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Flashcards in The Development of Emotions Deck (31)
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1
Q

What are emotions?

A

Subjective reactions to something in the environment.
Accompanied by some form of physiological arousal.
Communicated to others by some expression or action.
Usually pleasant or unpleasant.

2
Q

Why are emotions important?

A

Allow children to let people know how they feel.
Linked to children’s social + school success.
Help us adapt to our environment (e.g. fear).
Important in: self-awareness, emotional regulation, social competence + ability to form positive peer relationships.

3
Q

What emotions can be seen from 1 month old?

A

Joy, fear, anger surprise, sadness. Maybe disgust + contempt.

4
Q

What are Schwartz’s primary emotions?

A

Joy, sadness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, love.

5
Q

Name the key stages of development in emotion understanding.

A

3-5yo - simple cause + effect - recognition, reminder, external cause.
5-7yo - mentalistic - belief, desire, hiding.
7-9yo - reflective - morality, regulation, mixed.

6
Q

What is the external understanding of emotions phase (age 3-5)?

A

Recognising faces.
External causes.
Reminiscing.

7
Q

Explain a study which shows cultural differences in mentalistic emotions (Joshi & MacLean).

A

Indian girls at age 4 had an age 6 mentality compared to English girls.

8
Q

When does the emotion ‘desire’ start to be understood?

A

Age 5-7.

9
Q

When does theory of mind develop?

A

4+.

10
Q

What is theory of mind?

A

Children’s understanding that people have mental states such as thoughts and desires that affect their behaviour.
Allows children to get beyond people’s observable actions and respond to their unseen states.

11
Q

What task can be used to measure theory of mind?

A

False belief tasks.

12
Q

What type of questions are children more likely to answer successfully?

A

Belief/action questions rather than emotion questions.

At 8yos children can answer both successfully.

13
Q

How well do children do in understanding self vs others’ false-belief emotions?

A

Better at self.

Overall better at beliefs than emotions questions.

14
Q

Name 3 types of reflective emotions.

A

Ambivalent emotions, regulation, moral emotions.

15
Q

Explain the development of understanding ambivalent emotions with age.

A

4-5 - one emotion.
7-8 - sometimes both but not at the same time.
10-11 - interaction of emotions.

16
Q

When does regulation start to occur?

A

After 7 years old.

17
Q

Name 4 main types of regulation strategies.

A

Behavioural strategy - action to manage the emotion.
Social support - intervention of another character helps protagonist to overcome the negative emotion.
Attentional deployment - do or think of something else in order to regulate the emotion.
Cognitive reappraisal - able to regulate the emotion due to modifying the meaning of the situation.

18
Q

What have Salas, Pons & Molina shown about regulation?

A

Older children use more valid strategies and use cognitive reappraisal more often.
80% at 11 compared to 35% at 7 knew how to regulate emotions when feeling sad.
Further statistics: Rocha (2015) - reflective emotions: 90% at 11 compared to 30% at 7 knew that failing to confess a misdemeanour would lead to sadness due to morality.

19
Q

What are some weakness of TEC (Test of Emotional Comprehension)?

A

Only measures static emotions.
Individual differences in emotion processing.
Single item scale.
Maybe there’s more than one answer - could be due to different experiences?

20
Q

What are some strengths of TEC (Test of Emotional Comprehension)?

A

Has 9 components.
Used by many different cultures - has been normed.
Fairly simple stories.

21
Q

What are some key ways parents can influence children’s emotion understanding?

A
They model emotion behaviours. 
They develop the emotional climate in the family. 
Specific behaviours (e.g. coaching or dismissing).
22
Q

How do mothers with social phobia impact their children emotionally (Murray, 2008)?

A

10mo infant - no difference.

14mo infant - increased social avoidance compared to controls - modelling mother’s behaviour.

23
Q

How can parents help children’s learn about emotion through socialisation?

A

Reminiscing with them about shared past emotional experiences.
Children whose mothers discuss feelings more = recognise others’ emotions more + have better emotional regulation.
Mothers’ use of emotion language predicts ability to label emotions.

24
Q

What is a negative of research into emotional understanding in children?

A

Little work on fathers.

Controlling for past emotion understanding.

25
Q

Describe Aznar & Tenenbaum’s study into emotional understanding.

A

Spanish mothers + fathers with 6 or 4yos.
Reminiscence or play condition.
Counterbalancing - first visit with mother or father then 2 weeks later - same task with other parent.
TEC before study + 6 months later.

26
Q

What did paternal talk predict?

A

Nothing.

27
Q

What did maternal talk predict?

A

Higher emotional understanding.

28
Q

What are the 3 things that predict children’s emotional understanding (Karstad & Wichstrom, 2015)?

A

Parents’ mensualisation scores.
Child’s social skills.
Child’s verbal skills.
All 3 predict increases in emotional understanding.

29
Q

What is a weakness of parent-children studies of emotional understanding?

A

It’s mostly correlational.

30
Q

What did Tenenbaum (2008) find about what helps children to learn emotions?

A

Ambivalent or hidden emotion condition.
Results: experimenter-explanation + self-explanation increased TEC scores.
Self-summary did not.

31
Q

Are there gender differences in emotion?

A

No - both in TEC scores and in the way parents talk to children - no differences.