Module 9: Emotional Development (Official)

Describe how the quality of the barnet-child attachments contributes to healthy emotional development

1. Affects sense of security and thus their emotionality 2. Securely attached children show more positive emotions, fewer negative emotions, more open with their emotions, and greater understanding of them.

sadness, surprise and disgust

1. Appear at 1 yo. 2. Sadness is uncommon but if present, it's usually due to neglect and abuse. Blended with anger

How to parents contribute to their child's emotional development?

1. Attachment 2. Emotional expression 3. Reactions to children's emotions 4. Teaching of emotional display rules

Describe the development of anger

1. Begins at 1 yo and peaks by the 2nd year 2. Displayed through frustration - when removed, retrained, left, or put down 3. Often blended with sadness. 3. Decline can be attributed to increased language ability.

Relate the stability of temperament across childhood to the idea of goodness-of-fit.

1. Describes how well the temperament fits with environment/parenting 2. Difficult okay with sensitive parenting 3. Parents fit parenting style to the child - can make the temperament enhance genetic effects.

development of happiness

1. Early, reflexive smiles in the 1st month 2. Social (intentional) smiles start around 3/4 months of age, directed toward people. 3. At infancy, much more likely to smile at familiar people 4. Toddlerhoo, like making jokes and people laugh

self-conscious/complex emotions

1. Emerge at 2 yo. 2. i)Embarrassment ii)pride; early and greater in first steps iii)guilt; feeling about your behaviour (okay) iv)shame; feeling bad about who you are (not good) Whether one feels guilt or shame depends on how the parent appraises the child's behaviour. v)empathy vi)jealousy vii)cultural differences; others more embarrassed than proud of individual accomplishments (collectivist)

Describe the 4 various components of emotional experience

1. Emotional expression; the expression of emotion, later in development 2. Emotional recognition; recognizing emotions in others (i.e. via body language) 3. Emotional understanding; labelling and understanding emotions of self and others 4. Emotional self-regulation; being able to control one's emotional expression

separation anxiety

1. Fear of being separated form primary caregiver, beginning at 8 months and peaking around 13 months 2. Dependent on culture and how raised

Discuss the functionalist approach to emotion

1. Focus on the evolutionary/adaptive function of emotions 2. Promotes action towards a goal 3. Emotions vary based on the relationship between an individual and their environment (bidirectionality)

Describe how genetics and gene-environment interactions contribute to healthy emotional development

1. Genes have a substantial portion 2. Interaction of genes and environment; i) goodness of fit - negative environment makes genetic effects much more prominent ii) parenting styles

Describe the determinants of temperament

1. Genetic; genes related to dopamine and other NTs 2. Environmental; parenting styles, teratogens. Note that there is bidirectionality due to the active child theme.

Describe how temperament can affect later developmental outcomes

1. High on anger and inattention dimensions; likely to exhibit problem behaviours such as aggression and low social competency, defiant 2. High in fearfulness dimensions; difficulty in new situations.

Describe how the child's understanding of emotion contributes to healthy emotional development

1. Identifying emotions in others; if not understanding, it's hard to respond to them 2. understanding of the causes and consequences of emotions 3. understanding of real and false emotions; display rules (i.e. gender and cultural differences)

Describe the development of emotion understanding

1. Infants start to perceive that others' emotional expressions are meaningful, can discriminate between them, and start to exhibit social referencing. 2. Toddlerhood- can label facial expressions and understand situations that can cause happiness. 3. Preschool and elementary school years; understanding of the situations that cause emotions and display rules (understanding false emotions)

How is temperament assessed?

1. Lab; HR variability, EEG recordings; unbiased, but behaviour limited in only a set of circumstances. 2. Parent reports via rating scales; could be biased, but have knowledge of what the child is like in many situations.

Identify the factors measured in the study of temperament

1. Large individual differences suggest that it's innate 2. Types; easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up 3. Temperament will be stable early in childhood but decrease across childhood unless at the extremes.

Describe fear and its development

1. Most adaptive or functional emotion. 2. Afraid of loud noises, novel things (i.e. strangers), and sudden movements at 6 months of age. 3. Varies with temperament of child and familiarity of situation. 4. 8 mo; separation anxiety and peak fear of strangers.

Apply the example of emotions to seeing a cougar stalk you

1. Neural responses; amygdala fires 2. Physiological responses; stress response 3. Subjective feelings; subjective fear 4. Cognitions related to those feelings; how to escape? 5. The desire to take action; urge to escape 6. Expressive behaviour (i.e. facial expressions); face and body shows fear

Describe how parent-socialization practices contribute to healthy emotional development

1. Parents' expression of emotion; anger can make children view themselves as negative and can add to the development of the hostile attribution bias 2. Parents' reaction to children's emotions; not good to dismiss negative emotions in children (i.e. criticize, make fun). Operant conditioning involved. 3. Parents' discussion of emotions; their meanings, appropriate circumstances for expressing them, emotional coaching.

Describe how the child's culture contributes to healthy emotional development

1. People across cultures experience mostly the same emotions, but can still vary (collectivist vs individualist cultures) 2. Due to genetics, parenting practices

Analyze the various factors contributing to healthy emotional development.

1. Quality of parent-child relationship 2. Genetics and Gene-Environment interactions 3. Parental Socialization practices 4. Child's culture 5. Child's understanding of emotion

Illustrate the protracted development of emotion regulation processes

1. Shifting from co-regulation to self-regulation; dependent on caregivers to regulate their emotions at first, at 5 months they start to self-regulate via self-comforting (i.e. suck thumb) or -distracting (i.e. look away) 2. Changes in use of cognitive strategies; from i)Physical capabilities ii)Neurological; PFC iii)Cognitive - re-appraisal of situations iv)Expectations of others 3. Changes in selection of effective regulatory strategies (toolbox); aided by ability to distinguish between what they can and cannot control

Evaluate the importance of effective emotion regulation skills

1. Tied to social and academic competence and adjustment 2. Difficulties in emotional self-regulation can lead to childhood disorders (i.e. depression, anxiety)

True or False: Members of collectivist cultures are more likely to express negative emotions compared to their individualist counterparts.

False

emotion

a complex coordinated reaction to significant events involving 1. Neural responses 2. Physiological responses 3. Subjective feelings 4. Cognitions related to those feelings 5. The desire to take action 6. Emotional expressions (i.e. facial expressions)

still face paradigm

a parent plays with a child and then suddenly shifts to an unresponsive, expressionless face

basic emotions

anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise; each is thought to play an important role in both survival and social communication.

emotion regulation

conscious and unconscious processes used to both monitor and modulate emotional experiences and expressions

display rules

cross-cultural guidelines for how and when to express emotions. Sometimes, fake emotions must be expressed in certain situations.

self-conscious emotions

emotions such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride that relate to our sense of self and our consciousness of others' reactions to us

Dimensions of temperament

fearfulness, attention, anger/frustration, and activity level.

temperament

individual differences in emotion, activity level, and attention that are exhibited across contexts and that are present from infancy

difficult temperament

more negative mood, intense responses, slow adaptation to change, and irregular routines and bodily functions

slow to warm up temperament

need to adjust gradually to change

easy temperament

regular, adaptable, and happy

co-regulation

the process by which a caregiver provides the needed comfort or distraction to help a child reduce his or her distress

social referencing

where children use their caregivers' emotions and tone of voice as a guide to act in novel situations

differential susceptibility

where children's temperaments vary in the environments in which they're raised such that they do very poorly in harsh conditions but very well in enriched conditions.