Put It Together

It's All a Growing Process

With my project I used the terms love, happiness, and anger...all which relate to emotions. Each child responded differently to my verbal questions and reacted differently to the visual pictures. The older the children were, the more they related the words to relationships and everyday situations. In bringing everything together, I will now present recent studies of viewing emotion and cognition as dynamically linked and that they work together to process information and execute action (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1999), which all benefit from stimulating environments.

Cruise Ship Growing

"Regulatory aspects of development can best be understood by research that conceptualizes relations between cognition and emotion. The neural mechanisms associated with regulatory processes may be the same as those associated with higher order cognitive processes. Thus, from a developmental cognitive neuroscience perspective, emotion and cognition are dynamically linked and work together to process information and execute action." (Bell & Wolfe, 2004)

Cole, Martin, and Dennis noted in their Summary and Conclusions section that developmental research can be enriched by studies of the role of emotions in organizing a child’s thinking, learning, and action, and likewise by studies of the role of thinking, learning, and action in the regulating of emotions. (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004).

Diamonds 11

"There already may be some neurological support for this linkage. Recent cognitive neuroscience findings suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying emotion regulation may be the same as those underlying cognitive processes, specifically, higher order cognitive processes such as volitional sustained attention or working memory." (Bell & Wolfe, 2004)

Diamonds 11

It may be, however, that by supporting infants in the development of attentional skill, in part to relieve infant distress (Ruff & Rothbart,1996), caregivers are contributing to the attentional skills associated with later emotion regulation, as well as later complex cognitive processing.

"Emotion and cognition are an intricately bound developmental process." (Bell & Wolfe, 2004)

Indeed, there is the suggestion that cognition and emotion are integrated by school age (Blair, 2002).

"To consider emotion regulation without simultaneously considering cognition gives a less than dynamic view of child development." (Bell & Wolfe, 2004)

Developmental Psychology PY241

Dr.Harris

TF: Dr.Cara Diyanni
Spring 2006

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