Social and emotional development in infancy & childhood

Question 1

what are basic emotions?

Answer 1

• Darwin (1872) argued that the ability to communicate emotion through facial expressions is innate.
• Evidence of emotions in newborn infants would support this idea.
• Adults can accurately judge some emotions in 1- to 9-month-olds (Izard et al., 1980).

Question 2

when does Anger, sadness, distress emerge?

Answer 2

• Angry expressions increase after 4-6 months
• Sadness responses to pain, separation, disruption of communication.
• Newborns show distress to hunger, pain, over-/ under-stimulation, changes in temperature

Question 3

when does fear & disgust arise?

Answer 3

• Rises from 6 months onwards
• Stranger anxiety emerges around 7 months
• Infant develops balance between approach (curiosity, interest, friendliness) and avoidance (fear)

Question 4

when does Surprise, interest, joy/happiness arise?

Answer 4

• Emerge between 2 and 7 months
• Between 2 to 6 months, infants exhibit joy and surprise when they discover they can exert some control over objects and events

Question 5

what are Complex emotions?

Answer 5

• Embarrassment, jealousy, pride, guilt and shame, shyness
• Also called self-conscious emotions
• Emerge in second/third year of life
• Require cognitive skills associated with self-recognition and self-evaluation
• Not innate

Question 6

when does infant smiling emerge?

Answer 6

• First few weeks smiles are internally driven, not linked to external stimuli
• Social smiles emerge from 6 weeks
• 6-week-olds smile in response to familiar faces and voices
• From 3 months, smiling is synchronised with adults’ smiles
• Infant smiles are a strong social signal for adults and support interaction between infant and adult
• Smiling is a social signalling device that signifies emotional state
• also crying

Question 7

what did Ellsworth et al., 1983 study?

Answer 7

• Social competence and person-object differentiation: An analysis of the still-face effect
• 3-month-olds
• Measured time smiling at: an unfamiliar adult or one of three puppets.

Question 8

what is the Infant discrimination of emotions?

Answer 8

• Habituation paradigms used to measure discrimination
• 6- to 7-month-olds distinguish happy and surprised faces; 4-month-olds do not (Caron et al., 1982)
• 3-month-olds discriminate happy (smiling) and angry (frowning) expressions (Barrera & Maurer, 1981)

Question 9

what did Field et al, 1982 study?

Answer 9

• Discrimination and imitation of facial expression by neonates
• 74 neonates (newborns), mean age 1.5 days (36 hours).
• Habituated to one of three emotions, then presented with the next emotion: happy, sad, surprised.
• Visual fixations to face measured from habituation to test.
• Results:
  
  • Visual fixations decreased across habituation trials
  • Visual fixations increased on early trials of new expression
  • Suggests neonates discriminate three basic emotions.
  • Infants imitated expressions.
  • Adult viewers could guess above chance if trials were surprise, happy or sad.
  • Do newborns understand emotion?

Question 10

how do we understand emotions?

Answer 10

• What does it mean to understand emotion?
• Understanding that certain situations might elicit particular emotions.
• Understanding that our emotions affect our behaviour.
• How do we measure this ability in young infants?

Question 11

what is social referencing?

Answer 11

• Seeking out emotional cues from another (e.g. parent) to know how to act in an uncertain situation.
• Requires ability to recognise different expressions of emotion
• Requires ability to understand and interpret another’s expression of emotion

Question 12

what did Sorce et al., 1985 study?

Answer 12

• Maternal emotional signaling: Its effect on the visual cliff behavior of 1-year-olds.
• Visual cliff task with 12-month-olds
• Mothers waited on the deep side.
• Mothers were trained to produce fearful, angry, interested, happy and sad expressions as infants approached.
• Conclusions:
  
  • By 12 months old, infants can visually reference their mother
  • By 12 months old, infants can respond according to an emotional message

Question 13

what did Hepach & Westermann, (2013) study?

Answer 13

• Infants’ sensitivity to the congruence of others’ emotions and actions.
• Compared 10- and 14-month-olds
• How do infants react to actions that are consistent or inconsistent with emotions?
• Surprisal measure:
  
  • longer looking
  • greater pupil dilation
• Surprisal measure: Pupil dilation:
  
  • Pupil size changes with
  • Luminance
  • Attention
  • Working memory load
  • Emotional stimuli
• Happy actor, happy action (stroking)
• Happy actor, angry action (thumping)
• Angry actor, angry action (thumping)
• Angry actor, happy action (stroking)

Question 14

how do children understand emotion?

Answer 14

• Children’s understanding becomes more sophisticated with age:
• 8-year-olds can recognise that individuals may have different emotional reactions to a situation (e.g. a dog approaches a child). (Gnepp et al., 1987)
• 10-year-olds (but not 6-year-olds) understand that more than one emotion can be felt simultaneously.
  (Harris, 1983)
• From 4 years, children understand how appearances and feelings might differ (hiding emotions). (Harris et al., 1986)