily at familiar people which prolongs positive social interactions with caregivers and strengthens bonds.
• Towards the end of the first year of life, infants start to laugh at surprising or unexpected events such as funny noises

Question 8

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of negative emotions - Early negative emotions

Answer 8

Early negative emotions:

• The first negative emotion that is clearly seen in infants is generalized distress. This can be due to hunger, pain or overstimulation.
• There is debate about whether infants just experience generalised distress, or whether they can experience specific negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger).
• It is hard to test this looking at the context, as often infants experience distress in incongruent situations (where you would not expect distress!)
• Some researchers have been able to distinguish between anger and sadness vs distress from pain in 2-month-olds by examining facial expressions

Question 9

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of negative emotions - Fear

Answer 9

Fear:

• There is little evidence that fear is present in the first few months of life.
• It’s not until 4 months that infants start to become wary of unfamiliar objects and events but not people (Sroufe, 1995).
• At 6-7 months, fear can be observed to people, particularly to strangers
• This seems to be because infants learn unfamiliar people do not provide the comfort and pleasure familiar people do.
• This intensifies until age 2 but does vary depending on the infant’s temperament.
• Other fears are evident around 7 months including fear of loud sounds, sudden movements and novel toys
• This is clearly adaptive: babies do not have the ability to escape from situations on their own, and so expressions of fear are powerful tools for getting help.

Question 10

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of negative emotions - Separation Anxiety

Answer 10

Separation Anxiety:

• This distress at being away from a caregiver emerges at around 8 months of age.
• Infants will typically show signs of distress when this happens and even more distress when it is the parent walking away (compared to the infant crawling/walking away).
• Separation anxiety increases from 8- to 15 months of age and then declines. It has also been found cross-culturally

Question 11

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of negative emotions - Anger

Answer 11

Anger:

• By 1, infants begin to clearly express anger, often toward other people and this increases up to 16 months of age.
• In 2nd year, as children gain more control over their environment they become more angry when control is taken away from them.
• Toddlers are quicker to respond with anger at 18 months of age than at 36 months of age
• This decline is likely due to children becoming able to express themselves through language and through the use of self-regulation.

Question 12

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of self-conscious emotions

Answer 12

Self-conscious emotions:

By 2nd year, kids begin to show a range of emotions: guilt, pride, shame and embarrassment - known as self-conscious emotions as they relate to our awareness of other people’s reactions to us.

• Some researchers link the emergence of these emotions to children developing a sense of self
• They are also fostered through children’s growing awareness of what others expect of them

Question 13

Part 2: Emergence and Development of Emotions

The emergence of self-conscious emotions:

Guilt vs Shame

Answer 13

Self-conscious emotions: Guilt vs Shame -

Guilt: involves remorse and regret about one’s actions and a desire to undo the damage.

Shame: is more focused on oneself - feeling exposed and wanting to hide.

Shame and guilt can be distinguished early on…

Study:

• 2-year-olds played with a doll that was rigged so one leg would fall off when the experimenter left the room.
• Some toddlers showed behaviours indicative of shame: they avoided the experimenter when they returned and avoided telling them about the doll.
• Other kids showed behaviours indicative of guilt: they attempted to repair the doll and told the experimenter when they returned.

Individual differences in whether children tend to feel guilt or shame - may be related to parenting styles.
- Children are more likely to show shame when parents emphasise the child is bad and they are more likely to experience guilt when parents emphasise the ‘badness’ of the behaviour and the effect it had on others

Question 14

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

What is emotion regualtion?

Answer 14

Self-regulation of emotion (or emotion regulation) can be defined as the set of processes whereby people seek to redirect or dampen down their feelings of emotion.

In everyday life, people are continually exposed to potentially emotion-inducing stimuli.

The fact that these kinds of stimuli only occasionally trigger full-blown emotions, perhaps means that we engage in some form of emotion regulation almost all of the time (Davidson, 1998).

Question 15

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

The self-regulation of emotion

Answer 15

Emotional regulation involves initiating, inhibiting or modulating the following 4 aspects of emotional functioning:

1. Physiological factors: including heart and breathing rate that can change for example through steady deep breathing.
2. Subjective feelings linked to that emotional state.
   Cognitions and perceptions that are associated with this feeling.
3. Expressive behaviour: An outward expression of the emotion.

Question 16

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

The Marshmallow Task

Answer 16

Children decide whether to eat one marshmallow now or wait for the experimenter to return and they can have two.

Children find delaying gratification hard and show a wide range of emotions on the task while they are waiting.

Children who did better on this task often had better self-regulation strategies; included singing, talking, trying to sleep, or making up games to play

Question 17

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

Children and emotion regulation

Answer 17

Emotion regulation takes time to develop, young kids are easily overwhelmed by loud noises, abrupt movement, hunger and pain.

They must rely on their caregiver to settle them down.

Question 18

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

Three-step transition

Answer 18

There are three developmental stages to emotion regulation:

1. The transition from caregiver to self-regulation
2. The use of cognitive strategies and problem solving to control negative emotions
3. The selection of appropriate strategies

Question 19

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

Three-step transition: Step 1

Answer 19

Step 1: From caregiver to self-regulation

• When infants are distressed, parents help to regulate their emotions by attempting to soothe or distract them.
• Parents then begin to use vocalisations (talking, singing, shushing) to calm children.
• Holding or rocking infants while talking soothingly to them has been found to be the most reliable approach, plus feeding them if they are not highly upset
• From 6 months of age, infants start to show signs of rudimentary self-regulation
• In aversely arousing or uncertain situations, infants attempt to reduce distress by averting their gaze or self-soothing (sucking fingers, stroking clothing/fabric)
• Such developments are made possible by their increasing ability to control their attention and movements.
• From 6 months on, children develop and improve on their ability to distract themselves by playing on their own when distressed.
• These developments are largely due to rapid cognitive developments in language, attentional control and inhibitory control
• As language develops further, children are more likely to negotiate with their parents rather than engaging in emotional outbursts

Question 20

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

Three-step transition: Step 2

Answer 20

Step 2: The use of cognitive strategies

• Whereas younger children use behavioural emotion regulation strategies, older children use cognitive strategies and problem solving
• Finding themselves in an unpleasant situation they may rethink their goals so they can adapt to that situation.
• For example, an older child being teased may defuse the situation by downplaying the importance of the teasing; whereas a younger child might react to it in a way that would provoke more teasing.

Question 21

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

Three-step transition: Step 3

Answer 21

Step 3: The selection of appropriate strategies

• Over time, children improve their ability to select cognitive OR behavioural strategies appropriate to the situation
  > For example, they may realise it is better to try and find an alternate way to obtain a goal rather than giving up in frustration when their first attempt fails.
• Thought to be due to developments in planning and problem solving across middle childhood and adolescence and also being able to distinguish between controllable stressors (e.g., homework) and uncontrollable stressors (e.g., parents arguing).

Question 22

Part 3: Emotion-Regulation Development

Why are these skills important?

Answer 22

Kids with better emotion regulation have better interactions with others, are well-adjusted and well-liked by peers and adults.

This is because emotion regulation fosters social competence skills that help us achieve out goals in social interactions and maintain positive relationships with others.

Children with better E-R also do better in school - helps them pay attention, be better behaved > liked by teachers and peers.

Kids ability to manage frustrations and emotions predicts later anxiety levels

Question 23

Part 4: Individual Differences and Temperament

What is temperament?

Answer 23

While the overall development of emotions and self-regulation is roughly similar for most children, there are large individual differences in children’s emotional functioning

• Some infants and children are relatively mellow: not easily upset and can quickly calm down
• Some are emotional: they get upset quickly and negative emotion can persist for a long time.
• In addition, children differ in how timid they are, how they express positive emotion, and the ways they deal with emotions.

This refers to individual differences in temperament.

Temperament definition: describes a person’s emotional, attentional reactivity and self-regulation that show consistency across situations and stability over time

Question 24

Part 4: Individual Differences and Temperament

Six aspects of temperament

Answer 24

There are six aspects to temperament:

1. Fearful distress/inhibition: distress and withdrawal in new situations.
2. Irritable distress: fussiness, anger and frustration especially if the child does not get what they want.
3. Attention span/persistence: duration of orienting towards objects of interest.
4. Activity level: how much an infants moves.
5. Positive affect/approach: smiling/laughing, approach to people, degree of cooperativeness.
6. Rhythmicity: regularity and predictability of routines such as sleeping

Question 25

Part 4: Individual Differences and Temperament

Temperament - Nature Nurture

Answer 25

Temperament is thought to be hereditary. Identical twins have more similar temperaments than non-identical twins…

However, environmental stressors such as negative parenting, stress, and instability have been linked to emotion regulation too

Question 26

Part 4: Individual Differences and Temperament

How do we measure temperament?

Answer 26

PRINT THAT SHIT OUT

Younger infants
Blocked toys, puppets, scary mask

Toddlers:
Strangers, unpredictable toys, risk taking

Question 27

Part 4: Individual Differences and Temperament

How do we measure temperament?

Comparing different methods

Answer 27

Questionnaires:
+ Parents have extensive knowledge of their child’s behav in many situations
- Parents may not be objective and don’t have wide range of other kids behaviour to compare to

Lab measures:
+ Data is objective and less likely to be biased
- Kids behaviour is only observed in a limited set of circumstances and could reflect their mood on the day

Question 28

Take home points

Answer 28

• Positive and negative emotions, as well as infants recognition of emotions, emerges early on in development.
• There are developmental changes in what triggers these emotions and more complex ones (such as self-conscious emotions) develop a little later.
• Emotion regulation is a very important skill and there is a three step developmental transition in children becoming able to do this successfully.
• There are clear individual differences in emotion and emotion-regulation and children’s stable differences in these domains is known as temperament.
• Temperament can be measured using questionnaires or using lab-based tasks.