Emotion, Temperament, and Personality Development

Emotional development

Sarah Hardy: “What makes us human rather than just apes is the capacity to combine intelligence with articulate empathy”

Emotion: the subjective reaction that we experience in response to some environmental stimulus

Some important distinctions/components:

 Emotion is more than a behavioral response

E.g., a smile doesn’t always mean that the person is happy
 Facial expressions are not the only way to read emotions
We can recognize emotions through voice and body language, etc.
 Emotions are not independent of cognition
Emotions are different depending on how we interpret the situation
 Each emotion is actually a palette of emotions
The number of emotions we can express is unlimited (Kagan, Tooby, & Cosmides)
 Emotions are not expressed one after another in a discrete manner, but are sometimes mixed
E.g., infants can express anger and fear simultaneously, and older children can express both joy and fear at the same time

The Scientific Study of Emotions

First theory and scientific study came from Charles Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872)

Proposed that facial expressions and emotions seen in both humans and animals were based on a common physiological system
(same biological mechanisms)

Functionalist perspective: extends Darwin’s ideas, viewing emotions as playing an adaptive role, helping individuals to achieve goals
related to survival
Discrete emotion theory: basic emotions are innate and associated with distinctive bodily and facial reactions

Major Aspects of Emotional Development

Primary emotions: emotions that emerge during 1st year of life
Secondary (self-conscious) emotions: emotions that emerge during 2nd year of life or later

Four aspects of emotional development:

1. Emotional expression
2. Emotional recognition
3. Emotional understanding
4. Emotional self-regulation

Major Aspects of Emotional Development

Aspect Description Developmental Milestone
Emotional Ability to express 1st year: primary emotions
expression clearly different • At birth: disinterest, interest, disgust
emotions • 1-3 months: joy
• 3-6 months: anger, sadness, surprise
• 6-8 months: fear
nd
2 year: secondary emotions
• 18-24 months: empathy, envy/jealousy
• 30-36 months: pride, guilt, shame, hubris
Emotional Ability to 3 months: sensitivity to abrupt emotional caregiver changes
recognition recognize/become 6 months: (implicit) recognition of all basic emotions
aware of emotions 12 months: social referencing (modeling reactions on the basis of the recognition of
others’ reactions)
Emotional Ability to verbally 3-5 years old: public aspects of emotions
understanding label and comprehend • (explicit) recognition and naming of emotional expressions
use of emotions in • How external causes affect others’ emotions
themselves and others • The impact of reminders on emotions
7 years old: mentalistic nature of emotions
• Role of desire and belief in emotions
• Discrepancy between expressed and felt emotions
9-11 years old: complexity of individual emotional behavior
• Mixed nature of emotions
• Relationship between morality and emotions
• Role of cognition in emotional regulation
 Emotional self- Ability to control one’s st
1 year: ability to regulate some disturbing input
regulation emotional expressions
rd
3 year: ability to hide real emotions
5-11 years: increasing ability to self-regulate emotional stress

 Emotions during adolescence

= Dramatic physical and image changes in adolescents causes challenges in their psychological well-being and social
relations (parents, particularly)
= Adolescents experience more negative emotions on average than children
= They experience more positive emotions through interactions with peers rather than their parents (Csikszentmihalyi &
Larson)
= Emotional autonomy: subjective sense of independence, esp. in relation to parents/parental figures
= Internalizing problems: affect the people experiencing (“internalized”) them and include anxiety disorders, depression,
eating disorders, etc.
= Externalizing problems: reflected by “acting out,” such that behavior adversely affects other people
= Oppositional defiant behavior: a problem in childhood characterized by defiant, uncooperative, and hostile behavior
toward adults

= Conduct disorder: characterized by different types of antisocial behaviors (e.g., aggression, vandalism, and theft)

Development of Temperament

Temperament: refers to personality in infants and young children

Studies/models on temperamental development

= Thomas and Chess
= Rothbart et al

Studies/models on temperamental development

= Thomas and Chess
Easy babies: have regular patterns of eating, sleeping, and toileting; have positive mood in general; eager to approach
objects and people; easily adjusts to new situations; low-intensity reaction to events
Difficult babies: unpredictable, with generally negative moods; have difficulties in adjusting; high-intensity reaction
Slow-to-warm-up babies: slow pattern of reaction; difficulty in adjustment; tendency to withdraw in a novel situation; low
in activity

Rothbart Et Al: Dimensions of Temperament In Infancy

Broad factors Narrow dimensions

Negative emotionality
Surgency/extraversion (positive affect and activity)
Orienting/regulation (associated with effortful control;
capacity to inhibit a dominant response and reorient
attention to another goal)
Fear, frustration/irritability, sadness, falling reactivity
Approach, vocal reactivity, high-intensity pleasure,
smiling and laughter, activity level, perceptual sensitivity
Low-intensity pleasure, duration of orienting, cuddliness,
soothability

Development of Personality
 Personality: reliable behavioral traits describing an individual’s interaction with the world
– Biologically-based
– Observable early in life
– Stable over time

The Five-Factor Model of Personality

Factor Description Lower-order traits

Extraversion Varying tendencies to be involved 1. Social inhibition/shyness
to the world around them 2. Sociability
3. Dominance
4. Energy/activity level
Neuroticism Susceptibility to negative 1. Anxious/fearful distress
emotions 2. Irritable distress
Conscientiousness Varying capacities for behavioral 1. Self-control
and cognitive control 2. Attention
3. Achievement motivation
4. Orderliness
5. Responsibility
6. Conventionality
 Agreeableness Variety of traits that foster 1. Antagonism
congenial relationships with 2. Prosocial tendencies
others 3. Cynicism/alienation
Openness-to-experience How original, creative, 1. Openness
aesthetically sensitive, 2. Intellect
knowledgeable, and curious
individuals are

Risk-taking
= engaging in behaviors that can result in harm to the individual
– More frequent in boys than girls in all ages
– Increases over in childhood and into adolescence, decreases in early adulthood
Factors:
= Peer pressure
= Psychobiological development
Personal fable: a belief in one’s uniqueness and invulnerability
Heritability and stability of temperament and personality
 Temperament and personality are moderately heritable and emerge relatively early depending on the particular trait
 Temperament and personality are moderately stable, with stability increasing with age

Intelligence and School Achievement

Intelligence Tests and Testing

Intelligence as defined by Robert Sternberg is the mental activities necessary for adaptation to, as well as shaping and
selecting of, any environmental context. It is not just reactive to the environment but also active in forming it. It
offers people an opportunity to respond flexibly to challenging situations.

Psychometric approach – an approach to cognition that assumes that intelligence and other cognitive abilities can be
described in terms of a series of mental factors, then, in turn, can be assessed by standardized tests.

J.P. Guilford’s theory – there are 180 unique intellectual factors

Charles Spearman’s theory – proposed that intelligence can best be described in terms of a single factor
Raymond Cattell – proposed that intelligence can be divided into fluid and crystallized abilities
Intelligence is composed of specific cognitive abilities (verbal abilities, spatial abilities, speed of processing, memory) that are
intercorrelated and influenced by a higher-order general intellectual factor, g.

IQ Test – tests whose main purpose is to provide an index (intelligence quotient) that quantifies intelligence level

Wechsler scales – individually administered IQ tests, including the WPPSI (for children 2-7 y/o), the WISC (for children 6-16 y/o),
and the WAIS (for adults)

Standford-Binet – an individually administered IQ test for people two years old to adulthood

Some of the More Widely Used Intelligence Tests for Children

Infancy Intelligence Tests

1. Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development

2. Gesell Developmental Schedules
3. Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale

Childhood Intelligence Tests

1. Weschler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI)

2. Weschler Scale of Intelligence for Children (WISC)
3. Stanfod-Binet Scale
4. The Ravens Progressive Matrices
 The relationship between schooling and IQ (Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams)

1. There is a strong, positive correlation between years of education and IQ (.60 or higher)
2. There is a small but significant drop in children’s IQs over summer vacation
3. Children who attend school intermittently have lower IQs than children who attend school regularly
4. Children who start school late have lower IQs than children who start school on schedule
5. Quality of schooling is related to IQ, with children attending better-quality schools having higher IQs
6. People who drop out of school early have lower IQs than people who stay in school

People with higher-status jobs have higher IQs than people with lower-status jobs.
Childhood IQ is positively related with longevity and better health.

Stereotype threat – phenomenon in which minority members perform worse on IQ or other tests after being reminded of the
negative stereotype concerning their groups’ performance on such tests

Although IQ tests may be a good measure of intellectual abilities for children from the majority culture, they are not an adequate
test of intelligence for children from minority homes.

To improve assessment of minority children with IQ and other standardized tests, psychologist Dalton Miller-Jones made several
recommendations:

1. When assessing any area of intelligence, it is important to specify the cognitive processes that might be involved in the task
or elicited by the stimuli.
2. Multiple tasks with different materials should be used with the same individual.
3. Tests must be appropriate for the culture from which the child comes.
4. The connection must be validated between the cognitive operations assessed by a test and the attainment of school-related
concepts such as arithmetic and reading.
5. Procedures must be developed that permit an examiner to probe for the reasoning behind a child’s answers.

Pygmalion effect – a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, in which a person internalizes the expectations of an authority figure

Five critical questions and answers about IQ

1. What is IQ? – an index / indicator of human intelligence; it is associated with many information-processing skills
2. How it is calculated? – it is based on a normal curve, with an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15
3. What does IQ predict? – academic performance, occupational status, longevity and better health
4. Is IQ stable over time? – IQ tends to highly stable over childhood into young adulthood; infancy DQ and childhood IQ are
not highly correlated, although measures of habituation and preference for novelty from infancy correlate significantly with
childhood IQ
5. What are the main concerns about IQ? – IQ discriminates against minority-group children; Is IQ an adequate measure of
human intelligence?

Flynn Effect – the systematic increase in IQ scores (about 5-9 points per decade) observed over 20 th century

Alternative Approaches to the Development of Intelligence

1. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence – describes intelligence in terms of three subtheories or types of intelligence
a. Contextual (practical) – intelligence must be viewed in the context in which it occurs
i. Adaptation – adjusting one’s behavior to obtain a good fit with one’s environment
ii. Selection – the selection of environments in which to interact
iii. Shaping – the ability to modify, or shape, the behavior of others
b. Experiential (creative) – examines how people deal with novel information and the extent to which they are able
to automatize certain processes
c. Componential (analytic) – a set of information-processing mechanisms that can be used in any environmental
context or culture

2. Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences – postulating eight (8) components, or modules, of intelligence
a. Linguistic – sensitive to meaning and order of words
b. Logical-mathematical – ability to reason logically and recognize patterns and order
c. Musical – sensitivity to pitch, melody, rhythm, and tone
d. Spatial – ability to perceive physical environment accurately and to recreate or transform aspects of that
environment
e. Bodily-kinesthetic – ability to use one’s body skillfully and handle objects adroitly
f. Interpersonal – ability to understand people and relationships
g. Intrapersonal – access to one’s emotional life as a means to understand oneself and others
h. Naturalistic – individuals who exhibit the proclivity to pose (and ponder) questions about life, death, and ultimate
realities
 Gardner’s Criteria for Intelligence

1. Potential isolation by brain damage

2. An evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility
3. An identifiable core operation or set of operations
4. Susceptibility to encoding in a system
5. A distinctive developmental progression, along with a definable set of expert end-state performances
6. The existence of savants and prodigies
7. Support from experimental psychological tasks
8. Support from psychometric findings

Origins of Individual Differences

1. Genes and environment
2. Intellectual competency
a. Institutionalized children – children living in overcrowded, understaffed institutions show significant intellectual
impairment, especially if they are not removed and placed in more supportive environments before their second
birthdays
b. Children at risk
i. Biologically at-risk infants being the most susceptible to the effects of unresponsive parenting
ii. Children growing up in emotionally supportive homes and receiving cognitively rich experiences tend to
have higher IQs than children growing up in homes that provide less intellectual stimulation
iii. The greater the number of risk factors, such as low family income and father absence, the lower children’s
IQs tended to be.
c. Preschool compensatory education – programs designed to provide preschool children from low-income homes
with the intellectual skills necessary to perform well in primary school

Intelligence at the Extremes

1. Intellectual impairment – a lower-than-average level of intelligence as measured by IQ tests
a. Organic – people whose impairment can be traced to specific biological factors
b. Cultural familial – individuals who show no identifiable organic reason for their lower intellectual levels
* The cognitive test performance of people with intellectual impairment, such as those with Down syndrome, tends to
be more similar than for people with typical intelligence
2. Gifted intelligence – children with IQ’s two standard deviations above the mean

The Three Rs: Acquiring Society’s Core Academic Skills

1. Reading – based on the biological primary abilities associated with language and is an evolutionarily novel activity
a. Matthew effect – the phenomenon in which the difference between good and poor readers (or other cognitive
abilities) increases over time
b. Some important emergent literacy skills and knowledge
i. Language – children need to be versatile with their spoken language before they can be expected to read
it
ii. Conventions of print – knowledge of some of the basics of how print is organized for reading
iii. Knowledge of letters – reciting and identifying ABCs before entering school
iv. Linguistic awareness – identifying linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, and words
v. Phoneme-grapheme correspondence – letter sounds
vi. Emergent reading – pretend to read
vii. Emergent writing – pretend to write
viii. Print motivation – children who are interested in reading and writing are more likely to notice print, ask
questions about print, encourage adults to read to them, and spend more time reading once they are able
c. Dyslexia – difficulty in learning to read despite having an average level of intelligence and good educational
opportunities

2. Writing – “second order symbolism” or becoming aware that written symbols represent oral language symbols that, in turn,
represent real objects and people in the world

3. Arithmetic
a. Sum strategy – an addition strategy used by young children that involves counting together the two addends (that
is, one after the other) of a problem
b. Min strategy – an arithmetic strategy in which children faced with an addition problem start with the largest
addend and count up from there
c. Fact retrieval - the retrieval of a fact directly from long-term memory without using effortful procedures
* Unschooled children who sell things on the street for a living are able to make arithmetic computations better when
the problem is presented as a business transaction than as a school-type problem
d. Math disabilities
 i. Children with math disability tend to use less-sophisticated arithmetic strategies and show poorer
knowledge of counting rules than typically developing children
ii. Many children with math disability use fact retrieval less often when solving simple arithmetic problems,
and when they do, they are often wrong

Glossary

Biologically primary abilities – cognitive abilities that have been selected for in evolution, are acquired universally, and children
typically have high motivation to perform tasks involving them, such as language

Biologically secondary abilities – cognitive abilities that build on biologically primary abilities but are principally cultural inventions,
and often-tedious repetition and external motivation are necessary for their mastery, such as reading

Cumulative deficit effect – the phenomenon by which multiple risks persisting over many years add up, resulting in children who
display deficits in social, emotional, and cognitive functioning

Crystallized abilities – intellectual abilities that develop from cultural context and learning experience

Fluid abilities – intellectual abilities that are biologically determined and reflected in tests of memory span and spatial thinking

General intelligence (g) – in psychometric theory, the idea that intelligence can be expressed in terms of a single factor, called g

Hierarchical model of cognitive abilities – the model that proposes that intelligence is composed of specific cognitive abilities (for
example, verbal, spatial, sped of processing, memory) that are intercorrelated and influenced by a higher-order general intellectual
factor, g

Phonemic awareness – the knowledge that words consist of separable sounds

Phonics – reading instruction method based on learning letter-sound correspondence

Phonological recoding – reading skills used to translate written symbols into sounds and words

Prodigy – a child with generally typical abilities in all but small number of areas (usually one), in which he or she displays precocious
talent

Positive manifold – the high correlations among scores on sets of cognitive tests that have little in common with one another in
terms of content or types of strategies used

Whole-language approach – a top-down approach to teaching reading that emphasizes the readers’ active
construction of meaning