Child Psych 11/23 Self-control and emotional regulation

Symbols provide something like "psychological distance" which may be more like...?

"somatic distance" (distance from physical/emotional reactions to stimuli)

A classic study on delay of gratification in preschoolers by Walter Mischel:

-He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow -If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. -If, however, they didn't ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows"

Although adults must socialize emotion regulation, infants vary, from the start, in various facets of temperament:

-activity levels -reactiveness to stimulation (e.g., proneness to startle, cry) -positive affectivity—tendency to display positive emotional signals, like smiling and laughing -negative affectivity—tendency to display negative affect (e.g., crying) -soothability—how easily the infant can calm down following upset

Difficulties with emotion regulation are associated with a number of psychiatric diagnoses, including:

-externalizing disorders (e.g., conduct disorder) -eating disorders -affective disorders (anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder) -personality disorders

Children who waited longer on the marshmallow test:

-got higher SAT scores and showed better cognitive abilities/emotional coping in adolescence -had higher educational achievement, had higher sense of self-worth, better ability to cope with stress and less cocaine/crack use particularly in individuals vulnerable to psychosocial maladjustment

Children who had less self-control in the marshmallow test:

-were more likely to be bullies, -had lower self-esteem, -were more likely to be addicts, etc.

Types of emotional regulation strategies:

1. adaptive 2. associated with negative effects 3. context-dependent

In addition to differences in attachment style, a number of other individual characteristics are thought to emerge during childhood, including differences in:

1. self control/ cognitive control 2. self-regulation 3. emotion regulation

Moffitt tracked these children for ______ years

30

Alexithymia

A learned difficulty expressing emotions; more common in men

Ancient _________ philosophers thought of emotions as irrational, animistic, visceral; as interfering with higher-order processes of thought and reason

Greek

Is training possible for self-control?

In general, cognitive-behavioral approaches have support

Is intervention possible?

There is a possibility that just giving families money may affect the child's self control

________ access to a desired item has an effect on children's capacity to delay

Visual

Marshmallow test performance was found to predict a number of outcomes in...?

adolescence and adulthood

Historically, there was also an entrenched idea of __________ between "emotion" and "reason"

antagonism

Emotion regulatory processes may be ___________ or _____________, conscious or unconscious, and may have their effects at one or more points in the emotion generative process

automatic or controlled

Exposure to stress hormones in _________ __________ affects infant temperament

breast milk

Reappraisal

changing one's emotional experience by changing the way one thinks about the emotion-eliciting stimulus

Sally Boysen's Studies includes chimps that must...?

choose which bowl of food they want to go to the other chimp (choose the one with less)

Children with higher self control were more likely to...?

come from higher SES families and had higher IQs during childhood

The rules of what constitutes acceptable emotional expression are...?

culture specific (and sometimes family specific)

Much of self control is about structuring the environment (using ________ ___________) and behaving in such a way as to minimize temptation/poor decision-making

extended cognition

Self-regulation:

generally used more in the education literature, to refer to a child's ability to "sit still and behave" (i.e., be a good student)

Emotion regulation can be defined as the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they...?

have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions.

Girls had significantly _________ self-control scores than boys during childhood

higher

There are still likely some gender differences in Alexithymia, leading to gender differences in ability to...?

identify and express emotions (e.g., alexithymia)

An important point is that "self control"—although it seems quite cognitive and thus in the head—is not all about...?

internal "will power"

Corumination:

is a version of this that happens between two people

Lower self-control due to lower SES may be due to...?

kids not trusting the adult or wanting to risk not getting any marshmallow at all

Beaver and colleagues performed a longitudinal study of the relationship between ____________ abilities and self-control in 155 pairs of twins

language

Moffitt et al. (2011) performed a ____________ study on a cohort of 1,037 children, starting at age 10

longitudinal

Fetal programming or prenatal programming is the term given to the effects of prenatal exposures on various enduring ______________

phenotypes

Lower self control during childhood was related to...?

poorer physical health, financial well being, and higher criminality in early adulthood

They found that language skills __________ correlate with self-control

positively

Many studies have shown that __________ stress predicts more difficult infant temperament (and susceptibility to anxiety/depression later in dev)

prenatal

Suppression:

pushing something out of mind

Chimps have an extremely difficult time with the game when there are...?

real, physical rewards involved

Situation selection:

refers to approaching or avoiding certain people, places, or objects in order to influence one's emotions

Rumination:

repeatedly thinking about a certain event (or events) or repeatedly thinking certain thoughts over-and-over, repetitively (e.g., as commonly occurs in depression)

Children were thus encouraged/ taught to _______________ emotion, to encourage reasoning abilities

repress (rather than express)

Moffitt measured...?

self-control (a composite measure of ratings from teachers, parents and children betw. 3-11 years)

Placing the burden of self-control more outside rather than inside the head has implications for the...?

skills you might try to teach kids

Children tend to delay longer when they use __________ that mentally distance (or distract) them from the attractive features of a reward

strategies

John and Gross (2004) found that use of reappraisal rather than ___________ predicted better functioning

suppression

Mischel obtained a similar result with human children: if children were exposed to a __________ representation of the reward (rather than an actual marshmallow) during the delay period, this substantially increased the length of time they were willing to wait

symbolic

When there are _________ instead of physical rewards chimps perform "rationally," and choose the smaller number (thus getting the larger reward themselves)

symbols

The idea behind "emotion regulation" is that emotions, despite having adaptive evolutionary origins, need to be...?

tempered, channeled, controlled, etc. (i.e., regulated), for social life to run smoothly

Self control / cognitive control:

the ability to delay gratification and/or weigh out alternatives and choose to behave in line with higher-order goals rather than simply immediate, personal pleasure

Emotion regulation:

the use of various strategies to regulate one's emotional state

In addition to physical availability, a key element in delay of gratification is what children __________ of as they try to wait for the larger reward

think

"cool encoding" =

thinking about a stimulus in ways that do not activate "hot" emotions, that will lead to impulsivity

The results of the study suggest that discounting rate / "reward sensitivity" may be...?

trait-like (i.e. a personality characteristic)

Individual differences in ________ ________ predict differences in negative outcomes (anxiety/depression) and mediate the effects of early experience on those outcomes

vagal tone