Lifespan Chapter 4: Emotional Development, Emotion Regulation, and Attachment

Vocabulary flashcards focusing on key definitions and concepts related to emotional development, neurobiology, attachment theory, and caregiver interactions from Chapter 4.

Emotion

A coordinated response involving physiological arousal, subjective feeling, thoughts and interpretation, facial/vocal expression, and action tendencies.

Action Tendency

The motivational aspect of emotion that prepares a person to act, such as fear encouraging avoidance or anger mobilizing confrontation.

Emotional Intelligence

A capability involving perceiving, identifying, integrating, and managing emotions to support well-being and relationships.

Basic Emotions Theory (BET)

A theory proposing that humans experience a set of innate, universal emotions shared broadly across people and sometimes across species, which serve evolutionary functions.

Emotion Schemas

Emotional structures in older children and adults shaped by experience and culture that incorporate memories, thoughts, images, hormones, bodily shifts, and typical response styles.

James–Lange Theory

A theory proposing that a stimulus produces a bodily reaction, and awareness of that bodily reaction leads to the feeling of emotion.

Cannon–Bard Theory

A theory proposing that a stimulus produces emotional experience and physiological arousal simultaneously.

Low-Road Processing

Fast, automatic, and relatively unreflective emotional processing that moves from sensory systems toward the amygdala without extensive cortical analysis.

High-Road Processing

Slower and more deliberate emotional processing that allows individuals to interpret context, compare information with memory, and regulate their response.

Behavioral Approach System (BAS)

A neurobehavioral system related to reward sensitivity and approach behavior that supports moving toward desirable goals, incentives, and positive outcomes.

Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS)

A neurobehavioral system related to sensitivity to punishment, threat, uncertainty, and avoidance that supports caution and inhibition when potential risk is detected.

Self-Conscious Emotions

Emotions such as pride, shame, embarrassment, empathy, and guilt that typically emerge around 18–24 months because they require self-recognition and advanced cognitive abilities.

Social Referencing

A process where older infants (often around 10–12 months) use caregivers' emotional reactions to interpret ambiguous events and decide whether to approach, avoid, or continue an action.

Emotion Regulation

The use of strategies to manage emotional experience and expression in order to meet situational demands and achieve goals.

Infant Co-Regulation

Caregiver support that helps manage an infant's intense arousal through soothing, feeding, holding, voice, touch, gaze, and responding to cues.

Synchrony

A repetitive, rhythmic coordination of nonverbal behavior in face-to-face interaction between caregiver and infant, including timing of looks, smiles, vocalizations, movement, and pauses.

Repair

The act of noticing an infant's distress or disengagement and responding in a way that restores connection, comfort, or regulation.

Face-to-Face Still-Face Paradigm

An experimental paradigm consisting of normal interaction, a still-face episode with an unresponsive caregiver, and a reunion episode, used to study infant reactions to social disruption.

Attachment

An emotional bond through which infants seek protection, closeness, comfort, and support for exploration from caregivers.

Proximity Maintenance

An attachment behavior in which the child seeks to remain near or regain access to the caregiver, particularly under stress or uncertainty.

Secure Base

A role provided by a caregiver that acts as a reliable foundation supporting the child's exploration, allowing the child to return when reassurance is needed.

Safe Haven

A role provided by a caregiver that offers comfort and protection when the child is distressed, tired, afraid, ill, or overwhelmed.

Internal Working Models

Cognitive representations of self and others built from early caregiving experiences that shape expectations about relationships, support, trust, and self-worth.

Ainsworth's Strange Situation

An observational assessment procedure evaluating infant attachment quality through brief social episodes involving separation, reunion, and the introduction of a stranger.

Secure Attachment

An attachment pattern where infants use the caregiver as a secure base, may show distress during separation, but seek or greet the caregiver on return, accept comfort, and resume exploration.

Avoidant Attachment

An attachment pattern characterized by little outward distress at separation and avoiding or ignoring the caregiver upon reunion, despite elevated physiological arousal.

Anxious/Ambivalent Attachment

An attachment pattern where infants are highly distressed by separation and seek proximity upon reunion while simultaneously resisting comfort or remaining angry.

Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment

An attachment pattern marked by contradictory, fearful, or confused behavior toward the caregiver, reflecting a lack of a coherent strategy for coping with stress.

Secure-Base Provision

A caregiving focus on meeting attachment and exploration needs, resolving distress effectively, and helping the child return to a calm state.

AMBIANCE System

A coding system used to identify patterns of disrupted parent–child affective communication, including contradictory messages, role confusion, negative intrusiveness, and withdrawal.

Temperament

Biologically influenced individual differences in emotional and behavioral style present early in life.

Goodness of Fit

The degree of match between a child's temperament and caregiver/environmental expectations and responses.

Differential Susceptibility

The phenomenon wherein reactive and irritable infants are especially sensitive to and affected by both low-quality and high-quality caregiving environments.

Vagus Nerve

A major component of the parasympathetic nervous system involved in regulating heart rate, mood, pain, and immune functions.

Neuroception

The automatic detection of safety and threat cues by the nervous system.

Floor Time

An intervention technique where caregivers get on the floor, allow the child to lead the interaction, and respond to the child's signals, interests, and activities.