emotional development in relation to typically growing children and in Autistic children.

1. Emotional
Development Mannat Sharma

2. Content
EMOTIONS FUNCTIONS OF EMOTIONS-
FUNCTIONALIST APPROACH
REGULATION AND
COMPETENCE
MILESTONES EMOTIONS IN AUTISM

3. EMOTION
• Emotion is a rapid appraisal of the personal significance of the
situation, which prepares you for action.
For example-
o Happiness leads you to approach
o Sadness to passively withdraw
o Fear to actively move away
o 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.
(Campos, Frankel, & Camras, 2004; Saarni et al., 2006)

4. Functionalist
approach
• The functionalist approach emphasizes
that the broad function of emotions is to
energize behavior aimed at attaining
personal goals.
• Functionalist theorists believe that
emotions are central in all our endeavors:
-cognitive processing
-social behavior
-physical health.

5. Functionalist
approach cont.
• Emotions and Cognitive Processing :
-Emotional reactions can lead to learning that is essential
for survival.
• Emotions and Social Behavior:
-Children’s emotional signals, such as smiling, crying, and
attentive interest, powerfully affect the behavior of others.
-The emotional reactions of others regulate children’s
social behavior.

6. Emotional Competence & Self-Regulation
Emotional
competence
involves-
Awareness of one’s
emotional states
Detecting others’
emotions
Using vocabulary of
emotion in socially
and culturally
appropriate ways.
Having empathic
and sympathetic
sensitivity to
others’ experiences
Adaptively coping
with negative
emotions
Awareness that
emotional
expression plays a
role in relationships
Viewing oneself
overall as feeling
the way one wants
to feel.

7. Self Regulation
Ability to regulate or
control one's emotions.
Other abilities contributing to self
regulations are:
-Attention focusing and shifting.
-The ability to inhibit thoughts and
behavior
-Planning
-Actively taking steps to relieve a
stressful situation
(Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2004;
Thompson & Goodvin, 2007).

8. Milestones of Emotional Development
AGE EMOTIONAL EXPRESSIVENESS EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING
Birth–6 months • Social smile emergence
• Laughter appears
• Expressions of happiness increase when
interacting with familiar people
• Emotional expressions gradually become
organized signals that are meaningfully
related to environmental events
Detects emotions by matching the
caregiver’s feeling tone in face-to-face
communication
7–12 months • Anger and fear increase in frequency and
intensity
• Uses caregiver as a secure base
• Regulates emotion by approaching and
retreating from stimulation
Detects the meaning of others’ emotional
signals
Engages in social referencing
1–2 years • Self-conscious emotions emerge but
depend on monitoring and
encouragement of adults
• Begins to use language to assist with
emotional self- regulation
Begins to appreciate that others’
emotional reactions may differ from one’s
own
Acquires a vocabulary of emotional terms
Displays empathy

9. 3–6 years • Self-conscious emotions are clearly linked to self-
evaluation
• As representation and language improve, uses
active strategies for regulating emotion
• Begins to conform to emotional display rules; can
pose a positive emotion he or she does not feel
• Understanding of causes,
consequences, and behavioral
signs of emotion improves in
accuracy and complexity
• As language develops, empathy
becomes more reflective
7–11 years • Self-conscious emotions are integrated with inner
standards of excellence and good behavior
• Uses internal strategies for engaging in emotional
self-regulation; shifts adaptively between problem
centered and emotion-centered coping
• Conformity to and conscious awareness of
emotional display rules improve
• Can reconcile conflicting cues
when explaining others’
emotions
• Is aware that people can have
mixed feelings and that their
expressions may not reflect
their true feelings
• Empathy increases as emotional
understanding and perspective
taking improve

10. Emotions in Autism

11. Social Referencing
Normal Development
9 months-10 months:
• Sharing and guiding attention
• Declarative pointing
Autism with ID
1-2 years:
• Makes eye contact
• Shows social smile and responds to name
• looks less at others than ND
• little shared attention and language use -
2-5 years:
• Points imperatively but limited
declarative pointing.
9-11 years:
• lacks spontaneous social referencing

12. Expressing Emotions
Normal Development
• 1st month:
Expression of basic emotions and
social smile
Autism with ID
• 3-6 years:
More flat/neutral and ambiguous
expressions
• 5-11 years:
Equal number of emotional
expressions during interactions,
more neutral and incongruent
expressions than ND

13. Perceiving Human Faces
Normal Development
• 1st month:
Preference of human over
nonhuman stimuli.
Child can imitate facial emotional
expressions.
Autism with ID
Looks less at other peoples faces
• 4-11 years:
Poor identification and memory of
faces
• 8-19 years:
Equally able as ND to identify
faces

14. Perceiving Emotional Expressions
Normal Development
• 1st month:
Recognition of facial emotional
expressions
• 8-14 years:
Attends more to eye than mouth
region
Autism with ID
• 3-5 years:
Attends to negative emotions more
than to neutral expressions, but less
than ND
• 4-7 years:
Less interested in social- than non-
social stimuli.
• 5-15 years:
Poor matching of emotional
expressions of others

15. Responding to Emotions
Normal Development
• 1st month:
Imitates facial emotional
expressions.
• 2-5 years:
-Appropriate response to emotional
expressions of other people
-Ability to differentiate between
external expression and internal
experience of emotions
Autism with ID
• 5-6 years:
Less positive expressions during
social interactions, more during play
with objects
• 9-11 years:
little attention to distress in others

16. Understanding Emotions
Normal development
• 1st year:
Relates emotions to external events,
attends to caregivers’ emotions to guide
own action
2 -3 years:
-Active involvements with emotions of
others’ (teasing, comforting), comment
adequately on own and others’
emotions.
-Connects emotions to external events
Autism with ID
• 10-20 years:
Understands emotions resulting from
situations and desires, but not from
beliefs.

17. Complex Emotions
Normal Development
• 10 to 12 years:
Understanding and use of
complex emotions
Autism with ID
• 4-6 years:
Enjoys mastery of skill, but shows
no pride in mastery