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Week 9: Emotional Development (Describe the development of emotion…
Week 9: Emotional Development
Illustrate the protracted development of emotion regulation processes and evaluate the importance of effective emotion regulation skills
Emotion Regulation:
very important aspect of emotional development
need to be able to regulate your emotions in order to be able to achieve goals
have to learn to regulate feelings, regulate of physiological processes (arousal, take a deep breath), thoughts and behaviours
very long and very slow process (continues to develop into adulthood and some people are not able to regulate their emotions)
Regulatory Development:
in early infancy, parents control exposure (don’t want major exposure), soothe (them when they are upset) and distract them
by 6 months, babies able to distract themselves somewhat
by 12 months, babies consistently able to distract themselves (related to motor development)
rely less on parents over time, use cognitive strategies
it is bad to be too happy and too aroused, meaning that the child need to get away for a little bit
Discuss the functionalist approach to emotion and label the various components of emotional experience
Functionalist approach: evolved emotions as adaption to motivate; emotions have evolved to adapt to the environment to motivate us (whether that be motivate us to get away from something or motivate us to approach something that we like)
Evolutionary importance: we find pleasure in evolutionarily important tasks
not just subjective feelings, include motivations for a behaviour
Functional approach: emotions are useful because they help people adapt to their environment and organize their behaviour around an important goal - ex: fear makes you prepped for danger
Theories of Early Emotion: Izard's cross-culture research-differential or discrete emotions (present from birth, physiological individual)
we now know that physiological measures are unable to differentiate specifically between specific emotions or discrete emotions
we also now know that babies do not show discrete emotions in the way adults do
Babies really only show distress, pleasure and wariness in first couple months
Emotional Development:
emotions are not just subjective feelings (not just sad, anger, fear) --> they include a motivation to behaviour – either a desire to approach or withdraw or a desire to change a person or situation
emotions have a functional (adaptive) purpose
physical changes – heart and breathing rate, skin conductance, stress hormones
when we have an emotion there is physical arousal that we have (positive or negative)
Interpretation of emotion is important (and how we deal with them cognitively)
Describe the development of emotion understanding and differential the development of basic and self-conscious emotions
Positive Emotions:
early smiles reflexive (ex. smile after they pass gas, because it feels better)
social (intentional) smile starts around 2 months
two months smile at controlling environment
at 7 months, more likely to smile at familiar people (particularly their caregiver)
in second year, like making jokes and making people laugh
Negative Emotions:
not well-differentiated in first few months (ex. cries are not differentiated)
disagreement as to when differentiated
well organized by about 6 months
infants don’t always demonstrate a mood congruent to situation – different interpretation (different stimuli can cause different moods)
doesn’t matter as long as mom knows something is wrong
Fear:
fear is thought to be the most adaptive or functional emotion that we feel (because it moves us out of a situation that can cause danger to us)
early on kids afraid of loud noises, novel (new) things, and sudden movement (a lot of things can startle the child)
temperament of child and familiarity of situation (they may be more comfortable at home vs. a lab)
stranger wariness
: begins at about 7 months, this is the time when infants start differentiating between people and smiling more at familiar people and they become very wary of strangers); lasts until about 2 years of age (but does not happen with all infants)
factors that alter infant fear: unfamiliar setting, distance from familiar figure, bigger, passive expressions, low control and unpredictability
Separation Anxiety:
begins around about 8 months (specific to primary caregiver or caregivers (so if they leave the room or if the infants have to be taken away from them, there is a lot of anxiety)
peaks around 13 months
dependent on culture (kids who never leave their mothers get greater separation anxiety then those infants who are away from their mother at a young age and are used to it by 8 months)
there is less fear when the child chooses to leave the room
Anger and Sadness:
by the beginning of the second year, differentiating emotions is a lot easier (clear to differentiated bodily states, tiredness, huger, wet diaper, from just anger at a situation or sadness)
kids display anger when they are frustrated (gaining sense of self and self-agency) – when they’re removed, restrained, left or put down when they want to be picked up
shows higher level of cognition (shows higher level of “I want to do this”, “you’re frustrating me in this”, “my intentions or my desires are not being met”)
if kids show sadness instead of anger in these situations it is not a good sign as it is a sign of neglect or abuse or over-instructive parenting
Self-Conscious/Complex Emotions:
start to come in second year (after 1st birthday) – have to have a differentiation of self from other (need recognition of self)
include embarrassment, pride, guilt, and shame (include awareness or self)
have to be aware of self and aware of others perceptions of self
18-24 months – become embarrassed at being centre of attention
pride: apparent pretty early (great pride in first steps, when older they will have more pride in difficult tasks)
guilt: over what done to others; more about the behaviour
shame: more self-related; feel bad about who you are
guilt is okay, shame not so good (with shame you don’t usually try to correct the situation; should tell the kids that the behavior is not good and not tell them that they are not good)
cultural differences – other cultures more embarrassed than proud of individual accomplishment
show less shame when they can’t do a difficult tasks and show more shame when they can’t figure out an easy task
Identify the factors measured in the study of temperament and relate the stability of temperament across childhood to the idea of goodness-of-fit
Temperament:
large individual differnces - innate (some babies cry through the night and don't cry very much in the day and some are completely opposite); it is kind of about personality but much more shallow
Thomas and Chess:
Easy: 40%, they were easy to soothe and distract when they were upset
Difficult: 10%, they were not easy to soothe and got upset easily
Slow-to-warm-up: 15%, they didn’t like new situations but once they settled in they were okay
What about the other 35% - maybe just average babies?
Rothbart: thought maybe the Thomas and Chess study used too many different stimuli so now they just focus on these
fearful distress/inhibition (how babies respond to new situations)
irritable distress (how distressed they get)
attention span (how long are they able to pay atteniton for)
activity level (how active are they)
postive affect (how much positve affect they show)
rhythmicity (ability to fall into a routine)
Goodness of Fit:
child’s relationship with parents is vey important for the child maintaining stability of temperament
how temperament fits with environment
parents recognize temperament while still encouraging more adaptive functioning
difficult temperaments okay with sensitive parenting (but parents really have to adapt their parenting style)
parents have to fit their parenting styles to the individual child
the quality of the relationship between parent and child are more effective then temperament
Stable Over Time:
studies find conflicting results – only about 30% of kids remain very stable in their temperament
early in childhood more stability but decreases across childhood due to kids being exposed to different situations and start spending more time with their peers and less time just with their families these differences may change (may molded by peers)
children at extremes more likely to retain
more stability for emotions than activity (ex. if kid is really active when a child, it does not mean they will play lots of sports but if they are easy they may stay easy)
3 Patterns of Temperament:
"Easy" babies: usually happy and cheerful, adjusted well to new situations, have a regular sleep and hygiene regime (~40%)
"Difficult" babies: unhappy, irregular shcedule, respond intensely to unfamiliar sitautions (~10%)
"slow to warm up" babies: often unhappy, but responded better to new situations (~15%)
what about the other 35%?
Analyze the various factors contributing to healthy emotional development
quality of child's relationship with parents has a huge effect on emotional development (both through temperament and through general healthy emotional development)
goodness of fit and gene by environment interactions (genes interacting with environment in a multipliable way)
certain genes are discovered (ex. some genes will have negative outcomes if child raised in a poorly parented home and will have not have an effect if child raised in a happy and healthy home)
Parents: directly socialize emotional development
parents own emotional expression will effect emotional expressions of kids
modeling and exposure
if parent if very emotive then the child is more likely to be emotive; if parent has no emotions the child may be like that
reaction to child's emotions with children
denial never good
always good to acknowledge the emotions and help them rationalize the emotion/soothe them
discussion of emotions with children
causes and how to regulate-emotion coaching
talk about how to regulate emotions (and kind of emotional coaching)
parents should talk about emotions that have come up, perhaps after the event
Culture: play a important role, particularly in emotional expression - some cultures are more expressive then other cultures