Emotional Development

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Emotional Development

• How Children Develop (3rd ed.)
• Siegler, DeLoache Eisenberg
• Chapter 10

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Emotional Intelligence

• A set of abilities that contribute to competent
  social functioning

• Being able to motivate oneself and persist in the
  face of frustration
• Control impulses and delay gratification
• Identify and understand ones own and others
  feelings
• Regulate ones moods
• Regulate the expression of emotion in social
  interactions
• Empathize with others emotions

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Emotional Intelligence

• A better predictor than IQ of how well people
  will do in life, especially in their social lives
• In research by Walter Mischel, preschoolers
  abilities to delay gratification were found to
  predict their social, emotional, and academic
  competence many years later.

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Overview

• I. The Development of Emotions in Childhood
• II. Regulation of Emotion
• III. Individual Differences in Emotion and its
  Regulation
• IV. Childrens Emotional Development in the
  Family
• V. Culture and Childrens Emotional Development
• VI. Childrens Understanding of Emotion

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I. The Development of Emotions in Childhood

• A. Theories on the Nature and Emergence of
  Emotion
• B. The Emergence of Emotion in the Early Years
  and Childhood

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I. The Development of Emotions in Early Childhood

• Emotion is characterized by a motivational force
  or action tendency and by changes in physiology,
  subjective feelings, and overt behavior.
• Although most psychologists share this general
  view of emotion, they often do not agree on the
  relative importance of its key components.
• There is considerable debate, for example, about
  the basic nature of emotions, including whether
  they are innate or partly learned, and about when
  and in what form different emotions emerge during
  infancy.

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A. Theories on the Nature and Emergence of
Emotion
Discrete Emotions Theory
The Functionalist Approach
Research supports both perspectives to some
degree, and no one theory has emerged as
definitive.
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Discrete Emotions Theory

• Argues that
• Emotions are innate and are discrete from one
  another from very early in life.
• Each emotion is packaged with a specific and
  distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions.

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The Functionalist Approach

• Emphasizes the role of the environment in
  emotional development
• Proposes that the basic function of emotions is
  to promote action toward achieving a goal
• Maintains that emotions are not discrete from one
  another and vary somewhat based on the social
  environment

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B. The Emergence of Emotion in the Early Years
and Childhood

• To make their interpretations of infants
  emotions objective, researchers have devised
  highly elaborate systems for coding and
  classifying the emotional meaning of infants
  facial expressions.
• These systems identify emotions first by coding
  dozens of facial cues and then by analyzing the
  combination in which these cues are present.
• Nonetheless, it is often hard to determine
  exactly which emotions infants are experiencing.
• It is particularly difficult to differentiate
  among the various negative emotions that young
  infants express.

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Characteristics of Some Families of Emotions
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1. Positive Emotions

• Smiling is the first clear sign of happiness that
  infants express.
• Young infants smile from their earliest days, but
  the meaning of their smiles appears to change
  with age.
• Social Smiles are directed toward people and
  first emerge as early as 6 to 7 weeks of age.

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1. Positive Emotions

• At about 7 months, infants start to smile
  primarily at familiar people, rather than at
  people in general.
• After about 3 or 4 months of age, infants laugh
  as well as smile during a variety of activities.
• During the second year of life, children start to
  clown around and are delighted when they can make
  other people laugh.

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2. Negative Emotions

• The first negative emotion that is discernible in
  infants is generalized distress.
• By 2 months of age, facial expressions of anger
  or sadness can be differentiated from
  distress/pain in some contexts.
• By the second year of life, differentiating
  between infants anger and other negative
  emotions is no longer difficult.

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Distress

• The interpretation of negative emotions is
  complicated by the fact that infants sometimes
  display negative emotions that seem incongruent
  with the situation they are experiencing.
• It has been suggested that young infants are
  experiencing undifferentiated distress when they
  evidence negative emotion and that anger and
  distress/pain are not differentiated in most
  contexts.

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Fear

• The first clear signs of fear emerge at around 6
  or 7 months, when unfamiliar people no longer
  provide comfort and pleasure similar to that
  provided by familiar people.

• The fear of strangers intensifies and lasts until
  about age 2 but is quite variable across
  individuals and contexts.
• Other fears are also evident at around 7 months
  and tend to decline after 12 months.

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Evidence of Fear in Young Children
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Separation Anxiety

• Refers to feelings of distress that children,
  especially infants and toddlers, experience when
  they are separated, or expect to be separated,
  from individuals to whom they are attached
• It is a salient and important type of fear and
  distress that tends to increase from 8 to 13 or
  15 months and then begins to decline.
• This pattern is observed across many cultures.

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Separation Anxiety
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Anger
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3. The Self-Conscious Emotions

• Feelings such as guilt, shame, embarrassment, and
  pride that relate to our sense of self and our
  consciousness of others reactions to us.
• Emerge during the second year of life
• At about 15 to 24 months of age, some children
  start to show embarrassment when they are made
  the center of attention.
• By 3 years of age, childrens pride is
  increasingly tied to their level of performance.
• The situations likely to induce self-conscious
  emotions in children vary somewhat across
  cultures.

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Guilt and Shame

• Guilt is associated with empathy for others and
  involves feelings of remorse and regret and the
  desire to make amends.
• Shame does not seem to be related to concern
  about others.
• Shame and guilt can be distinguished fairly
  early, but whether children experience guilt or
  shame partly depends on parental practices.

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4. Normal Emotional Development in Childhood

• From early to middle childhood, acceptance by
  peers and achieving goals become increasingly
  important sources of happiness and pride.
• School-age childrens fears are generally related
  to real-life important issues rather than
  imaginary creatures.
• By the early school years, childrens perceptions
  of others motives and intentions are important
  in determining whether or not they will be
  angered.
• Children overall become less intense and less
  emotionally negative with age in the preschool
  and early school years.

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Emotions in Adolescence

• Adolescence is a time of greater negative emotion
  than middle childhood.

• Although the increase in the frequency and
  intensity of negative emotions and the decrease
  in positive emotions is small for most
  adolescents, a minority experience a major
  increase in the occurrence of negative emotions,
  often in their relations with their parents.

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5. Depression

• The rate of clinical depression, which is less
  than 3 prior to adolescence, is 15 or higher
  from age 15-18.
• An addition 11 of U.S. youth experience less
  serious symptoms of depression.
• Hispanic children report more symptoms of
  depressions than do Euro- or African Americans.
• Children with depression frequently exhibit
  behavior problems.

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Depression
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Depression

• Possible causes of depression include genetic
  factors, maladaptive belief symptoms, feelings of
  powerlessness, negative beliefs and
  self-perceptions, and the lack of social skills
  .
• Family factors also contribute to depression
• In many cases depression is likely due to a
  combination of personal vulnerability and
  external stressful factors.
• Antidepressant drugs are most common treatment

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Gender and Depression

• Starting at age 13 to 15 in the United States,
  girls begin showing higher rates of clinical
  depression than do boys.
• Stressors for girls include concerns about body
  image, early puberty, worries about peer
  acceptance and an increased tendency to ruminate
  on symptoms of their distress and on the meaning
  of their distress.

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II. Regulation of Emotion

• A. The Development of Emotional Regulation
• B. The Relation of Emotional
• C. Regulation to Social Competence and Adjustment

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A. The Development of Emotional Regulation

• The process of initiating, inhibiting, or
  modulating internal feeling states,
  emotion-related physiological processes, and
  emotion-related cognitions or behaviors in the
  service of accomplishing ones goals.
• Its emergence in childhood is a long, slow
  process.

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1. Shift from Caregiver Regulation to
Self-Regulation

• In the first months of life, parents help
  infants regulate their emotional arousal by
  controlling their exposure to stimulating events.
• By 6 months, infants can reduce their distress by
  averting their gaze and sometimes by
  self-soothing, which is engaging in stylized or
  repetitive rubbing or stroking of their bodies or
  clothing.
• Between ages 1 and 2, infants increasingly turn
  their attention to non-distressing objects or
  people to distract themselves from sources of
  distress.

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1. Shift from Caregiver Regulation to
Self-Regulation

• Over the course of the early years, children
  become more likely to rely on themselves rather
  than their parents when they must delay
  gratification.
• In addition, they become increasingly able to
  rely on language to manage their emotional
  arousal and to regulate their expression of
  negative emotions.
• Childrens improving self-regulation is due at
  least in part to the increasing maturation of the
  neurological system.
• They are also influenced by increases in adults
  expectations of children and to age-related
  improvement in the ability to inhibit motor
  behavior.

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2. Use of Cognitive Strategies to Control
Negative Emotions

• Whereas younger children use behavior strategies
  like distracting themselves with play, older
  children also employ cognitive strategies such as
  mentally distracting themselves from negative
  events or trying to see things in a positive
  light.
• As children age, they are better able to use
  cognitive strategies to adjust to emotionally
  difficult situations.

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3. Selection of Appropriate Regulatory Strategies

• The ability to select cognitive or behavioral
  strategies that are appropriate for the situation
  or stressor is aided by
• Childrens increasing capacity to distinguish
  between stressors that can be controlled and
  those that cannot be.
• Childrens ability to choose the most effective
  strategies for managing their reactions to these
  stressors.

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B. The Relation of Emotional Regulation to
Social Competence and Adjustment

• Social competence is the ability to achieve
  personal goals in social interactions while
  simultaneously maintaining positive relationships
  with others.
• Emotional regulation has important
  consequences for social competence.

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III. Individual Differences in Emotion and its
Regulation

• A. Temperament

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A. Temperament

• The constitutionally based individual differences
  in emotional, motor, and attentional reactivity
  and self-regulation that demonstrate consistency
  across situations, as well as relative stability
  over time.
• Differences in the various aspects of childrens
  emotional reactivity that emerge early in life
  are labeled as dimensions of temperament.

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Infant Temperament

• Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas conducted
  pioneering longitudinal research on infant
  temperament.
• Three categories (based on parents reports)
• Easy babies (40) adjusted readily to new
  experiences, quickly established routines, and
  generally were cheerful in mood and easy to calm
• Difficult babies (10) were slow to adjust to
  new experiences, likely to react negatively and
  intensely to stimuli and events, and irregular in
  their bodily functions
• Slow-to-warm-up babies (15) were somewhat
  difficult at first but became easier over time
• The remaining infants did not fit into these
  categories.
• Some dimensions of temperament showed stability
  over time and predicted how children were doing
  years later.

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Infant Temperament

• In contrast to Thomas and Chesss approach, many
  contemporary psychologists believe that it is
  important to
• Assess positive and negative emotion as separate
  components of temperament
• Differentiate among types of negative
  emotionality
• Assess different types of regulatory capacity
• Recent research suggests that infant temperament
  is captured by six dimensions
• Fearful distress, irritable distress, attention
  span and persistence, activity level, positive
  affect, and rhythmicity

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Examples of Items in Mary Rothbarts Temperament
Scales
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Examples of Items in Mary Rothbarts Temperament
Scales
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1. Stability of Temperament Over Time

• Children who as infants showed behavioral
  inhibition with novel stimuli also showed
  elevated levels of fear in novel situations at
  age 2 and elevated levels of social inhibition at
  age 4 ½.

• It is important to note, however, that some
  aspects of temperament tend to be more stable
  than others.

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2. Temperament and Social Adjustment

• In a longitudinal study conducted in New Zealand,
  young children who were negative, impulsive, and
  unregulated had more problems as young adults
  with adjustment, including unemployment and
  conflict with roommates, than did their peers
  with other temperaments.
• Behavioral inhibition in infancy, a
  temperamentally-based style of responding
  characterized by the tendency to be particularly
  fearful and restrained when dealing with novel or
  stressful situations associated with problems
  such as anxiety, depression, and social
  withdrawal at older ages.

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2. Temperament and Social Adjustment

• Different problems with adjustment are associated
  with different temperaments.
• However, childrens adjustment depends on how
  their temperament fits with the demands and
  expectations of the social environments they are
  in, a concept described as goodness of fit.
• Moreover, the childs temperament and the
  parents socialization efforts seem to affect
  each other over time.

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Measuring Temperament

• A number of different methods are used to assess
  temperament

• Parents or other adults periodically report on
  fearfulness, anger/frustration and positive
  affect
• Laboratory observations have been used to assess
  behavioral inhibition, emotionality and
  regulatory capacities
• Physiological measures (heartrate, EEG, cortisol
  level) have proven useful for measuring aspects
  of temperament

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IV. Childrens Emotional Development in the
Family

• A. Quality of the Childs Relationships with
  Parents
• B. Parental Socialization of Emotional Responding

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Personality

• Refers to the pattern of behavioral and emotional
  propensities, beliefs and interests, and
  intellectual capacities that characterize an
  individual

• Has its roots in temperament but is shaped by
  interactions with the social and physical world
• Chief among these interactions are childrens
  relationships with their parents and their
  parents socialization practices.

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A. Quality of Childs Relationships with Parents

• The quality of childrens relationships with
  their parents seems to influence their sense of
  security and how they feel about themselves and
  other people.
• In turn, these feelings affect childrens
  emotionality, understanding of emotion, emotional
  self-regulation, and emotional responses to
  people and events in their world.

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B. Parental Socialization of Childrens
Emotional Responding

• Socialization refers to the processes by which
  individuals, through experience with others,
  develop the skills and ways of thinking and
  feeling, as well as standards and values, that
  allow them to adapt to their group and live with
  other people.
• Parents, teachers, and other adults are
  important socializers for children, although
  other children, the media, and social
  institutions can play a role in socialization.

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1. Parents Expression of Emotion

• The emotions to which children are exposed may
  affect their level of distress and arousal
• The consistent and open expression of positive
  emotion in the home is associated with positive
  outcomes.
• In families in which negative emotions are
  predominant, children tend to exhibit low levels
  of social competence and to express negative
  emotions themselves.

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1. Parents Expression of Emotion

• The expression of emotion by parents influences
  childrens views about themselves and others in
  their social world.
• It also provides children with a model of when
  and how to express emotion and may affect
  childrens understanding of what types of
  emotional expressions are appropriate and
  effective in interpersonal relations.
• Children also influence the expression of emotion
  in the home.

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2. Parents Reactions to Childrens Emotions

• Parents who respond to their childrens sadness
  and anxiety by dismissing or criticizing their
  feelings communicate to their children that their
  feelings are not valid.
• In turn, their children tend to be less
  emotionally and socially competent than children
  whose parents are emotionally supportive.

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3. Parents Discussion of Emotion

• Family conversations about emotion are an
  important aspect of childrens emotional
  socialization.
• Family discussions of emotion are especially
  likely to occur when a family member is
  experiencing a negative emotion.
• They are more likely to foster childrens
  understanding of emotion if they are supportive
  rather than hostile.

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V. Culture and Childrens Emotional Development
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The Role of Culture

• Although people in all cultures are likely to
  experience many similar emotions, research shows
  that the degree to which different emotions are
  expressed varies considerably across cultures.
• One reason may be genetic, in that people from
  different racial or ethnic groups may tend to
  have somewhat different temperaments.
• Parents ideas about the usefulness of expressing
  different emotions also vary across cultures and
  in different subcultures in the United States.

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The Role of Culture

• Cultural differences in parenting practices may
  contribute to cross-cultural differences in
  infants expression of emotion.
• For example, American mothers appear more likely
  than Japanese mothers to encourage childrens
  emotional expressiveness in situations of
  conflict and distress, and corresponding
  cross-cultural differences are observed in
  childrens responses to hypothetical vignettes.

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The Role of Culture

• Cultures also differ in the degree to which they
  promote or discourage specific emotions, and
  these differences are often reflected in parents
  socialization of emotion.
• For example, the Tamang in Nepal are seldom
  supportive when their children experience
  negative emotional arousal because of the
  cultural value on keeping calm and clear of
  emotion.
• However, parental behavior that is nonsupportive
  by U. S. standards does not appear to have a
  negative impact of the childrens social
  competence within the context of this culture.

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VI. Childrens Understanding of Emotion

• A. Identifying the Emotions of Others
• B. Understanding the Causes of Emotion
• C. Childrens Understanding of Real and False
  Emotions
• D. Understanding Simultaneous and Ambivalent
  Emotions

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A. Identifying the Emotions of Others

• The first step in the development of emotional
  knowledge is the recognition of different
  emotions in others.
• By 4 to 7 months, infants can distinguish certain
  emotional expressions, such as happiness and
  surprise.
• At 8 to 12 months, children demonstrate social
  referencing, the use of a parents facial,
  gestural, or vocal cues to decide how to deal
  with novel, ambiguous, or possibly threatening
  situations.
• By age 3, children in laboratory studies
  demonstrate a rudimentary ability to label a
  fairly narrow range of emotional expression.

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A. Identifying the Emotions of Others

• Young children are best at labeling happiness,
  with the ability to distinguish among different
  negative emotions gradually appearing the late
  preschool and early school years.
• Most children cannot label more complex emotions
  until early- to mid-elementary school.
• The ability to discriminate and label different
  emotions helps children respond appropriately to
  their own and others emotions.

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B. Understanding the Causes and Dynamics of
Emotions

• A variety of studies have shown rapid development
  over the preschool and school years in childrens
  understanding of the kinds of situations that
  typically evoke different emotions in others.
• Two-year-olds can identify happy situations in
  stories, although children are not accurate in
  identifying sad situations until age 4.

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B. Understanding the Causes and Dynamics of
Emotions

• In everyday discussions of emotions, 2-year-olds
  mention emotions in appropriate ways.
• By age 4 to age 6, childrens explanations for
  why peers experience negative emotions in
  real-life situations in their school are somewhat
  similar to those of adults.
• Children get more skilled at explaining the
  causes of emotion across the preschool and school
  years.
• With age, children also come to understand that
  people can feel emotions based on reminders of
  past events.

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C. Childrens Understanding of Real and False
Emotions

• Childrens understanding of the difference
  between real and false emotions improves
  considerably from age 3 to age 5.
• Over the preschool and elementary school years,
  children develop a more refined understanding of
  emotional display rules a social groups
  informal norms about when, where, and how much
  one should show emotions and when and where
  displays of emotion should be suppressed or
  masked.
• Cognitive development, social factors such as
  gender, and parents beliefs and behaviors all
  likely contribute to childrens understanding and
  use of display rules.

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Facial display figures used in the assessment of
expression regulation
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Display Rules

• Children in 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th grade
  listened to stories designed to elicit display
  rules.
• Then they were asked to predict and explain what
  the story protagonists would say and what facial
  expressions the protagonists would show in the
  emotion-laden situations.
• Childrens knowledge of how and when to control
  emotional displays increased between grades 1-5
  and then leveled off.
• Their understanding was greater for verbal
  display rules, whereby children monitor, falsify,
  and inhibit their speech, than for facial display
  rules
• Children also understood prosocial display rules
  better than self-protective display rules.

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Display Rules