Emotions and Developmental
Psychopathology
Huei-Lin Huang
2010/12/27
Reference:
Izard, C. E., Younstrom, E. A., Fine, S. E., Mostow, A. J., & Trentacosta, C. J.
(2006). Emotions and Developmental Psychopathology. In Cicchetto, D.
and Cohen, D. J. (Eds.). Developmental Psychopathology, second edition.
Volume 1: Theory and Method. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Outline
Approaches to the study of emotions and psychopathology
Emotion regulation and dysregulation and psychopathology
Neurobiological processes in emotion regulation and psychopathology
Individual and social processes in emotion regulation and
psychopathology
Causal processes in psychopathology
Emotion and the development of psychopathology in infancy and early
childhood
Emotion and depression
Externalizing behavior problems
Autism
Conclusion
Future directions
INTRODUCTION
A full understanding of the processes that lead to normal
development and psychopathology requires a multifaceted
approach
These disciplines range from molecular biology and
neurophysiology to social psychology and behavioral
ecology
The scope of research in these domains includes study of
neural, perceptual, cognitive, social, and overt
behavioral (action) processes
3
INTRODUCTION
Forces drive the processes of self-organization
Within and across neural, perceptualcognitive, and action systems adds
 Within the individual
 In individual-environment transaction
(Cicchetti & Tucker, 1994; Izard, Ackerman, Schoff, & Fine. 2000)
4
INTRODUCTION
Motivational process associated with emotions are
major players:
In self- organization within and across systems
In self-regulation
In determining the adaptiveness of developmental
trajectories
5
INTRODUCTION
Self-regulation:
The roots of psychopathology
 Attentional/cognitive regulation
 Emotion regulation
 Regulation at the neurobiological level
(Calkins & Fox, 2002; Posner & Rothbart, 2000)
6
INTRODUCTION
Functions of emotions:
Critical to survival and adaptation
Play a key role in goal-directed behavior
Dysfunction in any of the emotion systems (e.g.,
Interest, joy, sadness, anger, fear, shame, guilt) may
contribute to the development of psychopathology
(Izard, 1977; Lazarus, 1991)
7
INTRODUCTION
Executive function
Basic emotion to motivate a particular type of
cognition and action
Inherent capacity to motivate adaptive cognition
and action
 Person and contextual factors can alter this
capacity and prevent its realization
(Izard & Ackerman, 2000)
8
INTRODUCTION
Coordination of the components of emotion: to the
connections among the emotion, cognitive, and action systems-Lack of coordination among emotion components (e.g.,
Emotion arousal and feelings without emotion expression in
schizophrenia)
Maladaptive intersystem connections (e.g., Anger and
shame linked to aggression and violence in delinquent youth)
 Psychopathological processes :the role of emotions as
causes and consequences of psychopathology
 Poor inter- system connections: tend to vitiate the
inherently adaptive functions of emotions
(Ackerman, Abe, & Hard, 1998)
9
INTRODUCTION
Normative developmental tasks in the context of
personality and social functioning :
Coordinating emotion arousal
Emotion motivation
Nonverbal and verbal emotion expression
(Abe & Izard, L999a; Izard Et Al., 2000)
10
INTRODUCTION
Effective coordination of emotion processes depends on:
The intensity of the stimulus
The emotion-eliciting situation
The way the executive functions of emotions
The executive functions of the cognitive systems
Adaptive connections between the emotions and cognitive
systems
 For example, it might prove quite adaptive to suppress the
expression of anger feelings in response to provocative
remarks by a person in authority
11
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
An approach emphasizing the social functions of
emotion
(Keltner & Kring, 1998)
Emotions represent adaptations to problems in forming and
maintaining relationships
 Emotion expressions elicit responses from others
 Coordinating aspects of social interactions
 Emotion experiences gauge the significance of events and
responses in social contexts
Emotions provide a wealth of information relevant to
interpersonal interactions, conflict resolution, and
social adjustment
12
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Disturbances in emotion experience or expression impact
relationships negatively and contribute to various forms of
psychopathology
Deficits in approach-related emotion systems or motivation for
social contact contributes to depression
Diminished emotion expressivity to the uncoordinated social
interactions in schizophrenic individuals
Heightened fear and diminished positive emotion to social
phobia
Deficient emotion regulation to borderline personality
disorder
Emphasis on the problems created by deficits or limitations in
the social functions of emotions
13
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
The role of the social functions of emotions in
psychopathology
Intrapersonal functions of emotions
 In motivating and organizing the thought and
action involved in individual adjustment and
personality development and functioning
Emotion thresholds
Emotion-related personality factors
(Fredrickson, 2000, Izard, 2002; Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000)
14
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
A dimensional approach
(Kring & Bachorowski, 1999)
Two broad dimensions: approach and withdrawal
Theory rooted in neuropsychological research
(Davidson, 1992; Davidson & Tomarken, 1989; Gray, 1979, 1982. 1995)
15
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Persons with psychopathology (depression, anxiety
disorders, psychopathy, and schizophrenia)
Functions of emotions in remain comparable to
normal individuals
Deficits occur in any one of the components in
emotion processes: inability to achieve one or more
emotion functions in an adaptive fashion
Perception, experience, intensity, or display
16
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Behavior activation and behavioral inhibition Systems (Gray,
1978, 1995)
Approach and withdrawal motivation systems (Davidson, 1994)
Depression relates to deficits in the approach motivation system
(Depue, Krauss, & Spoont, 1987)
Anxiety disorders to disturbances in the withdrawal
motivation system (Barlow, 1988; Gray, 1978)
Psychopathy to dysfunction in both the approach/behavioral
activation system (strong) and withdrawal/inhibition system
(weak)
Schizophrenia to problems in both the activation/approach
systems and the inhibition/withdrawal systems (Fowles, 1994)
17
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Pathological conditions cannot be explained in terms of
dysfunction in a single motivation system, a single dimension of
emotionally, or a single component of emotion processes
Depression: combination of high negative affect and low
positive affect
Schizophrenia: a diminished emotion expression and
possibly diminished emotion experience as well (Earnst & KRING,
1999)
Psychopathy: a discordance between emotion experience
and its verbal articulation as well as disjunction between
components of the emotion process (Cleckley, 1941)
18
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
EMOTIONS AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Other approach:
Focused on the social functions of emotions( Keltner And Kring, 1998)
Emotionality as assessed in temperament and personality (Rothbart et al,
2000)
A framework of affective dimensions, Krrng And Bachorowski (1999)
Largely in relation to research on adults
Unique emotion characteristics or emotion-related cognitive or
behavioral do not correlates for each diagnostic category
Lack of disorder-specific emotion features may reflect the
underlying dimensional nature of psychopathology
 The fuzzy boundaries between the criteria that attempt to
separate categories of psychological disorders
19
The Present Approach to Understanding the
Role of Emotions in Psychopathology
20
Link the emotion systems functioning and nosological
categories
Individual functions of emotions and social
functions of emotions
Two types of functions do not constitute orthogonal sets of
emotion characteristics
Some functions of particular discrete emotions apparently
have more direct influence on personality or
individual functioning than on social functioning
 E.G., Individual- or self-oriented shame motivation
toward self-improvement (Tomkins, 1963)
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Stage-salient emotions
Adaptive functions (see Abe & Izard., 1999a, and Izard, 1991, for reviews)
 Healthy young infants:
 Smiling readily and frequently and at virtually
anyone who enters their perceptual field 
Growth-inducing social interaction and gain social
support
Dysadaptive and psychopathology (Abe & Izard. 1999b)
 Dysregulated, either under- or overregulated
 Toddlerhood:
 High- Intensity and frequent expressions of anger
and sadness 
 Neuroticism at age 3.5 years
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Emotion-Cognition Relations: Neuroscience
Basic processes
Brain systems can generate and sustain emotional
behavior in the absence of any cognition other than
perceptual discrimination (ledoux, Sakaguchi, & Reis, 1984)
Individual differences in modularity (Simons, Fitzgibbons, &
Fioriton, 1993)
What is the significance of modular and relatively
independent functioning of the emotion systems
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Nature of the perceptual, cognitive, or informationprocessing bias
characterizes aggressive children, psychopathic youth,
and adults with anxiety disorders (Crick & Dodge, 1994; mcnally,
1996; Schultz, hard, & Ackerman. 2000)
Bias signal dysfunction in brain systems concerned
mainly with perception, cognition, and information
processing associated with rational decision making
Deficit in emotion systems and emotion information
processing (Schultz et al., 2000)
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Emotion socialization
Signal problems in both emotion systems and cognitive
processes
The development of emotion-cognition relations can be
studied using “experiments in nature” (see Cicchetti,
2002)
In the research on children with Down syndrome,
autistic people, and children who have experienced
maltreatment
Both children with Down syndrome and children who
experienced maltreatment use fewer words to express
internal states, including words referring to emotion in
self and other
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Ability to express verbally one’s own and others’
feelings(Denham. 1998; Izard, 2002)
A hallmark of early emotional development
A predictor of later social competence
A normally developing children, internal state language
correlated with play behaviors, but this relation did not
hold for the children with Down syndrome (Beeghly & Cicchetti.
1997)
Intersystem connections emerge between cognitivelanguage abilities and socio-emotional regulatory
behaviors for normally developing children
Delayed and diminished for children with Down
syndrome
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Autism (Baron-Cohen, 2003)
Dissociation between emotion and cognition
 In brain imaging of people with Autism during an
emotion recognition task
Cognitive ‘systemizing” dominates and empathetic
processing is less prominent
Brain regions (Baron-Cohen et al., 1999)
 Cognitive processing (i.e., temporal lobes) show
increased activation
 Emotion-processing regions (i.e., amygdala) show
decreased activation
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Emergence of intersystem connections between emotion
and cognition
hallmark of normal emotional development
When these connections fail to develop, problem
behaviors are likely to emerge, even for children without
developmental disorders
In abusive and impoverished environments( Pollak,
Cicchetti, Klorman, & Brumaghim, 1997)
 Children who experience abuse show –
 Abnormal emotion-processing patterns
 Sensitivity to anger
o Adaptive in the home environment
o Maladaptive in other contexts (e.g., peer
interactions at school)
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Maltreated children’s problems (Beeghly & Cicchetti,
1997)
The delayed development of internal state language
Frequent experience of negative emotion
Sensitivity to anger cues
 Do not cohere with the cognitive ability to
communicate these experiences verbally
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Emotions, Culture, and Socialization Processes
Cultural factors and socialization
 Affect the way that emotions influence the development
of psychopathology and the emergence and meaning of
symptoms
Appraisals vary across cultures (Izard, 1971; Markus &
Kitayama, 1991; Matsumoto, 1990)
 Emotions
 Attitudes toward emotions
 Emotion labels
 Emotion concepts
 Emotion expressions
 Cause variations in the relations between emotions and
psychopathology
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Psychasthenic (Shweder, 1988)
Interchangeable diagnoses
Set of symptoms leads Chinese psychiatrists to
diagnose a patient as psychasthenic
Very similar set of symptoms and underlying
biochemical changes lead American psychiatrists
to diagnose the patient as depressive.
Cultural psychology
Psychasthenic patients in China
Have different affective-cognitive structures
Suffer in significantly different ways from depressives
in the United States
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Within cultures, variations in socialization practices
Individual differences in children’s ability to express and
regulate emotions
Socialization involving extreme forms of parent-child
interactions like abuse or maltreatment
Impede emotional development
Alter neurobiological stress-response systems
Increase the likelihood of psychopathology
(Cicchetti, 1990, 2002; Cicchetti & Rogoach, 2001a, 2001b; Shipman & Zeman, 2001)
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Expressing Emotion
Infancy:
 begin to develop a characteristic style of expressing
emotions
 the frequency of expression of various discrete
emotions tends to remain stable over time (Hyson &
Izard, 1985; Izard, Hembree, & Huebner, 1987)
toddlerhood
 expression styles predict expectable personality
characteristics
 neuroticism, at age 3.5 years (Abe & Izard, 1999b)
The Developmental Functions of Emotions
Expressing Emotion
later development:
emotion expression relate to many forms of psychopathology
attenuated or discordant expression in people at risk for
Schizophrenia (Simons et al., 1993)
prolonged expression of negative emotions (particularly sadness and
anger) in depression (Blumberg & hard. 1986)
dampened or developmentally delayed expression in Down Syndrome
Disorder (Cicchetti & Sroufe, 1976; Emde, Katz, & Thorpe, 1978)
inappropriate or incongruous expression in Autism (Sigman & Capps, 1997)
deceptive expression in psychopathy (Cleckley, 1941; Patrick, 1994)
expressions of particular emotions in certain conditions characterize
aggressive rejected children (Hubbard, 2001) and delinquent youth
(Keltner, Moffitt, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1995)
type of abuse that leads to a Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
(Bonanno et al., 2002)
Emotion Patterns
Emotion Patterns
Provocative situations typically elicit a pattern of discrete
emotions
whether real or imagined
different patterns of emotions characterize some
psychological disorders
Patterns of emotions are particularly evident in anxiety
and depression (Izard, 1972; Izard & Youngstrom, 1996)
patterns of emotions and the implications of co-occurring
emotions for emotion regulation and emotion motivation
help in understanding and treating emotions-related
problems (Izard, 2002)
help in discerning the roots of some forms of
psychopathology
Emotion Knowledge: Its Role in Emotion
Communication, Empathy, and Adaptive and
Maladaptive Behavior
Emotion communication
Plays a key role in social interactions and the development
of the attachment bond and other relationships (ainsworth,
blehar, waters, & wall, 1978; bowlby, 1969, 1973; hobson, 1995)
Before children acquire language, emotion
communication depends on facial, vocal, and postural
cues in expressive behavior (izard et al., 1995; zivin, 1986)
Soon after the beginning of language acquisition,
children use words to label and talk about their own
and others’ feelings (bretherton & beeghley-smith, 1982)
Verbal component of emotion communication grows
steadily in early childhood (dunn, bretherton, & munn, 1987; hard,
1971)
Emotion Knowledge: Its Role in Emotion
Communication, Empathy, and Adaptive and
Maladaptive Behavior
Emotion-related skills form the foundation for emotion
knowledge (izard, 2001) and the construct of emotional intelligence
(mayer & salovey, 1997)
Both before and after language acquisition, effective emotion
communication depends on the ability of the participants to
detect and respond in a meaningful fashion to each other’s
emotion signals
After language acquisition, both accurate emotion perception
and emotion labeling become critical in emotion
communication and essential to empathic responding and
prosocial behavior
 Deficits in emotion knowledge
 Low socioemotional and academic competence (denham,
1998; izard et al., 2001)
 With internalizing behavior (fine, izard, mostow, trentacosta, &
ackerman, 2003)
Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation
emotion regulation and attention regulation
the critical components of self-regulation
the key to adaptive psychological and neurobiological
functioning (Calkins & Fox, 2002; Posner & Rothbart, 2000)
Current theory and research indicate that the study of
each of these three broad interrelated constructs
requires a multilevel approach that considers
processes at the neural, emotional, and cognitive
levels (Cicchetti & Dawson. 2002).
Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation
Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation
emotion regulation for adaptive behavior
emotion dysregulation in maladaptive behavior and
psychopathology
Trauma
socioemotional deprivation
significant negative life events
child maltreatment
leads to emotion dysregulation and psychopathology
(Cicchetti & Lynch. 1995; Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2001b)
Inability to regulate emotionspreclude empathic or
prosocial responding (Eisenberg et al., 1996), a condition that
may characterize a number of psychological disorders
EMOTION REGULATION AND
DYSREGULATION AND
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
EMOTION REGULATION AND
DYSREGULATION AND
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
consider the number and complexity of the relevant
systems or components that contribute to the
management of emotions
emotion regulation in terms of combination of
cognitive, behavioral, and social processes (Folkman
& Lazarus, 1990; Kopp, 1989; Thompson, 1994;
Thompson & Calkins, 1996)
EMOTION REGULATION AND
DYSREGULATION AND
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
A researcher’s emphasis on one or more of these three types
of regulatory processes depends on his or her definition of
emotion
When researchers define emotions as cognition-dependent
phenomena, they focus on processes involved in the
deployment of attention, reinterpretation of the eliciting
event, and actions chat change the meaning of the personenvironment relationship (Folkman & Lazarus, 1990)
Approaches to emotion regulation that focus on cognitive,
behavioral, and social processes have addressed issues
relating to socioemotional competence and adaptive
behavior. They usually do not deal specifically with the role
of emotion regulation in psychopathology.
EMOTION REGULATION AND
DYSREGULATION AND
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
A few researchers concerned with emotion regulation
have recognized that it entails a multiplicity of systems
and domains of functioning
Key components of emotion regulation
Neurobiological systems
Traits of emotionality/temperament/personality
(e.g., emotion thresholds)
Cognitive processes
Interpersonal relationships
Intersystem interactions and connections
EMOTION REGULATION AND
DYSREGULATION AND
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Some of the regulatory processes of emotion
regulation proceed more or less automatically
and preconsciously (e.g., changes in brain and
neural systems that influence emotion activation
thresholds and responses to stress)
Other processes of emotion regulation, like those
dependent on executive functions of emotions
and cognition, occur in consciousness or can be
accessed reflectively.
EMOTION REGULATION AND
DYSREGULATION AND
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Executive functions of emotions consist of their
inherently motivational and goal-oriented qualities,
which may include action tendencies
All of these characteristics of emotion and the way they
play out in person-environment transactions affect
emotion regulation
Executive functions of cognition as it relates to
emotions
Attentional control
Consequent appraisal
Attributional processes that activate a particular emotion
Decision-making processes relating to coping strategies
(Posner & Rothbart, 2000)
Neurobiological Processes in Emotion
Regulation and Psychopathology
Three critical neurobiological system in emotion
regulation
prefrontal cortex (PFC), particularly as it relates to other
regulatory systems
hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system
the vagal (Xth cranial) nerve complex (VC) of the
autonomic nervous system (ANS)
mediated by the neurochemically specific pathways
(e.g., norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine,
serotonin)
project from the brain stem (Cicchetti & Tucker, 1994)
All three of the systems appear to have the capacity to
influence the threshold and intensity of emotion arousal
待續
Thank you for your attention!