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11/5/2015
1
Emotional
Development
How Children Develop
Chapter 10
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 one’s own and
others’ feelings
Regulate one’s moods
Regulate the expression of emotion in
social interactions
Empathize with others’ emotions
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Emotional Intelligence
EQ is a better predictor than IQ
of how well people will do in life,
especially in their social lives
Emotion
Characterized by neural and
physiological responses, subjective
feelings, cognitions related to those
feelings, and the desire to take actions
Most psychologists share this general view:
but they disagree on importance of its key
components
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Perspectives
Research supports both perspectives to some degree,
and no one theory has emerged as definitive.
Discrete Emotions Theory
The Functionalist Approach
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
Maintains that emotions
are not discrete from
one another and vary
somewhat based on the
social environment
Emphasizes the role of
the environment in
emotional development
Proposes that the basic
function of emotions is
to promote action toward
achieving a goal
Characteristics of Some
Families of Emotions
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Happiness
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
Happiness
Around 3 or 4 months, infants
laugh as well as smile during
activities
At about 7 months, infants
start to smile primarily at
familiar people, rather than at
people in general
In 2nd year, children clown
around and enjoy making
others laugh
*
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Negative Emotions
The first negative emotion
that is discernible in infants is
generalized distress
By 2 months, facial
expressions of anger or
sadness can be differentiated
from distress/pain in some
contexts
By the second year of life, this
differentiation is no longer
difficult
Negative Emotions
Also display anger when:
stimulation removed
caregiver leaves
arms restrained
Why?
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Anger
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 there is variability
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Evidence of Fear
in Young Children
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
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
Around 15 to 24 months, children show
embarrassment when the center of attention
By 3 years, children’s pride is increasingly tied to
their level of performance
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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
Whether children experience
guilt or shame partly depends
on parental practices
Emotions in Middle Childhood
From early to middle childhood: acceptance by peers and achieving goals are important sources of happiness and pride
By the early school years, children’s 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
A minority experience a
major increase in the
occurrence of negative
emotions, often in their
relations with their
parents
Depression
The rate of clinical depression, which
is 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
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
Antidepressant drugs are most common treatment
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Regulation
of Emotion
The Development of
Emotional Regulation
The Relation of Emotional
Regulation to Social Competence
and Adjustment
Patterns in
Developing Self-Regulation
Transition from Regulation
by Others to Self-Regulation
Use of Cognitive Strategies
to Control Negative Emotions
Ability to Select Strategies
Appropriate for the Situation
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Emotional Self-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 one’s goals
Its emergence in childhood is a long, slow process
Transition to Self-Regulation
In the first months of life,
parents
help infants regulate their
emotional arousal by
controlling their exposure to
stimulating events
6 months: infants reduce
distress by averting gaze and
self-soothing
Between 1 and 2 year: infants
increasingly divert their
attention to non-distressing
objects or people
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Transition to Self-Regulation
Over the course of the early years, children
become more likely to rely on themselves rather than
their parents
Children’s 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
Individual Differences
in Emotion and its
Regulation
Temperament
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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 children’s emotional
reactivity that emerge early in
life are labeled as dimensions
of temperament
141 children followed from infancy to adulthood)
Infants were rated on 9 personality dimensions:
1. Activity level
2. Rhythmicity
3. Approach/withdrawal
4. Adaptability
5. Emotional reactivity
6. Responsiveness to stimuli
7. Mood (positive or negative)
8. Distractibility
9. Attention span
New York Longitudinal Study
by Thomas and Chess
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Easy 40% Regular routines, cheerful, adapts
easily
Difficult 10% Irregular routines, dislikes new
experiences, reacts negatively
Slow-to-
warm
up
15% Inactive, mid to low-key reactions,
negative in mood, adapts slowly.
35% fit no category: a mixture of these.
Difficult pattern: 70% developed behavior problems by
school age (only 18% of easy children did).
Slow-to-warm-up: few problems in early years, but some
later in school when need to respond actively/quickly.
Infant Temperament
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Infant Temperament
In contrast to Thomas and Chess’s 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
Examples of Items in Mary
Rothbart’s Temperament Scales
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Examples of Items in Mary
Rothbart’s Temperament Scales
The Stability of Temperament
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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Temperament and
Social Adjustment
Different problems with adjustment
are associated with different
temperaments
Children’s adjustment depends on how
their temperament fits with the demands
and expectations of the social
environment:
a concept described as goodness of fit
Moreover, the child’s temperament and
the parents’ socialization efforts seem to
affect each other over time
Children’s Emotional
Development
in the Family
Quality of the Child’s
Relationships with Parents
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
Socialization
How individuals, through 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,
(other children,
the media, and social
institutions too)
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Parental Emotions
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
When negative emotions are predominant,
children have low
levels of social competence
and to express negative
emotions themselves
Parental Reactions to Emotion
Parents who respond to their
children’s 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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Children’s
Understanding
of Emotion
Identifying the Emotions of Others
Understanding the Causes of Emotion
Children’s Understanding of
Real and False Emotions
Understanding Simultaneous
and Ambivalent Emotions
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 parent’s 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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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
