The Development of Emotions

Question 1

What are emotions?

Answer 1

Subjective reactions to something in the environment.
Accompanied by some form of physiological arousal.
Communicated to others by some expression or action.
Usually pleasant or unpleasant.

Question 2

Why are emotions important?

Answer 2

Allow children to let people know how they feel.
Linked to children’s social + school success.
Help us adapt to our environment (e.g. fear).
Important in: self-awareness, emotional regulation, social competence + ability to form positive peer relationships.

Question 3

What emotions can be seen from 1 month old?

Answer 3

Joy, fear, anger surprise, sadness. Maybe disgust + contempt.

Question 4

What are Schwartz’s primary emotions?

Answer 4

Joy, sadness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, love.

Question 5

Name the key stages of development in emotion understanding.

Answer 5

3-5yo - simple cause + effect - recognition, reminder, external cause.
5-7yo - mentalistic - belief, desire, hiding.
7-9yo - reflective - morality, regulation, mixed.

Question 6

What is the external understanding of emotions phase (age 3-5)?

Answer 6

Recognising faces.
External causes.
Reminiscing.

Question 7

Explain a study which shows cultural differences in mentalistic emotions (Joshi & MacLean).

Answer 7

Indian girls at age 4 had an age 6 mentality compared to English girls.

Question 8

When does the emotion ‘desire’ start to be understood?

Answer 8

Age 5-7.

Question 9

When does theory of mind develop?

Answer 9

4+.

Question 10

What is theory of mind?

Answer 10

Children’s understanding that people have mental states such as thoughts and desires that affect their behaviour.
Allows children to get beyond people’s observable actions and respond to their unseen states.

Question 11

What task can be used to measure theory of mind?

Answer 11

False belief tasks.

Question 12

What type of questions are children more likely to answer successfully?

Answer 12

Belief/action questions rather than emotion questions.

At 8yos children can answer both successfully.

Question 13

How well do children do in understanding self vs others’ false-belief emotions?

Answer 13

Better at self.

Overall better at beliefs than emotions questions.

Question 14

Name 3 types of reflective emotions.

Answer 14

Ambivalent emotions, regulation, moral emotions.

Question 15

Explain the development of understanding ambivalent emotions with age.

Answer 15

4-5 - one emotion.
7-8 - sometimes both but not at the same time.
10-11 - interaction of emotions.

Question 16

When does regulation start to occur?

Answer 16

After 7 years old.

Question 17

Name 4 main types of regulation strategies.

Answer 17

Behavioural strategy - action to manage the emotion.
Social support - intervention of another character helps protagonist to overcome the negative emotion.
Attentional deployment - do or think of something else in order to regulate the emotion.
Cognitive reappraisal - able to regulate the emotion due to modifying the meaning of the situation.

Question 18

What have Salas, Pons & Molina shown about regulation?

Answer 18

Older children use more valid strategies and use cognitive reappraisal more often.
80% at 11 compared to 35% at 7 knew how to regulate emotions when feeling sad.
Further statistics: Rocha (2015) - reflective emotions: 90% at 11 compared to 30% at 7 knew that failing to confess a misdemeanour would lead to sadness due to morality.

Question 19

What are some weakness of TEC (Test of Emotional Comprehension)?

Answer 19

Only measures static emotions.
Individual differences in emotion processing.
Single item scale.
Maybe there’s more than one answer - could be due to different experiences?

Question 20

What are some strengths of TEC (Test of Emotional Comprehension)?

Answer 20

Has 9 components.
Used by many different cultures - has been normed.
Fairly simple stories.

Question 21

What are some key ways parents can influence children’s emotion understanding?

Answer 21

They model emotion behaviours. 
They develop the emotional climate in the family. 
Specific behaviours (e.g. coaching or dismissing).

Question 22

How do mothers with social phobia impact their children emotionally (Murray, 2008)?

Answer 22

10mo infant - no difference.

14mo infant - increased social avoidance compared to controls - modelling mother’s behaviour.

Question 23

How can parents help children’s learn about emotion through socialisation?

Answer 23

Reminiscing with them about shared past emotional experiences.
Children whose mothers discuss feelings more = recognise others’ emotions more + have better emotional regulation.
Mothers’ use of emotion language predicts ability to label emotions.

Question 24

What is a negative of research into emotional understanding in children?

Answer 24

Little work on fathers.

Controlling for past emotion understanding.

Question 25

Describe Aznar & Tenenbaum’s study into emotional understanding.

Answer 25

Spanish mothers + fathers with 6 or 4yos.
Reminiscence or play condition.
Counterbalancing - first visit with mother or father then 2 weeks later - same task with other parent.
TEC before study + 6 months later.

Question 26

What did paternal talk predict?

Answer 26

Nothing.

Question 27

What did maternal talk predict?

Answer 27

Higher emotional understanding.

Question 28

What are the 3 things that predict children’s emotional understanding (Karstad & Wichstrom, 2015)?

Answer 28

Parents’ mensualisation scores.
Child’s social skills.
Child’s verbal skills.
All 3 predict increases in emotional understanding.

Question 29

What is a weakness of parent-children studies of emotional understanding?

Answer 29

It’s mostly correlational.

Question 30

What did Tenenbaum (2008) find about what helps children to learn emotions?

Answer 30

Ambivalent or hidden emotion condition.
Results: experimenter-explanation + self-explanation increased TEC scores.
Self-summary did not.

Question 31

Are there gender differences in emotion?

Answer 31

No - both in TEC scores and in the way parents talk to children - no differences.