Processing Affect 1

Question 1

What does affective communication to children provide?

Answer 1

Important input to their development such as regulating their emotions ect.

Question 2

I want to unfold
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
Because where I am folded,
I am out of touch with the truth

Implication

Answer 2

There might be something as the truth in us. Unfolding this truth is deeply related to how we are

Sense/ expectation of wanting to grow and being related to

Sometimes young infants struggle to the adapt to the world

Synchronos- syn (together) chronos (in time)- what happens when two individuals meet each other at the same time and with the same level

We do a lot of things non-verbally
Intimacy

Need for communication often becomes prominated when we become isolated

Question 3

Human Nest
- what is the idea?
- what are the key principle features?

Answer 3

Idea that human being has been evolved in growing up in a particular environment

Key principle features:
- Soothing perinatal experiences (e.g., no separation from mother)
- Breastfeeding on request for 2-5 years (quite different to western cultures)
- Affectionate touch; Responsivity; Free play
- Social embeddedness- other mature caregivers are also part of the infants life

Question 4

Human nest 3 time points

Answer 4

1. Inter-subjectivity (invisible influence in child’s dev)
2. Intimacy, trust, security
3. Coherence

Question 5

Explain why empathy has deep roots

Answer 5

Empathy is critical for development

Emotional bridge between organism and environment (e.g., Freud- our first ego is an embodied ego, 1938; Ferreira, 1961)

Little empirical attention to infant’s affective capacities until the 1970s and 80s

Question 6

Explain about intersubjective infant

Answer 6

• Experience-expectant (e.g., Narvaez et al., 2013)
• Infant sensory organism is highly receptive to stimuli arriving from social world (i.e., social fittedness; e.g., MacFarlane, 1975). To people in general but also caregivers.
  – MacFarlane- infant is able to identify mothers breastmilk- this shows theres a pre disposition to connect and for social adaption
• Engages dyadic, affectively charged exchanges and interactions (“proto-conversations”- conversations at a non-verbal level; Trevarthen, 1979)
• Young infants are highly attended to voices

Question 7

Social Fittedness: Parental Brain
What happens to brains when we become parents

Answer 7

When we become a parent- It’s a period of high plasticity in the brain

Theres a caregiving network that becomes accentuate when a person becomes a parent

The caregiving situation is highly salient to the brain

Increased activity in limbic regions- which are connected to emotions and tied to reward

Relations to empathy

Relations to motivation-reward- nucleus accumbens

Relations to physicality as well

Question 8

Affective Communication
- what does this communication become?
- what is being communicated?
- what do you see when infants and caregivers become synchronised
- what underpin healthy emotional development?

Answer 8

• This communication becomes synchronised- presence of affective communication system. Things start to happen at the same time and exchange of information starts to happen at the same time. Eg. the way the face is moving, eye contact, hands moving
• When it becomes synchronised a lot of innate developmental input is being communicated
• When infants and caregivers begin to synchronise in this way you see RH (intuitive non verbal representation of ourselves). The RH of caregiver is activating and amplifying RH of infant.
• Co-ordinated patterns of interaction underpin healthy emotional development

Question 9

“In individual emotional development the precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face…what does the baby see when he or she looks at the mother’s face?

What does this suggest?

Answer 9

I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself” (Winnicott, 1971)

Infant becomes what the relationship is. The young child will see how they have been mirrored.

This highlights importance of non-verbal affective processes

Question 10

I See You

Answer 10

“When I look, I am seen, so I exist” (Winnicott, 1971)

Important that we are seeing for us to have a sense of who we are

The deeper our seeing is, the more opportunity for integration

Implied in the act of seeing

We see each other in our wholeness

Question 11

• What did Strogatz, 2004 say about the tendency to synchronise?
• What did Leckman & March (2011) say about the dyadic relations between child and caregivers in the first year of life?

Answer 11

“For reasons we don’t yet understand, the tendency to synchronise is perhaps the most pervasive drives in the universe. It extends from people to planets, from animals to atoms” (Strogatz, 2004)

“It has…become abundantly clear that…the dyadic relations between child and caregivers within the first years of life can have direct and enduring effects on the child’s brain development & behaviour” (Leckman & March; 2011)

Question 12

Synchrony
- what is it?
- elements relating?

Answer 12

Meeting together in time- create an affective communication system which is intrained with others

“…an overarching process that co-ordinates the ongoing exchanges of sensory, hormonal, and physiological stimuli between parent and child social interactions…” (Feldman, 2007, p. 340)

Motor activity
Body sensation
Emotion
Cognition

Question 13

Experimentally inducing synchrony:
Paladino, et al (2010)
Study and results

Answer 13

• Pp who is seated in front of computer screen who is seeing another person
• Experimenter brushes cheek either in synchrony with the way the person on the screen cheek is being brushed, or not.

Found:
- The timing of this makes a difference to how the pp experiences this experiment
- In synchrony- they start to feel more close to the other person and they think they could relate (psychological)
- They start to see their own face as to the persons face on the screen (perceptual level)
- Sense of relating
- Synchrony has also been explored in infants- found they pay particular attention to when synchrony makes sense

Question 14

Rabinowitch TC, & Knafo-Noam, A (2015).
Study and reuslts

Answer 14

• 2 children sitting next to each other but not looking at each other.
• They’re tapping something in front of them
• They don’t realise this is happening on an implicit level but they are encouraged to either tap in synchrony or out of synchrony

Found:
- When 2 children are tapping the object in synchrony to on another, they feel closer and more similar to the other person
- 2 children are reacting in a synchronised way even if they are unaware of this

Question 15

Cirelli, Einarson % Trainor (2014)

Answer 15

A young infant is standing in opposition to experimenter and music begins to play.

They either bounced in synchrony or not

Again see them being close and liking each other

Idea that early synchronised changes makes infants feel closer.

However, were not always in synchrony with other people.

Best functioning mother-infant dyads are in attuned states about 28-34% of the time (Harris & Waugh, 2002; Tronick & Beeghly, 2011)- therefore it’s not all about synchrony.

Question 16

Graph with match meanings/ intentions and mismatch of meanings/ intentions:
Explain

Answer 16

The graph suggests distinct phases of face-to-face parent-infant interaction over time which are simulated in the still-face paradigm. A state of match is not perfect, it contains messiness and can lead a state of mismatch. Reparation is the process that turns a state of mismatch into match.

The key is to find a way to repair the situation- brings it back from messiness to matching

Question 17

Still-face paradigm

Answer 17

Parent is instructed to keep a still face

Infant tends to be distressed and turns away

Question 18

Why are breaks important in synchrony?

Answer 18

Breaks are important and need to be sensitively supported -> states of fear can arise

Question 19

Figure showing mean % of negative affect for low and high parent responsiveness groups across episodes

Answer 19

Looking at negative affect in different stages of interactions

During play and when stopping playing and adapts a still face

Break in connection leads to an increase in negative affect

Negative affect can quickly escalate if parent is not responsive. When there is a reunion it stabilises and negative affect decreases.

Question 20

Mean heart rate for low and high parent responsiveness groups across episodes

Answer 20

The caregiver needs to make sure the psychobiological activity of the infant is remaining within this window of tolerance

If the HR increases too much, it can become de stabilising

It is therefore important to regulate these breaks and connection

Not about the break, it’s about the repair- the longer it takes to repair is more distressing for infants

Question 21

1- where does repair of mistakes in face-to-face interactions with infants occurs within ______

2- latency to interactive repair related to ______
– reparation of mismatch aided _____
self-comforting positively related to______

3- sensitive re-attuning regulates________
– maternal touch can lower_______

Answer 21

• Repair of mistakes in face-to-face interactions with infants occurs within 3-5s
• Latency to interactive repair related to infant cortisol reactivity
  – Timely reparation of mismatch aided infant recovery
  – Self-comforting positively related to cortisol reactivity- infant tries to regulate emotive state for itself but when it does this it doesn’t tend to help reducing the negative affect.
• Sensitive re-attuning regulates physiology, builds resilience and trust
  – Maternal touch can lower infant’s heart rate during arousal
  – Parent engagement and infant expectations

Question 22

• what is critical in child-caregiver dyads given…
• what can alter limbic activity
• what heightens children’s’ vulnerability to environmental influences

Answer 22

• Co-regulation is critical in child-caregiver dyads given protracted development of neural system

We can feel and have emotions much earlier

– Neocortical regions can alter limbic activity (Hariri et al., 2000)

– Immaturity is likely to heighten children’s vulnerability to environmental influences

Question 23

Does providing access to maternal stimulus buffer against high amygdala activity (Gee et al., 2014)?

Answer 23

high amygdala activity is an indicator of threat or fear

Children were presented with pictures of their mother or a stranger during fMRI scanning (going into an fMRI is seen as a threatening situation)

About 80-95% of adult emotional events are shared

Hypothesis: Availability of parental cue would dampen amygdala reactivity

Question 24

Amygdala reactivity (Mother vs Stranger)

Answer 24

Lower amygdala reactivity response when presented with own mother’s image

Dampening effect correlated with strength of parent-child relationship

The dampening of amygdala response by the parental cue in children was noteworthy given the high amygdala response that is typically observed in children.

Theres a reduction in amygdala activity if they are seeing an image of their mother as opposed to a stranger

Children: -0.02
Adolescence: 0.01

Question 25

Emotion Regulation

Emotional face go/no-go task

Procedure

Answer 25

Image shows set-up of the emotional regulation task. The image shows 5 adult faces next to each other (i.e., 5 trials of the task set-up). The first three show a neutral expression, the fourth a fearful expression, the fifth a neutral expression. Participant has to withhold response to the fearful image.

Have to press a button every time they see a neutral face

They have to switch and stop responding when they see fearful face

SO it requires emotional regulation

They did this once when their mother was sitting next to them and one where there was a stranger

Question 26

Emotional face go/no-go task

False Alarm rate

Results

Answer 26

• Children’s false alarm rate for fearful faces improved significantly when seated next to their mother
• Improved the most for children who showed the largest maternal buffering effects on the amygdala during fMRI scanning session

Graph shows that children had a higher false alarm rate with a stranger compared to their mother. No difference in false alarm rates for adolescents.

less difference in adolescence compared to children

Question 27

Sequential develop of capacities over time

Answer 27

Posits that dyadic affective processing is a precursor for trust and security self-regulation which, in turn, provides a foundation for more complex coherent function.

Sense of trust and security in relationship becomes trust in oneself.

• Physiology & Emotion Regulation
• Attachment
• Social engagement
• Symbolism
• Self-formation

Question 28

What is likely to happen if a parent is emotionally available and emotionally unavailable?

Answer 28

Emotionally available parent:
Regulatory resources are present and stress reactivity is decreased. Regulatory resources and stress reactivity then link to infant stress inoculation and growth.

Emotionally unavailable parent:
Regulatory resources are absent, thus parent emotional unavailability links to increased stress reactivity, which in turn, leads to infant dysregulation and disorganisation.