Module 9 - Emotional Development Flashcards
Discrete Emotions (Dr. Caroll Izzard)
Focused on the idea that emotions are innate and can be differentiated from one another very early on in life
There are a small number of basic emotions:
Interest, Joy, Surprise, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Self-Hostility, Fear, Shame, Shyness, and Guilt.
Continuous Emotions
emotions differ depending on arousal (mild-intense) and valence (pleasant-unpleasant). Emotions can be distinguished by plotting scores on these two dimensions.
Circumplex model (Russell, 1980)
functionalist approach to emotional development
Focused on the evolutionary/functional significance of emotions, not on differentiating them.
Emotions are evolutionarily adaptive because they motivate us to attend to environmental stimuli – motivate us to get away from something that’s bad for us, or motivate us to approach something that we like.
Circumplex model
emotions may be innate, the boundaries between emotions are fuzzy and are separated by differences in valence and arousal
Emotions are characterized by what components?
1) Neural Responses
2) Physiological responses
3) Subjective Feelings
4) Cognitions
5) Desire to take action
6) Expressive behaviour
Neural responses
The firing of brain regions like the amygdala, etc.
Physiological responses
Changes in heart rate, stress hormones, etc.
Subjective feelings
How we traditionally describe emotions - happiness, sadness, etc.
Cognitions
Our thoughts or inner dialogue related to the experience
Desire to take action
Typically either approach or avoidance based
Expressive Behaviour
Facial expressions, gestures, etc (although these may not always be expressed)
Theorists who take a functionalist approach to understanding emotional development propose that emotions:
Promote action toward a goal
Emotional development consists of much more than simply experiencing emotions and consists of:
Emotional expression: the ability to express different emotions.
Emotional recognition: the ability to recognize or become aware of different emotions.
Emotional understanding: the ability to verbally label and comprehend the use of emotion in themselves and others.
Emotion development also consists of emotion regulation
How we can organize basic emotions?
1) Valence (pleasant or unpleasant)
2) Discrete categories
Pleasant emotions
- Early smiles within the first two months of an infant’s life are reflexive (e.g., after they’ve been fed or passed gas).
- Social smiles start at around 2 months old.
-7 months, infants are more likely to smile at their caregivers than they are to smile at strangers.
-24 months, young children enjoy making other people smile and laugh.
Unpleasant emotions
-unpleasant emotions are not well-differentiated during the first few months.
-begin to differentiate by 6 months and are clearly different by age 2. By this point, parents and other people can tell the difference between a tired cry and a hungry cry.
-infants do not always demonstrate an emotion that is congruent to the situation.
Fear
adaptive as it motivates us to move out of a situation that could cause danger.
Stranger wariness
The degree to which a child may experience stranger anxiety is altered by several factors, including the size of the stranger, facial expressions, and the predictability of the situation.
Separation anxiety
Separation anxiety tends to peak at ~13 months old; however, this depends on culture and family norms.
Ex: mothers who live in the United States often only have a very short maternity leave, and so these babies will show less separation anxiety than babies who rarely leave their mothers
What does the Visual Cliff study demonstrate?
That infants use social-referencing to determine how to approach and react to ambiguous stimuli.
Social referencing is a major mechanism through which infants learn about the world around them (including emotions!).
Self-conscious emotions
-Sometimes called complex emotions or social emotions.
-They require one to be able to reflect upon actions in order to consider what others might think about them.
-develop later than basic emotions because children must first understand that they are different from other people.
-Self-conscious emotions start to differentiate around ~2 years old, and include emotions like embarrassment, pride, guilt, and shame.
What are some examples of self conscious emotions
-Pride
-Guilt
-Shame
-Embarrassment
Collectivist cultures
emphasize interpersonal relationships and connections with others
individualist cultures
emphasize the individual and their autonomy
Role of shame in misbehaviour - Collectivist
Parents emphasize shame in child’s misbehaviour. This is because misbehaviour is a reflection not only on the individual, but also on their family and social connections.
Thus, in collectivist cultures, shame is more normative (and is thus less strongly associated with difficulties).
Role of shame in misbehaviour - Individualistic
Parents emphasize mischievousness in child’s misbehaviour.
Shame is less commonly emphasized, as it is related to feeling bad about oneself.
Shame is less normative and is associated with adverse outcomes for children.
When do infants express anger?
Infants clearly express anger by 12 months
anger is not clearly differentiated from other basic emotions like sadness until ~12 months of age.
Emotion regulation involves initiating, inhibiting, or modulating the following:
1) Internal feeling states
2) Emotion-related cognitions
3) Emotion-related physiological processes
4) Emotion-related behaviours
Types of emotion regulation
1) Distraction
2) Rumination
3) Reappraisal
4) Relaxation/arousal control
5) Expressive engagement
6) Expressive suppression
Distraction
a cognitive emotion regulation strategy that develops very early. By ~6 months, young children begin to regulate their emotions using distraction, and can consistently do this by 12 months of age. This is related to their motor development.
Rumination
Rumination is a cognitive emotion regulation strategy that involves focusing attention on your distress, as well as the causes and consequences of your distress.
Reappraisal
a cognitive emotional regulation strategy that involves changing the way you think about an issue, and is generally considered adaptive.
Relaxation/Arousal control
Relaxation is a behavioural emotional regulation strategy that involves focusing on our body’s response to powerful emotions. Getting enough exercise, sleep, or deep breathing can all help with regulating emotions.
Expressive engagement
Expressive engagement is behavioural emotion regulation that involves actively engaging with the emotion. Expressive engagement is generally considered an adaptive emotion regulation strategy as it helps alleviate distress, facilitates understanding of emotions, and promotes social support.
Expressive suppression
Expressive suppression is a behavioural emotion regulation strategy that involves inhibiting or suppressing one’s emotions, which is related to cultural display rules.
relying too much on expressive suppression can be maladaptive.
Emotional regulation
The ability to initiate, inhibit, and modulate emotional experiences. It consists of a variety of behavioural and cognitive strategies.
It is both one thing and many.
How does emotion regulation develop?
Through help from parents, and practice, children learn to select the best emotion regulation strategy to help them in the moment. (caregiver’s, cognitive strategies, strategy selection)
It is a long, slow process that continues into adulthood.
Parents play an important role in helping their child develop their own emotion regulation strategies through effective ________________.
co-regulation
Young children tend to manage their distress through ______________, whereas older children are able to use _________________.
Behavioural strategies, cognitive strategies
What is temperament?
individual differences in emotion, activity level, and attention that are exhibited across contexts and that are present from infancy and thus thought to be genetically based
temperament reflects an infant’s biological tendencies in emotion regulation, activity, and attention. While temperament is thought to be largely genetic, the stability and outcomes associated with temperament depend on the environment.
closely linked to behavioural style and general arousal level
Thomas and Chess postulated that infants could be placed into 3 temperament categories (Historical perspective on operationalizing temperament)
Easy (40%) – these infants are cheerful, easy to distract or soothe when upset, and are quick to establish routines
Difficult (10%) – these infants get upset easily, are hard to settle, and are slow to adjust to new experiences
Slow-to-Warm-Up (15%) – these infants are somewhat difficult at first, but become easier over time
Dr. Mary Rothbart argued that temperament is best captured by 5 key factors (modern perspective on operationalizing temperament)
1) Fearful distress/inhibition – how the infant responds to new situations.
2) Irritable distress – when they get distressed, how distressed do they actually get?
3) Attention span – how long are they able to pay attention to something?
4) Activity level – how active they are.
5) Positive affect – how much positive affect they show.
The stability and outcomes associated with temperament depend on what?
the environment.
What factors influence stability?
-Different Time Frame
-Baseline levels
-parental environments
Time frame (temperament)
Early in childhood, temperament is relatively stable. However, as children gain autonomy and start spending more time with their peers, temperament can change.
Ex: research that examines the stability of temperament from infancy to late childhood finds that only ~30% of children remain very stable in their temperament.
Baseline levels (temperament)
children at the extremes are more likely to remain stable in their temperament.
That is, children who are very easily distressed (or those who are very mellow) are likely to retain that temperament over time.
We also see that the emotional qualities of temperament are more stable than activity levels.
Environment (temperament)
goodness-of-fit describes how well a baby’s temperament fits with the expectations and demands of environment.
parents have to fit their parenting style to the child to a certain extent.
Importantly, the quality of the parent-child relationship is more important for child development than temperament.
What is temperament?
Temperament is an individual difference that reflects an infant’s starting point when it comes to how they approach the world and regulate their emotions.
While temperament is somewhat stable over time, this depends on various factors, including parenting.
Thomas and Chess labeled babies who took a long time to adjust to new experiences, tended to react negatively and intensely to stimuli and events, and were irregular in their eating and sleeping habits as:
Difficult babies
Assessing temperament might consist of ratings what characteristics?
-Startle response to sudden change
-Attention span
-Movement of arms and legs
- Ease of falling asleep
Some theorists focus on defining whether emotions are __________or _________, while others focus on the __________________
Discrete, continuous
evolutionary function of emotions.
Children generally use ____________emotion regulation strategies before developing __________ emotion regulation strategies.
behavioural, cognitive
Temperament is an innate individual difference related to
emotional development. It reflects one’s behavioural style and general arousal level.
The quality of the parent-child relationship has a
huge effect on emotional development. This is largely due to temperament, parenting style, and secure attachment
In what ways do parents also directly socialize emotional development ?
1) Parents own emotional expression
2) Parents reactions to emotional expression
3) Discussion of emotions with children
Genes are related to…
Temperament.
Both for the infant and the parent. This means that infants with difficult temperaments are more likely to have parents with similar dispositions.
however, genes are not our destiny. For example, while an infant may have a gene related to difficult emotional development, this may not “turn on” if they are raised in a nurturing family environment.
The affects of culture Emotional development
all cultures generally experience the same emotions, they differ greatly in the degree to which they are expressed. This is related to both cultural norms and cultural diversity in parenting practices.
Cultural norms about emotion expression are instilled in children primarily by their parents, as well as through interactions with others. Thus, recommendations about healthy emotional development must be culturally relevant.
Emotions have several components: (NPSEA)
- Neural responses
- Physiological factors, including heart rate, breathing rate, and
hormone levels - Subjective feelings
- Emotional expressions
- The desire to take action, including the desire to escape, approach, or
change people or things in the environment
Emotions
neural and physiological responses to the environment, subjective feelings, cognitions related to those feelings, and the desire to take action
Marshmallow Test
Mischel believed that a child’s ability to delay eating one marshmallow for the reward of eating two marshmallows later was an indicator of that child’s self-control or willpower in the face of immediate pleasure or happiness
The ability to exhibit self-control early in life, he reasoned, predicted success later in life.
He interviewed these children at 10 year intervals, those children who were able to wait the longest were found to be more intelligent, attentive, strategic, and self- reliant than those who displayed less patience
Avoiding contamination or illness
Disgust
functionalist perspective
a theory which argues that the basic function of emotions is to promote action toward achieving a goal. In this view, emotions are not discrete from one another and vary somewhat based on the social environment
Theories on the nature and emergence of emotion
1) Discrete Emotions theory
2) Functionalist perspective
discrete emotions theory
a theory in which emotions are viewed as innate, and each emotion has a specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions
Fear
GOAL - Maintaining one’s own physical and psychological integrity
MEANING - This stimulus is threatening to me
ACTION - Flight or withdrawal
Anger
GOAL- Attaining the end state that the individual currently is invested in
MEANING - There is an obstacle to my obtaining my goal
ACTION- Forward movement, especially to eliminate obstacles to one’s goal
Sadness
GOAL- Attaining the end state that the individual currently is invested in
MEANING - My goal is unattainable
ACTION- Disengagement and withdrawal
Shame
GOAL- Maintaining others’ respect and affection; preserving self-esteem
MEANING - I am bad (my self-esteem is damaged), others notice how bad I am
ACTION- Withdrawal; avoiding others, hiding oneself
Guilt
GOAL- Meeting one’s own internalized values
MEANING - I have done something contrary to my values and perhaps hurt someone else
ACTION- Movement to make reparation, to inform others, or to punish self
Most researchers agree that there are six basic emotions that are universal in all cultures, what are they?
happiness
fear
anger
sadness
surprise
disgust
AFFEX
- a prominent system for coding emotions in infants that links particular facial expressions and facial muscle movements with particular emotions
-has been used to demonstrate links between children’s emotional expressions and their emotion regulation skills and social behaviors.
A study of children at the head start centre showed that the more the children expressed anger and sadness in a laboratory task, the more they…
displayed mental health and behavior problems in their classrooms 6 months later
social smiles
smiles that are directed at people; they first emerge around the third month of life
One study in Italy found that children as young as 3 years of age understood…
Jokes.
Including ones based on irony, such a puppet saying “Well done!” to another puppet that failed to score a basket
When do initial signs of fear begin?
7 months.
The ability to recognize fear in other peoples faces also happens around this time.
What did a study on fear show?
-Infants displayed no fear of the approaching stranger at 4 months
-Experienced a steep increase in expressions of fear such that the fear of strangers was clearly in place by 8 months.
-Little change in how much fear was expressed between 8 and 16 months, suggesting that after 8 months infants have more experience with novel situations and thus maintain some wariness but do not become increasingly distressed in fear-inducing situations
Separation anxiety (About)
-Tends to appear around 8 months and then begins to decline around 15 months
-Pattern of separation anxiety occurs across many cultures
-Some amount of separation anxiety is both normal and adaptive, as it encourages infants to stay in close proximity to adults who can protect them and provide for their needs.
separation anxiety (definition)
Feelings of distress that children, especially infants and toddlers, experience when they are separated, or expect to be separated, from individuals to whom they are emotionally attached
Sadness as expressed by infants
Infants rarely express anger as a single emotion; rather, they often express anger blended with sadness, which suggests that infants tend to express a general state of distress and that they are unable to differentiate whether a stimulus is making them sad or angry
When do Children’s tendency to react to a situation with anger appear to peak?
around 18 to 24 months of age
and from age 3 to 6 years, children show less negative emotion (likely due to their increasing ability to express themselves with language and regulate emotions).
Infants often exhibit sadness in the same types of situations in which they show…
Anger.
preschool years, their displays of sadness appear to be somewhat less frequent than displays of anger
Involves a cognitive understanding that something is not as it usually is
Surprise.
Most infants begin to express surprise by age 6 months.
What emotion is thought to have an evolutionary basis?
Disgust.
As it helps humans avoid potential poisons or disease-causing bacteria
The expression of self conscious emotions is an example of?
Discontinuous growth: there is an abrupt, qualitative change in children’s abilities to experience self-conscious emotions that is linked to the emergence of a sense of self
Difference between guilt and shame?
Guilt is associated with empathy for others and involves feelings of remorse and regret about one’s behavior, as well as the desire to undo the consequences of that behavior
Shame does not seem to be related to concern about others. When children feel shame, their focus is on themselves and the acceptance of a personal failure; they feel that they are exposed, and they often feel like hiding
Explicit belitting
Explicit belittling appears to have a more positive effect on children in these Asian cultures than it does on children in Western cultures.
(e.g., “You made your mother lose face,” “I’ve never seen any 3-year-old who behaves like you”)
What did a longitudinal study on feelings of guilt show?
children who were more prone to feelings of GUILT when they were 5th-graders were less likely to engage in risky behaviors, such as using illegal drugs and having many sexual partners, once they turned 18,
whereas those who experienced more SHAME as 5th-graders engaged in more risky behaviors later in life
differential susceptibility
a circumstance in which the same temperament characteristic that puts some children at high risk for negative outcomes when exposed to a harsh home environment also causes them to blossom when their home environment is positive
Research indicates that children who are impulsive or low in emotion regulation seem to have …
more problems and are less sympathetic to others if exposed to hostile, intrusive, and/or negative parenting rather than to supportive parenting
A study in Canada found that children whose parents rated them as high in shyness had fewer what?
fewer problems with peers and fewer emotional problems if their mothers were high in warmth
goodness of fit
the degree to which an individual’s temperament is compatible with the demands and expectations of his or her social environment
Identical twins vs fraternal twins temperament
identical twins are more similar to each other in these aspects of their emotion and regulation than are fraternal twins
Twin study on whether genes or the environment have more influence over temperament
The found that a large portion of the variance in three aspects of temperament (effortful control, negative affectivity, and extraversion) was explained by heritability.
They also found that key aspects of the home environments—namely how chaotic and unsafe they were—had a heritable component as well parents’ temperaments affected children both directly through genetic transmission and indirectly through the home environment they created
Activation of the right frontal lobe has been linked to what?
withdrawal, a state of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety
Mary Rothbart, five key dimensions of temperament:
fear, distress/anger/frustration, attention span, activity level, and smiling and laughter
She has created measures of temperament in both infancy (the Infant Behavior Questionnaire) and early childhood (the Child Behavior Questionnaire) that ask parents, teachers, or observers to rate each child along several dimensions of temperament
emotion coaching
the use of discussion and other forms of instruction to teach children how to cope with and properly express emotions.
Children who receive this type of guidance tend to display better emotional understanding than children who do not.
What did a longitudinal study by Judy Dunn find?
that the degree to which children are exposed to, and participate in, discussions of emotions with family members at ages 2 and 3 predicts their understanding of others’ emotions until at least age 6
Researchers have also found that children whose parents use emotion coaching are …?
more socially competent with peers, more empathic, and less likely to exhibit problem behaviors or depression than are children who do not receive such guidance
emotion socialization
the process through which children acquire the values, standards, skills, knowledge, and behaviors that are regarded as appropriate for their present and future roles in their particular culture
What happens when Parents dismiss or criticize their children’s expressions of sadness and anxiety?
this communicates to their children that their feelings are not valid.
In turn, their children are likely to be less emotionally and socially competent than are children whose parents are emotionally supportive. And tend to be lower in sympathy for others, less skilled at coping with stress, and more prone to express anger and to engage in problem behaviors such as aggression
What is The first step for children to develop an understanding of emotion?
Is to recognize different emotions in others.
By 3 months of age, infants can distinguish facial expressions of happiness, surprise, and anger.
By 7 months of age, infants appear to discriminate a number of additional expressions, such as fear, sadness, and interest
By age 3, children in laboratory studies demonstrate a rudimentary ability to label a fairly narrow range of emotional expressions displayed in pictures or on puppets’ faces
social referencing
the use of a parent’s or another adult’s facial expression or vocal cues to decide how to deal with novel, ambiguous, or possibly threatening situations
Very few preschool children recognize what emotion?
Disgust
but one-third of 12- to 14-year-olds recognize it, and three-quarters of 15 to 17-year-olds do
Children’s inability to recognize emotions in others has been linked with what?
the development of mental health problems:
one study found that 1st-grade children who were low in emotion recognition ability had high levels of loneliness, perhaps because they misinterpreted others’ emotional cues and thus had difficulties in relationships
emotional intelligence
the ability to cognitively process information about emotions and to use that information to guide both thought and behavior
How do we measure emotional intelligence in children and adolescents?
researchers typically ask participants to respond to direct statements about themselves and their abilities.
What has Emotional intelligence has been linked to?
a range of positive outcomes in both childhood and adolescence.
Children high in emotional intelligence are:
-better able to manage their own emotions and are less likely to engage in aggressive behavior
-have fewer mental health problems, lower risk behaviors, and better strategies for coping with stress
What is an intervention for elementary school students to promote emotional intelligence as a way of reducing aggressive and antisocial behavior?
RULER.
focuses on building their emotion RECOGNITION, emotion UNDERSTANDING, emotion LABELING, and emotion EXPRESSION and REGULATION.
Display Rules
a social group’s informal norms about when, where, and how much one should show emotions and when and where displays of emotion should be suppressed or masked by displays of other emotions.
Display rules sometimes require that children express an emotion that is not matched with their felt emotion. (pretending to love an aunt’s cooking)
Part of the improvement in understanding false emotion involves a growing understanding of?
Display rules
When can children recognize exaggerated and fake emotional displays?
Children as young as 11⁄2 years of age can
What are two main strategies for engaging in display rules?
1) simulating an emotion, typically in order to be nice to someone else
2) Masking an emotion as a self-protective measure
emotion regulation
a set of both conscious and unconscious processes used to both monitor and modulate emotional experiences and expressions
co-regulation
the process by which a caregiver provides the needed comfort or distraction to help a child reduce his or her distress
self-comforting behaviors
repetitive actions that regulate arousal by providing a mildly positive physical sensation
self-distraction
looking away from an upsetting stimulus in order to regulate one’s level of arousal
social competence
The ability to achieve personal goals in social interactions while simultaneously maintaining positive relationships with others
Children who are unable to successfully regulate their emotions are at higher risk what?
of becoming victims of bullying compared with their peers who are better at emotion regulation
Still-Face Paradigm
mothers and their infants, usually around 4 months of age. Mothers in the experimental group first are instructed to play normally for 2 minutes with their babies; then, they are told to sit back in their chairs, maintain a neutral expression, and not talk to, touch, or otherwise react to their babies.
FINDINGS: how quickly the infants become distressed when their mothers do not express emotion or react to the infants’ emotional expressions.
