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PSY 494 Lecture 7: Emotional Development
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studying the development of emotion is important for both practical and theoretical reasons.: 3 practical reasons - ANSWER 1. On a practical level, if you work with toddlers, teenagers, or people of any age, it's helpful if you can understand their emotional reactions.
- Parents are often concerned about whether their child is developing "on schedule" in various ways, and emotion is no exception. Research can help establish norms for typical emotional development, allowing early identification of children who may have problems later.
- good research can help identify the mechanisms that underlie developmental changes in emotion. This knowledge is important for those who want to develop interventions. studying the development of emotion is important for both practical and theoretical reasons: 3 theoretical reasons - ANSWER 1. At a theoretical level, learning how emotion develops may help us understand more about emotion itself If a kind of emotion is evident early on, this provides some support for its being basic (asswning that basic emotions exist at all, of course}
- We also learn more about the causes of emotion by seeing when in development they emerge. As we shall see, developmental trajectory sometimes provides information about the function served by some emotion or aspect of emotion, or about the psychological abilities needed for the emotion to occur.
- researchers can help identify the socialization patterns by which children learn cultural rules about emotional feelings and displays. 4 issues with studying emotion in children - ANSWER 1, For the first year, children don't talk at all, and for the next year or more they don't talk much.
- Infants' facial expressions are limited, compared to the rich variety that adults show.
- Even after children begin to talk, we can hardly expect them to say much about their emotions until they are taught what words to use. Children learn this vocabulary largely
when parents and others say to them, "I'm sorry you're feeling sad," or "I can tell you're angry."
- For ethical and practical reasons, researchers can't use many of the methods they would use with adults or older children. We can't ask infants or toddlers to watch upsetting films while they sit motionless in a brain-scan device. infant gestures - ANSWER some children around 2 years old make interesting hand gestures to indicate emotions- for example, drawing the forefinger from an eye down the cheek (like a !lowing tear} to indicate sadness However, gestures convey limited information about emotion. emotional labelling for children: assumptions adults must make and the confusion that occurs during this process - ANSWER Children learn emotional vocabulary largely when parents and others say to them, "I'm sorry you're feeling sad," or "I can tell you're angry." -->But to say such things, adults must make inferences about what preverbal children are feeling, and this can be difficult. -->Anyone who has spent much time with infants has wondered, "what on earth is the baby crying about ???" -->Even if you know the specific target of the child's emotion, it can be diflic-ult to determine how the child is appraising it, as needed to explain a strong, unexpected emotional reaction -->So adults are trying to interpret young children's emotions at the same time that children are trying to learn what emotion words mean. Some confusion is inevitable how do researchers study emotion in children, what is an issue with this approach? - ANSWER researchers observe infants' spontaneous behaviors or their reactions to simple situations, and see how those reactions change over time. this approach leaves substantial room for debate over how to interpret study results, The one emotional expression readily apparent from birth - ANSWER crying. Newborns cry when they are hungry, sleepy, gassy, uncomfortable in any way, or in response to a loud noise. A newborn's cry expresses (blank). - ANSWER distress: an undifferentiated protest against anything unpleasant or threatening.
almost instantaneously, and is accompanied by tightly closed eyes. -->crying in response to emotional events or hearing another baby cry starts after a delay and builds up slowly, with eyes open or partly open. crying in fear vs anger - ANSWER Crying in response to fear (a sudden loud noise) is about the same as crying in response to anger (someone holding the infant's hands immobile), so we cannot differentiate these two emotions based on the sound of babies' cries development of smiling and laughing among infants - ANSWER When newborns relax, sometimes they curl up the corners of the mouth. By about the age of 3 weeks, their eyelids begin to crinkle as well, and infants may open their mouths into a full grin --> these expressions occur occasionally throughout the day, but most commonly during rapid eye movement sleep (may be from happy dreams), or just randomly connection between smiling/laughing in babies and the social situation - ANSWER However, these expressions have little or no connection to the social situation, unless we want to assume that the babies are having happy dreams during their rapid eye movement sleep, so it's a matter of definition as to whether we want to call them smiles. social smiling in infants - ANSWER By about 2 months of age, infants begin social smiling- smiling in response to seeing someone else smile. Social smiling occurs much more frequently in some mother-infant pairs than in others, although it is not obvious how much the mother influences the infant and how much the infant influences the mother Why does the social smile emerge around the age of 2 months? discuss evidence among blind-from-birth infants - ANSWER ->For the first few weeks of life, infants have only blurry vision, and they tend to look toward the top of the face ( the eyes) rather than the bottom. --> At about 6 to 8 weeks, infants begin to look more closely at people's features and start to see smiles more clearly.
-->However, you don't have to learn how to smile: People blind from birth smile about as much as sighted people do and in the same situations --->They don't smile in response to seeing someone else smile (because they do not see), but they smile in appropriate situations nevertheless is social smiling necessary to strengthening parent-child bonds? - ANSWER Although social smiling helps to strengthen the relationship between parent and child, it is not necessary to strengthen the relationship. ->Children who are blind from birth can establish an attachment to their parents that is just as strong as that of any other child ->On average, the parents of blind children play physically with their babies ( tickling, bouncing, and so on) more than parents of sighted children, and blind babies often smile in response to this play, as well as in response to sounds -->Indeed, tactile cues, especially skin contact, are an important basis of bonding for everyone contagious laughter - ANSWER Just as infants cry when they hear others cry, at some point they begin to laugh when they hear others laugh. The same is true for adults, and for that reason many television comedies include a laugh track to enhance the viewers' enjoyment. -->Whereas contagious crying develops slowly after hearing someone cry, contagious laughter occurs quickly -->Still, not much is known about how contagious laughter develops in childhood. Moro reflex - ANSWER Another infant behavior that we might consider an emotional expression is the Moro reflex -->a sequence in which the infant flings out its arms and spreads its fingers, then contracts quickly into a fetal position with fingers bent. -->has been described as an infant startle, and the second part of it does resemble the adult startle response.
case: ->Many aspects of our inherited human nature do not emerge for some years into life: The capacity for language is one such aspect, and sexual desire is another. -->Still, if we could demonstrate distinguishable emotions early in life, we would strengthen the case for basic emotions. -->For that reason, several investigators have sought to identify facial expressions for distinct emotions in infants as young as possible. ( Oster, Hegley, & Nagel, 1992): how well do adults recognize baby facial expressions? 3 results from facial images study - ANSWER -->researchers obtained photographs of strong facial expressions of infants -->These expressions had been coded by a system similar to FACS, but for babies' faces, called Max, -->the expressions were thought to convey joy, interest, surprise, disgust, fear, anger, sadness, or generic distress. -->Found that more than 70% of images labelled correctly for joy and surprise, as well as one expression interest. The other image of interest was of a baby < 2months old, babies that young show low interest in general --> Results for negative emotions much less impressive. People did slightly better than chance for some photos of some emotions, but not by much. -->more likely to choose the label distress as sadness than the intended label (people did well at labeling the sad expressions, but this may be because sadness was a default choice for distressful expressions). ( Oster, Hegley, & Nagel, 1992): second study, 2 coding systems, and results - ANSWER the researchers wanted to know whether two different facial expression coding systems: Max and a new, FACS-based system called Baby FACS, would yield the same interpretation of the displays.
The two systems produced agreement for expressions of joy and surprise, but not for the negative emotions: --> Of the 19 expressions that one system coded as a display of a particular negative emotion, the other system coded only 3 the same way. how well do adults recognize baby emotions when given expression, voice, and posture cues? - ANSWER Even when adults observe infants' body movements and vocalizations as well as their facial expressions, they do not consistently label any expression as fear or anger, and they are only a little better at identifying sadness. Furthermore, expressions that suggest fear, surprise, anger, or sadness often occur in what appear to be inappropriate or irrelevant situations: E.g. Surprised expressions when excited, or putting object in mouth inducing emotions for experiments: anger and fear in babies, 2 results - ANSWER 1. In one commonly used task, the researcher holds an infant's wrists immobile on a table for up to three minutes.
- In another, the researcher activates a gorilla head that makes growling noises while its eyes light up and its lips move. -->first situation elicits anger and second one fear -->Found that facial expressions of both were not clearly different -->breathing rate increased more for anger but struggled more when restrained/fear It is difficult to know when specific emotions emerge and whether they do so before or after adults have taught babies the emotional words and concepts for their language and culture: Consider the difficulty in determining the age when babies first experience surprise (experiment of possible vs impossible outcome) - ANSWER -->Experimenters in a study show an infant two objects, cover them with a screen, and then retrieve one of the objects from behind the screen. Then they remove the screen to show either one object (the possible outcome) or two objects (the impossible outcome)
Sternberg and Campos ( 1990)'s explanation for the anger-restraining paradigm - ANSWER -->this sequence reflects development from a fuzzy sense of frustration to prototypical anger. -->At 1 month, the infant can't move its arms and presumably doesn't understand why. -->By 4 months, the infant localizes his or her frustration to the arm restraint but still cannot attribute the event to the actions of another person. ->By 7 months, the infant appears to blame the experimenter for the situation. become more prototypically angry as they develop the cognitive ability to attribute their frustration to a particular cause, especially another person. They also develop the motor capacity to display their anger. infants show significantly more distress when the mother does the restraint: why? 3 explanations - ANSWER 1. The infant may be accustomed to such intrusions by strangers, especially physicians and nurses, but not mom
- Perhaps the infant feels betrayed by the mother's mistreatment.
- Or perhaps the infant feels less inhibited at expressing anger toward the mother, uncertain how the stranger would react. In any case, an infant's responses show a complex interaction of many influences. before 1 year of age, babies have limited ability to express specific emotions, particularly negative emotions. yet over the succeeding months and years, they gradually develop a full range of emotional expressions. why? 3 hypotheses - ANSWER 1. One hypothesis is that even newborns possess the full range of basic emotions, or at least the potential for them. By this reasoning, for example, newborns do not display anger partly because they lack the cognitive capacity to assign blame, and partly because they lack the motor capacity to make an angry expression.
- A second hypothesis is that newborns' distress is a mixture of anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and so forth. As the infant matures, these emotions separate from one another, as if a mixed pile of objects was sorted into different stacks.
- A third hypothesis is that certain emotions are simply absent at birth. a newborn is no more capable of experiencing anger than of seeing ultraviolet light. The capacities for
anger, disgust, and so forth develop later through brain maturation, learning, or both. Presumably, different emotions emerge at the age when they first become useful, but whether this is a result of development or a complex social learning process is unclear; development of emotions at 3+ years: 3 factors - ANSWER By about 3 years of age, children express a wide range of emotions. They develop greater understanding of other people's emotions, greater ability to talk about emotions, and greater ability to regulate emotions. How do these transitions occur? Research suggests that physical maturation, cognitive development, and social interaction all play important roles, physical maturation: eyesight for newborns till six month olds (what are the two issues) - ANSWER ->The capacity to display emotions requires a certain degree of physical maturation. For example, newborn infants have poor vision, especially in the center of the eye, where adults' visual acuity is best. ->For the first 6 months, they have trouble shifting visual attention from one object to another. ->A moving object will capture their attention so thoroughly that they literally cannot look away from it. ->immature vision does not limit their emotions, but it does limit their ability to respond to visual stimuli. physical maturation: crawling - ANSWER Similarly, developing abilities to crawl and walk introduce new situations with implications for emotion. ->An infant who is newly able to crawl also must face a new risk of getting lost or of encountering danger. ->An infant who is newly able to stand and walk suddenly must cope with the risk of falling.
up to their own noses to wipe off the spot: they recognized, "The child I see in the mirror is me." ->Modifications of this test have shown apparent self-recognition in several nonhuman species, theory of mind - ANSWER At the age when children first start to recognize themselves in the mirror, they also begin to show embarrassment, shame, and guilt. These emotions continue to develop over at least the next few years. Gradually, children begin to show theory of mind, the understanding that other people have minds too and that some people, including yourself might know something that other people don't know. -->emerges from 1.5 years to 4.5-6years old other-conscious emotions, - ANSWER Theory of mind is also important for emotions such as shame, embarrassment, and guilt; for this reason, some researchers refer to these as other-conscious emotions, rather than self-conscious emotions social interaction and development of emotion: caregivers (1 years old), cultures, other children - ANSWER -->humans learn a great deal about emotion from their social environment. Infants begin looking to trusted caregivers to find out how they should feel about novel objects or events sometime late in the first year of life. -->Different cultures have different expectations about emotions and different rules for displaying them. Infants learn these expectations from daily interactions -->also learn from interactions with other children: E.g. Children who share their toys with others that the other children are willing to share in return intersubjectivity and social referencing - ANSWER intersubjectivity, the sharing of experience: People identify with one another's emotions. If you care about someone,
seeing that person happy makes you happy. social referencing, observing other people's behavior as a guide to your own reaction. Intersubjectivity and social referencing begin in infancy. intersubjectivity and social referencing among parents and children: primary and secondary intersubjectivity - ANSWER -->Not only does the parent copy the child's response, but also the child copies the parent, thereby learning the proper emotional reactions. -->At first, infants just respond to the parent's emotions (primary intersubjectivity) -->but later they notice what caused the parent's reaction and then adjust their reaction to the object (secondary intersubjectivity). -->Intersubjectivity and social referencing begin in infancy and become more and more prominent as children grow older social referencing in the visual cliff experiment - ANSWER -->An early sign of social referencing appears at about 9 months, in the visual cliff: -->Researchers place an infant on a table with plates of clear glass on either side. On the "shallow" side, the infant sees a floor that is just a short step down. On the "deep" side the floor appears to be much farther away -->Infants who have had some experience with crawling, and therefore some experience with falling down, usually turn toward the shallow side, indicating the ability to detect depth ( and a preference for avoiding injury). -->researchers place an infant on the shallow side while the mother stands beyond the deep end. -->The mother is instructed either to look frightened or to smile and encourage the infant to cross (cues). An infant stays put when the mother looks frightened, but tests the glass and then crosses when the mother looks happy
2 universal/cross cultural expectations for children - ANSWER 1. A survey of 48 countries found that parents in all locations wanted their children to be happy, not too fearful, and capable of controlling their anger
- Most people expect and tolerate occasional impulsive and aggressive behaviors by 2- and 3-yearolds (thus the expression "the terrible twos"), but after that, they expect children to restrain themselves, and peers ostracize those who don't universal emotional expression among boys vs girls: 6 findings - ANSWER -->Emotional expressions vary by gender, but not much at first. -->On average, boys express anger more often than do girls, whereas girls show more happiness, sadness, anxiety, and sympathy. -->In each case, the difference is small, although the difference in displays of happiness increases from early childhood to adolescence -->Across cultures, most parents work harder to control their sons' anger. Perhaps parents are less worried that their daughters' anger will get out of control. -->Meanwhile, they strongly reinforce their daughters' expressions of happiness. -->Parents tend to discuss emotions with their preschool daughters more than with their sons, but this may be because the girls initiate such conversations more often Children vary substantially in their ability to regulate or conceal their emotions: experiment on US children - ANSWER -->In US, one rule of polite behavior is to express thanks for any gift and never show disappointment. -->Preschool children were asked to rank five small presents from best to worst, and experimenters promised to give them one of the presents after the children did a task. -->When the time came, the experimenters at first gave each child his or her least preferred gift, waited a few seconds, and then apologized and gave the fav gift. -->During the delay, some children cried, threw the unwanted present, and demanded a better one. Others politely accepted it and hid their disappointment. -->those who vigorously displayed frustration were rated by their teachers and others as
lacking social skills, whereas those who hid their disappointment were considered good at controlling their emotions in many situations. -->In a similar study, children who hid their disappointment scored higher on understanding other people's emotions and understanding cultural rules for displaying emotions How do children learn these display rules?: imitation finding among parent-child pairs - ANSWER On the whole, parents who express mostly positive emotions have children who also express positive emotions, whereas parents who express much negative emotion have children who also vigorously express their fears and anger 3 explanations for parent-child imitation finding - ANSWER 1. it is tempting to assume that the children react to their parents' displays and copy them. However, these studies are correlational and we cannot draw cause-and-effect conclusions.
- Perhaps the parents are reacting to their children's emotional outbursts.
- Perhaps parent and child show similar emotional displays because of shared genetic profiles. -->A study with adopted children suggested that all three of these explanations are valid to some extent Parental emotional displays vary across cultures, and children learn from them: Japanese v American child-parent pairs - ANSWER -->researchers asked Japanese and American moms to yell angrily while their II-month-old infants crawled toward a toy -->The American babies typically paused briefly but then kept approaching the toy, whereas Japanese babies paused far longer. -->According to the researchers, the American babies had heard their mothers yell so often that they did not take them seriously ("Mom's yelling at me again. Oh well."). -->For Japanese babies, however, an angry voice was a rare and mysterious event. -->Even in the first year of life, many American babies learn that anger is acceptable,
and they often want to restrict the adolescents' freedom.
- another reason heightened emotions is puberty, with all the bodily changes that puberty entails. Researchers find that the onset of puberty is a better predictor of increased emotional intensity than age adolescent risk taking behaviours - ANSWER Adolescence is a time of increased risk taking as well. Adolescents might engage in unprotected sex, fast driving, extreme sports, alcohol, other drugs, or other potentially dangerous activities that provide temporary thrills but the potential for costly consequences later increase in risk taking among teens: an increase in opportunity? - ANSWER We cannot attribute these tendencies entirely to increased opportunities, because adolescents of other species, including rodents, also show increased exploration and risk taking Could you decrease adolescents' risk taking by teaching them to think through their decisions and evaluate the risks more carefully? - ANSWER in laboratory studies, adolescents make the same decisions that adults do, but more slowly, on average. Adults know immediately that they don't want to swim with sharks. Adolescents weigh the pros and cons even more deliberately than adults prefrontal cortex hypothesis: explanation for increased risk taking among teens - ANSWER A popular hypothesis is that adolescents try risky behaviors because the prefrontal cortex of the brain does not reach full maturity until the late teens or early twenties. According to this argument, because the prefrontal cortex is important for inhibiting automatic behaviors, adolescents have less "brake" on their dangerous impulses especially if they seem exciting or fun. light experiment on teenage impulses - ANSWER -->A light flashes to the left or right, and the viewer's task is to inhibit the tendency to look at it and instead look the opposite
direction. -->Young children find this task difficult, and even adults are quicker to look toward the light than to look away from it. -->The ability to inhibit the tendency to look toward the light gradually improves throughout the teenage years, concurrent with maturation of the prefrontal cortex are adolescents fundamentally incapable of inhibiting their impulses? When are risky acts most likely to occur? - ANSWER Most adolescents are capable of inhibiting most of their unwanted impulses most of the time. Risky and impulsive acts are most likely to occur under peer pressure the evidence linking immaturity of the prefrontal cortex to adolescent risk taking is complicated: study by Galvan, Fuligni, Lieberman, & Telzer, 2015 - ANSWER The most direct test of the hypothesis did indicate a correlation, but not in the way we might guess: -->In a longitudinal study, adolescents who became more successful at inhibiting risky activities showed LESS activation in the prefrontal cortex while inhibiting those impulses -->difficult to interpret: Does this mean that participants who took fewer risks in real life were less able to inhibit their impulses in general? Probably not. -->A more likely explanation is that these individuals needed less activation because they found it easier to inhibit their impulses, or their impulses were less strong than other adolescents. reward system development: role in risk taking adolescent behaviour - ANSWER -->if immaturity of the prefrontal cortex were the main reason for adolescent impulsive behavior, we should expect risky behaviors to decrease gradually over the teenage years, as brain maturation progresses. -->In fact, risky behavior increases between the ages of 10 and 20 years. -->The reason for this is not decreased inhibition, but increased drive for excitement,
