Module 4 - Chapter 7: Appraisal, Knowledge, and Experience & Chapter 8: Development of Emotions in Childhood

Describe how emotion can develop as a result of maturation and cognitive development.

1) Developmental Emergence Newborns: disgust in response to sour tastes. 2 Month Old: joy/happiness occur, smiles. Properly social smiles emerge after the first month. By the third month they occur frequently in interaction with caregivers, and this is inferred to indicate positive emotion. 3 Month Old: smile in response to the same kinds of events that make older children smile 4 Month Old: sad expressions; hard to be certain as to the age at which the emotional expression of sadness means the same thing as it does for an adult. 4-6 Month old: expressions of anger 7 Month Old: fear emerges, perhaps in unison with children's growing ability to move in the physical environment 4-12 Month: the largest growth in fear expressions 18 Months: self-conscious emotions begin. They include empathy, concern related altruism, embarrassment, and envy 12 - 24 months: response to another's distress; offer comfort in ways that they themselves like to be comforted. 3 years: offer comfort to the individual needs of others; respond to distress that they have caused. 2-3 years: A complex set of emotions is expressed: pride, shame, guilt, and regret; self- conscious evaluative emotions. 3+ years: extensive emotional repertoire. 2) Cognitive Consciousness Self-reflection and self-other differentiation represent key cognitive milestones in the emergence of the self-conscious emotions in the second year of life. The development of the last class of socially based emotions—pride, shame, guilt, regret, and the like—is accompanied by further cognitive development between the ages of 2 and 4. A major element of cognition contributing to emotional development at this stage is language. 18 Months: talking about internal states; A critical milestone capacity for both cooperation and altruism. 2 years: use of emotion words happy, sad, mad, and scared. Mentalistic conceptions about emotions: they know that emotions are about certain kinds of events, and that consequences of emotions are different from the emotion itself. 3-4 years: attribute representational states to people, such as beliefs, thoughts, and knowledge. 5-6 years: connect others' beliefs to their emotions.

Three theories of the development of emotions in the first three years of life.

1) Differential Emotions theory as articulated by Carroll Izard. 2) Differentiation Theory as conceptualized in 1932 by Katherine Bridges 3) Functionalist View

Development of Emotion Regulation Timeline

2M: Attentional Control; Organization of the HPA-axis and PNS 4-5M: Control of Affect/Motor Activity/ Recovery from Distress; Cortical Control: Rudimentary Forebrain Centres 10M: Response Inhibition; Neuro development of Frontal Lobes 1-2Y: Talking with Others (e.g. Solicit Assistance) & Self-Directed Calming; Language Development: Prefrontal Lobes and Pariental Areas 3-5Y: Executive Functioning Effortful Control/ Self-Distraction/Re-Appraisal/Self-Monitoring; Maturation of VM-PFC and ACC & Increased Functional Connectivity Theory of Mind/ Emotion of Understanding/ Knowledge of Social Rules and Norms; Paracingulate Cortex/ Orbitofrontal Cortex/ Superior Temporal Sulcus

Emotional Development Summary

2M: Happy; Visual Attention 3M: Sad; Loss of Control/Expectancy Violation 4M: Anger; Means-End Knowledge 7M: Fear; Memory/Visual Discrimination 12M: Surprise; Expectancy Disconfirmation/Attributional Thinking 18M: Empathy, Embarrassment, Altruism, Envy; Mentalizing/Self-Other Differentiation 2Y: Language/Desires, Goals, & Intentions 3Y: Pride, Shame, Guilt, Regret; Representational Knowledge/ Theory of Mind (Understanding Beliefs & Thoughts)

Differentiation Theory

A theory of how such emotions emerge in the first years of life. A second and related perspective is based on differentiation theory. The idea is that infants start out with two basic emotion states of negativity/distress and positivity/pleasure. More differentiated emotions emerge later during development, perhaps as a result of changes in hedonic tone and general arousal. This view was originally conceptualized in 1932 by Katherine Bridges, who described infant emotion as a state of diffuse excitement, which would differentiate into positive and negative affect, and eventually into the discrete emotions of joy, sadness, anger, fear, and so on. The mechanism through which specific emotional states come to exist involves biological maturation and interactive experiences with one's environment.

Differential Emotions Theory

A theory of how such emotions emerge in the first years of life. Articulated by Carroll Izard. This describes discrete or basic emotions such as joy, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear as "natural kinds," based on hardwired systems that mature during development on a kind of developmental timetable. According to this theory, every basic emotion has a set of neural, expressive, and feeling components that occur automatically and nonconsciously in response to specific events. The response pattern that is generated by each emotion is rather restricted and stereotypical, but it can be modified via information processing mechanisms. From this standpoint, emotional development is due to maturation and particular types of interaction that lead to distinct emotions.

Functionalist View

A theory of how such emotions emerge in the first years of life. The third theory of emotional development is the functionalist view. This theory describes emotions as relational processes in which children establish, alter, and maintain their relationship with the environment, especially the environment of caregivers, siblings, and other people. Under this model, an emotion is not simply an intrapersonal feeling: it has interpersonal consequences. Emotions are profoundly social. Joy may signal success toward a particular goal, sadness may connote a loss, and anger is a response to the blockage of one's goals, usually by someone else. Facial expressions are not conceived of as unconscious behavioral/physiological responses to emotional situations, but rather as signals that communicate to others. They differ depending on the audience, the event, and its personal relevance. Emotional development takes place as children establish new goal states and new ways of evaluating emotional events, and as their relationships with others change over time.

Draw a diagram of Fischer, Shaver, and Carnohan's theory.

According to Fischer, Shaver, and Carnochan, emotion is defined as: a reaction to a notable change which leads to appraisal of the event in terms of value or significance and then promotes an action tendency and an emotional expression. In this theory, emotion develops in three basic levels or stages.

Cognitive Development

According to Piaget's theory, a child's way of thinking about the world changes as the child grows (the stages of development are: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, formal operational). The development of cognition may result in changes in emotion. As they enter the pre-operational stage, they joke by giving things the wrong name, or by treating things in novel ways. When they reach the concrete operational stage (age seven or so), they begin to have a passion for riddles, which they find very amusing. By the formal operational stage they can understand puns, which require a good deal of abstraction. Paul McGhee, who developed a theory of humour based on cognitive development, suggests that a developing child's emotions can best be understood in the framework of their developing cognition.

Describe the appraisal of relevance.

Another approach is to identify appraisals as they occur, and ascertain whether emotion-specific appraisals relate to other measures of emotional response. For example, one might code appraisal- related themes, such as uncertainty or loss, or dimensions, such as responsibility or effort, in individuals' spontaneous speech, and ask whether those appraisals relate to measures of experience, or expression, or physiology.

Describe how emotion can develop as the result of learning and of differentiation.

At the same time, interpersonal effects occur as children use the expressions of others to learn about the nature of objects and events. If children generalize the reactions of others, they come to know how to treat various objects and situations. When language emerges, talking about negative emotions with others enables children to learn about other peoples' mental states, including their beliefs, desires, and intentions. Speaking about the reasons for certain outcomes enhances children's ability to think in mental terms about the causes of others' behavior. The negativity bias may, therefore, facilitate children's social-cognitive development. Finally, in learning about reasons for others' negative expressions, children can adjust their own behavior in ways that elicit more positive reactions from others.

Regulatory Emotional Processes

Change the Situation: Ross Thompson explain, regulation of emotions is often accomplished by means of changing the situation. The child's parents are usually responsible for managing a child's emotions by selecting play environments, creating predictable schedules, and offering a supportive emotional climate at home. A related process is trying to alter situations. Executive Function: As children mature and experience different opportunities to learn to regulate their emotions, their abilities of executive function improve. Executive function is the set of processes involved in being able to plan in relation to long-term goals and other people, to negotiate the unexpected, and to deal with dangers and with immediate emotions. Cognitive Change: Another method of regulating emotions is by cognitive change, which refers to altering the way an emotionally charged situation is appraised. This involves both beliefs and the ability to change one's beliefs. Children's power to make reappraisals and mental transformations depends on their cognitive maturation. Behavioral and Physiological Change: emotions can be regulated by behavioral and physiological change. Unlike the previous methods of regulation, this involves changing emotions once they are underway. These attempts to alter emotional expressions such as disgust increase sympathetic nervous system activation. As a result, it is possible to have an incongruity between behavioral and physiological responses during an emotional event such that behaviors decrease while physiological responses rise.

Differentiating

Differentiation may be the outcome of both maturation and learning. It refers to the fact that emotions are simple for younger children, and more complex and differentiated for older human beings. Differentiation may occur in stimuli for emotion or in responses.

Describe the appraisal of goal impact.

Discrete Approaches: Lazarus discussed the two stages of the appraisal process. In his version of the primary appraisal stage the individual appraises the event in terms of its relevance to goals. Early in the process, the individual evaluates whether an event is relevant to personal goals. If it is, an emotion is elicited; if not, no emotion ensues. If an event is relevant, it is appraised as to whether it is congruent or incongruent with goals. Goal-congruent events elicit positive emotions, and goal- incongruent events produce negative emotions. These stages make up primary appraisal. Then the individual appraises the event in relation to more specific goals, or issues for the ego. This is secondary appraisal. Events can concern moral values, for example, to be kind, or to avoid doing to others what one would not want done to oneself. Events might bear upon issues of the self and identity, for example, whether one is excelling in areas that are central to self- definition, such as one's academic work, or performance in the arts or sport, or work for charities An approach to discrete emotions that is related to Lazarus's is that of Oatley and Johnson- Laird. They postulate appraisals with two components, as we have been discussing. A primary appraisal of an event occurs in relation to goals. It is automatic and unconscious. It occurs not in terms of good and bad, but in terms of basic emotions (such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust), each of which sets the brain into a mode adapted to deal with a recurring situation (respectively: progress toward a goal, loss, frustration by another, threat, and toxicity). Recall that Gazzaniga's patient, discussed at the beginning of the chapter, did not say she experienced something good or bad: she said she felt "kind of scared." Each mode is a set of states of readiness with a distinct phenomenological tone, but no necessary verbal meaning. In the second stage of appraisal the individual considers a causal attribution for the event, how to respond to the event, and future consequences of action. At this level Lazarus calls the process the core relational theme of the emotion: its essential meaning. You can think of emotions in relation to these core relational themes as summaries of the different classes of events that elicit them. In evolutionary terms, these themes map onto the problems and opportunities to which people respond with emotions.

Learning

Emotions may be learned in one or more of three ways: operant conditioning, classical conditioning, and social learning. Operant learning of anger focuses on learning in response to rewards or re-enforcers. Classical learning of anger in response to associations developed over time. Social learning of anger involves learning by imitating others.

Secondary Appraisal

Other systems—which we are calling secondary appraisals, which Chrysippus called second movements—provide more deliberative, conscious, complex assessments to decide what to think and what to do about it. Modern research on appraisal has tended to be in two families: discrete approaches, which emphasize that appraisals give rise to distinct emotions, and dimensional approaches, which focus on the components of appraisals that can relate to several emotions.

Describe how emotion can develop as a result of maturation and cognitive development.

Physical growth is the result of maturation in children. Most children (including those unable to see or hear) will smile, laugh, and pout without any learning whatsoever. Moreover, they will do so at roughly the same ages. If an emotion appears by unfolding, it does not require any learning, experience, or any contact with other human beings.

Describe the theory of Shaver and colleagues that divides emotional reactions first into a superordinate level of positive and negative and next into a basic level of two positive emotions (love and joy) and three negative ones (anger, fear, and sadness).

Shaver et al. captured English speakers' organization of emotion knowledge. What this task revealed, according to Shaver et al., is that there are three levels to our emotion knowledge. At the superordinate level, there is a distinction between positive and negative emotions. This seems to fit well with how people appraise the goodness and badness of events immediately and automatically. At the next level, known as the basic level of knowledge, are six emotion concepts: love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness, and fear. One might expect these terms to be those that people most frequently use to describe their emotional experience. It is interesting to note as well that many of the terms correspond to the emotions that appear to have universal facial expressions. This same list of emotions replicates (with slight variations) in analyses of other languages. Below each of the basic emotion terms are many more specific states. This is known as the subordinate level of emotion knowledge. These are likely to be states that share properties of the basic emotion concept above them, and that are in important ways similar to one another.

Explain, with examples, the difference between superordinate, basic, and subordinate emotions.

Superordinate Level: - This level is present at birth: it is instinctive, unlearned, and common to all humans. - It represents the distinction between pleasant or positive and unpleasant or negative emotion. - It does not require the frontal lobes of the brain. - It presupposes a sensorimotor stage of cognitive development. Basic Level: - This level matures or unfolds in the first few years. - The pleasant emotions differentiate into joy and love. - The unpleasant emotions differentiate into fear, sadness, and anger. - It does not require learning: it is universal in humans. - It does not require the frontal lobes of the brain. - It involves the 'basic' emotions recognized by many theories. - The cognitive development involved is pre-operational or concrete operational. (The actual emotions named at this level originate from experiments which asked people to relate their emotions. The authors suggest that there are between five and seven basic emotions.) Subordinate Level - This level begins to appear after ten years of age. - It includes further differentiation (love can become infatuation, friendship, or romance). - It includes combinations of emotions (guilt can be a combination of fear and sadness). - It is unlimited in size (new emotions could be added throughout the lifespan). - It involves the frontal lobes more and more as the person matures. - It requires a formal operational level of cognitive development. - It is heavily dependent on learning. - It is not universal, but culturally dependent (different cultures may develop different emotions at this level). - Emotions at this level are learned and defined by scripts. - Furthermore, new subordinate emotions can be created by scripting.

Brain Development

The human brain does not complete its development until a person reaches their early 20s, so some changes in emotion are due to brain development. The part of the brain to develop last (the frontal lobes) is the one involved in controlling emotions. The ability to control our emotions in social situations increases with age.

Explain, with examples, what we mean by "the cultural variation of appraisal."

The important point is that culture shapes how we appraise emotion-eliciting events. Solitary and social experiences might have different meanings in individualist and collectivist cultures. Or consider being alone. Middle-class Europeans or Americans may appraise this in positive terms and experience contentedness. By contrast, Inuit people as studied by Briggs or the people of Ifaluk as studied by Lutz appraise being alone in terms of isolation, which elicits feelings of sadness.

Primary Appraisal

This is a primary appraisal, an automatic emotional reaction to events and objects in the environment, which motivates rapid approach or avoidance responses. It corresponds to what Chrysippus called the first movement of an emotion. The system that makes these appraisals probably involves the amygdala. This first appraisal system appears to give rise to our core feelings of positivity or negativity.

Explain the role that appraisal plays in determining emotional reactions to events.

When events are evaluated, assigned value in terms of the individual's concerns, the evaluative process is called appraisal. To start with, the process is automatic, something like a reflex, and need have nothing to do with language. This is primary appraisal. Emotions are then usually directed to particular objects and people and can often be described in words. This is secondary appraisal.

Explain which type of appraisal evaluation (negative or positive) is more impactful and why.

negative evaluations are more potent than positive evaluations. The bad is stronger than the good. This bias to be more responsive to danger rather than to satisfaction makes evolutionary sense. Without it, our chances of survival would be diminished; we only die once. Negative stimuli, such as frightening sounds or disgusting smells, trigger more rapid, stronger physiological responses than positive stimuli, such as pleasing sounds or delicious tastes.