Towards causal explanations of language mechanisms behind emotion development

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that language difficulties co-occur with social,emotional, and behavioural (SEB) difficulties in children (see St Clair et al., 2011; Levickis et al., 2018).However, the research literature has not yet uncovered the direct causal mechanisms behind this cooccurrence.To illustrate this, I will begin with an overview of key emotion theories that the existingco-occurrence studies have missed. I will then examine relevant language and emotion developmentresearch on the basis of (1) theoretical framework, (2) methodological rigour, (3) ecological validity ofprocedures, and (4) evidential value to real-world educational and clinical contexts. Finally, I willconclude with my reflection on the causality between language difficulties and SEB difficulties inchildren. To respect the preference of the communities I represent, I will use identity-first andemancipatory language (American Psychological Association, 2019; Bottema-Beutel et al., 2020; TheAlliance for Inclusive Education, 2021) wherever applicable throughout this paper.

Parent-Infant Interaction Tasks Adapted for Remote Testing: Strengths, Challenges, and Recommendations

The closure of in-person laboratories and decreased safety of face-to-face interactions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic jeopardized the ability of many developmental researchers to continue data collection during this time. Disruptions in data collection are particularly damaging to longitudinal studies, in which the testing of different age groups occurs on a continuous basis, and data loss at one time point can have cascading effects across subsequent time points and threaten the viability of the study. In an effort to continue collecting data for a longitudinal study on emotion development started in-person pre-pandemic, we adapted two parent-infant interaction tasks (free-play task and toy removal task) for a remote testing framework. Our procedure for pivoting these tasks to a supervised, remote online testing framework is outlined and the associated strengths and challenges of testing in this format (e.g., feasibility and implementation, testing environment and task setup validity, and accessibility, recruitment, and diversity) are critically evaluated. Considerations for applying this framework to other behavioral tasks are discussed and recommendations are provided.

God and emotions: Experience of emotive analysis

The present paper accentuates the importance of holistic views of the world that is relevant for text studies. The purpose of the study is to establish what language means representing emotions which are attributed to God by biblical characters are utilized, and, subsequently provide their classification. Based on the study of the theological interpretation of the antinomy ‘“the immutability of God” - the emotions of God”, the paper 1) introduces the concept of ‘attribution of emotions’ into the conceptual and terminological apparatus of emotiology thus explicating the specificity of biblical emotive meanings; 2) provides the analysis of the depicted biblical space in the emotive aspect; 3) gives the interpretation of biblical characters’ activity as a cause of emotions attributed to God. Central to the text analysis is the notion of the emotional script. This notion is instrumental in presenting the systemic description of emotion development, i.e. the cause of its origin and the corresponding reaction. The language material of the present study is taken from King James Bible. The methods employed in the study include the definitional, contextual, emotive, and lingua-stylistic analyses with references to the historical and cultural context. The outcomes of the present study include the identification of the lexical means of emotions and the following typology of such lexical units: 1) lexemes denoting the cause of emotions attributed to God; 2) lexemes denoting the emotions attributed to God; and 3) lexemes denoting the biblical space perceived by characters as a ‘reaction’ to emotions attributed to God. Given the theandric nature of Jesus Christ, the depicted emotions of His are treated as manifestations of His human nature. The results obtained have made it possible to fill in linguistic content into one of the antinomies of Christian understanding of God and to outline the prospect of further linguistic research on Christian dogmata from the perspective of emotivity.

ASD Toddlers Exhibit Impaired Development of Neural Systems That Respond to and Guide Mother-Child Interactions

Motherese is an experience-expectant, human-specific and innate form of parent speech that enhances social and language learning, and affect and emotion development in infants. An early sign of ASD is the child’s lack of responding to motherese and reduced social mother-child interactions. To learn why, we devised a novel experiment quantifying (a) neural responses to motherese and other emotion speech with sleep fMRI and (b) active behavioral preference for motherese with eye tracking in ASD and TD toddlers. We combined the power of diverse neural and clinical data types using Similarity Network Fusion to reveal four neural-clinical clusters. The ASD cluster with the weakest neural responses to motherese and the poorest social and language abilities had the lowest eye tracking attention to motherese, while the TD cluster with the strongest neural response to motherese showed the opposite effects. We conclude that the ASD child’s impairment in engaging in social mother-child interactions is due to impaired development of innate neural systems that normally respond to and guide behavior that maintains mother-child interactions.

Susceptibility in Development

Susceptibility in Development offers a novel approach to understanding power in development through theories of affect and emotion. Development agents—people tasked with designing or delivering development—are susceptible to being affected in ways that may derail or threaten their ‘sense of self’. This susceptibility is in direct relation to the capacity of others to affect development agents: an overlooked form of power. This book proposes a new analytical framework—the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected—to enable new readings of power relations and their consequences for development. These barely perceptible forms of power become visible through ethnographic attention to local level development. Susceptibility in Development offers a comparative ethnography of two types of local development agents: volunteers in a community development programme in Medan, Indonesia, and women municipal councillors in Dehradun, India. Ethnographic accounts that are attentive to the emotions and affects engendered in encounters between volunteers and ‘beneficiaries’, or municipal councillors and voters (for example) provide a fresh reading of the relations shaping local development. Local development agents may be more ‘susceptible’ than workers and volunteers from the global North, yet the capacity/susceptibility to affect/be affected orders relations and shapes outcomes of development from the local to the global. In theorizing from the local, Susceptibility in Development offers fresh insights into power dynamics in development.