The ability to discriminate and identify different emotions in others Quizlet

- Differences in aspects of temperament (anger/irritability, positive emotion and the ability to inhibit behaviour) have been associated w differences in children's social competence & maladjustment.
- Aspects like negative emotionality may not always be associated w children's negative outcomes --> some children w certain temperamental characteristics are esp sensitive to their social environments, whether + or -
- Differential susceptibility = children who are prone to negative emotions tend to do worse than children who are not, but in supportive social environments, they often tend to do better than their more emotionally positive peers.
- Theorists: differential susceptibility occurs bc aspects of temperament & behaviour that are adaptive for survival vary across positive and negative social contexts.
- In harsh environments, expressing negative emotion may help children obtain attention and vital resources needed for survival, whereas in supportive environments, proneness to negative emotions might make children more sensitive to parents' attempts to socialize positive behaviours, which may lead to higher social and moral competence.
- behavioural inhibition (= the tendency to be high in fearful distress and restrained when dealing w novel/stressful situations) is also stable.
- Children who are behaviourally inhibited are more likely to have problems such as anxiety, depression, phobias and social withdrawal at older ages.
- Goodness of fit = the degree to which an individual's temperament is compatible w the demands and expectations of their environment. - How children ultimately adjust depends not only on their temperament but also on their goodness of fit.
- Supportive parenting can moderate some of the negative effects of behavioural inhibition.
- children's maladjustment and social competence are predicted by the combo of temperament+parents' child-rearing practices, but the child's temperament+parents' socialization efforts also seem to affect each other

- 3 months:, infants can distinguish facial expressions of happiness, surprise, and anger.
- 7 months: infants appear to discriminate a number of additional expressions such as fear sadness and interest. + they start to perceive others' emotional expressions as meaningful.
- ~ 5 1/2 months: some children begin to demonstrate that they can relate facial expressions of emotion and emotional tones of voice to events in the environment, although this ability is often not seem until 7-12 months of age. Such skills are evident in children's social referencing --> their use of a parent's/other adult's facial expression or vocal cues to decide how to deal w novel, ambiguous, or possibly threatening situations.
- age 3: children in lab studies demonstrate a rudimentary ability to label a fairly narrow range of emotional expressions displayed in pictures/on puppets' faces.
- Young children (even at 2 years) are skilled at labelling happiness. The ability to label anger, fear and sadness emerges and increases in the next year or two, w the ability to label surprise and disgust gradually appearing in the late preschool and early school years.
- Most children can't label more complex emotions, such as pride, shame and guilt until early to mid-elementary school.
- The ability to discriminate and label different emotions helps children respond appropriately to their own and others' emotions

- Knowing the causes of emotions is also important for understanding one's own and others' behaviour and motives. It's also key for regulating one's own behaviour and hence, for social competence.
• By age 3, children are quite good at identifying situations that make people feel happy.
• At age 4, they're fairly accurate at identifying situations that make people sad, and
• at age 4-5, they can identify situations likely to elicit anger, fear or surprise.
• by age 4-6, children can give accurate explanations for why their peers expressed negative emotions int heir preschool.
• after age 7, children's ability to understand the circumstances that evoke complex social emotions such as pride, guilt, shame, embarrassment, and jealousy emerges
• from age 4-at least age 10, children are generally better at identifying emotions from stories depicting the cause of an emotion than from pictures of facial expressions such as fear, disgust, embarrassment and shame. may be bc facial expressions of these emotions are often interpreted as indicating more than one emotion.

- Easy: Positive mood, fast adaptation, low-moderate activity, low intensity of reactions. ("flexible" ~40%)
- Difficult: Negative mood, slow adaptation, high activity, intense reactions, highly sensitive. ("spirited" ~10%)
- Slow-to-warm-up: Withdrawal, slow adaptation, low moderate activity, mild reactions ("shy" ~15%)
- Implications: 70% of difficult children develop behavioral problems by school age
- Goodness-of-fit model: Fit between temperament and caregiving predicts developmental outcomes