Emotions

William James theory of emotions states that within human beings, as a response to experiences in the world, the autonomic nervous system creates physiological events such as muscular tension, a rise in heart rate, perspiration, and dryness of the mouth. Emotions, then, are feelings which come about as a result of these physiological changes, rather than being their cause.

Based on moods and life experiences as well as the current contextual limitations of the living conditions, it is true that emotions are adaptive. Cognitively and affectively emotions will be adaptive when anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise and sadness cannot be expressed openly.
Dimensional view of emotions refer to the way in which different emotions will have cognitive and behavioral consequences.
Categorical view of emotions will have different effects in situational outcomes in judgments in case of for instance, anger and sadness.
Discrete emotions that are universal ( sadness, disgust, anger, sadness, fear, happiness) and therefore their affect and facial expressions are quiet discernible.

In the continuum of emotions, reflexive and involuntary responses serve as a buffer and a way to let out the pent in emotions. An example is when someone flicks their eyes, if some foreign object goes into the eyes. Similarly, as inwardly as emotions are contain in the human heart, their involuntary expression does become vividly obvious when someone who is hurt is un-stoppably weeping. Even a child can discern the hurt in the weeping eyes of a mom, is he/ she see that mom is hurt and is weeping. Same is true for little babies, if their emotions are not understood, they will become reactive and response in other ways.

Scripts and their relevance to emotional development: Scripts are like schema. They help in the efficiency in adjusting the affective and cognitive energies of the individual in social interactive situations. The scripts are relevant to human emotions, as they prepare the human being as social organisms to act according to the demands of the situation in which they are.

Sympathetic Nervous System is part of autonomic nervous system and is responsible for all the behaviors and feelings or bodily changes that accompany the fight-flight response in the organism. Certain neuron transmitters guide as activators of specific sympathetic nervous activation that makes the body prepare itself for the oncoming stresses.

In physiological terms, the parasympathetic system is concerned with conservation and restoration of energy, as it causes a reduction in heart rate and blood pressure, and facilitates digestion and absorption of nutrients, and consequently the excretion of waste products.

Emotions also affect memory in various ways: positive emotions can aid accurate recall
and negative emotions can fail accurate recall even recognition at times.
Emotions and memory interact because from emotional regulation point of view, when human beings are feeling positive in their moods and are comfortable, our positive emotions serve as a source of contentment and as a consequence out other mental faculties such as memory works efficiently.

For further references, see works by Elizabeth Loftus, and Engel Tulving
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9265872&dopt=Abstract