Understanding and expressing emotion

What are the 5 elements of the developmentalist view of emotion?

Neural responses

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Physiological factors

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Subjective feelings

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Emotional expressions

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Desire to take action

Six basic emotions

Happiness

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Sadness

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Fear

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Anger

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Disgust

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Surprise

Who coined the 6 basic emotions?

Ekman and Friesen 1976

Positive emotions: at 3-4 months…

Infants smile and laugh at a range of activities

Positive emotions: at 3-8 months…

Infants smile to external stimuli

Positive emotions: at 6-10 months…

social smiles are observed

Positive emotions: at 2 years…

Children have the desire to make others laugh

Ellsworth 1993

Preference for humans: Observed 3-6 month olds playing with stranger, mother or puppet. No touching.

Results: 20% more smiling to mother>puppet, same pattern with stranger- no maternal preference yet.

When does discrimination by familiarity begin to occur?

7 months

Negative emotions: for infants…

harder to discriminate than positive, eases at 2yo but in general humans find positive emotions easier to identify

Negative emotions: Fear 4months…

Wary of the unfamiliar, protective

Negative emotions: Fear 6-7 months…

First signs of fear e.g., loud noises, strangers, sudden movements etc

Negative emotions: Fear 2 years…

Fear of strangers settles but this is variable

Longitudinal study of fear development

Stranger meets infant at 4, 8, 12 and 16 months

Stranger makes gradual approach from door to holding infant

Steep change in emotion from 4-8months with it settling at 16 months

Negative emotions: Separation anxiety 8months vs 15

8 months arrives, 15 months begins to decline

Negative emotions: Separation anxiety- Kagan 1978

Chinese children experience more separation anxiety as they tend to sleep with their parents a lot longer, and they are less likely to experience non-parental childcare

Negative emotions: Anger 12 months

Clear expressions of anger

Negative emotions: Anger 18-24 months

peak anger expresison

Negative emotions: Anger, Brangar-Reiker 2010

Longitudinal study

Creating frustration- mother holds with toy of interest just out of reach

Found moderate anger at 4 months with steady increase

Self-conscious emotions : When do they develop and why?

2 years as a sophisticated sense of the world is required

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A combination of a developing sense of self and external standards?

What do self conscious emotions include?

Guilt, shame, embarrassment, Pride

What is the differences between guilt and shame?

guilt is action-focused, and empathy stems from it, whilst shame is self-focused e.g., you did a bad thing versus you are a bad person

Shame and culture: Furukawa 2012

Japanese children experience more shame than Korean or US children at ages 8-11

Wo did the Broken doll study?

Barrett 1993

What happened in the Broken doll study?

2 years old left alone in a room with doll whose legs fall off

Guilty children: tried to fix doll

Shameful children: tried to avoid experimenter

Who did the visual cliff study?

Sorce 1985

What happened in the visual cliff study?

Infants far more likely to cross cliff when met with positive emotional signals from caregiver

Visual cliff criticism

How do we know this is not just a cooccurrence of events

Development of emotional understanding: Moss 2001

Children show more interest in a novel toy when positive words were paired with looking at the toy than negative.

Control condition revealed no significant effect of type of noise

Result= 12-18mo use social referencing and have emotional understanding

Development of emotional understanding: Serrano 1993

4-6 month olds can discriminate between positive and negative emotions

this does not mean they have emotional understanding

Development of emotional understanding: For social referencing to aid infants in emotional understanding, they must understand…

1. Another persons social message relative to the event or object

2. That the emoter determines the social message

3. Emoters referential clues can help to determine social message e.g. smile means its good

When is emotional vocab developed?

2-3 years

What did Widen and Russell (2003) find regarding categorising emotional vocalubary?

In 2-5 year olds, 5 year olds perform the best except on sadness

Every age struggled with categorising disgust

Development of emotional understanding: Borke 1971

Children as young as 3-5 can correctly identify the feelings of a book character

Development of emotional understanding: Laguatta 1997

4-5 year olds understand that memories can cause emotions- Mary’s rabbit

at 3 years- 40% pass, at 4 years- 80% pass, at 5 years- 100% pass

Development of emotional understanding: Bonfaree 1997

5 year olds understand that internal and external emotions aren’t always congruent