Lecture 7 - Expressing and Understanding Emotion

Question 1

(reading):

Siegler, Saffran, Gershoff, Eisenberg & Leaper, How Children Develop. Chapter 10. Emotional Development.

(read up to but not including Emotion Regulation; the version doesn’t matter)

Answer 1

(reading):

Question 2

(lecture summary):

This lecture provides an overview of early emotional development, in terms of infants’ abilities to express emotion, recognise the emotions of others, and regulate their own emotion, through social referencing and other processes. Individual differences in temperament are discussed.

Emotional expression
- The ability to express emotions develops in the early years, with ‘basic’ emotions emerging within the first year and more complex, self-conscious emotions after 2 years of age.

Emotional understanding

• Infants can discriminate emotions by 4-6 months.
• Social-referencing ability is an indicator that an infant can understand and make use of emotional cues. This occurs around 12 months.
• Emotional vocabulary and more sophisticated understanding (e.g. causality) occurs later.

Answer 2

(lecture summary):

Question 3

(lecture study question):

Discuss reasons why there are different developmental trajectories for different emotions.

Answer 3

(lecture study question):

Question 4

(lecture):

Positive emotions:

What is the first clear sign of happiness that infants express?

Answer 4

(lecture):

Smiling is the first clear sign of happiness that infants express.

3-8 weeks – smile to external stimuli (e.g. touch, voice)

6-10 weeks – ‘social smiles’ i.e. directed towards people

3 - 4 months - infants laugh as well as smile during a variety of activities.

During the second year of life, children start to clown around and are delighted when they can make other people laugh.

Question 5

(lecture):

Describe a study that shows infants’ preference for humans.

Answer 5

(lecture):

Preference for humans (Ellsworth et al., 1993)

• 3 and 6 month old infants
• Spent 5 mins interacting with their mother, a stranger, or a puppet (object)
• Split into three 90 second periods: active – static – active (NB. active period contained no touching)

See slide 6-7 for results

Question 6

(lecture):

Negative emotions:

What age are we able to differentiate between infants’ negative emotions?

Answer 6

(lecture):

It is difficult to distinguish different types of negative emotions in young infants.

By the second year of life, differentiating between infants’ negative emotions is no longer difficult.

First to be observed is generalised distress.

Question 7

(lecture):

Fear:

Describe the timeline of fear expression in growing infants.

Answer 7

(lecture):

4 months – wary of unfamiliar objects/events

6-7 months – first signs of fear 
> Novel toys
> Loud noises
> Sudden movements
> Strangers

2 years – fear of strangers ends, but is variable (e.g. dependent on infant’s temperament and context)

Question 8

(lecture):

Describe a longitudinal study of fear development.

Answer 8

(lecture):

see slide 10

Question 9

(lecture):

Describe a study investigating separation anxiety.

Answer 9

(lecture):

See slide 11

Question 10

(lecture):

Describe the timeline of anger expression in growing infants.

Answer 10

(lecture):

In infancy is often mixed with sadness – yet to differentiate whether something makes them angry or sad.

12 months – clear expressions of anger.

18 -24 months – peak in expression of anger.

Decline relates to increased communication skills and increased emotional regulation.

Question 11

(lecture):

Describe a longitudinal study of anger development in infants.

Answer 11

(lecture):

See slide 13

(done in the same study as the fear development study)

Question 12

(lecture):

Describe the timeline of self-conscious emotions in growing infants.

Answer 12

(lecture):

Include embarrassment, pride, guilt, shame…

Emerge later – during 2nd year of life.

Depend on critical changes in cognitive development (which is why we don’t see them earlier).

Question 13

(lecture):

Why do self-conscious emotions develop in infants?

Answer 13

(lecture):

See slide 15 and watch lecture around 24 mins in.

Question 14

(lecture):

Define guilt.

Define shame.

Describe a study that distinguishes shame and guilt: the broken doll study.

Answer 14

(lecture):

Guilt is thinking you have done wrong and feeling remorseful about behaviour – associated with empathy (what you did)
- desire to undo consequences

Shame is thinking you have done wrong and feeling exposed/conscious about it – focus is on self (who you are)
- desire to withdraw from social interaction

(see slide 17 for study)

Question 15

(lecture):

Why do some children express shame and some express guilt?

Answer 15

(lecture):

See slide 18

Question 16

(lecture):

Describe the development of emotional understand in infants.

Describe all relevant studies. (might sound broad but the exam will be the same, you need to know how to bring up studies that are relevant)

Answer 16

(lecture):

see slide 19-34