Development Psychology

- Biologically-endowed processes involved in quickly evaluating an experience and preparing to act on it rapidly.

Cole et al (2004):

- Trigger - an experience (something we see or hear)

- Appraisal - evaluation of experience

- Physiological changes - changes in the body

- Action - do something

Distinct from moods

Identifiable trigger

Quick onset and short duration

Responses to the trigger are psychological, physical and behavioural

Preparedness to act

Adaptive: a survival mechanism

- Innate

- Universal

- Both automatic and extended deliberate responses

- Eyebrows: musvle contracts to pull eyebrows up and in

- Eyelids: lower eyelids

- Lips

1) Happiness; 2) Surprise; 3) Fear; 4) Sadness; 5) Disgust; 6) Anger

7) Comtempt - added later by Ekman

- Discrete emotion families

 Different physiological expression, triggers, appraisals, behavioural respose

- 'Families' of emotions

- Can be blended

Complex emotions

E.g. Pride, embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, shame

- How to identity, label and understand the emotions of oneself and others

- How to talk about and understood talk about emotions

- How to manage and control the experience, intensity ad expression of emotions.

- How to respond to others emotions

- How to manage behaviour associated with emotions

- Emotional competency/emotional intelligence: emotion knowledge, intelligence and communication

1) Expressing and recognising emotion

2) Understand emotions

3) Regulating emotions

- Relationships between triggers and emotions change in line with cognitive and social changes

       - Fear of imaginary creatures

       - Peer rejection

       - Understanding of intentionality

- There is an increase in negative emotions in early to middle adolescence

- As children get older, there are changes in when and how emotions are displayed.

Infants

- Show distinct facial expressions from birth

- Can appear to imitate a range of emotional expressions

- Distinguish different emotions in facial, vocal and body expressions

- Show preference for positive over negative expressions

- Social smiles emerge from around 8 weeks - smiles in responses to external events (esp. people)

- Develop through parent-infant mutual imitation

- Cross-cultural differences determine frequency of smiling

Wormann et al, 2012

- Adaptive - results in attention and care

- Laughter is seen from 3-4 months, usually in response to clowning and absurdity

- Children 'clown around' to make others laugh in their second year

- Positive emotional expressions become more frequent over the first year.

- Undifferentiated distress is the first observable emotions

- Difficult to identity components (anger vs. fear vs. pain)

- Children show wariness by around 4 months, and by 7 months begin to show fear of strangers, new objects and loud noises.

- Adaptive: help children get protection and support

- Separation anxiety - 8 months 

Emotional communication e.g. Sorce et al (1985) 'The visual cliff'

- 12 months old:

     - Smile: 14-19 cross cliff

     - Fear: 0/19 cross cliff

     - Anger: 2/19 cross cliff

- Emotional expressions allow children to understand a situation as safe or threatening,

- Other example: parent's affective cues influence infant's affect towards absurb events (Mireault et al, 2015)

- Tickling requires 'social wrapping' to be funny (Reddy, 2008)

1) Infant actively seeks another person's affective appraisal of a stimulus

2) That individual provides a clear affective message about the stimulus

3) The infant regulates his/her affect and behaviour toward the event to align with that message

- Young children use the emotional signals of others in moments of ambiguity and uncertainty to regulate affect and behaviour

- Fear of strangers and separation anxiety intensifies from around 15 months and lasts until about 2.

- Ability to regulate emotions improves - collaboration with parental regulatio and increasing independent regulation

- Learn about 'display rules'

- Increasing recognition, understanding, and expression of basic emotions and developmnt of social emotions.

- Social or 'self-conscious' emotions relate to our sense of self and other's or imagined reactions to us

       - E.g. embarrassment, guilt, shame, pride

- Requires an understanding of oneself as distinct from others and ability to engage in self-evaluation

- Used in monitoring social interactions and correct moral and social transgressions

- I did that wrong vs. I did that wrong

- Self --> shame

- Behaviour --> guilt

- Shame: feel exposed, attempt to hide or getaway

- Guilt: remorse and regret, attempts to undo consequences of behaviour

- Emotions are not expressed as vividly and directly as in younger years

- More sophisticated emotional regulation strategies - increasing use of cognitive techniques

- Emotion recognition improves

- By five years old, children are as good as adults at distinguishing happiness and fear (Redger et al, 2015)

- Accurately identifying anger and sadness takes lonher and continues to improve into later childhppd and adolescence.

Chronaki et al, 2015

- Recognition of facial and vocal emotion expression in 4-7, 10 years olds and adults

- 10 year olds as accurate as adults at indentifying happy and angry faces, but not as good as identifying sadness or using vocal information.

- 'Attempts to influence which emotions one has, when one has them, and how one experiences or expresss these emotions

- Changes to intensity, duration, quality

- Activation of a goal to influence emotion trajectory

- Conscious and deliberate or unconscious and implicit

- Emotional regulation can include changes to:

    - The situation/trigger

    - Subjective feelings

    - Cognitions

    - Physiological processes

    - Behaviour

- Over time, children develop an increasing number of strategies to regulate these aspects of the emotional process.

- Regulatory behaviour include:

      - Avoidance (i.e. gaze aversion)

      - Self-soothing (sucking thumb)

      - Talking about emotion/experience

      - Negotiation

      - 'Rethink' emotional experience

      - Adapt to situation rather than trying to change it

- The growing ability to control attention and physical movement; to use language and more developed cognitive skills, all enhance a child's emotion regulation.

Mischel et al, 1987 - The Marshmellow test

- Children chose between one marshmellow now or two marshmellows later

- Avoidance and distraction were observed in those who delayed the longest

- Those who 'delayed gratification' were much more successful in later life - better academic performance, jobs, physical and psychological well-being

- Mental distancing - the best method for delaying gratification is to change your perception on the object. This mentality 'cools the hots' aspect of your environment.

- An inability to control the experience and display of emotion subsequent behaviour impairs peer relationships and academic performance

      - E.g. taking part in play, dealing with conflict, coping with stress, attention in class rooms

- Emotion-related issues may be core to a range of developmental and psychological problems, such as conduct disorders, anxiety and depression (Crowell et al, 2015)

- Suppression of emotions (negative or positive) can be maladaptive

- Some emotion regulation strategies may provide immediate relief but cause long-term vulnerability

      - E.g. hypervigilence in contexts of parental conflict; emotional buffers in response to parental depression or anxiety

- Some emotion regulation may be unhelpful

      - E.g. Self harm, alcohol, drugs

- Children's emotional regulation behaviour emerges from the parent-child relationship and parenting practices

Reactions to emotion displays

- Encourage, discourag, ignore

- Dismissing, teasing, criticising

Discussion of emotions

- Rationalising and explaning vs. dismiising, teasing and criticising

- Reference to mental states.

Emotional expression

- Display and intensity of emotions

       - Eisenbrg et al, 1998

- Early emotional socialisatio is driven by family but peers become increasingly influential in middle childhood. (Klimes-Dougan & Zeman, 2007)

E.g. whining

- A way of producing a request, complaint or objection using distinct vocal delivery to display and 'affective stance'.

- Recruits the help of a parent to fix a problem

- Parents can engage in 'stance inversion' - e.g. respond to negative affect with positive affect

- Focus on problem resolution rather than emotion state.