Emotional Development

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Emotional Development
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Module ObjectivesChapter 9

• Why do people have emotions?
• At what ages do children begin to experience and
  express different emotions?
• What is attachment?
• When do children begin to understand other
  peoples emotions?

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Andriea was so excited to meet her 7-month-old
nephew Colin. She rushed up to him while he was
playing on the floor with his truck and swept him
up in a big hug. After a brief, confused look,
Colin burst into angry tears, as if to say who
are you? Put me down right now!

• Think on your own
• Identify some of the emotions Colin may have
  felt. Also, what emotions could Andreia have felt?

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Expressing Emotions

• When reviewing the situation with Colin and
  Andreia joy, anger and surprise all appeared.
  These are considered basic emotions
• Emotion is the language of a person's mental
  state of being, they are tied to the person's
  internal (physical) and external (social) sensory
  feeling.

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Why do people feel emotions?

• Modern research suggests that emotions are useful
  because they help people adapt to their
  environment (Izard Ackerman, 2000).
• For example, youre walking down a dark street
  late one night. You become frightenedhow does
  this affect your behavior?
• The fear is adaptive because it allows you to
  organize your behavior around an important goal-
  avoiding danger.

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Basic Emotions

• Joy, anger, surprise, interest, disgust,
  distress, sadness and fear are all classified as
  basic emotions (Dragh-Lorenz, 2001).
• Basic emotions are experienced by people
  worldwide and each consists of three elements
• A subjective feeling
• A physiological change
• An overt behavior

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For example- you wake to the sound of a
thunderstorm and then discover your roommate took
your umbrella.
Subjectively you might be angry, physiologically
your heart might be beating faster and overtly
you might be scowling
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How can we determine emotions in infants?

• Facial expressions provide important clues about
  which emotion the child is experiencingbut they
  are only one component of emotion

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Identify the Correct Emotion!
Fear Disgust Anger Sadness Interest Joy
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How did you do?
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Facial Expressions

• Do facial expressions accurately reflect an
  infants emotional state?
• YES! Research has shown that infants (and adults)
  worldwide express basic emotions in the same way.
• Humans have universal emotional expression, which
  suggests that we are biologically programmed to
  express emotions in a specific way.

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Development of Basic Emotions

• Infants experience only two general emotions
• pleasure and distress.
• This will rapidly change and more discrete
  emotions will develop, by 9 months infants are
  thought to experience all basic emotions.

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Positive Emotions

• Smiles
• First month ? reflex response
• By 6 weeks ? the social smile appears
• By 7 months? smiles toward people encourages
  interaction and bonding
• Laughing
• By 3 to 4 months ? during activities (i.e.,
  playing)
• By 1 year ? response to unexpected events
• By 2 years ? response to own behavior or
  attempting to make others laugh

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Reflexive Smile in a Sleeping Newborn
Social Smile in an 8-Month-Old Infant
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Negative Emotions

• Generalized distress
• Newborns ? hunger, pain, overstimulation
• Anger and/or sadness
• 2 months ? visible facial expression matches
  situation
• Fear and/or distress
• 6-7 months to 2 years ? stranger wariness
• 7 to 12 months ? fear of novel toys, noises,
  sudden movements
• 8 to 15 months ? separation anxiety

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Stranger Wariness

• The emotion of fear is fully developed by 9
  months and is expressed in two ways
• Stranger wariness
• Separation anxiety
• Stranger wariness is the distress that young
  children experience when they are exposed to
  people who are unfamiliar to them.
• When a stranger approaches, a typical 6-month-old
  looks away and begins to fuss.
• This begins somewhere between 8-9 months of age
• reaching its peak at 12-15 months.

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Stranger Wariness

• At this time infants begin to realize that all
  people are not the same, and that the
  relationship they have with their primary
  caregivers is special.
• How wary an infant feels around strangers depends
  on a number of factors.
• Infants tend to be less fearful of strangers
• When the environment is familiar
• If infants are given time to warm up to the
  strangers
• Who are female than those who are male

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Stranger Wariness

• Stranger anxiety is adaptive because it emerges
  at the same time that the child is being to
  master crawling
• Being wary of strangers provides a natural
  restraint and makes the infant less likely to
  wander away from familiar caregivers
• Stranger anxiety gradually declines as infants
  learn to interpret facial expressions

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Separation Anxiety

• This is the intense fear or anxiety that occurs
  when a parent or caregiver leaves the child
• This typically develops around the same time as
  object permanence and is universal across
  cultures.
• Infants growing cognitive skills allow them to
  ask questions with no readily apparent answers
• Why is my mother leaving?
• Where is she going?
• Will she come back?

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Development of Complex Emotions

• In addition to the basic emotions, people feel
  complex emotions such as embarrassment, pride,
  guilt and shame.
• These are known as self-conscious emotions that
  involve feelings of success whens standards are
  met and feelings of failure when they are not.

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Research suggests that these complex emotions
depend on the child having self-awareness and
consciousness of adult reactions (Lewis, 2000).

• These complex emotions usually develop between 18
  months and 3 years

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Self-awareness

• A foundation for emotional development is the
  realization that we are distinct individuals-
  separate from other people.
• The emerging sense of me and mine fosters
  self-conscious emotions.

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• The onset of self-awareness is evident when
  infants of various ages are compared.
• Very young infants have no sense of self. It is
  theorized that for the first 4 months, infants
  see themselves as part of their mothers (Mahler
  et al., 1975)

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Later developments

• As children grow they continue to experience
  basic and complex emotions but are elicited by
  different situations and events.
• The cognitive growth elementary school children
  have means they experience shame and guilt in
  situations they would not have as preschool
  children (Reimer, 1996).
• Example unlike preschool children, many
  school-age children would be ashamed if they
  neglected to defend a classmate who was
  wrongfully accused of theft.

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Identifying Emotions in Others

• By 4 to 7 months infants begin to distinguish
  facial expressions associated with different
  emotions.
• Infants can distinguish a happy, smiling face
  from a sad, frowning face- but they may not
  understand the emotional significance (Ludemann,
  1991).

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How can we tell whether infants understand the
emotions expressed in a face?

• The best evidence of this is that infants often
  match their own emotions to other peoples
  emotions (Walker-Andrews, 2001).
• When happy mothers smile and talk in a pleasant
  voice ? infants express happiness themselves
• When mothers are angry or sad ? infants become
  distressed

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• Twenty-three-month-old Stephanie watches as her
  older brother Erik and his friend Leo argue
  loudly with each other and begin to wrestle.
  Uncertain of what is happening, Stephanie glances
  at her mother. Her mother, though, wears a
  smile, knowing that Erik and Leo are just
  playing. On seeing her mothers reaction,
  Stephanie smiles too, mimicking her mothers
  facial expression.

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Social Referencing

• By the end of the first year, infants in an
  unfamiliar or ambiguous environment often look at
  their mother/father as if searching for cues to
  help them interpret the situation.
• At this age, infants generally use parents
  emotional signals to guide their interpretations
  of, and reactions to, potentially upsetting or
  dangerous events and objects.

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Parents influence how the child perceives a new
object

• If the parent looks afraid when shown a novel
  object, 12-month-olds are less likely to play
  with the toy than if a parent looks happy
  (Repacholi, 1998).
• Also, social referencing shows that infants are
  remarkable skilled at using their parents
  emotions to direct their own behavior.

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• As their cognitive skills continue to grow,
  children begin to understand why people feel as
  they do.
• Example a kindergarten child knows that
  unpleasant events often make a person sad or
  angry (Levine, 1995)
• Children at this age also know that they more
  often feel sad when they think about the
  undesirable event itself
• They can understand that remembering a past sad
  event can make a person unhappy (Lagattuta, 1997).

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Display Rules

• A social groups informal norms about when,
  where, and how much one should show emotions and
  when and where displays of emotions should be
  suppressed or masked by displays of other
  emotions
• Prosocial motive
• Using verbal or facial display rules to protect
  someone elses feelings
• Self-protective motive
• Using verbal or facial display rules to protect
  their own feelings

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Example of display rule Children in the US
learn that they are supposed to express happiness
or gratitude when they receive a gift from
grandma, and by all means, to suppress any
disappointment they may feel should the gift turn
out to be pink fuzzy footed pajamas.
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Display Rules Continued

• Same for boys and girls NO
• In elementary school in the US
• Girls believe that it is more acceptable to
  express emotions like pain whereas boys do not
• Girls are more attuned than boys to the need to
  inhibit emotional displays that may hurt someone
  elses feelings
• Children seem to be attuned to display rules if
  they are valued in their culture or if an
  awareness of them serves an important function in
  the family

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Think on Your Own

• Recall a recent situation in which you engaged in
  social referencing.
• Why did you look to the reactions of others to
  determine your own reaction to the situation?
• Did you use display rules? Why?
• If you didnt -should you have?

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Identifying Emotions

• By age 3, children have the ability to label a
  few emotional expressions
• Best at labeling happiness
• The ability to label anger, fear, and sadness
  gradually appears between the ages of 4-6
• The ability to label pride, shame, and guilt
  gradually appears between the ages of 8-9

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Between the ages of 4-8, children have the
ability to label others emotions by their body
movements

• -Four-year-olds good at sad movements
• -Five-year-olds good at sad, fear, and happy
  movements
• -Eight-year-olds good at sad, fear, happy, and
  anger movements

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Measure of Childrens Ability to Label Others
Emotions

• Children are asked to view pictures like these
  and identify the emotions of the characters.
• With age, children can better identify
  appropriate emotions.

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The school age child

• Elementary school children begin to comprehend
  that people can have mixed feelings.
• By about 8 yrs. children can realize how people
  can feel good and bad at the same time, which
  coincides with concrete operational thinking.
• A child recognizes that a situation can produce
  two opposing feelings
• For example- A child can be happy and scared
  about staying home alone.

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What was Your first social-emotional relationship?
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The first special relationship we experience
develops between parent and child

• It is believed that this relationship will
  influence the development of our future
  relationships

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What is Attachment?

• Attachment is an enduring emotional connection
• A close emotional bond that is person-specific
  and is enduring across time and space.
• Infants show their attachment through
  proximity-seeking behaviors, meaning infants (and
  adults) like to be near those we are attached.
• Actions such as approaching, following, and
  climbing into the lap demonstrate the need to be
  physically close. As well as contact-maintaining
  behaviors such as clinging, resisting being put
  down all are evidence of attachment.

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Think on Your Own

• Who are you attached to?
• List 5 people and reflect on why that
  relationship involves attachment

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Harry Harlow (1959) The Monkey Love
experiments

• Harlow evaluated whether feeding or contact
  comfort was more important to infant attachment.
• The young animals were raised by two kinds of
  surrogate monkey mother machines.
• One mother was made of soft terry cloth, the
  other made of wire mesh

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Monkey Love Experiments

• Harlow's monkey studies demonstrated that the
  need for affection created a stronger bond
  between mother and infant than did physical needs
  (food).

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Monkey Love Experiments

• Harlows work suggested that the development of a
  childs love for their caregiver was emotional
  rather than physiological
• Attachment was closely associated with critical
  periods in early life, after which it was
  difficult or impossible to compensate for the
  loss of initial emotional security.

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What happened to these monkeys?

• Monkeys raised without their mothers or other
  monkeys were socially maladjusted the rest of
  their lives.
• When confronted with fear, they displayed
  autistic and institutionalized behaviors-throwing
  themselves on the floor, clutched themselves,
  rocked back and forth, and screamed in terror.
• They were incapable of having sexual relations
  and they were also unable to parent their
  offspring, either abusing or neglecting them.

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What does this mean for humans?

• Harlow showed that the development of attachment
  was closely associated with critical periods in
  early life, after which it was difficult or
  impossible to compensate for the loss of initial
  emotional security
• Further experiments in which abusive conditions
  were created showed that no matter how abusive
  the mothers were, the baby monkeys always came
  back and displayed affection towards them.
• Even in the face of abuse, the need for love was
  overwhelming

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Do we all need attachment and physical contact?

• Yes, according the theories of John Bowlby (1969,
  1991), that children who form an attachment to an
  adult are more likely to survive.
• Attachment not only deepens the parent-child
  relationship, but may have contributed to human
  survival.

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Bowlbys Attachment Theory

• According to Bowlby, the development of
  attachment takes place in four phases
• Preattachment
• Attachment-in-the-Making
• Clear-cut (or True) Attachment
• Reciprocal Relationships

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PreattachmentBirth to 6 weeks

• The infant produces innate signals (crying,
  clinging, smiling, or sucking) that bring others
  to his/her side and the infant is comforted by
  these interactions.
• The infants behaviors and the response they
  evoke from adults create an interactive system
  that is the first step in the formation of
  attachment.

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Attachment-in-the-Making6 weeks to 6-8 months

• Infants begin to respond preferentially to
  familiar people
• Infants are forming expectations about how their
  caregivers will respond to their needs, and as a
  result, develop (or not) a sense of trust in them

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Clear-cut Attachment6-8 months to 1.5-2 years

• By 7-8 months, infants have singles out the
  attachment figure, usually the mother, as a
  special person.
• The mother now serves as a secure base
• Infants actively seek contact with their
  caregivers
• They happily greet their mother when she appears
• They may exhibit separation anxiety when she
  leaves
• This behavior reflects cognitive growth as well.
  The infant now has a mental representation of
  mother and an understanding that she will be
  there to meet the infants needs.

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Reciprocal Relationships1.5-2 years and beyond

• As the cognitive and language abilities of
  toddlers increase, they being to understand
  their parents feelings, goals and motives
• They are better able to act as partners in the
  attachment relationship
• They often take initiative in interactions and
  negotiate with parents
• They cope with separation more effectively
  because they can now anticipate the return.

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The Quality of Attachment

• Based on how the infant reacts to separation from
  the caregiver and the reunion by using a
  procedure known as the Strange Situation.
• Ainsworth (1993) and others have identified 4
  basic types of attachment relationships

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Strange Situation
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Ainsworths Three Attachment Categories

• Secure Attachment
• Insecure/Resistant
• Insecure/Avoidant

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Classifications of Infant Attachment
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Types of Attachment

• Secure attachment is a relationship of trust and
  confidence.
• The baby may or may not cry when the mother
  leaves, but when she returns, the baby wants to
  be with her and if the baby is crying, the baby
  stops.
• During infancy this relationship provides a
  secure base for exploration of the environment.
• This group seems to say I missed you terribly,
  but now that youre back, Im okay.
• 60-65 of American children have secure
  attachment relationships (Kail, 2007).

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A secure attachment relationship is likely to
develop when parents respond to their infants
needs reliably and sensitively
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3 Types of Insecure Attachment

• A relationship that is unstable or unpredictable,
  characterized by the infants fear, anxiety,
  anger or indifference toward the caregiver
• Insecure-Avoidant attachment
• A pattern of insecure attachment in which infants
  or young children seem somewhat indifferent
  toward their caregivers and may even avoid their
  caregivers
• The baby is not upset when the mother leaves,
  and, when she returns, may ignore her by looking
  or turning away

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If they do get upset when left alone, they are as
easily comforted by a stranger as by a parent.As
if to say, you left me again, I always have to
take care of myself!

• 20 of American infant have avoidant- attachment

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Resistant/ambivalent Attachment

• A pattern of insecure attachment in which infants
  or young children are clingy and stay close to
  their caregivers rather than exploring their
  environment.
• The baby is upset when the mother leaves and
  remains upset or even angry when she returns, and
  is difficult to console
• Because the child cant depend on the parent for
  attunement and connection, he develops a sense of
  anxiety and feelings of insecurity

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Insecure Attachments (p.221)

• Disorganized attachment is a pattern of insecure
  attachment in which infants or young children
  have no consistent way to coping with the stress
  of the Strange Situation
• The baby seems confused when the mother leaves
  and, when she returns, seems as if the baby
  doesnt really understand whats
  happeningwhats going on here?
• They want to approach their mother, but they also
  seem to regard her as a source of fear from which
  they want to withdraw

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Disorganized Attachment

• Disorganized attachment leads to difficulties in
  the regulation of emotions, social communication,
  academic reasoning as well as to more severe
  emotional problems.
• This type of attachment occurs when the childs
  need for emotional closeness remains unseen or
  ignored.
• Less than 5 of middle-class Americans fall into
  this category.
• This rate is considerably higher in samples in
  which parents are having difficulties with their
  own working models of attachment.

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Identify the Attachment Relationship

• A baby in this group might say I missed you
  terribly, but now that youre back, Im okay.
• A baby in this group might say You left me
  again. I always have to take care of myself.
• A baby in this group might say Why do you do
  this? I get so angry when youre like this.

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How Did You Do?

• A baby in this group might say I missed you
  terribly, but now that youre back, Im okay.
• A baby in this group might say You left me
  again. I always have to take care of myself.
• A baby in this group might say Why do you do
  this? I get so angry when youre like this.

Secure
Insecure/Avoidant
Insecure/resistant
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Infants develop an Internal working model, which
are a set of expectations about parents
availability and responsiveness
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Adult Attachment

• Adult attachment models are based on adults
  perceptions of their own childhood relationships
  with their parents and of the continuing
  influence of those relationships
• Autonomous or Secure
• Dismissing
• Preoccupied

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The attachment of parents is a significant
factor in the attachment styles of their children
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Securely attached infants appear to grow up to be
better adjusted and more socially skilled than
insecurely attached children.