Date of Award
2007
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Program
Psychology
Supervisor
Dr. J Bruce Morton
Abstract
There are striking individual differences in emotion development. Variations in emotion development have been associated with typical development as well as developmental psychopathology. While understanding emotional reactivity is important, the emergence of self-regulatory abilities is also critical in understanding emotion development. The interaction between emotional reactivity and self-regulation has an important influence on childhood psychological development. Current paradigms used to evaluate individual differences in attention to threat-related stimuli cannot clearly disentangle automatic and controlled processes that have been hypothesized to underlie performance. The main goal of the present research was to develop a means of disentangling automatic and controlled processing underlying children’s attention to threat-related stimuli, and to test the utility of the Quadruple Process Model for characterizing individual differences in children’s emotion processing. Results revealed group differences in automatic associations to fearful faces and neutral faces. Methodological considerations for future studies are discussed.
Recommended Citation
Burnham, Priscilla V., "DISENTANGLING AUTOMATIC AND CONTROLLED PROCESSES IN CHILDREN’S ATTENTION TO NEGATIVE EMOTION" (2007). Digitized Theses. 5044.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/5044
