Child Development - Chapter 10

Irritable distress (Mary Rothbart)

Fussiness, anger, and frustration, especially if the child is not allowed to do what he or she wants to do.

Darwin had a view of emotions parallel with the Dimensions Theory. True or False?

False. He was aligned with the Discrete/Differential theories of emotions. Believed they were innate to each species and identifiable by facial expressions.

Emotional self-regulation is more similar between fraternal twins than identical twins. True or False?

False. It is more similar between identical twins, which shows it may have a genetic basis.

Two main approaches/theories of emotion

1. Discrete / Differential theories 2. Dimensions theories

Mary Rothbart 6 dimensions of temperament

1. Fearful distress/inhibition 2. Irritable distress 3. Attention span and persistence 4. Activity level 5. Positive affect/approach 6. Rhythmicity

Theorists agree mostly on 4 basic emotions, which are:

1. Happiness 2. Fear 3. Anger 4. Sadness

Not fitting any categories (Chess & Thomas)

35% of the group

At what age are infants capable of distinguishing certain emotional expressions in other people?

4 to 7 months.

At what age do infants demonstrate use of Social Referencing?

8 to 12 months.

Emotional Intelligence

A set of abilities that contribute to competence in the social and emotional domains. Includes being able to: - motivate oneself in the face of frustration, - control impulses and delay gratification, - identify and understand one's own feelings and other's, - regulate one's own emotions' in social interactions, - empathize with others' emotions.

Behavioural inhibition

A temperamentally based style of responding characterized by the tendency to be particularly fearful and restrained when dealing with novel or stressful situations.

Emotion-related behaviour

Actions or facial expressions related to one's feelings.

Time tables for when emotions emerge can be unreliable. Why?

Because they are based on observable expressions, not on the presence of the emotion itself. It is possible that infants experience certain emotions before they can express them physically. it is impossible to know.

Emergence of Embarrassment

Between 15 and 24 months of age. Children will show embarrassment when made the center of attention: blush, hide, lower the eyes.

At what age do the emotions displayed by infants tend to become more consistent with the situation they are experiencing?

Between 5 and 12 months of age.

At what age do infants demonstrate fear of strangers?

Between 6 and 8 months. Lasts until about 2 years of age. Varies with presence of a parent, infant's temperament, how the stranger approaches, etc.

When does happiness emerge?

By 2 to 3 months of age.

At what age are children able to label a small set of emotional expressions?

By 3 years of age, but have a limited vocabulary for labelling them. For example, may label an emotion as "happy", but don't know other names for happy, such as "joy".

Emergence of Pride

By 3 years of age, children's display of pride is tied to the level of their performance: more pride when achieve difficult tasks than when achieve easy ones.

In the experiment designed to test if children would feel shame or guilt, how are these two emotions distinctively expressed?

Children who felt shame: hid the doll, avoided the experimenter, and delayed telling the truth. Children who felt guilt: tried to fix the doll right away, did not avoid the experimenter, and told the truth right away.

Attention span and persistence (Mary Rothbart)

Duration of orienting toward objects or events of interest.

Difference between Shame and Guilt.

Guilt: associated with empathy for others and feelings of remorse and regret about one's behaviour, as well a desire to undo the consequences of that behaviour. Shame: focus on oneself, feel like hiding as if you have been exposed, no related concern about others or the consequences of the behaviour for others.

Ekman's 6 basic emotions

Happiness Anger Sadness Disgust Surprise Fear

Basic Emotions

Innate Universal Primary Facial expressions seen in babies

Why is emotional intelligence important?

It predicts how well people do in life, especially in their social lives, better than any other measurable factor.

Fearful distress/inhibition (Mary Rothbart)

Levels of distress and withdrawal, and how long they last, in new situations.

Social referencing

Looking at mom or dad (primary caregiver) to see their emotional expression and using it to evaluate the situation. If mom expresses fear, they understand it is a dangerous situation.

Pros and cons of laboratory visits (measuring temperament)

Pros: - Less likely to be biased. Cons: - Children's behaviour usually is observed in only a limited set of circumstances.

Pros and cons of physiological measures (measuring temperament)

Pros: - Very objective and unlikely to be biased. Cons: - There is no way to tell whether the process reflected by physiological measures are a cause or a consequence of the child's emotion and behaviour in the situation.

Rhythmicity (Mary Rothbart)

Regularity and predictability of the child's bodily functions such as eating and sleeping.

Rumination and Co-rumination

Rumination: insistent focus on one's own emotions and on their causes and consequences, without engaging in efforts to improve one's situation. Co-rumination: extensively discussing and self-disclosing emotional problems with another person.

Social smiles

Smiles directed at others. 7 months: smile primarily to familiar people but not to strangers. 18 months: smiling more to people than to inanimate objects. 2nd year: purposefully uses smiles to interact with people, fully understands their social value. 18 months to 2 years: try to make other people smile by being funny or saying funny things.

Positive affect/approach (Mary Rothbart)

Smiling, laughing, approaching people, degree of cooperativeness and manageability.

When do self-conscious emotions emerge?

Start at around 15 to 18 months. Fully developed by 3 years of age.

Internal feeling states

Subjective experience of emotion

Social competence

The ability to achieve personal goals in social interactions while simultaneously maintaining positive relationships with others.

How was the Visual Cliff experiment used to test Social Referencing?

The experimenters asked the mother on the other side of the cliff to display different emotions through facial expressions, and noted how many infants crossed the cliff. Emotions mothers expressed: interest, joy, sadness, fear, anger. At 12 months, if mom expressed such emotions, % of infants crossed: - Fear: 0% - Anger:11% - Sadness: 33% - Interest: 73% - Joy: 74%

Emotion-related cognitions

Thoughts about one's desires or goals; One's interpretation of an evocative situation; Self-monitoring of one's emotional states.

Agreeableness and Adaptability (Mary Rothbart)

- Agreeableness: Exhibiting positive emotions and behaviours towards others. as well as having a tendency to affiliate with others. - Adaptability: being able to adjust to specific conditions, including the needs and desires of others.

Temperament

- Constitutionally based individual differences in emotional, motor,and attentional reactivity and self-regulation that demonstrate consistency across situations, as well as relative stability over time. - Genetic building blocks of Personality. - Genetic predisposition to behave and react in certain ways. - Relatively stable over time: what may change is HOW it is expressed over time.

Discrete or Differential Theories of emotion

- Emotions are distinct, placed in mutually exclusive categories. - Innate: can be differentiated vey early in life. - Each emotion is "packaged" with a specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions. - Categories: Basic vs. Self-conscious emotions.

Constitutional basis of temperament refers to?

- Genetically inherited characteristics. - Biological functioning: neural development and hormonal responding - which can be affected by the environment during the prenatal and after birth periods.

Emotions in adolescence

- Increase in the frequency and intensity of negative emotions. - Decrease in positive emotions. - Modest increase in the occurrence of negative emotion. - Negative emotions often in their relations with parents.

Suicide in adolescents

- Leading cause of death after accidents: 300 per year in Canada. - Estimated that for every actual death, there are 200 additional attempts. - Big sex difference: boys actually "succeed" in suicide, girls attempt more often. - Girls: more likely to use peaceful methods. - Boys: more likely to use violent methods. - Adolescence is the age of onset of various personality disorders, which may influence the rates of suicide in this age group.

Vagal tone relationship to temperament

- Low vagal tone: heart rates constantly high, that vary little with inhalation/exhalation. - Low vagal tone correlates with negative reactivity and inhibition in response to novel situations. - High vagal tone: variable and often lower heart rates. - High vagal tone correlates with positive emotions and few negative reactions in novel or stressful situations.

Buss & Plomin theory of temperament development

- Originally established 3 dimensions: emotionality, sociability, attention. - Later added 3 more: soothability, shyness, activity level. - Measurement: child will have a score for each of the 6 categories, and the composite score is their final score of temperament. - Use parent's report through questionnaire: Colorado Childhood Temperament Inventory

Frontal lobe activation measures through EEG and relationship to temperament

- Right frontal lobe activation: correlates with negative emotion, inhibition, anxiety and avoidance. - Left frontal lobe activation: correlates with positive emotion, relaxed and engaged mood, curiosity towards novelty.

Goodness of Fit

- The degree to which an individual's temperament is compatible with the demands and expectations of his or her social environment. - Influences how children ultimately adjust.

Functionalist Theory of emotions

- The role of emotions is to produce action towards achieving a goal in a given context. - Emotional reactions are affected by social goals, social context, social relationships, others' interpretations of events and their reactions to it, both present and past. - Example: a child may feel shame after doing something wrong. But what is to be considered wrong is determined by the parents, and if the child will consider it wrong as well depends on their relationship with the parents.

Three patterns in the development of emotional self-regulation.

1. From infants, who rely almost totally in other people to help them regulate their emotions - to early childhood, when they become increasingly able to self-regulate. 2. Increasing use of cognitive strategies and planful problem solving to control negative emotions. 3. Increasing selection and use of appropriate, effective regulating strategies.

Self-regulation strategies (emotional regulation)

Looking, away, thumb sucking, blanket, self-soothing behaviour, touching, falling asleep.

Difficult babies (Chess & Thomas)

- 10% of the group - A lot of negative emotion - High intensity negative reactions to novel stimuli and events - Withdrawal from novel situations - Slow to adapt to new routines and experiences - Irregular in daily routines and bodily functions

Slow-to-warm-up babies (Chess & Thomas)

- 15% of the group - Somewhat negative, but not as difficult - Low levels of activity - Withdrawal from novelty but with enough time they warm up to novelty - Somewhat difficult at first but easier over time, as they had repeated contact with new objects, people and situations

Easy babies (Chess & Thomas)

- 40% of the group - Positive mood, not freaked out about novelty, easy-going. - Adjusted readily to new situations, quickly established daily routines. - Generally cheerful and easy to calm down.

Cortisol level measurement and relationship to temperament

- Baseline cortisol: typical cortisol levels in any given situation. - Higher levels correlate with higher levels of inhibition, anxiety and social withdrawal. - Cortisol reactivity: level of cortisol in stressful situations. - Higher levels of cortisol in a given situation correlate with negative emotionality temperament and lower regulatory abilities.

Possible causes of depression in adolescents.

- Hormonal imbalances - Body image - Identity crisis - Family history (genetic) - Peer rejection, or bullying - Chronic stress - Family conflict; low levels of family engagement, support, and acceptance; and high levels of negativity. - Maladaptive belief systems: seeing oneself in excessively negative way, feeling incompetent, flawed and worthless; viewing the world as unfair and cruel. - Lack of self-efficacy. - Rumination and co-rumination - Lack of emotional regulation

Vagal suppression relationship to temperament

- Modulation of vagal tone in challenging situations, that allows the child to shift away from the physiological responses triggered by the situation and to focus on processing information relevant to generating coping strategies. - High ability for vagal suppression is related to a variety of positive outcomes, including better regulation of state and attention control in infancy, fewer behavioural problems, higher status with peers, more appropriate emotional regulation in pre-school years, - Vagal tone and vagal suppression assess some capacity related to adaptation and emotional regulation.

Dynamic-Systems Theory of emotions

- Novel forms of functioning arise through the spontaneous coordination of components interacting repeatedly. - Specific cognitive and physiological events tend to coordinate more often with each repeated occasion, forming stronger connections and coherent "emotional interpretations". - That way, emotions develop differently for each individual depending their unique emotion-related biology and cognitive capacities and experiences.

Rouge Test

- Put a little make up on their nose, put them in front of the mirror. - If they try to take the makeup off, you assume they have Self-Awareness. - If they don't react, they have not reached that point yet. - Kicks-in at 17-24 months.

Two behaviours common in depression and anxiety among adolescents.

- Social withdrawal. - Bodily complaints.

Sroufe (1979, 1995) theory of emotional development

- Three basic affect systems: joy/pleasure, anger/frustration, wariness/fear. - These systems undergo developmental change from primitive to more advanced forms during the early years of life. - Changes in the systems are due to infant's expanding social experiences and their increasing ability to understand them.

Two types of strategies used for regulating emotions

1. Do it yourself. 2. Get help from others, usually parents.

Chess & Thomas 3 different Temperaments

1. Easy 2. Difficult 3. Slow-to-warm-up

Cultural factors influencing children's temperament and emotional expressions. (5)

1. Genetic: different cultural groups have a different genetic pool that may predict the range of temperaments seen in the group members. 2. Diversity of parenting practices: some cultures may value more or less supportive parenting styles than others, which influences children's expression of emotion. 3. Cultural factors such as valuing independence and emotional self-assertion, or valuing interdependence and emotional regulation for maintaining group well-being. 4. Cultures differ in the degree to which they promote or discourage expression of specific emotions, and these differences are reflected in the parents' socializing practices. 5. Different emotions have different values and perceived usefulness in each culture, and this may influence parents' level of acceptance of children's emotions.

Type of physiological measures (temperament) (3)

1. Measuring heart rate and vagal tone. 2. Brain wave activity measures (EEG) of the frontal lobe 3. Cortisol levels.

Mary Rothbart 4 temperament types

1. Negative reactivity: negative, active 2. Positive reactivity: positive, active 3. Behavioural inhibition: shying away from others 4. Attention shifting: switching attention

Six components of emotions

1. Neural responses. 2. Physiological factors such as heart rate and hormone levels. 3. Subjective feelings. 4. Cognitions and perceptions that cause or are associated with the neural and physiological responses and subjective feelings. 5. Desire to take action, including desire to escape, approach or change people or things in the environment. 6. Expressive behaviour and cognitive interpretations of, or reactions to, the feeling state.

Methods for measuring temperament

1. Parental report through questionnaires. 2. Laboratory visits 3. Physiological measures

Parents' discussion of emotions (socializing)

1. Parents who discuss emotions with their children teach them about the meanings of emotions, the circumstances in which they should be expressed, and the consequences of expressing them. 2. Children's temperament and initial understanding of emotion also influence how often or if any of these conversations will happen: parents are more likely to engage in conversation about emotions if the child is already well regulated and expressed a "acceptable" amount of negative emotion. 3. Parents' emotional style + child's temperament = child's coping styles.

Parents' reactions to children's emotions (socializing)

1. Parents who react to their children's negative emotions by dismissing, threatening, being belligerent, invalidating: - children will tend to be less socially and emotionally competent, show lower levels of sympathy for others, less skilled coping with stress, and more prone to negative emotions and problem behaviours. 2. Parents who show support, validation and acceptance of their children's negative emotions by helping them understand and regulate their emotional arousal, and to find ways to express their emotions constructively: - children tend to be better adjusted and more competent both with peers and academically.

Key dimensions of Mary Rothbart model of temperament? (2)

1. Reactivity: how strongly react to new situations, arousability, physiological reactions. 2. Self-regulation: how they deal with their reactivity, attention, avoidance, approach, inhibition.

How do parents socialize their children's emotional development? (3)

1. Role modelling: through their own expression of emotion with their children and other people. 2. Reactions: through their reactions to their children's expressions of emotion. 3. Education: through discussions they have with their children about emotion and emotion regulation.

Attachment style and relationship to temperament.

1. Securely attached: high quality, trusting relationship with parents. - Correlates with: a. More positive emotions, less social anxiety and anger. b. More honesty in their expression of emotion. c. Better understanding of their own emotions. 2. Insecurely attached: relationship with parents is low in trust and support. - Correlates with: a. More negative emotions, more social anxiety b. Less honesty in their expression of emotion. c. Lesser understanding of their own emotions.

Early smiles - first and second months

1st month: fleeting smiles during REM sleep, primarily. 2nd month: smile when stroked gently, when feel like they are controlling an event in the environment (rattle sound, for example). 6-9 weeks: smiles are reliable but involuntary - happen when interacting with others, or when interacting with the environment. Early smiles are reflexive and evoked by a biological state rather by social interaction.

Dimensions Theory of emotions

A circle with four poles: Valence: pleasant vs. unpleasant Activation: passive vs. active. Circle of emotions examples: - Relaxed: mildly active + pleasant emotion - Andry: intensely active + unpleasant emotion

When does anger emerge?

By 4 to 6 months of age.

When does fear emerge?

By 6 to 7 months of age.

By what ages are all basic emotions in place?

By 7 months of age.

Emotion

Characterized by neural and physiological responses, subjective feelings, cognitions related to those feeling and the desire to take action.

Negative temperament always correlates with poor social skills later in life. True or False?

False. Negative temperaments in positive parenting environments tends to produce children who are more sensitive to parent's attempts to socialize positive behaviours, which may lead to higher social and moral competence.

Children in different cultures demonstrate separation anxiety at different ages. True or False?

False. Pattern of separation anxiety is consistent across different cultures: emerges at about 8 months, increases until 13 to 15 months, and then declines.

Being able to inhibit inappropriate behaviour, delay gratification, and use cognitive methods of controlling their emotion and behaviour doesn't help children to be well-adjusted or liked by their peers and by adults. True or False?

False. Social competence is a great advantage for being integrated into the group.

Parents of negative, unregulated children eventually become more patient and less unitive with their children; which helps the child to become less negative and unregulated. True or False?

False. The opposite is true. Parents tend to become less patient, which negatively impacts the child.

Children exposed to suboptimal parenting do better if they have unregulated or reactive temperaments. True or False?

False. These children tend to do worse if exposed to suboptimal parenting.

Emotion-related physiological processes

Heart rate and hormonal or other physiological reactions, including neural activation, that can change as a function of regulating one's feelings and thoughts.

Activity level (Mary Rothbart)

How much the infant moves (e.g. waves arms, kicks, crawls).

Parent-help strategies (emotional regulation)

Hugging, speaking softly or singing, rocking, removing them from the situation.

Girls are more likely to experience depression during adolescence than boys. True or False?

True. By 19 years old, they are 2 times more likely.

One reason for changes in WHEN and HOW MUCH temperament is expressed at different ages.

It is likely that the changes occur do to genes turning ON and OFF throughout development, so there are differences in the degree to which behaviours are affected by genes.

How do parents influence the tendency of children to feel shame vs. guilt

Parents help children feel guilt, but not shame by: - Disciplining their children by emphasizing the BEHAVIOUR as bad, and not the child - Helping them understand the consequences of their actions for others - Teaching them to repair the harm they have done. - Avoiding publicly humiliating them. - Communicating respect and love for their children when disciplining them.

Emotion coaching

Parents not only discuss emotions with their children but also help them learn ways of coping with their emotions and expressing them appropriately. - Children of parents who use emotion coaching: more socially competent with peers, more empathic, less likely to exhibit problem behaviours or depression than children who did not receive it.

Pros and cons of parental report through questionnaires (measuring temperament)

Pros: - Parents have an extensive knowledge of their children's behaviour in many different situations. Cons: - They can misrepresent their child, by reporting them to be "better" than they actually are. - To try to minimize the problem, questionnaires have Lie Scales to see how much they are misrepresenting the child. - They also may have a different personal perception of temperament dimensions, such as irritability (what is irritability? for some one behaviour may "say" irritable, but not for others; it's not objective).

Characteristics of major clinical depression?

Some combination of at least 5 of the following symptoms, occurring nearly every day for at least two weeks: - Depressed mood most of the time - Significant weight loss or gain - Insomnia or excessive sleeping - Motor agitations - Fatigue or loss of energy - Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt - Marked diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities - Diminished ability to concentrate - Recurrent thoughts of death

Protective Factor for suicide in adolescence

Sports participation: - Stayed in sports: lower risks of suicide and suicidal ideation/attempts. - Discontinued: higher risk, because of the loss of the environment, team, etc. - Never had it: less risk than those who stopped playing, but higher than those who always played.

Selective smiles

Starts at 7 months. Smiling primarily at familiar people, and refusing to smile at strangers. This selective smiling tends to make parents feel special and make the bond stronger.

Some theorists disagree with one of Ekman's 6 basic emotions. Which one and why?

Surprise Some people argue that it is not an emotion, but a cognitive state.

Self- regulation of emotions

The process of initiating, inhibiting, or modulating: a. Internal feeling states b. Emotion-related cognitions c. Emotion-related physiological processes d. Emotion-related behaviour

Socialization

The process through which children acquire the values, standards, skills, knowledge and behaviours that are regarded as appropriate for their present and future role in their particular culture.

Close, good relationships with a teacher can act as buffer to minimize negative effects of a shy temperament. True or False?

True.

Differences between being an "easy" or a "difficult" child have been have ben associated with children's later social competence and maladjustment. True or False?

True.

Ekman believed emotions were displayed through facial expressions, and couldn't be hidden. True or False?

True.

Temperament plays a role in children's development and social adjustment, but this role is complex and varies as a function of the child's social environment and the degree to which the child represents a challenge to the parents. True or False?

True.

Vagal tone and vagal suppression assess some capacity related to adaptation and emotional regulation. True or False?

True.

Some aspects of temperament tend to be more stable than others, over time. True or False?

True. For example, positive emotionality, fear and distress/anger may be more stable than activity levels over the course of infancy.

Adolescents from lower socio-economic levels are more prone to major clinical depression. True or False.

True. They are up to 2.5 times more likely to experience depression, in Canada and in the U.S.

Children better understand social referencing if they see both vocal and facial expression cues, but vocal cues alone are better than facial cues alone. True or False?

True.Together is better. Vocal alone is better than facial alone.

Pattern of self-regulation development: use of cognitive strategies to control negative emotions

Younger children: primarily use behavioural strategies such as distracting themselves with play. Older children: add on cognitive strategies and problem solving to adjust to emotionally difficult situations. This ability helps children to avoid acting in ways that may be counterproductive. Example: when an older child is teased by peers, they may downplay the situation and avoid reacting to it in a way that would provoke more teasing.

Fear emergence

a. 4 months: wary of unfamiliar objects and events. b. 6-8 months: fear of strangers (recognition that unfamiliar people do not provide the same comfort as those who are familiar. c. Around 7 months: other fears emerge, such as fear of novel toys, loud noises, sudden movements, others. d. Fear tends to increase until about 12 to 16 months. e. Fear is adaptive: expression of fear brings people in to help the infant - can't defend themselves. f. Mother's way of dealing with the infant's expression of fear shapes individual differences in how fear will be dealt with by the infant.

Display Rules

a. A social group's informal norms about when, where and how much one should show emotions and when and where displays of emotion should be suppressed or masked by displays of other emotions. b. Starting in the elementary school years, children increasingly understand usefulness of hiding true emotions. c. Pro-social motives for hiding true feelings: such as to not hurt someone else's feelings. d. Self-protecting motives for hiding true feelings: such as to avoid being teased. e. Display rules are different across culture and for different genders. f. Parents' beliefs and behaviours - which often reflect culture - likely contribute to children's understanding and use of display rules.

Children's ability to identify and label emotion in others.

a. By 3 months, infants can distinguish facial expression of happiness, surprise, and anger. b. By 7 months, they are able to identify also fear, sadness and interest. c. By 5-7 months, they start to perceive emotional expression as meaningful, and also to demonstrate that they can relate facial expression of emotion and emotional tones of voice to events in the environment. d. By 14 months, children are able to apply information gathered through social referencing even an hour later. e. Children better understand social referencing if they see both vocal and facial expression cues, but vocal cues alone are better than facial cues alone. f. By 3 years, children are able to label a narrow range of basic emotions. The ability and complexity of emotions they can label increases over time. g. Ability to label emotions helps children respond appropriately to others and their own emotions.

Children's understanding of real and false emotions.

a. By age 3: children show occasional attempts to mask their won negative emotions. b. By age 5: understanding of false emotions improves considerably. c. Between 4 and 6, children from different cultures show similar level of understanding of how people can be misled by facial expressions. d. Understanding of Display Rules of the social group help children improve understanding of false emotions. e. Children also increasingly understand the signs of someone who is lying about how they feel, such as looking away, or changing tone of voice, and use this knowledge to better hide their own emotions. f. Increasing cognitive capacity as well as social integration help children better understand Display Rules and false emotions.

Anger and sadness emergence

a. By the first year, children display anger very clearly and more frequently. b. Expression of anger increases until 16 months of age. c. During the 2nd year, as they are more able to control the environment, they tend to show anger when control is taken away. d. Often show sadness in the same situations they show anger. e. Such negative emotions decrease for most children at around the second year. f. Decrease may be due to ability to express themselves through language, and ability to better control expression of negative feelings.

Pattern of self-regulation development: selection of appropriate regulatory strategies

a. Children improve in their ability to select the best strategy for each emotional situation. b. Being to understand that a particular coping strategy may or may not be appropriate depending on the situation and their goals. c. Planning and problem-solving skills improve as the child grows older. d. Growing ability to distinguish between stressors that can be controlled and those that cannot: stop trying to change situations that can't be changed.

Children's ability to understand the causes and dynamics of emotion.

a. Children's understanding of the kinds of emotions that certain situations tend to evoke in others helps them regulate their own responses. b. By age 3: children can identify situations that evoke happiness. c. By age 4-5: can identify situations that evoke sadness, anger, fear, or surprise. d. By age 7: identify situations that evoke complex emotions such as pride, embarrassment, guilt, shame and jealousy. e. Ability to understand that memories evoke emotions, as well as affect behaviour in the present starts at 3 and increases up to 5 years old. f. Children in elementary school and beyond increase their understanding of decreased emotional intensity over time, experiencing of two or more emotions at the same time, and cognitive mechanisms to increase or reduce fears and modulate positive/negative emotions. g. By age 10: understand emotional ambivalence, and realize that people can have a mixed feelings about events, others and themselves.

Self-conscious emotions

a. Complex, higher level emotions. b. Emotions such as: guilt, shame, embarrassment, pride, and envy. c. Related to our sense of self and consciousness of others' reactions to us. d. Require self-concept, a certain amount of cognitive ability, social skills and self-awareness. e. Crucial for behaviour regulation, keeps our behaviour in check. f. Determined by cultural context.

Parents' expression of emotions (socializing)

a. Emotions expressed in the home influence how children view themselves and others. b. Modelling for when and how to express emotion, and which emotions are appropriate and effective in interpersonal relations. c. Parental emotions affect children's general level of distress and arousal in social interactions. d. Children exposed to negative emotions in the home show more negative emotions in social interactions, and vice-versa. e. Genetics may play a role: if the parent is genetically prone to negative emotions, this trait passes along to the child, and influences both their nature and their environment.

Separation anxiety

a. Feelings of distress that children, especially infants and toddlers, experience when they are separated or expect to be separated, from individuals to whom they are emotionally attached. b. Emerges at about 8 months, increases until 13 to 15 months, and then declines. c. This pattern is consistent across different cultures.

Pattern of self-regulation development: from parents to self-regulation

a. Mothers are often seen trying to calm their infants down, by singing, rocking, talking, caressing. b. By 6 months of age, infants show signs of rudimentary self-regulation and self-soothing. c. Other strategies emerge with increased motor and attention control: looking away, distracting themselves. d. Become less likely to seek comfort from parents as they get older. e. Language: increasing ability to negotiate or discuss situations instead of outbursting negative emotions. f. Strategies emerge from increasing maturation of neurological structures: frontal lobes, central to effortfully managing attentions and inhibiting thoughts and behaviours. g. Self-regulation emerges also as a way of complying with what adults seem to expect from them. h. 2-years-old: increasing ability to regulate motor behaviour