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Davis EL, Parsafar P, Brady SM. Early antecedents of emotion differentiation and regulation: Experience tunes the appraisal thresholds of emotional development in infancy. Infant Behav Dev 2023; 70:101786. [PMID: 36370666 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2022.101786] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2022] [Revised: 10/14/2022] [Accepted: 11/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Abstract
In this review, we synthesize evidence to highlight cognitive appraisal as an important developmental antecedent of individual differences in emotion differentiation and adept emotion regulation. Emotion differentiation is the degree to which emotions are experienced in a nuanced or "granular" way-as specific and separable phenomena. More extensive differentiation is related to positive wellbeing and has emerged as a correlate of emotion regulation skill among adults. We argue that the cognitive appraisal processes that underlie these facets of emotional development are instantiated early in the first year of life and tuned by environmental input and experience. Powerful socializing input in the form of caregivers' contingent and selective responding to infants' emotional signals carves and calibrates the infant's appraisal thresholds for what in their world ought to be noticed, deemed as important or personally meaningful, and responded to (whether and how). These appraisal thresholds are thus unique to the individual child despite the ubiquity of the appraisal process in emotional responding. This appraisal infrastructure, while plastic and continually informed by experience across the lifespan, likely tunes subsequent emotion differentiation, with implications for children's emotion regulatory choices and skills. We end with recommendations for future research in this area, including the urgent need for developmental emotion science to investigate the diverse sociocultural contexts in which children's cognitive appraisals, differentiation of emotions, and regulatory responses are being built across childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Parisa Parsafar
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, USA
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2
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Smith-Flores AS, Feigenson L. “Yay! Yuck!” toddlers use others’ emotional responses to reason about hidden objects. J Exp Child Psychol 2022; 221:105464. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105464] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2021] [Revised: 04/08/2022] [Accepted: 04/28/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
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Abstract
Infants use statistical information in their environment, as well as others' emotional communication, to understand the intentions of social partners. However, rarely do researchers consider these two sources of social information in tandem. This study assessed 2-year-olds' attributions of intentionality from non-random sampling events and subsequent discrete emotion reactions. Infants observed an experimenter remove five objects from either the non-random minority (18%) or random majority (82%) of a sample and express either joy, disgust, or sadness after each selection. Two-year-olds inferred the experimenter's intentionality by giving her the object that she had previously selected when she expressed joy or disgust after non-random sampling events, but not when she expressed sadness or sampled at random. These findings demonstrate that infants use both statistical regularities and discrete emotion communication to infer an agent's intentions. In particular, the present findings show that 2-year-olds infer that an agent can intentionally select a preferred or an undesired object from a sample as a function of the discrete emotion. Implications for the development of inferring intentionality from statistical sampling events and discrete emotion communication are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lukas D Lopez
- Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, United States
| | - Eric A Walle
- Psychological Sciences, University of California Merced, Merced, CA, United States
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Juvrud J, Haas SA, Fox NA, Gredebäck G. Infants' Selective Visual Attention Is Dependent on Maternal Affect and Emotional Context. Front Psychol 2021; 12:700272. [PMID: 34603127 PMCID: PMC8481686 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700272] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2021] [Accepted: 08/12/2021] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
Development of selective attention during the first year of life is critical to cognitive and socio-emotional skills. It is also a period that the average child’s interactions with their mother dominate their social environment. This study examined how maternal negative affect and an emotion face prime (mother/stranger) jointly effect selective visual attention. Results from linear mixed-effects modeling showed that 9-month olds (N=70) were faster to find a visual search target after viewing a fearful face (regardless of familiarity) or their mother’s angry face. For mothers with high negative affect, infants’ attention was further impacted by fearful faces, resulting in faster search times. Face emotion interacted with mother’s negative affect, demonstrating a capacity to influence what infants attend in their environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joshua Juvrud
- Department of Psychology, Uppsala Child and Baby Lab, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Sara A Haas
- Department of Psychology, Uppsala Child and Baby Lab, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.,Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States
| | - Nathan A Fox
- Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States
| | - Gustaf Gredebäck
- Department of Psychology, Uppsala Child and Baby Lab, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
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6
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Wu Y, Gweon H. Preschool-Aged Children Jointly Consider Others' Emotional Expressions and Prior Knowledge to Decide When to Explore. Child Dev 2021; 92:862-870. [PMID: 34033118 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13585] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/09/2023]
Abstract
Emotional expressions are abundant in children's lives. What role do they play in children's causal inference and exploration? This study investigates whether preschool-aged children use others' emotional expressions to infer the presence of unknown causal functions and guide their exploration accordingly. Children (age: 3.0-4.9; N = 112, the United States) learned about one salient causal function of a novel toy and then saw an adult play with it. Children explored the toy more when the adult expressed surprise than when she expressed happiness (Experiment 1), but only when the adult already knew about the toy's salient function (Experiment 2). These results suggest that children consider others' knowledge and selectively interpret others' surprise as vicarious prediction error to guide their own exploration.
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Abstract
Historically, research characterizing the development of emotion recognition has focused on identifying specific skills and the age periods, or milestones, at which these abilities emerge. However, advances in emotion research raise questions about whether this conceptualization accurately reflects how children learn about, understand, and respond to others’ emotions in everyday life. In this review, we propose a developmental framework for the emergence of emotion reasoning—that is, how children develop the ability to make reasonably accurate inferences and predictions about the emotion states of other people. We describe how this framework holds promise for building upon extant research. Our review suggests that use of the term emotion recognition can be misleading and imprecise, with the developmental processes of interest better characterized by the term emotion reasoning. We also highlight how the age at which children succeed on many tasks reflects myriad developmental processes. This new framing of emotional development can open new lines of inquiry about how humans learn to navigate their social worlds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ashley L. Ruba
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA;,
| | - Seth D. Pollak
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA;,
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8
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Walle E. Factors Facilitating Emotion Understanding in Infancy: Commentary on Ogren and Johnson. Hum Dev 2020. [DOI: 10.1159/000512411] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
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Crivello C, Poulin-Dubois D. Infants' Ability to Detect Emotional Incongruency: Deep or Shallow? INFANCY 2020; 24:480-500. [PMID: 32677254 DOI: 10.1111/infa.12277] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/10/2018] [Revised: 10/04/2018] [Accepted: 11/19/2018] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Infants can detect individuals who demonstrate emotions that are incongruent with an event and are less likely to trust them. However, the nature of the mechanisms underlying this selectivity is currently subject to controversy. The objective of this study was to examine whether infants' socio-cognitive and associative learning skills are linked to their selective trust. A total of 102 14-month-olds were exposed to a person who demonstrated congruent or incongruent emotional referencing (e.g., happy when looking inside an empty box), and were tested on their willingness to follow the emoter's gaze. Knowledge inference and associative learning tasks were also administered. It was hypothesized that infants would be less likely to trust the incongruent emoter and that this selectivity would be related to their associative learning skills, and not their socio-cognitive skills. The results revealed that infants were not only able to detect the incongruent emoter, but were subsequently less likely to follow her gaze toward an object invisible to them. More importantly, infants who demonstrated superior performance on the knowledge inference task, but not the associative learning task, were better able to detect the person's emotional incongruency. These findings provide additional support for the rich interpretation of infants' selective trust.
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Walle EA, Reschke PJ, Main A, Shannon RM. The effect of emotional communication on infants' distinct prosocial behaviors. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 2020. [DOI: 10.1111/sode.12449] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Eric A. Walle
- Psychological Sciences University of California Merced CA USA
| | | | - Alexandra Main
- Psychological Sciences University of California Merced CA USA
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Ruba AL, Meltzoff AN, Repacholi BM. The Development of Negative Event-Emotion Matching in Infancy: Implications for Theories in Affective Science. AFFECTIVE SCIENCE 2020; 1:4-19. [PMID: 36042945 PMCID: PMC9376795 DOI: 10.1007/s42761-020-00005-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/04/2019] [Accepted: 02/03/2020] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Predicting another person's emotional response to a situation is an important component of emotion concept understanding. However, little is known about the developmental origins of this ability. The current studies examine whether 10-month-olds expect facial configurations/vocalizations associated with negative emotions (e.g., anger, disgust) to be displayed after specific eliciting events. In Experiment 1, 10-month-olds (N = 60) were familiarized to an Emoter interacting with objects in a positive event (Toy Given) and a negative event (Toy Taken). Infants expected the Emoter to display a facial configuration associated with anger after the negative event, but did not expect the Emoter to display a facial configuration associated with happiness after the positive event. In Experiment 2, 10- and 14-month-olds (N = 120) expected the Emoter to display a facial configuration associated with anger, rather than one associated with disgust, after an "anger-eliciting" event (Toy Taken). However, only the 14-month-olds provided some evidence of linking a facial configuration associated with disgust, rather than one associated with anger, to a "disgust-eliciting event" (New Food). Experiment 3 found that 10-month-olds (N = 60) did not expect an Emoter to display a facial configuration associated with anger after an "anger-eliciting" event involving an Unmet Goal. Together, these experiments suggest that infants start to refine broad concepts of affect into more precise emotion concepts over the first 2 years of life, before learning emotion language. These findings are a first step toward addressing a long-standing theoretical debate in affective science about the nature of early emotion concepts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ashley L. Ruba
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Waisman Center 399, 1500 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI 53705 USA
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12
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Ruba AL, Repacholi BM. Do Preverbal Infants Understand Discrete Facial Expressions of Emotion? EMOTION REVIEW 2019. [DOI: 10.1177/1754073919871098] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/28/2022]
Abstract
An ongoing debate in affective science concerns whether certain discrete, “basic” emotions have evolutionarily based signals (facial expressions) that are easily, universally, and (perhaps) innately identified. Studies with preverbal infants (younger than 24 months) have the potential to shed light on this debate. This review summarizes what is known about preverbal infants’ understanding of discrete emotional facial expressions. Overall, while many studies suggest that preverbal infants differentiate positive and negative facial expressions, few studies have tested whether infants understand discrete emotions (e.g., anger vs. disgust). Moreover, results vary greatly based on methodological factors. This review also (a) discusses how language may influence the development of emotion understanding, and (b) proposes a new developmental hypothesis for infants’ discrete emotion understanding.
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Patzwald C, Curley CA, Hauf P, Elsner B. Differential effects of others' emotional cues on 18-month-olds' preferential reproduction of observed actions. Infant Behav Dev 2018; 51:60-70. [PMID: 29679813 DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2018.04.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/07/2017] [Revised: 04/06/2018] [Accepted: 04/08/2018] [Indexed: 10/17/2022]
Abstract
Infants use others' emotional signals to regulate their own object-directed behavior and action reproduction, and they typically produce more actions after having observed positive as compared to negative emotional cues. This study explored infants' understanding of the referential specificity of others' emotional cues when being confronted with two actions that are accompanied by different emotional displays. Selective action reproduction was measured after 18-month-olds (N = 42) had observed two actions directed at the same object, one of which was modeled with a positive emotional expression and the other with a negative emotional expression. Across four trials with different objects, infants' first actions matched the positively-emoted actions more often than the negatively-emoted actions. In comparison with baseline-level, infants' initial performance changed only for the positively-emoted actions, in that it increased during test. Latencies to first object-touch during test did not differ when infants reproduced the positively- or negatively-emoted actions, respectively, indicating that infants related the cues to the respective actions rather than to the object. During demonstration, infants looked relatively longer at the object than at the model's face, with no difference in positive or negative displays. Infants during their second year of life thus capture the action-related referential specificity of others' emotional cues and seem to follow positive signals more readily when actively selecting which of two actions to reproduce preferentially.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Charlotte A Curley
- Infant Action and Cognition Lab, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
| | - Petra Hauf
- Infant Action and Cognition Lab, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
| | - Birgit Elsner
- Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, Germany
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