PSYC Development Test 3 PDF

Test 3: December 19th @ 9AM Chapters 1+10 Chapter 1: 7 Enduring Themes in Child Development 1. How do nature and nurture together shape development? (Nature & Nurture) 2. How do children shape their own development? (The Active Child) 3. In what ways is development continuous, and in what...

Test 3: December 19th @ 9AM Chapters 1+10 Chapter 1: 7 Enduring Themes in Child Development 1. How do nature and nurture together shape development? (Nature & Nurture) 2. How do children shape their own development? (The Active Child) 3. In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous? (continuity vs. Discontinuity) 4. How does change occur? (Mechanisms of change) 5. How does the sociocultural context influence development? (Sociocultural Context) 6. How do children become so different from one another? (Individual differences) 7. How can research promote children’s well-being? (research & children’s welfare) Nature (inherited genes) & Nurture (environment) - All human characteristics are created through joint workings of nature and nurture – who we are is created through the constant interaction of our biology and environment - If one twin has schizophrenia, 50% chance the other will too Genome: each person's complete set of hereditary info that interacts with and influences behaviors and experiences - Gene expression, where proteins respond to experience can turn gene activity on and off (does not structurally alter DNA) Epigenetics: the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment – how experience gets under the skin Methylation: biochemical process that reduces expression of a variety of genes and is involved in regulating reactions to stress - Evidence for the enduring epigenetic impact of early experiences The Active Child - Contribute to their development through selective attention → pay attention to moving objects and ones that make sounds, helping them learn about important parts of the world ex. People, animals etc. - Attention is drawn to faces – 1 month old will look to Mom - Begin to speak: 9-15 months - Toddlers talk to themselves (internal monologue, crib speech) which shows a practice in language use - Play – banging spoon makes a sound, dropping things to test how fast they fall, toddlers pretend play, which displays a common developmental pattern across cultures - Play teaches children lessons like how to cope with fears, resolve disputes, interact with others, self-control, rule adherence Continuity (small, gradual changes ex. Pine tree) & Discontinuity (occasional, large & sudden changes ex. Butterfly from cocoon) - Researchers who view development as discontinuous start from the common observation that children at different ages seem qualitatively different - Ex. 4 yr old and 6 yr old in how much they know and how they think about the world - Conservation of Liquid experiment is a technique used to test children’s level of thinking → younger children think that the amount of liquid has increased when the small glass transfers into a tall glass, while older children can reason that the amount remains the same, though the vessel looks different - Most developmental changes are gradual rather than sudden and occur concept by concept, skill by skill, not in a broadly unified way → child will behave according to one stage on some tasks and to another on other tasks - When deciding whether development is cont. or discont. the same facts can look very different depending on the perspective Stage theories: propose that development involves a series of large, discontinuous, age-related phases - Moves child from one coherent way of thinking to another - Kohlberg (moral), Freud (psychosexual), Erikson (psychosocial) Theory of Cognitive Development (Piaget): children go through 4 stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational) of cognitive growth Mechanisms of Change - The term “Mechanism” is an attempt to specify the shared goal of producing increasingly precise accounts of the processes that produce an outcome of interest - Can be behavioral, neural, genetic Effortful Attention: involves voluntary control of one's emotions and thoughts - Includes processes such as inhibiting impulses, controlling emotions, focusing attention & concentration - Difficulty in effortful attention is associated with behavioural problems, weak math and reading skills, mental illness - Limbic area (emotional reactions) anterior cingulate & prefrontal cortex (setting and attending to goals) are active and connected when controlling thoughts and emotions - Learning can change the wiring of the system that produces effortful attention Neurotransmitters: chemicals involved in communication amongst brain cells Hippocampus: learning and remembering - Sleep benefits infants' memory for general patterns (cortex) and preschoolers' memory for specific experiences (hippocampus) → hippocampus is too immature before then to enable rapid learning of details Sociocultural Context - Physical, social, cultural, political, economic, and historic circumstances that make up any child’s environment - Influences every aspect of children’s development – who they spend time with and where they spend it - Brofenbrenner’s bioecological model - Cross-cultural comparisons: compare the lives of children in different cultures → reveals practices that are rare in one culture are common in others ex. Sleeping arrangements Socioeconomic status: measure of social class that is based on income and education - Children from lower SES families face more long-lasting challenges than other children → have serious health problems, smaller brain surface area, lower IQ - Parents may read to them less, grow up in dangerous neighbourhoods, higher air pollution, Cumulative Risk: accumulation of disadvantages over years of development Resilient Children 1. Have positive personal qualities: high intelligence, easygoing personality, optimism 2. Close relationship with at least 1 parent 3. Close relationship with at least 1 other adult ex. Grandparent, teacher, coach Individual Differences - Differences emerge quickly 4 factors that can lead children to differ: 1. Differences in genetics - Even twins can experience mutations, copying errors resulting in gene difference - Fraternal twins and regular siblings differ in 50% of genes 2. Treatment by parents and others - Based on preexisting differences in children's characteristics ex. Parents are more sensitive to easygoing children than difficult ones (more angry with them) - Teachers provide positive attention and encouragement to students who are learning well and criticize the disruptive ones 3. Reactions to similar experiences - Child’s subjective interpretations of their treatment affect their development ex. Children who think that a parent prefers the other over them 4. Choices of environments - Active child – choose activities and friends that influence their subsequent development - Strive to live up to labels given by family Research & Children’s Welfare - Improved research-based understanding of development leads to practical benefits - Recommendations for fostering valid eyewitness testimony from young children – non-leading questions - Educational innovations – studying children’s differing beliefs about intelligence and how those beliefs influence their learning - Dweck - found that some children believe that intelligence is a fixed entity – each person has a certain amt of intelligence that is set at birth and cannot be changed by experiences - Others believe that intelligence is a changeable characteristic that increases with learning and that the time and effort people put into learning is the determinant of their intelligence – react to failure in more effective ways Chapter 1: Methods for Studying Child Development The Scientific Method - Basic assumption: all beliefs, no matter how widely shared or how likely they seem, may be wrong - Until beliefs have been repeatedly tested, they must be viewed as hypotheses: testable predictions about the presence/absence of phenomena or relations rather than as truth - If it is tested and evidence repeatedly does not support, it must be abandoned 1. Choose a question 2. Formulate a hypothesis on the question 3. Develop a method for testing 4. Use resulting data to draw conclusions Reliability Degree to which independent measurements of a behaviour are consistent Interrater reliability: indicates how much agreement there is between the observations of different raters who witness the same behaviour – sometimes qualitative ex. Secure or insecure or quantitative ex. Scale of 1-10 - Attained when the raters' evaluations are in close agreement – without agreement, we cannot have confidence in research findings bc there is no way to tell which of the ratings were accurate Test-retest reliability: attained when measures of a performance on the same test, administered under the same conditions, are similar on 2 or more occasions Validity Degree to which the experiment measures what it is intended to measure Internal Validity: whether effects observed within experiments can be attributed with confidence to the factor that the researcher is testing – can the variables be manipulated? Ex. passage of time in a test of depression bc the factor within the study believed to cause the improvement may have had no effect External Validity: the ability to generalize research findings beyond the particulars of the research in question - Never intended to apply to only the particular children and research methods in given study - Goal is to draw conclusions that apply generally – additional studies with new participants are needed to establish external validity Replicability Combines properties of reliability and external validity: Degree to which independent measurements of a give behaviour in subsequent experiments are consistent with the original findings (same procedure used), and subsequent studies identical to the original yield the same results with different ppl at different times Replication Crisis - Many findings are difficult to replicate (60%) called the replicability crisis - ManyBabies Consortium attempts to increase replicability of findings by performing preregistered parallel experiments ex. “Do infants prefer IDS or ADS?” and the answer is IDS, which predicted their later vocab over ADS Causes & Fixes: - too few participants → need larger samples - File-drawer problem (file away studies that fail to yield predicted results) → preregistration (submit planned methods and stat analyses to journal before conducting the study) - Failed subsequent studies → original and new investigators collab so that all original details are maintained Contexts for Gathering Data about Children 1. Interviews & Questionnaires Structured Interviews: research procedure in which all participants are asked to answer the same questions - Predetermined questions – useful when goal is to collect self-reports on the same topics Questionnaires: method that allows researchers to gather info from a large number of ppl simultaneously by presenting them in uniform set of printed questions - Quick and straightforward way for them to learn about feelings, beliefs, behaviors Clinical Interview: procedure in which questions are adjusted in accordance with the answers the interviewee provides - Useful for obtaining in-depth info about an individual - Starts with set questions but if they say something interesting, they can follow up the child’s lead - Find depression in children with tailored questions - Pro: lots of data quick and in-depth info about individual - Con: questions are biased → children avoid disclosing facts that show them in bad light 2. Naturalistic Observation Examination of ongoing behavior in environment not controlled by the researcher - When goal is to describe how children behave in their usual environment ex. Home, school etc. - Observer situates them unobtrusively in background to see relevant behaviors while minimizing chances that their presence will influence behaviors - Observance at the dinner table → troubled families have vicious cycles - Con: naturally occurring contexts vary on many dimensions, so it is hard to know which are influenced by the behavior of interest - Con #2: many behaviors of interest occur occasionally in everyday environment, reducing opportunities to observe them 3. Structured Observation Method involving presenting an identical situation to each participant and recording behavior - Elicit behavior that is relevant to the hypothesis and observe subsequent behavior - Longitudinal Experiments testing children's compliance with their mothers' requests to not play with toys on a shelf show that the quality of their compliance with the requests is somewhat stable over the years - Pro: ensures that all children studied encounter identical situations – allows direct comparisons of children in a given situation and establish the generality of each child's behavior across dif situations - Con: does not provide extensive info about individual's subjective experience as interviews do, cannot provide open-ended data that naturalistic observation can Correlation & Causation Variables: attributes that vary across individuals and situations ex. Age, sex, SES - Major goal of development research is to determine how these and other major characteristics of children and their environments are related to one another in terms of associations and cause-effect relations Correlational Designs Studied intended to indicate how 2 variables are related to each other - When variables are strongly correlated, a score on either variable can predict the score of the other - Ex. how long a child reads for can predict their test score - Correlations range from 1.00 to -1.00 - Direction of correlation is positive when high values of 1 variable are associated with high values of the other - Correlation is negative when high values of 1 variable are associated with low values of the other Correlation Does Not = Causation So why use correlational designs? - The influence of many variables of interest cannot be studied experimentally bc researchers cannot manipulate them – can only be studied by correlational methods - Valuable when goal is to describe relations amongst variables rather than identify the cause-effect relations - Ex. how moral reasoning and empathy are related Direction of Causation Problem: concept that a correlation between 2 variables does not indicate which variable is the cause of the other 3rd Variable Problem: concept that a correlation between 2 variables may stem from both being influenced by some 3rd variable Experimental Designs Group of approaches that allow inferences about causes and effects to be drawn Random Assignment: each participant has an equal chance of being assigned to each group in an experiment ex. flipping a coin - Crucial to infer that it was the varying experiences to which the groups were exposed that caused differences later (not from some preexisting difference) Experimental Control: ability of researchers to determine the specific experiences of participants during the experiment → experimental group: participants are presented the experience of interest → control group: participants are not presented the experience Independent Variable: experience experimental grp receives that control does not Ex. bullying video shown to kids Dependent Variable: measurable, determines if it was affected by exposure to the independent variable Ex. amount of bullying after viewed video - Method of choice for establishing causal relations, a central goal of scientific research - Cannot be used to study many differences and variables of interest Research Designs for Examining Development Cross-Sectional Designs - Participants of different ages are compared on a given behavior over a short period - Useful for illustrating differences and similarities between younger and older children - Do not yield info about the stability of behavior over time or patterns of change shown by individual kids - More common than longitudinal bc more practical Longitudinal Designs - Same participants are studied 2 or more times over a substantial length of time - Info about stability of individual differences over time and patterns of change - Loss of participants over time threatens the validity of the findings - Validity is also threatened when repeated tests are taken bc they become familiar - Used when main issues are stability and change over time Microgenetic Designs - Same participants are studied repeatedly over a short period - Provide a detailed and deep depiction of processes that produce change - More sessions over shorter time unlike longitudinal - Generalization of new strategies tends to be slow - Insight into change over brief periods but do not yield info about stability and change over long periods Chapter 10: Learning Objectives 1. List the basic universal emotions; Summarize the course of development of positive emotions and negative emotions and describe the major milestones that are involved. 2. Summarize major developments (including the use of social referencing) in children’s ability to identify the emotions of others. 3. Explain general age-related patterns of change in the development of emotion regulation including some underlying causes. 4. Name several dimensions of temperament and explain the role of temperament in children’s social skills and adjustment, incorporating the concept of goodness of fit. 5. Discuss ways in which family interactions contribute to children’s emotional development. 6. Describe ways in which emotional development is connected to mental health. 7. understand the key elements of an experiment and how it differs from a correlational study. Textbook Notes CH10 Intro Marshmellow Test by Michel studied the ability to delay immediate gratification to obtain larger rewards – will they wait for the 2nd marshmallow and how will they cope with the wait? - Wait until he returns and get 2 marshmallows or ring a bell for him to return and only get 1 - Some children distracted themselves by talking, singing, trying to sleep, and making up games, some gave up and ate the treat right away - Believed that their ability to delay eating 1 marshmallow for rewards was an indicator of their self-control or willpower in the face of immediate pleasure or happiness - ability to exhibit self-control early in life = success later in life - After 10-year intervals, those who were more patient earned higher SAT scores and higher behavioural control of attention and by 30 had higher self-esteem, ability to cope - Themes: individual differences (in emotional functioning) nature & nurture + sociocultural context (origins in the differences) continuity vs. discontinuity (emergence of self-conscious emotions) 10.1 The Development of Emotions - Emotions are more complicated than simple sensations or reactions → combination of physiological and cognitive responses to thoughts or experiences - Emotional Developmentalists attempt to explain why we experience emotions and why we express them outwardly in our faces or words  - Fear is a subjective feeling, HR and eyes widening are physiological factors, raised eyebrows are an emotional expression, how to get away from fearful stimulus is the desire to take action - Both nature and nurture influence cognition in the experience of emotion Components of emotions: 1. Neural responses 2. Physiological factors: HR, breathing rate, hormones 3. Subjective feelings 4. Emotional expressions 5. Desire to take action: fight or flight, approach or change ppl/things in the environment Theories on the Nature & Emergence of Emotion Are emotions innate or learned? Are humans born with the ability to experience key emotions? 1. Discrete Emotions Theory Theory in which emotions are viewed as innate, and each emotion has a specific and distinctive set of bodily and facial reactions - Argues that neurological and bio systems have evolved to allow humans, from infancy, to experience and then express a set of basic emotions through adaptation to our surroundings - Darwin → argued that the expressions for certain basic emotional states are innate to the species and therefore are similar across all peoples, including babies - Emotional responses are largely automatic and not based on cognition - To support this proposition, children express a set of recognizable, discrete emotions well before they can be taught about them - Emotional facial expressions and vocalizations of basic emotions are universal 2. Functionalist Perspective Theory which argues that the basic function of emotions is to promote action towards achieving a goal → emotions are not discrete and vary somewhat based on the social environment - Experience emotions to manage the relationship between themselves and the environment - Emotions are partly responses to how they appraise the environment and whether factors in the environment are promoting or hindering their well-being - Emotions and expressions are goal driven → when they want something to stop they cry, when they want something to continue, they smile or laugh - Occur at the subconscious level in all humans - Exceptions occur when children realize people can fake emotions and that faking can be another way to reach goals - Ex. fake a cry after a fight with sibling to evoke sympathy from mom Emergence of Emotions 6 basic, universal emotions: happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust *Think “Inside out” but add surprise - Basic emotions appear early in life (innate and result of nature) and serve important survival and communication functions Happiness - smiling, smiling eyes - Emerges early in infancy – during 1st month, they smile during REM sleep and later, when they are stroked - Early smiles may be reflexive and seem to be evoked by some biological state rather than social interaction - 3-8 weeks old → smile in reaction to external stimuli - 3 months → Social smiles (smiles directed toward people) - After 4 months → laugh during a variety of pleasurable activities, laugh when they find something funny - 3 years old → can understand ironic jokes and sarcasm - Neuroimaging studies confirmed that adults develop brain networks in response to infants' smiling or laughing faces that help them predict happiness Fear - eyes wide, brows raised, grimace - 7 months → Signs of fear begin to appear, and recognizing fear in others - Adaptive fear is fear of strangers and declines in this fear are related to the quality of the relationship with their mothers and how effectively they deal with the child's expression of fear - Preschool → imaginary capabilities develop, so thinking about scary creatures - School age → differentiate between real and imaginary fears, and are afraid of animals and darkness Separation anxiety: distress (crying) due to separation from the parent who is the child’s primary caregiver - Appears around 8 months and declines after 2 yrs old - Some amt of separation anxiety is typical and adaptive, as it encourages them to stay close to adults who protect and provide for them Anger - furrowed brow, baring teeth, flared nostrils - Response to frustrating or threatening situation typically involving other people - Adaptive emotion bc it helps marshal self-defense mechanisms and motivates them to work more diligently towards their goals  - Children are more likely to be angry with another person than with an object - Infants express anger as blended with sadness, not a single emotion – suggesting that they tend to express a general state of distress that cannot be differentiated - 1 yr old → clearly and frequently express anger and peaks around 18-24 months - Decline in anger is due to their increasing ability to express themselves with language and regulate emotion - Causes of anger change as they develop a better understanding of others motives Sadness - downturned corners of mouth, lips trembling - Exhibited in the same types of situations in which they show anger ex. Cannot control the outcomes in their environment - Display intense and prolonged displays of sadness when separated from parents for long time - Adaptive emotion bc it can draw in the attention and support from caregiver Surprise - eyes wide, brows raised, o-shaped mouth - Emotional reaction to a sudden, unexpected event – more than just a physical reaction to being startled but a cognitive understanding that something is not as it usually is - Appears at 6 months and are brief, transform into another emotional expression like happiness - Important in learning – violation of expectancy experiments - Extent of surprise is influenced by the emotional environment provided by parents Disgust - nose crinkled, possibly tongue sticking out - Evolutionary basis that helped humans avoid potential poisons and bacteria - Learn from reactions from parents to certain foods - Young children mostly direct disgust to food but older children come to view some behaviors or moral transgressions with disgust AFFEX System - Researchers developed a system for identifying emotional meanings of infants' expressions – coding dozens of facial cues and analyzing the combos in presentation like raised eyebrows, pursed lips etc. - Links particular facial expressions and facial muscle movements with particular emotions - Using interrater reliability (comparison of subjects' faces to AFFEX codes to see if they agree) Self-Conscious Emotions - Guilt, shame, embarrassment, jealousy, empathy, pride – relate to sense of self and consciousness of others reactions - Guilt is associated with empathy – involves feelings of remorse and regret and desire to undo the consequences of that behavior - Shame is not related to concern for others – focus is on the self and the acceptance of a personal failure, exposed - Ex. 2 yr olds are shameful or guilty when a doll breaks on them - Which emotion they exhibit is partly due to parental practices → guilty when parents emphasize badness of behavior, not character, and guilty when their parents help them understand the consequences of their actions - Longitudinal study showed children who exhibit guilt are less likely to engage in risky behaviors like drug use and shameful children did it more in their futures - Require that children have a sense of themselves as separate from others which develops at 2 yrs old - Expression of self-conscious emotions is an ex. of discontinuous growth → abrupt, qualitative change in their abilities to experience these emotions that is linked to the emergence of sense of self - Fostered by children's growing sense of what adults and society expects of them and acceptance of standards 10.2 Understanding Emotions Understanding of how to identify emotions & what they mean - Understanding of emotion affects social behavior, is critical to the development of social competence - Primitive in infancy but develops rapidly over childhood Identifying the Emotions of Others - 1st step to developing an understanding of emotion is to recognize different emotions in others - 3 months → can distinguish facial expressions of happiness, surprise, anger → studied using habituation paradigm - 12-14 months cannot differentiate between objects associated with emotion but 16-18 could and preferred happy faces over anger or fear - Lable anger, fear, sadness at 1-2 yrs old - Label surprise, disgust in late preschool and early school years - Label self-conscious emotions until middle elementary school - Scope and accuracy of labelling improves into adolescence  - Children in violent environments or untrusting adults can develop a heightened awareness to emotional cues of conflict – aspects of self-preservation for living in stressful environments or without parents - Cross-cultural comparisons show differences in reactivity to disgust, showing the affect of the languages spoken in each culture and how common expressions of disgust is given Social Referencing: use of parents facial expression or vocal cues to decide how to deal with novel, ambiguous, or threatening situations - Children are better at social referencing if they receive both vocal and facial cues of emotion from the adult - Use of vocal cues is more effective than just visual cues alone Autism & DSM5 (Diagnostic & Stat Manual of Mental Disorders) - Hallmark of autism is difficulties with interpersonal communication and interaction – difficulties expressing their emotions and responding to emotion in others - Meta-analysis found that ASD show differences in their ability to recognize all 6 basic emotions in faces and verbal communication - Differences may be related to theory of mind: ability to appreciate that other people have thoughts and feelings - Connecting to the Enduring Theme of Research: google glasses told autistic children when ppl were expressing different emotions, those who used the glasses showed improvement in social skills over the control group (how tech can help ASD improve emotion recognition and social behaviors) - COVID masks: could recognize joy and sadness in maskless people over masked people but were equally likely to recognize anger regardless – young children who experienced the pandemic were able to develop emotional recognition abilities bc they could see maskless faces at home - Inability to recognize emotions is linked to mental struggles – high levels of loneliness due to misinterpreting emotional cues Emotional Intelligence Ability to cognitively process info about emotions and to use that info to guide thoughts and behaviors - Involves ability to understand their emotions and others, as perceived through facial expressions, movements, and tone - Measuring emotional intelligence: answer direct statements about themselves and abilities (Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire) ex. “I can control my anger when I want to” - Linked to positive outcomes in childhood → better able to manage their emotions and less likely to engage in aggressive behavior, have fewer mental health problems, lower risk behaviors, better coping strategies - Predicts self-esteem, personality, cognitive intelligence Cognitive intelligence: ability to reason about, learn from, and remember verbal/visual info Roots of Empathy (ROE): program developed to promote emotional intelligence as a way of reducing aggressive and antisocial behavior - Built around monthly class visits where children learn through baby’s development while an instructor provides lessons on empathy, problem solving etc. - Helpful concept for understanding how emotion related skills affect children’s interactions and provides interventions for improving social emotion skills and mental health Understanding Real & False Emotions - 3 yr olds → Realization that the emotions people express do not necessarily reflect their true feelings - Ex. mask negative emotions when they receive a disappointing gift - 5 yrs old → understanding of false emotion has improved considerably - 1.5 yrs old → can recognize exaggerated and fake emotional displays - Break eye contact when lying, able to use this info to conceal their own deception Display Rules: social groups informal norms about when, where, how much one should show emotions and when and where they should be suppressed by displays of other emotions - Express an emotion that is not matched with their felt emotion - Displaying context-appropriate emotion and avoiding uncontrolled emotions are key to successful social interactions - Rules are different for men than women – reflect how members of gender should feel and behave 2 strategies for Display Rules: 1. Simulating an emotion to be nice to others (pretending to like her cooking) 2. Masking an emotion for self-protection (pretending not to be afraid of a bully) Experiments for display rules - 4, 6, 8 yr olds were asked to fake emotions to win a prize – 3 boxes, one with an attractive prize, one with an unattractive prize, and one with none - Trick experimenter into thinking one of the boxes without the attractive toy was the one with the attractive toy - 4 yr olds were not successful in following display rules – unable to mask disappointment and trick experimenter - Study shows that children experience a steep increase in their understanding and implementation of display rules in middle childhood - Understanding of real vs. false linked to increases in cognitive abilities 10.3 Emotion Regulation Set of conscious and unconscious processes used to monitor and modulate emotional experiences and expressions Development of Emotion Regulation - Develops gradually over childhood and paces the way for success in social interactions and academic settings - 9-12 months → awareness of adults demands and begin to regulate themselves accordingly - 2 yrs → Compliance grows rapidly, likely to heed simple instructions like “don't touch, hot” - Increasingly able to conform to adults expectations like “sit down, stay in your seat” - Adolescence → neurological changes in the cortex contribute to self-regulation and cognitive functioning, decline in risk-taking and improvement in judgement - Younger children regulate using behavioral strategies (distracting with play) and older children use cognitive strategies and problem-solving to adjust (downplaying the importance of teasing rather than provoking more teasing) Co-regulation: process by which a caregiver provides the needed comfort or distraction to help reduce their child's distress - Emotional states of young infants are externally controlled ex. Soothing, feeding Self-comforting Behaviors: repetitive actions that regulate arousal by providing a mildly positive physical sensation - 5 months → rudimentary emotion regulation in aversively arousing or uncertain situation - Ex. sucking fingers, rubbing hands Self Distraction: looking away from upsetting stimuli to regulate their level of arousal - Ex. turning head away from scary image - Over 1st year → self-comforting decreases and self-distraction increases due to increasing maturation of neurological systems (frontal lobe which manages attention and inhibits thought/behavior) and changes in external expectations of independent regulation, especially after 2 yrs - Play on their own when distressed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): treatment that helps them recognize their negative thoughts and patterns to learn ways to adjust those thoughts and behaviors - Effective in ASD Relation of Emotional Regulation to Social Competence & Adjustment Social Competence: ability to achieve personal goals in social interactions while simultaneously maintaining positive relationships with others  - Inhibit inappropriate behavior, delay gratification, use cognitive methods of controlling emotion are well-adjusted and liked by peers - Children who are unable to regulate emotions are at higher risk of becoming bullied - Regulated children do better in school bc they can pay attention and are better behaved 10.4 Role of Family in Emotional Development Indirect: Parents’ expressions of emotion to their children Direct: parents’ reactions to their children’s emotion & coaching of emotions Parents’ Expression of Emotion - Provides children with a model of when and how to express emotion – may affect children's understanding of what types of emotional expressions are appropriate and effective in interpersonal relations - Open expression in the home is associated with children's emotional expressions and behaviour - Happier homes = happier children (low aggression, high self-esteem) - The more that parents express positive emotions to children, the better they understand emotion display rules - Even when anger in the home is not directed towards them, they will be more angry and have deficits in self-regulation - Same goes for depression, children of depressed parents are attentive to expressions of sadness in others Lack of emotion influences development → Still-Face Paradigm - Control grp plays with their children for 10 mins - Experimental grp plays for 2 then sits back and keeps a still face - After 2 mins they play with them with a straight face - Infants become distressed when their mothers do not express emotion or react to their emotional expressions - Decrease in time looking at mother while still-faced, using the self-distraction method Parents’ Socialization of Children’s Emotional Responses Emotion Socialization: process through which children acquire the values, standards, skills, knowledge, behaviors that are regarded as acceptable for their present and future roles in their culture - Direct and indirect influence that they have on their children’s standards, values, ways of thinking and feeling - Affects emotional development and social competence - In Eurocentric cultures (independence, self-assertion, individual expression) mothers are more likely to encourage their children to express their emotions Parents’ Reactions to Children’s Emotions - Dismissal or criticize of expressions of sadness or anxiety communicate to their children that their feelings are not valid - Results children are less emotionally and socially competent then those with supportive parents – less skilled at coping with stress, more prone to expressing anger/aggression - The more the parents acknowledge their children's emotions the more they feel validated - Asian cultures focus on behaviours that cause or resolve emotional states, whereas Eurocentric cultures talk about internal emotional states Parents’ Discussion of Emotion - Discussions about emotions teach them about the meanings and circumstances in which they should be expressed, the consequences of not expressing them - Longitudinal Study (Dunn) → degree to which children are exposed to discussions of emotions at 2-3 predicts their understanding of others emotions until age 6 - Correlated with emotion language – mothers referencing others mental states was a better predictor for understanding that referencing emotions themselves Emotional Coaching: use of discussion and other forms of instruction to teach children how to cope with and properly express emotions - Children who receive guidance display better emotional understanding, more socially competent than children who do not - Childs ability to sustain attention and initial understanding of emotions affects the degree to which adults talk about emotion with them 10.5 Temperament Differences in Emotional Functioning ex. Some are mellow and less reactive Temperament: individual differences in emotion, activity level, attention that are exhibited across contexts and that are present from infancy and thus thought to be genetically based - Temperament of any give child is influenced by nature and nurture → themes of Individual Differences + Nature & Nurture - Some dimensions of temperament are stable over time and predict how children were doing yrs later Between-person Approach → 3 groups of infants: 1. Easy babies - adjust well to new situations, quickly establish daily routines, better moods (40%) 2. Difficult babies - slow to adjust to new situations, reacted negatively to novel stimuli, irregular daily routines (10%) 3. Slow-to-warm-up babies - somewhat difficult at first but became easier over time as they had repeated contact with novel stimuli (15%) Measuring Temperament Thomas & Chess: Newer approach that follows that every child has some level of each dimension of temperament Rothbart’s 5 key Dimensions of Temperament: 1. Fear: tendency to experience worry or nervousness about novel situations 2. Distress, anger, frustration: negative emotional response to having task interrupted 3. Attention span: attention to an object for extended time 4. Activity level: rate and extent of gross motor body movements 5. Smiling and laughter: positive emotional response to change in intensity of stimuli Measures of Temperament in Infancy: Infant Behavior Questionnaire Measures of Temperament in Childhood: Child Behavior Questionnaire - asks parents, teachers to rate each child along several dimensions of temperament with statements describing the target child and responses are averaged - Ratings of temperament tend to be stable (but not immutable) over time and predict later development in behavioural problems, anxiety, social competence - 0-3 yrs are less stable than 3-6 yrs - Some aspects of temperament may emerge later in adolescence and change considerably at different ages – gene expression - HR variability reflects the way the CNS responds to novel stimuli and ability to regulate emotion - EEG of LEFT frontal lobe for approach behavior, positive affect, sociability, exploration - EEG of RIGHT frontal lobe for withdrawal, uncertainty, anxiety Advantages of IBQ & CBQ Disadvantages of IBQ & CBQ *Parents have knowledge of their child *Parents may be subjective in their behaviour in different situations observations (reports sometimes do not *Lab data are less biased than parents POV correspond w/ lab reports) *Do not have comparisons for other children of child to base their report on ex. Some might think their child is irritable while another parent would think that child is tame *Behavior is observed in a limited set of circumstances – no external validity *May reflect a child's mood at a given moment rather than totality of temperament *No measure is perfect – assess using different methods Determinants of Temperament - Temperament has strong basis in biology and genetics ex. Identical twins are more similar in emotional regulation than fraternal twins - Functioning of Dopamine and other neurotransmitters affecting voluntary attentional processes (executive attention) are relevant for self-regulation - Teratogens (agents that harm prenatal) can predict infants attention regulation and behavior - Harsh and unstable homes are less self-regulated and unstable emotions - Active Child: temperamental characteristics can affect their environments and parents behaviors ex. Angry children have less patient parents who increase punishment, making the child angrier - Effortful control, negative affectivity, extroversion were explained by heritability in twin studies Passive gene-environment correlation: parents temperaments affected directly through genetic transmission and indirectly through home environment How Temperament Fits with Environment Goodness of Fit: degree to which one’s temperament is compatible with the demands and expectations of their social environment - Family provides the most important context for issues related to goodness of fit ex. Impulsive children have more problems when their parents are negative and unsupporting - Different temperaments will have different reactions to the same situation – some situations are better suited for certain temperaments Differential Susceptibility: circumstance in which the same temperament characteristic that puts some children at high risk for negative outcomes when exposed to a harsh home environment also causes them to blossom when their home environment is positive - Ex. children with impulsivity have more behavior problems if they are raised in harsh family environments and the opposite if they are in positive family environments - More sensitive and highly responsive: Called orchids who thrive in good conditions but wither in bad - Less sensitive: called dandelions 10.6 Mental Health, Stress & Internalizing Mental Disorders Children’s sense of well-being: Internally: emotions, stress levels Externally: relationships with family and peers - Mental health is a continuum – can be at the high end one day and the low end another - Becomes concern when many days are spent on the low end of the continuum - Genetic predispositions and environmental factors increases the risk of mental illness (nature & nurture) Stress Physiological reaction to some change or threat in environment - Response involves increased HR, stress hormones (cortisol from Adrenal Cortex), increased brain blood flow, heightened feeling of vigilance or fear - Underlies fight or flight response to a threat - Periodic stress can be beneficial and serves an adaptive function of mobilizing the person to take actions to reduce or manage exposure to the provoking stimuli ex. Work hard for an important test - Learn to cope with periodic stress if it is not constant and they have parental support Traumatic Stress - A single major or catastrophic event can trigger severe stress ex. School shooting, hurricane - Tend to experience high levels of fear and anxiety and experience depression and PTSD Toxic Stress - Experience of overwhelming levels of stress without the support from adults to help mitigate the effects of stress - Stress response system is overworked → amygdala & hippocampus (fear regulators) are overloaded and atrophy neuron dendrites - Can be permanent and lead to long-term changes in stress responses and stress-related chronic disease in adulthood Adverse Childhood Experiences - Traumatic childhood experiences ex. Abuse, neglect, violence, death are linked to mental and physical health problems later in life - As the number of ACE increases, the likelihood of mental illness is increased regardless of gender, race, education - Mothers with ACE can have children with more anxiety and behavior problems - Exposure to calm environments can reverse some of the effects of toxic stress → more normalized cortisol levels and reduction in behavioural issues - CBT, play therapy, parent-child interaction therapy help victims Enduring Theme of Research - AAP focuses the attention of pediatricians and health workers to understand, recognize, prevent toxic stress - Alberta Family Wellness Initiative brings tog researchers, policymakers, healthcare to integrate research on the life long effects of ACE and toxic stress on mental health Internalizing Mental Disorders A state of having problems with emotional reactions to the environment and with social relationships in ways that affect daily life - Chronic exposure to traumatic stress can lead to the development of chronic, negative emotional reactions to stimuli in environment that persist throughout life - Internalizing mental disorders (anxiety & depression) involve internal emotional states that are difficult to identify and diagnose compared to behavior disorders Equifinality: concept that various causes (genes, environment) can lead to the same mental disorder (no single pathway) Multifinality: concept that certain risk factors do not always lead to a mental disorder Ex. not every maltreated child develops a disorder Categories of Mental Disorders: 1. Psychotic disorders 2. Eating disorders 3. Personality disorders 4. Behavior disorders (externalizing disorders) Depression Mental disorder that involves sad or irritable mood with physical and cognitive changes that interfere with daily life - Diagnosis: sad, irritable for 2 weeks or more and exhibits sleep difficulties, weight changes, concentration difficulties, loss of interest in activities, suicidal ideation - Risk of depression increases with adolescence - Nature (elevated levels of cortisol and differences in brain structure, 40% heritability) and Nurture (low levels of parental sensitivity, support, high negativity) influence the appearance of depression - Cognitive component → unrealistic expectations about social relationships and see themselves are the cause of negative events - Cycle of depression and victimization for children Enduring theme of Individual Differences (Gender) - Girls more likely (2-3x) than boys to report symptoms - Disparity increases in early adulthood – adolescence in the peak gender disparity for depression - Cross-cultural proves these differences - Equifinality → individual factors in pubertal hormones, emotional reactivity - Societal factors → girls are more likely to experience stressful life events (SA), gender inequality, affected by media that objectifies and demeans women - CBT is helpful treatment but societal changes in the treatement of women are necessary for large-scale reduction in gender disparity Rumination: focusing on one’s own negative emotions and negative self-appraisals and on their causes and consequences, without engaging in efforts to improve one’s situation Ex. “I'm so fat” and “what's wrong with my life?” Co-rumination: extensively discussing and self-disclosing emotional problems with another - More common for girls and may account for gender differences in depression Anxiety Disorders Set of mental disorders that involve the inability to regulate fear and worry - Intense and persistent, chronic worrying that impaired their ability to interact with others and concentrate on tasks - Overactivation of amygdala & hippocampus (reactions to threats) and SNS - Panic attacks: sudden, intense surges of fear or discomfort, or from phobias - Most common anxiety disorder in children is Separation anxiety - Rates of anxiety rise to 14% in ages 12-17 - Increase in age = increase in several types of anxiety (panic disorder & agoraphobia) and decrease in separation anxiety - Can persist if not treated - Nature & Nurture → ⅓ is thought to be heritable coming from temperament, and environment can create negative associations with fear through conditioning, observation, or instruction - Overprotective parents can cause anxiety in children Treatment of Internalizing Mental Disorders SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) - Increase brain’s levels of serotonin, a chemical messenger that influences mood, emotions, and sleep - Decreases suicide risk CBT - Therapy that helps children recognize when they are having maladaptive thoughts and learn ways to actively modify those thoughts and reactions - Effective in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety - Wait times are a barrier for treatment → 3 months in ON - Disadvantaged families are less likely to receive treatment, though having higher mental illnesses - Shortage of health-care providers in Canada and worldwide - Suicide rates are higher in countries with shortages of MH professionals Chapter 10 Review The Development of Emotions Discrete-emotions theorists believe that a set of biological and neurological reactions to the environment have evolved so that humans experience a core set of basic emotions that are universal across all human cultures. In contrast, proponents of the functionalist perspective believe that emotions reflect what individuals are trying to do in specific situations—that is, their concerns and goals at the moment—and that there is not a set of innate, discrete emotions but rather that there are many emotions based on people’s many different interactions with the social world. As with several other aspects of development, there is evidence to support both the nature (discrete emotions) and nurture (functionalist) interpretations of emotion. Researchers have identified six basic emotions: happiness, fear, anger, sadness, surprise, and disgust. Each of these emotions can be reliably identified in infants, and each is thought to play an important role in both survival and social communication. Emotions undergo change in the early months and years of life. Smiles become social around the 2nd month of life, and what makes children smile and laugh changes with cognitive development. Infants begin expressing anger and frustration by 4 months of age and peak in their likelihood of responding with anger by 24 months of age. As they age, children increasingly match their anger to the situation, getting angrier if an act was intentional than if it was unintentional. Fear appears by 7 months of age, such as when infants become distressed in the presence of strangers. At around 8 months of age, infants display stranger anxiety and begin to exhibit separation anxiety when separated from their parents. Sadness, surprise, and disgust each appear in the first year as well. How often and to what stimuli children express each of these emotions is closely tied to their home and cultural environment.  The self-conscious emotions—guilt, shame, jealousy, empathy, pride, and embarrassment—emerge in the second year of life. Their emergence is tied in part to the development of a rudimentary sense of self and to an appreciation of others’ reactions to the self. Understanding Emotions An important aspect of emotional development is children’s understanding of different types of emotion, what they mean, and what events cause them. These skills are important for interacting successfully with others in their environments. By 12 months of age, infants exhibit social referencing. By age 3, children demonstrate a rudimentary ability to use words to label facial expressions. Children’s understanding of the situations that cause emotions, display rules, and the complexities of emotional experience increases in the preschool and elementary school years. Emotion recognition abilities look different amongst neurodivergent children, and several innovative approaches have been developed to help neurodivergent children become more attentive to emotions. Emotion Regulation Emotion regulation involves a set of both conscious and unconscious processes used to both monitor and modulate emotional experiences and expressions. Emotion regulation develops gradually over the course of childhood and paves the way for success both in social interactions and in academic settings. Newborns are not able to regulate their own emotions and must rely on adults to manage their emotions through a process called co-regulation. However, beginning after the 5th month, infants can engage in self-comforting and self-distraction behaviours when they are in stressful situations. Improvements in children’s regulatory capacities are based on increases in both their cognitive development and their ability to control their own bodies, as well as on changes in others’ expectations of them. Emotion regulation is generally associated with high social competence and low problem behaviour. The Role of Family in Emotional Development Children’s emotional development is affected indirectly by the quality of their early social relationships and by their parents’ own expressions of emotion. Infants have a strong negative reaction when their mothers do not react emotionally to them, as is demonstrated in still-face experiments. Parents engage in active emotion socialization to teach children about the appropriateness of emotion expression and about circumstances that require emotion regulation. Cultural factors have been shown to influence what emotions parents encourage their children to express, and certain emotions are more encouraged or discouraged in some cultures than others. Temperament Temperament—individual differences in emotion, activity level, and attention exhibited across contexts—is relatively stable but can undergo some change over time. Temperament can be measured through laboratory assessments or through parent reports; both strategies have strengths and weaknesses. Temperament is thought to be determined by both genetic and environmental factors. Children do best when there is high goodness of fit between their temperament and their environments. Some children experience differential susceptibility, such that they do very poorly in harsh conditions but very well in enriched conditions. Mental Health, Stress, and Internalizing Mental Disorders Mental health involves children’s sense of well-being both internally, such as in their emotions and stress levels, and externally, such as in their relationships with family members and peers. Stress, although adaptive and beneficial in short doses as a means of organizing a response to a threatening event, can be problematic when experienced repeatedly over long periods or at toxic levels. Children who have difficulties with their emotional reactions to their environments are said to have a mental disorder. The same mental disorder can be caused by different risks across different people (equifinality); however, the presence of a risk factor does not always lead to a disorder (multifinality). 3% of all children and adolescents around the world experience depression, which involves a combination of sad or irritable mood with physiological and cognitive changes affecting one’s ability to conduct normal interactions. Rates of depression are higher among adolescent girls than adolescent boys. Depression appears to have both biological and environmental causes.  Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 5% of Canadian children (aged 5 to 17) had an anxiety disorder, which involves excessive and uncontrollable fear of or worry about real or perceived threats. Anxiety is typically manifested as separation anxiety disorder in early childhood and as panic disorder and agoraphobia in later childhood and adolescence. Two of the most common treatments for depression and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents are CBT and the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). However, access remains a major barrier to the use of these treatments.