Social and Emotional Development in Infancy and Childhood Flashcards
(17 cards)
Basic Emotions
Anger, Sadness, Distress
- Angry expressions increase after 4-6 months
- Sadness responses to pain, separation, disruption of communication
- Newborns show distress to hunger, pain, over/under stimulated, changes in temperature
Basic Emotions
Fear and Disgust
- Rises from 6 months onwards
- Stranger anxiety emerges around 7 months
- Infant develops balance between approach and avoidance
Basic Emotions
Suprise and Happiness
- Emerge between 2 and 7 months
- 2 - 6 months: Infants exhibit joy and surprise when they discover they can exert some control over objects and events
Complex Emotions
Embarrasment, Jealousy, Guilt, and Shyness
- Self-conscious emotions
- Emerge in 2-3 year
- Require cognitive skills associated with self-recognition and self-evaluation
- Not innate
Reddy (2003)
Behaviours that appear ~ 6 months when an infant and familiar adult are interacting
- Showing-off: Exaggerated or unusual actions to gain attention
- Clever actions: Repeating actions to re-elicit praise
- Clowning: Repetition of odd actions that have previously led to laughter
- Teasing: Deliberate provocation through actions contrary to existing expectations or routines
Infant Smiling
Expression of emotion that forms the bridge between expressing emotions and forming social connection with others
* Social smiles emerge from 6 weeks in response to familiar faces and voices
* From 3 months smiling is synchronised with adult smiles
Infant smiles are a strong signal for adults and support interaction between infant and adults
* Neglected children can lose smiling cue
Fraiberg (1974)
Congenitally blind babies will smile at the sound of their mother’s voice or when touched
- But are often delayed in the development of smiling
Ellsworth et al. (1993)
More likely to produce smiles to unfamiliar, but human interacting person, compared to puppets
Children’s Expression of Emotions
Language development provides a new form of expression
* 2 Years: Emotion words emerge
* 3 Years: Emotion vacabulary rapidly increases
Allows insight into understanding what they know about emotions and how they understand their own and others emotions
Recognising Emotions
Infant Discrimination of Emotions
Habituation paradigms used to measure discrimination
* 6 to 7 months: Distinguish happy and surprised faces
* 4 month olds do not
* 3 months: Discriminate happy smiling and angry frowning expressions
Recognising Emotions
Field et al. (1982)
Discrimination and imitation of facial expressions by neonates
* Visual fixations increased on early trials of new expression
* Suggests neonates discriminate three basic emotions
* Infants imitated expressions to some extent: Adult viewers could guess above chance if trials were surprise, happy, or sad
Understanding Emotions
Social Referencing
Seeking out emotional cues from another 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
Understanding Emotions
Sorce et al. (1985)
Visual Cliff Task with Mother
By 12 month old infants can:
- Appropriately recognise Mother’s expression
- Respond according to an emotional message
- Understand differences and can use it to guide their actions
Understanding Emotions
Phillips et al. (2002)
How do infants react to actions that are consistent or inconsistent with emotions? (Violation of Expectation)
* 8 month olds look equally between consistent and inconsistent
- Haven’t understood link between positive emotion and action
- 12 month olds look longer when inconsistent
Understanding Emotions
Hepach & Westermann (2013)
Infants sensitivity to the congruence of others’ emotions and actions
- 10 month olds: Incongruent events discrimination in angry
- No significance difference in happy
- 14 months: Detect incongruent for both angry and happy
- Develop abstract conceptual understanding of emotions
Children’s Understanding of Emotion
Becomes sophisticated with age
- 4 years: Children understand how appearances and feelings might differ
- Hiding emotions
- 8 years: Recognise that individuals may have different emotional reactions to a situation
- 10 years: Understand that more than one emotions can be felt simultaneously
- But not at 6 years
Masten et al. (2008)
Maltreated children who had been removed from their family homes due to neglect and/or abuse
* Faster than control condition in identifying the depicted emotions, especially in the identification of fearful faces
