Lesson 6 - Emotion Development

Question 1

What is emotion?

Answer 1

Emotions are often thought of as having several components

1. Physiological factors - heart rate, breathing rate, and hormone levels.
2. Subjective feelings linked to the emotional state (may feel fearful)
3. Cognitions and perceptions that are associated w the emotional state (thoughts of how the bear may hurt you, worse case scenario outcomes)
4. Expressive behaviour - an outward expression of the emotional state (fearful expression such as widened eyes and mouth)
5. The desire to take action - ‘fight or flight’, change. (desire to run but u need to make urself known to bear and wave ur arms)

Question 2

What is disgust?

Answer 2

Active rejection of something

Question 3

What is fear?

Answer 3

Fight/flight - maintain self preservation
Fear helps us to survive, emotions are adaptive

Question 4

What is anger?

Answer 4

Forward movements, eliminating objects to goal

Question 5

What is sadness?

Answer 5

Disengagement and withdrawal

Question 6

What is shame?

Answer 6

Withdrawal, avoiding others, hiding oneself

Question 7

What is guilt?

Answer 7

Movement to make amends, to inform others, or punish self

Question 8

How do emotions develop or emerge?

Answer 8

identifying emotions
parents are likely to think they see many emotions in their infants early on including joy, anger, fear, and sadness

But often parents read too much into infants’ emotional range, especially early on.

To make things more objective researchers have developed elaborate systems of identifying emotions including coding dozens of facial cues.

Question 9

What is the first sign on positive emotion infants express?

Answer 9

Smiles

Question 10

How does smiling develop as a positive emotion with age?

Answer 10

0-4 - fleeting smiles during specific phase of sleep REM
Early smiles tend to be reflexive rather than due to social interaction

3-8 weeks infants begin to smile in reaction to external stimuli, eg touching, high pitched voices, SROUFE 1995

3 months - infants exhibit social smile ie smiles directed towards other people - more likely to smile at people than animated puppets
7 months - infants smile primarily at familiar people which prolongs positive social interactions with caregivers and strengthens bonds

Towards end of 1st year infants laugh at surprising events eg funny noises

Question 11

What is the first sign of negative emotion infants express?

Answer 11

Generalised distress
hard to test bc this distress is often experienced when you wouldnt expect distress

Question 12

How does fear develop with age?

Answer 12

4 months - infants become wary of unfamiliar objects and events but not of people (Sroufe 1995)

6-7 months - signs of fear can be observed, particularly to strangers (Camras et al) 1991

This seems to be because infants learn unfamiliar people do not provide the comfort and pleasure familiar people do

> 2 years - fear of strangers intensifies but depends on temperament

7 months:
Other fears are evident at this age, including fear of loud sounds, sudden movements, and novel toys (Kagan et al., 1978).

This is probably 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 13

How does separation anxiety develop?

Answer 13

8 months - distress at being away from caregivers emerges particularly when primary caregiver walks away.

8-15 months - separation anxiety increased then declines. Also been found cross- culturally (Kagan 1976)

Question 14

How does anger develop as an emotion?

Answer 14

1 year - children begin to clearly express anger, often towards other people (Radke-Yarrow &Kochanska 1990) and this typically increases up to 16 months of sge

2 years - toddlers gain more control over their their environment, anger is common 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 (Cole et al., 2011).

This decline in anger is likely due to better language and self regulation.

Question 15

What did Grossmann find out?

Answer 15

infants can recognise positive and negative emotions early on

3 months of age - infants can distinguish between happy, surprised, and angry faces
7 months - can distinguish between fear, sadness and interest

Question 16

What did Saarni et al find?

Answer 16

As well recognising emotions, even young children are sensitive to others reactions and this in turn affects their own emotions
By identifying and understanding others’ emotions children, and by able calibrate their own emotions to situations.

Question 17

At what age do self-conscious emotions develop?

Answer 17

2 years - children begin to show a range of emotions: guilt/pride/shame/embarrassment

(some r link this to child developing a sense of self)
(they are also fostered thru children’s growing awareness of what others expect them)

Question 18

Are emotions innate?

Answer 18

Charles Darwin says so argued that facial expressions for basic emotions are innate to the species, universal and found in very young infants

Question 19

There are thought to be 3 basic affect systems
Sroufe

Answer 19

1. Joy or pleasure
2. Anger or frustration
3. Wariness or fear
   These systems undergo developmental changes from primitive to more advanced during the first few years of life

eg wariness/fear expressed as startle reaction but a few months later they show wariness and then fear in novel situations. Thought infant is expanding social experience

Question 20

What does the functionalist approach say?

Answer 20

Advocates for the role of the environment
Function of emotions is to promote action towards achieving a goal in a given context
Emotional reactions are affected by social goals including other people involved and values learned. E.g, shame and guilt are associated w standards communicated by caregivers and the relationship the person has w the people in that context.

Therefore, some emotions need interaction to develop.

Question 21

Is fear of heights innate?

Answer 21

The visual cliff experiment -
Was originally used to say that infants have an innate fear of heights.

Question 22

What were the results of the marshmallow test on children?

Answer 22

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

Question 23

The self-regulation of emotion

Answer 23

The self-regulation of emotion

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

Physiological factors - heart rate, breathing rate, and hormone levels.

Subjective feelings linked to the emotional state.

Cognitions and perceptions that are associated with the emotional state.

Expressive behaviour - an outward expression of the emotional state.

Question 24

What did Zimber-Gembeck and Skinner 2012 propose?

Answer 24

Three developmental stages to emotion regulation:

1. From Caregiver to self-regulation - the transition from caregiver-dependant regulation to self-regulation.
2. Cognitive strategies - the use of cognitive strategies and problem solving to control negative emotions.
3. Selection of strategies - the selection of appropriate strategies

Question 25

1. From caregiver to self regulation

Answer 25

• when infants are distressed, parents help to regulate their emotions by attempting to soothe or distract them (Gianino & Tronick 1998).
• Parents then begin to use vocalisations (talking, singing, or shushing) to calm children.
• Holding or rocking infants while talking soothingly to them has been found to be the most reliable approach (Jahromi et al., 2004).

Question 26

At 6 months what do infants start to show?

Answer 26

signs of rudimentary self regulation

In adversely arousing or uncertain situations, infants attempt to reduce distress by averting their gaze or self soothing e.g, repetitive rubbing of their body or clothing/clothing fabric; Grolnick et al, 1996

Such developments are made possible by infants’ increasing ability to control their attention and movements.

Question 27

What do children develop from 6 months onwards and improve on?

Answer 27

their ability to distract themselves by playing on their own when distressed.

Developments are due to rapid cognitive developments in language, attention, and inhibitory control (Berger 2011)

Helpful for stopping and suppressing behaviours like this

As languages develops further, children are more likely to negotiate with their parents rather than engaging in emotional outbursts (Campos et al 2004)

Question 28

Younger children use behavioural emotion regulation strategies such as what?

Answer 28

e.g thumb sucking rubbing blankets, etc.

older children can use cognitive emotion regulation strategies and problem solving.

E.g, rethink goals to adapt to unpleasant situations.

Question 29

Over time, children improve their ability to select cognitive OR behavioural strategies to the situation (Brenner & Salovey 1997) this is thought to be due to:

Answer 29

-development in planning and problem solving across middle childhood and adolescence (Albert and Steinberg 2011) and;

-children being able to distinguish between controllable stressors e.g, homework, and uncontrollable stressors e.g, parents arguing.

Question 30

WHY ARE THESE SKILLS IMPORTANT?

Answer 30

better interactions with others, are well-adjusted, and well-liked by peers and adults (Diener &Kim 2004).

do better in school, likely bc it helps them pay attention, ne better behaved and better liked by teachers and peers (Denham et al 2012).

This is because emotion regulation fosters social competence.

ie, skills that help us achieve our goals in social interactions and maintain positive relationships w others.

Question 31

NDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND TEMPERAMENT

Answer 31

Development of emotions and self-regulation follows a developmental pathway, however there are large individual differences in children’s emotional functioning.

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.

Question 32

What is temperament?

Answer 32

Temperament describes a persons emotional and attentional reactivity, and self regulation that show consistency across situations and stability over time (Rothbart and Bates 1998)

Thought to be hereditary
Identical twins have more similar temperaments than non-identical twins
However env stressors (extreme) such as negative parenting, stress, and instability have been linked to emotion regulation and temperament too

Question 33

What are the 6 aspects to temperament?

Answer 33

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 object of interest.
4. Activity level - how much an infant moves.
5. Positive affect/ approach - smiling/laughing, approach to people, degree of cooperativeness
6. Rhythmicity - regularity and predictability of routines such as sleeping.

Question 34

What is cortisol?

Answer 34

Hormone released in response to stress, and helps to activate energy resources

Question 35

What is cortisol reactivity?

Answer 35

The amount of released in a given situation has been linked to temperament differences
children high in negativity emotionality and w poorer emotion regulation show larger increases in cortisol