Reading Response for 02/21/07

Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt
The Feeling Brain



This week’s reading focused less on emotions as physical expressions and discussed emotions as more conscious, socially influenced, and subjective experiences. These articles focused on emotional experience verses emotional states, and made a clear distinction between the two. An emotional state is a response to a stimulus that causes physical arousal and can often be un-conscious. An emotional experience is the internalization of a feeling and simultaneously connecting that feeling to a situation, event, or stimulus and is a conscious act that requires a sense of personal awareness. Ito have an emotional experiences knowledge of the self is required, and is implicit in a statement such as ‘I am happy’.
Michael Lewis, Paul Harris, and Daniel J. Siegel focus on identifying various stages of emotional transformation and development that accompany the maturation process. In isolating various stages of emotional development and factors that influence those stages, physiologists and biologists can better understand what is involved in internal, emotional representation. Emotional experiences and stages of self-awareness become more complex as we develop, and are strongly influenced by social interaction and parental care.
From birth to adulthood our emotional expressions change drastically. In the course of three years (from birth to age three) an infant will undergo a tremendous amount of emotional growth, and at each stage of development identifying an ‘emotional elicitor’ becomes increasingly complicated. Michael Lewis identifies three stages of emotional development in infants in his piece, “The Emergence of Human Emotions.” Lewis looks to emotional elicitors, stimulus that triggers an emotional state in and individual, to distinguish between stages of our emotional development. Emotional elicitors are autonomic and adaptive connections to emotions (i.e., food eliciting the feeling of happiness when we are hungry) and are also learned associations (Lewis, 2000). Emotional states can be triggered automatically and have an adaptive function (fear response to a predator). However, emotional states also arise from specific cognitive functions. The best example of this, as described in Lewis’ work, was the difference between a fear of falling downstairs verses a fear of failing a test. The latter is an emotional response to a specific cognitive process. The fear of failing is a conscious thought that can lead to a very specific emotional state.
As an infant matures his or her emotional elicitors become more and more complex. At the age of six months infants display six primary or early emotions: Contentment, Joy, Interest, Surprise, and Distrust, Anger/Fear. By 18 months emotional reactions are influenced by more conscious, “self referential behavior”, which give way to feelings such as embarrassment, empathy, and envy. These are known as “self-conscious emotions” (Lewis, 2000). The second major shift in emotional expression occurs between 2 ½ and 3 years of age. This “cognitive milestone” is characterized by a child’s capacity to evaluate their behavior to that of a learned standard. This is the point at which children evaluate their behavior relative to external expectations, for example, one can feel ashamed at failing a test and that feeling is produced because personal performance doesn’t live up to an outside expectation (that of a parent or a teacher). This stage is coined “self-conscious evaluative emotions”. Lewis’ work established a fascinating way in which to approach emotions as subjective states that develop as we do.
With a sense of self-consciousness and self-awareness children are able not only to understand their own emotional states, but they are able to make inferences about the states of others. This ability is coined ‘theory of mind’ or ‘mindsight’ and is discussed in Paul Harris and Daniel Siegel’s work. Paul Harris in, “Understanding Emotion”, looks at various stages of emotional understanding when children can identify their own emotional as well as those of others. Harris focused on the influence of family discussion in shaping an individual’s ability to recognize his or her own emotions. Social and familial care can greatly affect the way one relates, understands, and identifies an emotional experience: “parental attitudes and conversation have primary impact on the child’s own emotional life, which has in turn a beneficial effect on the child’s acknowledgement and understanding of emotion” (Harris, 2000). In a study conducted by Stelle, Steele, Croft, and Fonagy (1999), as discussed by Harris, called the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) a correlation between parental communicative ability and a child’s subsequent ability to discuss emotions concluding that, “children’s understanding of emotion is prompted in a relatively direct fashion by the conversational styles of their parent” (Harris, 2000). Harris’s work explores how parental communication and care can affect a child’s ability to recognize and talk about emotions.
Like Lewis, Daniel Siegel distinguishes between varying levels of emotions growth that correlate with our physical maturation. In “Toward An Interpersonal Neurobiology of the Developing Mind: Attachment Relationships, ‘Mindsight,’ and Neural Integration”, Siegel explores the evolution of the self, and how self-consciousness correlates to emotional understanding and expression. Siegel argues that as we mature we are constantly developing emotionally, and this growth continues throughout our lifetime. As children we pass through many stages of awareness and emotional expression: “emerging self” (after birth- taking in sensory data), “core self”, subjective self” (self and self other, including sharing with others and emotions between a child and a caregiver), “verbal self” and “narrative self”. The concept of passing through different stages of emotional maturity is fascinating and I think it compliment’s Lewis’s work well. Siegel views emotions as “complex layers of processes (such as appraisal or the evolution of meaning, and physical changes (such as endocrine, autonomic, and physiological)”. For every emotional reaction there is also a subjective response; and the two are intrinsically connected.
The subjective quality of emotional experience is an interesting and simultaneously complicated subject. As humans, we move through certain stages of emotional development, yet those stages are influenced by our individual experiences and environment. In thinking and in remembering we can bring about a change in our physical state; in understanding more about ourselves we can also infer more about others around us. Subjectivity itself is a universal quality of human emotion— our emotional experiences are deeply unique, yet at the same time, our emotional experiences connect us. We can understand each other because we understand ourselves.