Problem 2 Flashcards
Temperament
- refers to an infant’s inherent emotional disposition (e.g., emotionality, activity level, sociability).
- believed to have biological roots and shows stability in infancy.
- personality development is influenced by both genetic factors (temperament) and environmental factors.
Temperament-Based Components of Personality and Early Development
- early differences in temperament lead to variations in personality.
- key components: emotionality (intensity of emotional reactions), activity level, sociability.
- temperament affects later behavior, social interactions, and adaptability.
Common temperamental categories
easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm-up children.
Goodness of fit
- the match between a child’s temperament and their environment (e.g., parenting style).
- good fit leads to better emotional regulation and development, while a poor fit can lead to emotional or behavioral challenges.
- parenting styles that align with the child’s temperament enhance emotional well-being.
Emotions
- transient states with physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components
- physiological responses (e.g., heart rate) signal emotional states.
- cognitive processes influence how we appraise situations, affecting emotional responses
- behavioral processes involve actions (e.g., crying, smiling) that communicate emotions.
Development of Emotions in Infancy
- newborns show rudimentary emotions like distress and contentment.
- positive and negative emotions emerge early; more complex emotions develop over time.
- by 3 months, emotions like joy, surprise, and distress appear.
- 6 months: emotions like fear and anger differentiate.
Primary emotions
joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust (universal and cross-cultural).
Basic Emotions and Evolutionary Function
- basic emotions serve adaptive roles (e.g., fear warns of danger, joy encourages approach).
- these emotions are innate and shared across cultures.
- infants’ emotional expressions communicate their internal states to others, prompting caregivers to respond.
Approaches to Studying Emotional Development
- facial expressions
- Darwin’s research: studied how facial expressions signal emotional states across species.
- emotions are functional: they mobilize actions to achieve goals (e.g., anger drives action, sadness leads to seeking comfort).
Differentiation of Emotions in Infancy
- early emotions are undifferentiated (global positive or negative states).
- over time, emotions become more refined (e.g., sadness and anger separate).
Infants’ Emotional Expressions
- positive emotions: smiles and joy (e.g., when mastering a skill or engaging socially).
- negative emotions: initially difficult to distinguish (e.g., all negative states may appear as distress).
- as infants grow, they differentiate fear from other negative emotions by around 6 months.
Easy Children (40-50% of infants)
- General Characteristics: These children are typically calm, adaptable, and easygoing.
- emotional Reactivity: They tend to have regular biological rhythms (e.g., sleep, feeding schedules) and are predictable in their behavior.
- adaptability: Easy children adjust easily to changes in routine or environment.
- approach to New Experiences: They are generally curious and show a positive attitude toward new situations.
- emotional Regulation: They are usually able to regulate their emotions and rarely get overly distressed.
- parenting Fit: Easy children tend to do well with most parenting styles and often help create a positive parent-child relationship due to their ease of management.
Difficult Children (10-15% of infants)
- general Characteristics: These children are more likely to show irregularity in their biological rhythms (e.g., difficulty sleeping, feeding, etc.).
- emotional Reactivity: They often exhibit intense emotional responses to stimuli, both positive and negative.
- adaptability: Difficult children are typically less adaptable to new situations, and changes in routine can be more challenging for them.
- approach to New Experiences: They tend to show hesitation or avoidance toward unfamiliar situations or people.
- emotional Regulation: These children may have difficulty calming down once upset and may need more effort to soothe.
- parenting Fit: Difficult children may require more patience and consistent caregiving. They might benefit from a structured and predictable environment to reduce frustration.
Slow-to-Warm-Up Children (15-20% of infants)
- general characteristics: These children are characterized by a gradual approach to new situations or people, appearing shy or reserved at first.
- emotional Reactivity: They may show mild distress when faced with new or unfamiliar situations but do not react as intensely as difficult children.
- adaptability: Slow-to-warm-up children tend to need more time to adjust to changes in their environment, but once they become familiar with a situation, they often respond in a more positive way.
- approach to New Experiences: They are cautious and take their time to warm up to new people or experiences, but they eventually become more comfortable.
- emotional Regulation: They usually have moderate levels of emotional intensity but may take longer to calm down when distressed compared to easy children.
- parenting Fit: Slow-to-warm-up children benefit from gentle encouragement and gradual exposure to new situations. A supportive and reassuring parenting style helps them adjust without overwhelming them.
What is a possible reason why fear emerges later than sadness and anger?
Fear may require more complex mental representations to assess a potential threat, which might be beyond the cognitive capabilities of very young infants.
How are basic emotions different from complex emotions?
Basic emotions (e.g., anger, fear, sadness) emerge early in life and are often linked to survival mechanisms, while complex emotions (e.g., guilt, shame, pride) emerge later and often involve more intricate cognitions and social awareness.
What are self-conscious emotions, and when do they typically appear?
self-conscious emotions, such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride, require a sense of self in relation to others and usually begin to emerge around ages 1½ to 2.
What brain structure is linked with basic emotions?
Basic emotions are closely linked to the amygdala, a brain structure involved in emotional memory formation.
What are the differences between shame and guilt as complex emotions?
- Shame involves wanting to hide due to loss of respect from others.
- Guilt involves feeling the need to remedy a situation after a specific failure or wrongdoing.
What is embarrassment, and how does it develop in young children?
Embarrassment typically occurs when individuals feel they are receiving unwanted attention or have violated social norms.
It can develop as early as 2 years old and is linked to the emerging ability to understand the self in social contexts.
How do Machiavellian emotions in infants function?
These emotions (e.g., using facial expressions to elicit caregiver responses) may be displayed early in life to manipulate social interactions, even if the infant does not fully experience the associated emotion.
Q: What study suggests that infants have a basic sense of morality
- Research using geometric shapes (helper vs. hinderer) found that infants as young as 6 months preferred to interact with helpful figures, suggesting early emotional responses to moral behavior.
What is the developmental sequence for emotions in infancy?
Contentment, interest, and distress at birth.
Sadness and disgust at around 3 months.
Anger at around 4 months.
Fear around 6 months.
Self-conscious emotions (like pride and shame) develop between 1½ and 2 years.
How are complex emotions like jealousy understood in early development?
Early jealousy might not be fully complex but could reflect anger about a perceived loss of resources (like adult attention) rather than a sophisticated understanding of social roles.
Infant’s Reaction to Geometric Shapes
Context: 12-month-old infants viewed clips of a ball interacting with geometric shapes (triangle, square).
Helper vs. Hinderer:
Triangle = Helper (assists the ball).
Square = Hinderer (prevents the ball from climbing).
Key Finding: Infants looked longer when the ball “chose” the hinderer (square) over the helper (triangle), indicating a preference for negative social interactions.
Negativity Bias
- Infants show a tendency to respond more to negative emotions than positive ones
- The cost of ignoring negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger) is greater than missing positive emotions (e.g., joy, pleasure).
- May contribute to humans’ risk-averse tendencies.
Social Referencing in Infants
Concept: Infants look to parents’ emotional cues to guide their behavior in uncertain situations.
Example: An infant on a gondola used the parent’s calm demeanor to regulate their own anxiety.
Unexpected Event: Infant became distressed when the parent reacted to a potential emergency situation.
Key Insight: Infants are highly sensitive to small cues, which guide their emotional responses.
Emotional Inference by 9-Month-Olds
Study Example: Infants watched two people show contrasting emotions (happy vs. unhappy) while looking at an unfamiliar object.
Outcome: Infants expected the person who had a happy expression to interact with the object but were surprised when the person with a sad expression was revealed.
Conclusion: Infants at 9 months use emotional states to predict others’ behaviors.
Infants’ Recognition of Emotions in Others
Early Recognition: Infants as young as 4 months respond differently to various emotions like happiness, sadness, and surprise.
Tone of Voice: Even 5-month-old infants react to unfamiliar languages based on tone, distinguishing between positive and negative tones.
Brain Activity: By 7 months, infants show stronger brain activity in response to happy tones.
Visual & Auditory Cues: Infants integrate both cues to recognize emotions and regulate their behavior accordingly.
Social Referencing in Action
Example: A 1-year-old infant on a visual cliff will look to a parent’s emotional cues (alarm in voice or face) to determine whether to approach or avoid the cliff.
Key Concept: Social referencing allows infants to interpret ambiguous or unfamiliar situations by observing the emotional responses of trusted adults.
Emotional Contagion in Infants
- Emotional contagion is when one person’s emotion is “caught” by another person.
- Infant Sensitivity: By 6 months, infants can catch and express emotions like happiness, sadness, and fear from others.
- Contagion Example: Distress in one infant can cause distress in another, showing an early form of empathy.
- Role of Mirror Neurons: These neurons may help infants recognize and express emotions they observe in others.
Emotional Regulation in Infants
Emotional regulation is the ability to influence when and how emotions are experienced and expressed.
Development in Infants: Infants lack full emotional regulation, often experiencing intense emotional outbursts.
Key Process: Emotional regulation can be conscious (e.g., suppressing emotions) or unconscious (e.g., shifting attention away from a distressing image).
External Factors: Parents play a significant role in soothing infants and helping them regulate emotions.
Situational Factors in Emotional Regulation
Situational Modification: Infants regulate emotions by changing the environment they are in.
Example: A parent removes a frightening toy or takes the infant out of their crib to soothe them.
Parent’s Role: Parents play a key role in early emotional regulation by selecting or modifying situations for the infant.
Example: A parent might change the setting when an infant shows distress.
Infants’ Ability to Modify Situation:
Before Mobility: Infants are largely dependent on caregivers to modify their environment.
After Mobility: Once infants begin to move, they may modify situations themselves (e.g., crawling away from a scary situation).
Facial Expressions and Gestures: Infants may use facial expressions or gestures to alter a situation, like crying to attract a caregiver’s attention.
Example: An infant may show an alarmed face to a stranger, prompting the stranger to become quieter.
Attentional Deployment in Emotional Regulation
Attentional Deployment: Infants use attentional strategies to regulate emotions by focusing on different aspects of their environment.
Looking Away: Infants will often shift their focus from a distressing stimulus to something more neutral to manage their emotions.
Example: In the still-face procedure, infants look away from a mother’s impassive face to avoid distress.
Strange Situation: In the Strange Situation experiment, 12-month-olds use attentional redirection as a coping strategy.
Development of Attentional Skills:
Early Infancy: Infants begin using basic attentional redirection to cope with negative emotions.
Later Infancy: As they grow, they become better at choosing and focusing on more pleasant stimuli to regulate emotions.
Preschoolers: By preschool age, children become more skilled at using attention to distract themselves from troubling stimuli.
Response Modification in Emotional Regulation
Response Modification: This involves directly modifying emotional responses, such as through relaxation or inhibiting emotional expressions.
Self-Soothing: Infants engage in behaviors like thumb-sucking to soothe themselves.
Inhibition of Motor Movements: Around 1 year, infants begin to inhibit movements related to distress or excitement (e.g., calming down after becoming overly excited).
Example: An infant might learn to calm down by holding their breath or engaging in a self-soothing behavior.
Cultural Influence on Response Modification:
Cultural Display Rules: Different cultures socialize children to suppress or express emotions in specific ways.
Example: Iranian children are taught to suppress emotions, while Dutch children may suppress emotions more in peer interactions.
Development of Response Modification:
As children grow, they learn to use more sophisticated techniques to regulate emotions, such as counting to 10 or taking deep breaths.
Flashcard 4: Emotional Regulation Processes in Infancy
Infants’ Early Regulation:
Situation Modification: Infants begin to regulate emotions by changing their environment (e.g., caregiver interventions).
Attentional Deployment: Infants redirect their attention to regulate emotions, especially in response to unpleasant stimuli.
Response Modification: Infants start with simple self-soothing behaviors, and over time, learn more complex emotional regulation strategies.
Development of Emotional Regulation: These regulatory strategies grow more sophisticated as infants age, influenced by physical development, cognitive growth, and social interactions with caregivers.
