Emotional responsivity

Emotional responsivity refers to the ability to acknowledge an affective stimuli by exhibiting emotion. Any response, whether it is appropriate or not, would showcase the presence of this phenomena. Although emotional responsivity is a general term that is applied to nonclinical populations, it has also been associated with individuals with schizophrenia and autism.

Emotional responsivity is said to have a unique association with social interaction. Studies suggest that social interaction, especially at home, can influence the way a child responds to emotional stimuli. For example, if child grew up in a home where emotional displays resulted in punishment or negative criticism, the child would have the tendency to find ways to hide their emotions.

Measures of emotional responsivity

In experimental studies, emotional responsivity can be measured through various tasks, which would allow participants' facial expressions and behavior to be recorded and sometimes coded. Tasks used to measure emotional responsivity, particularly in children, include:

• Facial stimuli: This task involves asking a participant to view pictures of human faces that display different facial expressions. Participants would then be asked to rate their emotional experience.The facial expression would be considered the affective stimuli.
• Surprise Boxes: This task involves an experimenter opening a box in front of a participant, usually a child, and displaying either an amazed reaction, by saying "ohh" or, a frightened reaction, by saying "ahh."
• Experimenter Distress: In this task, the experimenter bangs his or her knee, displaying distress
• Yummy Yucky: In this task, a child is asked to eat a certain food that was chosen by his or her parent. An experimenter then tastes the chosen food and either displays a pleased or disgusted facial expression.

Emotional responsivity can also be examined through psycho-physiological approaches such as:

• Facial electromyography
• Skin conductance