W9: EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Question 1

Discrete Emotions Theory

Answer 1

There are discrete (basic) emotion categories: Anger, Fear, Sadness

Evolutionary adaptive:
These emotions are evolved to give us an adaptive edge
E.g. fear is used to avoid threats, sadness can be used to communicate that we need care or we are hurt
Present from birth (learned before formally taught…)
Universal → everybody in the world feels it (This is NOT TRUE = flaw with theory)
Not every culture has the same word for fear or angry
For some languages in the world, sadness is more associated with love

Distinct physiological profile
E.g., when you feel angry, you have a physiological response that goes with it (brain response, hormonal response, increased heart rate, etc.)
We know that this is NOT TRUE
You can’t discriminate when someone if feeling fearful or angry based on their physiological response

Question 2

Circumplex Model of Emotions Theory

Answer 2

Emotions are continuous rather than discrete

Two Dimensions: Valence, Arousal
Valence = how pleasant something is

Arousal = amount of energy associated with an emotion
E.g, Angry = unpleasant, high arousal emotion
E.g., Fear = unpleasant, high arousal emotion
E.g., Sadness = unpleasant, low energy

Circumplex model allows you to consider that the boundaries between emotions are fuzzy (e.g. feeling sad while also feeling anger) whereas discrete only allows you to feel one (either sad OR angry, not both)

Question 3

Functionalist Approach to Emotions

Answer 3

Focused on the adaptive functions of emotion:
What is this emotion doing for this child?
Tries to understand the point of having these emotions

Emotions motivate us to attend to environmental stimuli:
Example: If I see a bear in the woods, my fear emotion that comes up will allow me to attend to the stimulus and decide how to act → the fearful component motivates my behaviour
Example: Sadness might motivate us to attend to something that is a loss somewhere and ti has to be replaced

Emotions are goal driven: act upon the environment:
When a kid is smiling = that means they like it, do more
When kid’s face is communicating fear = tells us that something is wrong

Question 4

Stages of Emotional Development

Answer 4

1. EMOTIONAL EXPRESSSION
   Ability to express different emotions

Pleasant Emotions
Early expressions (e.g. smiles) are reflexive until 2 months
Social smiles start ~2-3 months
Toddlers (~2 years old) start trying to make people laugh

Unpleasant Emotions
In infancy, distress emotions (anger, sadness) are not well differentiated
A cry doesn’t necessarily distinguish between anger or sadness → that’s why parents try multiple things like are you hungry, cold, want to be burped

Becomes more differentiated with age and organized by ~6mos

Example of fear: normal part of childhood development
Adaptive: warning about potential dangers
Stranger Wariness (begins ~7 months, until ~2yos) – often when infants start crawling
As they become more able to get away from their caregivers, the fear of strangers kicks in
This phase is normal for development and expected

Separation Anxiety (begins around ~8 months, peaks ~13 months) – separation from caregivers
This is where the evolutionary adaptive emotion that prompts kids to stick close to their caregivers is probably a good thing for survival of the species
Fear of imaginary phenomena (e.g, monsters, ghosts, things under the bed)
Fear related to real life issues (e.g., challenges at school, threats to parents health, fear of personal harm → getting hurt, robbers, murderers)

Self-conscious emotions (“complex” or “social” emotions) → comes after basic emotions like anger and fear
E.g, embarrassment, pride, guilt, shame
Emerge around 2 years of age because in order to feel these emotions you have to have a sense of self that is separate from other people
Requires consciousness of self (differentiated from others)
E.g, if I’ve something bad and the other person knows, then I feel guilty
E.g., Rouge Test → putting a red dot on a kid and placing them in front of the mirror to see what they would do
If the kid touched their own face, that meant that they recognized themselves in the mirror → recognized red dot was on them and tried to rub it off
But if they just sit there and stare = they think it’s a different kid, they don’t recognize themselves

Influence of Cultural Differences?
E.g., Columbia for collectivist, Canada for individualist

Collectivist Cultures:
Emphasis is on interpersonal relationships, creating a sense of community
Self conscious emotions more likely in response to others behaviours
You are embarrassed not because you did something bad but because you are reflecting your group poorly
“I am proud of someone in my family”
Use of shame in discipline is normative → not associated with negative outcomes

Individualist Cultures:
More about bolstering an individual’s self image, autonomy, and the independence
Self conscious emotions more likely in response to one’s own behaviours
People might say “I am proud of something I have done”
Use of shame in discipline is associated with negative outcomes → you are telling the kid themselves that they are bad

2. EMOTION RECOGNITION
   Ability to recognize emotions

Starts early, before infants can label emotions

Discrimination of facial expressions of emotion by 3 months (habituation paradigm)
Children at 3 months old can tell the difference between a happy/angry/sad face

E.g., Visual Cliff → social referencing to decide how to approach

Ability to “label” emotions improves across childhood and adolescence
2yos can label happiness in pictures of faces → easiest to recognize
Recognition of vocal emotions follows more protracted developmental trajectory → really hard to recognize emotion through tone of voice

Emotion recognition is influenced by rearing environment
Children who were abused were more sensitive to signs of anger → able to pick up on anger earlier = suggest that the environment you’re raised in really shapes the way you perceive and interpret nonverbal cues
Emotional recognition is thought to be important for social competence
If you can understand other’s emotional states, you can adjust your own behavior accordingly

3. EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING
   Ability to understand the use of emotions in self and others
4. EMOTION REGULATION

Question 5

Emotion Regulation

Answer 5

Ability to control one’s emotional expression, arousal, and cognitions
Initiation (start), inhibition (stop) or modulation (ups and downs, changes in your emotion) of:
Internal feeling states.
Emotion-related cognitions.
Emotion-related physiological processes.
Emotion-related behaviours.

Regulation of emotions is important to achieve goals

Emotion Regulation Strategies:
Distraction
Develops very early (e.g., by 6 months) → turning away from the stimulation

Relaxation
Focusing on body’s response
E.g., “take a big breath” when upset

Expressive Engagement
Behavioural strategy: engage with emotion, express it
Can be adaptive (“letting it out”)
But context-dependent (e.g., age if you fall off you bike screaming: toddler vs. adult)
E.g., ranting to a friend

Expressive Surpression
Behavioural strategy: inhibit the emotion
Related to cultural display rules
E.g., “boys don’t cry”, suppressing anger in a cultural setting in customer service
Can be adaptive, but not if too much
E.g., if professor gave you a bad grade, maybe it’s best to suppress your emotions in the moment (e.g., anger, frustration) and then do another emotion regulation strategy later on

Rumination
Cognitive strategy: focusing attention on distress
Thinkin about the situation over and over again
Too much can be associated with anxiety/depression symptoms

Reappraisal
Cognitive strategy: changing your thinking → “reframing” something
Generally considered adaptive

How Does Emotion Regulation Develop?
Long and slow process, continuing into adulthood

In infancy, co-regulation with caregiver:
Infants born with few regulation skills

Parents help to co-regulate by doing things such as signing the baby, rocking the baby (e.g., control exposure to overwhelming stimuli soothe or distract child when upset) until infants learn to self-soothe

Requires parent responsiveness (e.g., Still Face paradigm)
As soon as the parent starts engaging with the child again, they are soothed

Parental responsiveness is a key piece of that co regulation → how children learn to regulate their emotions

Young children use behavioural strategies most commonly at first
E.g., distracting with play, expressively engaging with distress
With age, children come to rely more on cognitive strategies
E.g., Delay of Gratification Task aka marshmallow task: kids are given one marshmallow and they are asked to not eat it. If they can wait until the experimenter comes back and not eat their marshmallow, then they will get 2 marshmallows
Strategies children did: looking away, playing, pretending to eat it, rumination (staring at it)
Individual differences in ability to regulate (predicts social competence in youth)
Predicts social competence as you need to regulate your emotions to deal with other people a lot

Become better at selecting appropriate strategy for the situation
No “good” or “bad” strategies → it depends on the situation
Having a large “toolbox” of strategies is most adaptive
Being able to reappraise and engage when needed

Question 6

Socialization of Emotions

Answer 6

Parent-child relationship is key predictor of emotional development
Associated with more positive emotions

1. Parents’ own emotional expressions (children learn through modeling and reinforcement)
   Aligns with behavioral theories of development → you learn vicariously (through others)
2. Parents’ reactions to emotional expression (teaches children what is expected about emotions)
   If you validating a child’s emotions = teachers child that their emotions are valid
3. Discussions of emotions (direct teaching about emotions, emotion coaching)
   Direct teaching of emotions, having direct conversations

Parents help transmit cultural norms about emotion expression
What’s acceptable in your family

Question 7

Temperament

Answer 7

Behavioural tendency or disposition that a child has: innate individual difference
Tendency to experience emotion & capacity to regulate it:
Typical levels of arousal or activity
Capacity to focus attention
Example: you have a kid with a new toy. We’re going to observe how that child answers to this, how the child responds in terms of their emotion.
Do they cry? Are they curious, intrigued, happy? Are they a kid that focuses more on the negative or positive side?
Do they want to engage with the toy? Or do they want nothing to do with it?
ALL of this = temperament → the behavioural disposition that kids have

Can be influenced by genetics (hereditary → can get passed down) but ALSO influenced by the environment that a child is in
Children are responsive to the environments that they’re in, but their environments are also responsive to them
It is hard for a parent to care for a child that has a difficult temperament and is fussy and difficult and cries a lot → they may not get the same level of care compared to a child that’s easy going

How Do We Assess Temperament?
Historical approach (Thomas & Chess): interview with parents
9 temperament qualities: activity level, distractibility, adaptability, etc.
Placed into 3 temperament categories:

Easy (40%): cheerful, easy to distract and soothe, quick to establish routines

Difficult (10%): easily upset, hard to settle, hard to adjust to new experiences, hard to soothe

Slow-to-warm-up (15%): difficult at first but become easier over time
… other 35%? Can’t be categorized! They didn’t fall into any of the categories. Therefore thats a problem with this theory

Modern approaches (e.g., Rothbart): parent rating scales, observation of infant behaviour, psychophysiology (neuro response, heart rate, etc.) measures
Temperament is best captured by 5 key factors:
1. Fearful distress/inhibition (how the infant responds to new situations)

2. Irritable distress (how angry/frustrated child gets)
3. Attention span (how long child can pay attention to something)
4. Activity level (how active the child is)
5. Positive affect (how much smiling/laughter the child shows)

Temperament is largely genetic, hardly heritable
Generally stable (especially in early childhood; can change as children grow autonomy)

Outcomes associated with temperament depend on the environment:
“Goodness-of-fit”: how well a baby’s temperament fits with the expectations/demands of an environment

Best outcomes are when parents fit parenting style to child’s needs

Quality of parent-child relationship is more important than temperament for outcomes!

Assessing temperament might consist of ratings of …
Startle response to sudden change
GENETICS DON’T GO INTO TEMPERAMENT
Weight
Attention span
Movement of arms and legs
Ease of falling asleep