Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Emotion across the lifespan

Emotion across the lifespan:
How does emotion develop and vary across the lifespan?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

This chapter focuses on the emotional experience’s individuals encounter over the first few years of their life and how different age groups recognise emotions, their emotional awareness and how they regulate their emotions. The four focus groups of age will be infants and children. First lets look at some definitions:

Focus questions: What is emotional recognition, awareness and regulation? What are the key concepts of emotion in infants? What are the key concepts of emotion in children?

Definitions

What is an emotion?

The American Psychological Association (APA), defines emotion as “a complex reaction pattern, involving experiential, behavioural and physiological elements.”

Another definition:

Emotions are short-lived, feeling purposive expressive bodily response that help us to adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events.

What is emotion recognition?

Emotion recognition refers in psychology to the attribution of emotional states based on the observation of visual and auditory nonverbal cues. Nonverbal cues include facial, vocal, postural and gestural cues displayed by a sender, that is, a person displaying an emotional reaction.

What is emotional awareness?

Emotional awareness is the ability to recognise and make sense of not just your own emotions, but also those of others.

What is emotional regulation?

The processes involved in initiating, maintaining and altering emotional responses. Individuals subconsciously and consciously perform this regulation.

Emotional development over the lifespan

Infant:

Emotion recognition:

Parents and caregivers play a vital role in an infant's emotion recognition and experiences “since much of emotion regulation is first implemented externally until the child can internalize and develop effective stand-alone regulatory responses” . Over the first two years of life infants tend to learn their emotional skills from the familiar people in their life and may recognize expressions of emotion easier when they are expressed from people such as a parent or caregiver . If the caregiver doesn’t pay attention or help regulate the infant's emotional reactions, they are more likely to develop behavioural or emotional problems in later life. Throughout the first few years of an infant's life they learn from enviornmental stimuli and personal experience how to show emotions such as joy and sadness through facial expressions by mimicking those around them..

Emotional awareness:

An infant is born with primary emotions such as contentment and joy, interest and surprise and distress such as sadness, disgust, anger and fear and show these emotions through facial expressions and body posture . At around 5-6 months infants begin to react more and show physical discomfort to strangers more then they did when they were younger as they are developing stranger anxiety. During this time they are learning how to experience their own emotions and also learning how to observe others feelings by distinguishing emotional expressions.

As the infant grows their knowledge and understanding of others their emotions expand as well, at around 12 months they are able to grasp and notice other people's emotional states and begin to gain the understanding of behaviours and reactions matching an emotion they may feel or have felt themselves.

Over time infants become more self-aware and at around 2 years old are able to experience secondary or self-conscious emotions such as; embarrassment, envy, empathy, pride, shame and guilt.

Emotional regulation

Infants struggle with self-regulating themselves and usually require a parent or care-giver to help recognise and be able to regulate their emotions. Over time infants can learn skills and practice with support so they are able to independently regulate their emotions.

Techniques that can be used to help support are:

·        Being responsive

·        Being patient

·        Talking about emotions that are being experienced

·        Sooth and help them sooth with things such as being calm, supportive, present and providing comfort items such as a blanket.

Child

Emotion recognition:

Over the first few years of life children have already learnt, experienced and consolidated a large amount and array of emotions and feelings. Children continue to develop their response and recognition of emotion through observations of their environments and the people who are around them.

Children begin to build on their display rules for emotion which is recognised as the “cultural rules specifying what emotions should and should not be expressed under certain circumstances. For example: don’t laugh when someone falls down, look sad at a funeral etc.” As a child is supported through this process they are then able to physically experience their emotions inside and appropriate ways to display and regulate these emotions in their life and become “aware of the gap between inner and expressed emotions”.

Emotional awareness

As a child matures they are able to understand more concepts of emotional competence, patterns of emotion and emotional expression. Parents and caregivers still have predominant influence on a child’s emotional knowledge but they are able to gain knowledge from other ways as well.

A research study conducted by Illaria Grazzini and her team established 3 main levels of the growth of emotional understanding in children which is displayed below:

3–4 years of age:

Children demonstrate mastery of three initial components: recognition of facial expressions (e.g., sadness, happiness, fear, and anger), understanding of the impact of situational factors on emotions, and the role of desires in emotion.

6/7 years of age - "Mental":

Children gain three further components of emotional awareness: appreciation of the role of beliefs in emotions, the impact of memory on emotions, and the distinction between outwardly expressed and privately felt emotions.

8/9 years of age - "Reflective":

Children are found to have acquired the three remaining components of emotional awareness: knowledge of how moral considerations affect emotions, awareness that emotions may be regulated by means of cognitive control strategies, and an appreciation of concurrent mixed feelings.

Emotional regulation:

The key components of helping children with emotional regulation is teaching how to identify and be aware of their emotions, learning their personal triggers and how best to manage the emotions when they arise. It is important for children and all individuals to understand that every emotion no matter how big or small is valid, normal and manageable.

Research has showed that children pick up on emotions and reactions that are displayed around them, which is why modelling appropriate behaviour is important during the childhood years so they are able to understand they appropriate ways to handle their emotional regulation.

Child Mind Institute gives some examples and strategies on how to support children with self-regulation:

·        Don’t avoid hard situations, coach kids through tough situations

·        When a child acts out, encourage them to slow down and reflect with questions such as “what went wrong? How can we fix that for next time?”

·        Practicing mindfulness to focus on the present instead of the past or the future

Quiz

1 Infants are born with some primary emotions:

	True
	False

2 Emotions are long-lived:

	True
	False

3 When an individual reaches to the age of a child they no longer mimic their parents/caregivers emotions:

	True
	False

Conclusion

This chapter dives into the emotion processes that occur in the early stages of an individuals life.

What is emotional recognition, awareness and regulation?

Emotional recognition, awareness and regulation are vital components in gaining emotional competence and emotional stability in an individual. \

What are the key concepts of emotion in infants?

• Infants are born with some primary emotions and quickly gain knowledge of more emotions
• Infants gain emotional awareness and recognition through observation and experiences
• Infants are able to learn techniques such as self-soothing through being supported with self-regulation techniques

What are the key concepts of emotion in children?

• Children learn display rules of emotion with helps with their understanding of emotion and how to display and regulation their feelings
• Overtime and through observation children are able to grasp mental and reflective emotions
• The key components of helping children with emotional regulation is teaching how to identify and be aware of their emotions, learning their personal triggers and how best to manage the emotions when they arise

See also

• Affect regulation theory (Book chapter, 2019)
• Emotional intelligence and anti-social behaviour (Book chapter, 2019)
• Emotional self-efficacy (Book chapter, 2019)
• Empathy and forgiveness (Book chapter, 2019)

External links

• How to help children with emotional regulation
• Mindfulness ideas for children
• Signs of when your child may be stressed