Child Psychology Exam 3 Chapter 10 Emotional Development 1 Functions of Emotions Your emotion is a rapid appraisal of the personal significance of the situation which prepares you for answer For example happiness leads you to approach sadness to passively withdraw fear to actively more away and anger to overcome obstacles An emotion then expresses your readiness to establish maintain or change your relation to the environment on a matter of importance to you A number of theorists take a functionalist approach to emotion emphasizing that the broad function of emotions is to energize behavior aimed at attaining personal goals i Personally relevant 1 Goal in mind doing well on a test 2 Others social behavior may alter a situation s significance for you visiting a friend 3 Any sensation or state of mind can become personally relevant and evoke emotion Emotional reaction affects your desire to repeat the experience Emotions and Cognitive Processing i Emotional reactions can lead to learning that is essential for survival ii The emotion cognition relationship is evident in the impact of anxiety on performance Among children and adults high anxiety impairs thinking by diverting attention from cognitive processing to task irrelevant threatening stimuli and worrisome thoughts iii Emotions can also powerfully affect memory threatening experience at a doctors office iv Emotions were interwoven with cognitive processing serving as outcomes of mastery and as the energizing force for continued involvement and learning Emotions and Social Behavior i Children s emotional signals such as smiling crying and attentive interest powerfully affect the behaviors of others Similarly the emotional reactions of others regulate children s social behavior ii With age emotional expressions become deliberate means through which infants communicate and babies monitor the emotional expressions of others to assess their intentions and perspectives Emotions and Health i Much research indicates that emotions influence children s physical well being ii Many other studies indicate that persistent psychological stress manifested in anxiety depressed mood anger and irritability is associated with a variety of health difficulties from infancy to adulthood Other Features of the Functionalist Approach i Functional theorists point out that emotions contribute to the emergence of self awareness ii The functionalist approach emphasizes that to adapt to their physical and social worlds children must gain control over their emotions just as they do their motor cognitive and social behavior Children must also master their culture s rules for when and how to convey emotion 2 Development of Emotional Expression Earliest emotional life consists mainly of two global arousal states i Attraction to pleasant stimulation ii Withdrawal from unpleasant stimulation bitter flavors The middle of the first year is when emotional expression becomes well organized Facial expressions offer most reliable cues of infant emotions which work across cultures and allows the same interpretation of the same emotions Basic Emotions i Basic emotions happiness interest surprise fear anger sadness disgust are universal in humans and other primates and have a long evolutionary history of promoting survival ii Children coordinate separate skills into more effective emotionally expressive systems as the central nervous system develops and the child s goals and experiences change iii Basic emotions can be directly inferred from facial expressions iv Gradually emotional expressions become well organized and specific and therefore provide more precise information about the baby s internal state v Happiness 1 During the early weeks newborn babies smile when full during REM sleep and in response to gentle touches and sounds such as stroking of the skin rocking and the mother s soft high pitched voice By the end of the first month infants smile at dynamic eye catching sights such as a bright object 2 Between 6 to 10 weeks the parent s communication evokes a broad grin called the social smile The social smile is a broad grin evoked by the stimulus of a human face 3 Laughter which appears around 3 to 4 months reflects faster processing of information than smiling But as with smiling the first laughs occur in response to very active stimuli As infants understand more about their world they laugh at events with subtler elements of surprise 4 Around the middle of the first year infants smile and laugh more when interacting with familiar people Between 8 to 10 months infants more often interrupt their play with an interesting toy to relay their delight to an attentive adult And like adults 10 to 12 month olds have several smiles which vary with context By the end of the first year the smile has become a deliberate social signal 1 Newborn babies respond with generalized distress to a variety of unpleasant experiences From 4 to 6 months into the second year angry expressions increase in frequency and intensity Older infants also react with anger in a wider range of situations As infants become capable of intentional behavior they want to control their own actions and the effects they produce and will purposefully try to change an undesirable situation They are also more persistent about obtaining desired objects and less easily distracted from those goals Older infants are better at identifying who caused them pain or removed a toy The rise in anger is also adaptive New motor capacities enable angry infants to defend themselves or overcome obstacles 2 Sadness is less common than anger Sadness occurs often when infants are deprived of a familiar loving caregiver or when caregiver infant communication is seriously disrupted vi Anger and Sadness vii Fear 1 Fear rises during the second half of the first year into the second year 2 The most frequent expression of fear is to unfamiliar adults a response called stranger anxiety Many infants and toddlers are quite wary of strangers although the reaction does not always occur This is not universal It depends on several factors temperament some babies are generally more fearful past experiences with strangers and the current situation The stranger s style of interaction reduces the baby s fear 3 The rise in fear after age 6 months keeps newly mobile babies enthusiasm for exploration in check Once wariness develops infants use the familiar caregiver as a secure base or point from which to explore venturing into the environment and
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