Summary Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Summary Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology


Week 1 – Emotion theories
What is emotion and why do we have them?;
Emotion; direct link with specific event/situation
Mood state; not linked to specific situation, unclear cause, longer duration, lower intensity
Scherer;
- Physiological arousal
- Motor expression
- Cognitive processing/appraisal
- Action tendencies
- Subjective feelings
all have effect on social cognitions, attitudes and social interactions
has effect on contagious emotions; passing a felt emotion over to others (e.g. laughter or
yawning)
James-Lange theory:
peripheral position; focus on somatic and autonomous nervous system
perception of event > physical sensation/arousal > emotion/subjective feeling
>>emotion is awareness of bodily changes
Emotional reaction triad:
Emotion has three constructs: feelings, neurophysiological responses and motor expressions
action tendency is behavioural consequence
cognitive component for evaluative information processing; appraisal; cognitive
interpretation of event
physiological and psychological components interact with each other during emotion
episode
Evolutionary perspectives;
emotions are adaptive and help regulate interactions; belonging to group helps survival
emotions function as social signalling system and leads to action, tells something is
meaningful, stronger emotion is more important
emotions have latency time, which causes a better evaluation of the situation, thus more
behavioural flexibility than other stimulus-response reactions and stronger influence on
motivation
information processing involves hot cognition; emotional responses that help evaluate
relevant and irrelevant stimuli

, feelings as a monitor of evaluation and appraisal of environment, physical changes and
action tendencies
Schachter-Singer theory;
non-specific physiological arousal combined with situational factors to differentiate
emotions:
- Perception of arousal; arousal is always the same
- Cognitions: leads to label of the emotion, influenced by context; interpretation
Appraisal theory; (Lazarus)
- Primary appraisal (fun/dislike, helps/hinders achievement of goals); automatic, focus
on event, physiological arousal, prepares for action, followed by latency time
- Secondary appraisal (extent to which person can cope with consequences, given his
competences, resources and strength); evaluate with previous experiences, abilities,
strategy, response, emotion
emotion is reflection on process; fight (anger) or flight (fear)
>> Cultural and individual differences in appraisal (e.g. socialism vs individualism), causes
differences in emotional response
Tomkins; theory of discrete emotions: neural programs control certain emotion and
associated facial expression and motor skills


Motor expressions;
 Facial expressions; universal, only small differences between cultures due to cultural
desirability/display rules
 Vocal expressions; partly universal, even with language differences, proofs partial
biological basis of emotions
 Manipulation of expression; control or strategic: from cultural and strategic point of
view it is appropriate to control emotion expression (e.g. display rules or
manipulation)
 Physiological changes; provides energy (not to communicate) to be prepared for
action, specific in fear and anger; functional
 Subjective feelings; conscious experience about processes in body
 Dimensions of feeling; (Wundt) three-dimensional system:
o Excitement – depression
o Tension – relaxation
o Pleasant – unpleasant
 Verbal labelling of feelings; emotions are socially structured, and are thus influenced
by culture and other factors


Interaction of emotion components;