Week 7 | Social Emotional Development

What are the 4 components of emotional development?

• Emotional expression

• Emotional understanding

• Emotional regulation

• Parenting context

Emotional Expression: What are the 6 basic emotions? What age?

Birth or first year

1. Happiness

2. Fear

3. Anger

4. Sadness

5. Surprise

6. Disgust

What are the 4 secondary emotions? What age?

2nd year self conscious emotions

1. Embarrassment,

2. Pride

3. Guilt - external

4. Shame - internal

Smiling at different ages

Newborns: brief and can occur during sleep

3-8 week: smile to external stimuli

6 week-3 month: social smiles, directed to people

7 month: smiles more to familiar people

12 month: different smile types in different situations

What is the first sign of Negative emotions in newborns?

Generalized distress

Anger and Fear in newborns

Anger

• grow in intensity and frequency from 4-16 months

Fear

• evolutionary origins, adaptive

Self conscious emotions in the 2nd year

Involves a sense of self-awareness and based on other’s perceptions

(embarrassment, pride, guilt, shame)

How does embarrassment develop with cognitive development?

Embarrassment emerges only after child can recognize self: Mirror recognition test

Emotional Understanding: Discriminating emotions: Matching studies

Whether infants match emotional content across different modalities

Matching test results by age, 5 month, 1 year, 2 year

5 months: match the vocalization to congruent facial expressions (smiling face = happy voice)

1 year: positive emotions to positive events

2 year: negative emotions to negative events

Social referencing

Use social information (facial expression, voice) in ambiguous situations

Social referencing in 12 month olds but NOT 10 month olds

Avoid objects of other’s expressed fear

• avoid = fear

• approach = happy

Emotional Regulation: Developmental patterns

The monitoring, evaluation, and moderating of emotional responses

What are the 3 Developmental Patterns?

• 1 year: caregiver to self regulation

• Behavioural to cognitive strategies

• Selection of appropriate strategies

Caregiver to self regulation

Caregiver helps regulate child

Cognitive Regulation

See things in a better light, I can learn and do better next time

Selection of appropriate strategies

More emotionally mature, choose most appropriate strategy

Parenting Context of emotional development (4 things)

• Parents emotional expressivity relates to their children’s

• Parents with strong distress tolerance build positive relationships, parents with depression and anxiety affect infants emotions negatively

• Parents sensitivity and interactive synchrony benefits

• Cell phone use

What is Temperament?

A persons intensity of reactivity and regulation of emotions, activity, and attention

What are the 3 kinds of temperament? What percent of each were kids in the Thomas and Chess study?

• Easy 40%: Positive, regular, adaptive

• Difficult 10%: Active, irregular, react negatively (kicking, screaming)

• Slow to warm up 15%: Moody, inactive, slow to adapt, withdrawn (look away)

Temperament stability

Toddler temperament predicts adulthood traits

Goodness of Fit model

Compatibility between temperament and social environment

• Supportive = regulation

• Harsh = more negative reactivity

Social Development: What is attachment?

An emotional bond with a specific person that is enduring across space and time

What are 3 things that infants do when they’re attached?

• Follow caregivers movements

• Cling to caregiver when distressed

• Seek proximity to caregivers

Bowlby’s Ethological Theory of Attachment

Ethological approach: Born to love, attachment is inborn and adaptive

What does the ethological approach say attachment does?

Increases chance of survival

• Build-in appearance/behaviours to elicit attention foster attachment and increase the chance of survival

Monkey love study: who and what?

Harlow and Zimmerman

Q: What is the cause of attachment, food or contact comfort?

• Monkeys went to the ‘wire mother’ only for food, and spent the rest of their time with the cloth mother

Assessing attachment: what is the Strange Situation procedure?

Based on Bowlby’s theory

• Put infants in a room

• Caregiver leaves, stranger enters.

• Caregiver enters, stranger leaves

• Caregiver leaves child alone

• Stranger enters

• Caregiver enters

What are the 4 attachment styles? What percentages are they?

Secure - 62%-68%

Insecure avoidant - 15%

Insecure resistant - 9%

Disorganized - 15%

Moral Development: what is moral goodness?

Feelings of concern for others and attempts to help individuals in need

18 month VS 30 month in moral goodness

• Instrumental: both ready

• Emotion based: 30m > 18m

• Altruistic: both had a hard time

Moral understanding and evaluation

• Identifying and liking individuals who are cooperative, empathetic, or helpful

• Disliking individuals who are uncooperative, unempathetic, or unhelpful

4-5 month VS 6-10 month with moral evaluation

4-5

• 75-100% preferred helpers over hinderers

6-10

• reliably preferred helpers over hinderers

Agression in 18 month old

Behaviour/physical aggression

• Hitting, pushing, kicking, biting

Aggression in 3 year old

Relational aggression

• Threatening to withdraw friendship

• Ignoring or excluding a peer