Background: Despite evidence that caring for a spouse or partner with dementia may continue over a number of years, our understanding of how the carer’s experience unfolds over time is still in its infancy. In addition, the emotional experience of spousal dementia carers has been incompletely understood in research and clinical practice with a predominant focus upon negative emotional consequences. There is a need to contextualise the emotional experience of carers within a framework that enables understanding of positive aspects of the care experience. Objective: This thesis is in two parts. Part one uses systematic review to critically evaluate evidence from published longitudinal studies that assess the impact of care transition (caring for spouse at home and placed spouse in care home) on the well-being of spousal dementia carers. Part two is an empirical study examining emotion regulation and positive growth in spouses who care for their partner with a diagnosis of dementia. Methods: Systematic review of longitudinal studies that assess the impact of care transition on spousal carer well-being. The empirical study comprised a cross-sectional design comparing positive growth and emotion regulation in three carer groups (caring for spouse at home, placed spouse in care home or experienced death of spouse). 183 carers were recruited through a postal survey which comprised the following self-report measures: Post Traumatic Growth Inventory; Basic Emotions Scale; and Regulation of Emotions Questionnaire. Systematic Review Results: Despite poorer psychological and physical well-being over time compared with non-carers, symptoms of depression, perceived burden and stress are stable over time for those who continue to care for their spouse at home. Mixed results are obtained for carer well-being when examining transition to permanent placement in care home and impede definitive conclusions. Empirical Study Results: Spousal carers report more frequent feelings of fear and frustration compared to other basic emotions. Gender and care transition impact upon the experience and regulation of emotion and positive growth. Internalising emotion regulation strategies (for example, rumination) are associated with greater fear and frustration, sadness and guilt while strategies comprising social support seeking are associated with feelings of happiness in carers. Spouses report positive growth since taking on the role of carer and this is predicted in part by social support seeking emotion regulation strategies but not by experience of emotions. Conclusions: Spousal carers are not a homogenous group. Further research on the experience of spousal dementia carers is required. This should include the development of tools and methods tailored to capture emotion regulation. The concept of positive growth following stressful events (for example, becoming a carer) may have potential for presenting an enriched understanding of the emotional consequences of the carer experience over time.

The objectives of this mixed-method intervention study were: (1) To examine idiosyncratic profiles of emotions and performance of 3-4 leading handball team players in successful and less successful games and identify their strengths and limitations in emotion-concentration regulation; (2) To develop, implement, and evaluate an intervention program aimed at optimizing the players' emotion-concentration regulation and performance. The participants (n= 4, age= 24,5) consisted of four female elite handball players from the same team. An emotion-performance profiling process was conducted to facilitate objective one. To facilitate objective two, a small group IZOF based short term intervention was developed and implemented. The participants’ emotion-performance profiles are presented. The evaluation of the intervention indicated that the intervention increased the participants’ awareness and knowledge, and stimulated psychological skills development (i.e., emotion regulation and concentration). Methodological issues,future directions, and implications are discussed.

Introduction: Experiences of negative parenting and childhood abuse can have adverse consequences for the child‟s development particularly in relation to the ability to regulate emotions effectively. There has been extensive research in this area and attachment theory is pivotal. Problems in regulating emotions can involve not being able to recognise, label or manage internal and external states of mind and behaviour. Therefore research has shown that problems in emotion regulation skills due to negative parental and/or abusive experiences can result in long-term psychosocial problems such as depression. Research has suggested that adults with adverse childhood experiences exhibit risky behaviours as a means of managing their emotions such as self-harming, dangerous sexual encounters and substance misuse. Although research has shown that there is an association between these factors no real understanding of the pathways and the potential mediating roles these factors play has been investigated with people presenting with suicidal behaviour, which could be argued as the ultimate form of managing emotions and therefore the internal and external self. Therefore this study aims to answer the following question: Does childhood abuse and dysfunctional emotion regulation mediate the relationship between parental bonding and suicidal behaviour. Method: This study involved sixty participants from a suicidal behaviour sample presenting at an Accident and Emergency department aged between 18 - 65. Measures assessing childhood abuse, emotion regulation, parental bonding, suicidal intent, risk of repeating suicidal behaviour, depression and anxiety were completed. Results: Childhood emotional abuse was found to significantly mediate the relationship between low parental care and risk of repeating suicidal behaviour. A lack of external functional emotion regulation strategies was also found to mediate the relationship between parental care and risk of repeating suicidal behaviour. Finally, a lack of internal functional emotion regulation strategies was found to mediate the relationship between childhood physical abuse and risk of repeating suicidal behaviour. Conclusion: Preliminary findings of this study suggest that childhood emotional abuse and dysfunctional emotion regulation play a crucial role in further understanding those who engage in and are at risk of repeating suicidal behaviour. Therefore, emotions and emotion regulation within a developmental framework are important when considering long-term adult psychosocial functioning.

Envy is a painful emotion that can negatively impact one’s self-worth. It is also a shameful, socially undesirable emotion, implying both inferiority and hostility. Some scholars suggest that these features of envy lead to a need to cope with the emotion. Thus, over time, envy tends to be transformed into more socially acceptable responses such as resentment or dislike. The present study tested this claim. First, envy was manipulated by asking participants to read an article containing an interview with either a high- or low-envy target. The second article manipulated the likeability of the target by varying whether or not he or she made an arrogant statement. Finally, a third article indicated that the target had suffered a misfortune. Although, as predicted, envy decreased, the manipulation of likeability did not affect this decrease. Consistent with predictions, resentment increased after the second article and this was more likely when the target was dislikeable than when the target was likeable. Finally, the participants felt greater schadenfreude when the dislikeable target suffered than when the likeable target suffered and marginally more schadenfreude when the target was more enviable. Clearly, envy dissipated over time, but further research is needed to determine precisely why.

In the field of medicine, empathic providers have been found to bring numerous benefits to a clinical encounter as they are better able to elicit detailed and thorough case histories, build rapport and therapeutic alliance with patients, and foster greater compliance with treatment recommendations. Despite its multiple benefits, empathy has not been researched systematically within the field of speech-language pathology. In medical training, empathy has been found to decline by the time medical students are introduced to direct patient care. Currently, no information is available regarding the empathy trajectory of novice speech-language pathologists. The goal of the current project was to determine the effect of one semester of clinical experience on the perceived and self-reported empathy of novice speech-language pathology clinicians during their first semester of graduate school. A convergent parallel mixed-method design was used in two stages (pre/post). Both quantitative and qualitative data were gathered concurrently during two distinct moments in time (i.e. pre-test: during the first week of exposure to clients in clinic; post-test: at the end of the first semester of clinic). Quantitative and qualitative data analyses were completed separately at the conclusion of each stage, with data integration taking place during final interpretation. Quantitative findings revealed that novice speech-language pathology students were able to identify high vs. low levels of relational empathy as depicted in two video-recorded clinical interviews using a modified CARE measure (Mercer, Maxwell, Heaney, & Watt, 2004) even prior to exposure to clinical practice. In addition, these perceptions remained stable from pre-test to post-test. Qualitative comments written by novice clinicians regarding each video were analyzed using a-priori codes. Analysis of the qualitative data corroborated the quantitative findings except for mild nuances pertaining to observations about the caregiver in the video, which tended to occur more frequently at pre-test and less so at post-test. The significance of these qualitative findings was questionable, but it was hypothesized that clinicians may have become more “detached” from the caregiver’s perspective after they were exposed to direct work with clients in the clinic. Novice clinicians’ levels of self-reported empathy were also observed to remain stable from pre-test to post-test, as evidenced by quantitative findings from the Empathy Assessment Index (EAI – Gerdes, Segal, & Lietz, 2012). Analysis of the subtests from the EAI showed that all clinicians tended to have lower scores for emotional regulation as compared with other components such as affective response, affective mentalizing, perspective taking, or self-other awareness. Qualitative analysis of an exit interview in which novice clinicians were asked to list the most frustrating and most rewarding aspects of their semester showed that aspects of the semester which were perceived as frustrating were often balanced by those which were perceived as rewarding. In addition, direct work with clients and caregivers was listed by far as one of the most rewarding experiences for novice clinicians, particularly as it pertained to client progress. Factors which could potentially lead into burnout were noted in the list of frustrating items, but these occurred more infrequently. Further investigations into the empathy trajectory of novice speech-language pathology students are recommended especially using a cross-sectional or longitudinal design to determine if empathy remains stable over the course of training or whether it suffers a decline as academic, personal, and patient/caseload demands become more challenging and multifaceted. Possible investigations following clinicians after the completion of their clinical fellowship year would also be recommended as novice clinicians transition from trainees to full-fledged providers.

Purpose - This paper aims to explore how children's developing ability to effectively regulate their emotions influences their consumer behavior. Design/methodology/approach - Working with 80 children and one of their parents, this study used direct observations of child behavior in a task where they needed to regulate their emotions and a survey of parents about their child's emotional development and consumer behavior. The research used quantitative methods to test whether children's emotion regulation predicted parent reported consumer behavior (e.g. purchase requests, parent-child purchase related conflict) via multiple regression analyses. Findings - After controlling for children's age and linguistic competence, the study found that children's ability to control positively valenced emotions predicted consumer behavior. Specifically, children who had more difficulty suppressing joy/happiness were more likely to ask their parents for consumer goods and were more likely to argue with parents about these purchases. Practical implications - Content analyses of commercials targeting children have shown that many of the persuasive appeals used by advertisers are emotionally charged and often feature marketing characters that children find affectively pleasing. These findings suggest that these types of marketing appeals may overwhelm younger children which can lead to conflict with parents. Consequently, marketers and policy makers may want to re-examine the use of such tactics with younger consumers. Originality/value - While the potential link between children's emotional development and consumer behavior has been suggested in theoretical work, this is the first known study to empirically test this theorized relationship.

Responsive parenting is characteristically child-centered and creates a climate where children's needs are met. While responsive parenting has been studies less than harsh parenting, initial evidence supports a negative relationship between responsive parenting and children's externalizing problems. The current study sought to identify mechanism by which responsive parenting reduces risk for externalizing problems in the preschool years. Specifically, the study sought to evaluate the extent to which children's language development and children's emotion regulation skills mediate the expected negative relationship between responsive parenting and children's externalizing problems. While responsive parenting was found to be negatively related to children's externalizing problems, support for mediation was not found. Results are discussed in terms of what may account for the lack of support for study hypotheses

Selective attention is a specific area of executive control that declines in older adulthood and may be amenable to cognitive rehabilitation. This study explored background music as an accessible and typically enjoyable tool that may exogenously facilitate attention. Two particular properties of a musical piece – (1) mode (i.e., major, minor, or atonal), and (2) tempo (i.e., stimulative or sedative) – influence affect, arousal, and cognitive function, ultimately enhancing or hindering cognitive performance on attention-demanding tasks. Six musical pieces were selected to represent different combinations of mode and tempo. Older adults (i.e., 65-80 years-old; n=16) were recruited from Victoria, BC. Participants completed the Multi-Source Interference Task (MSIT) assessing selective attention at baseline and under the six counterbalanced musical conditions. In each condition, participants reported motivation and task-difficulty, as well as affect and arousal on the Activation-Deactivation Checklist (AD ACL). Musical affect impacted reaction times on MSIT control and interference trials for the first block, but had no influence during the last block. Musical arousal did not significantly impact attention. AD ACL responses, as well as task-difficulty and motivation to succeed on the task did not vary as a function of the music. The results illuminate older adults’ allocation of executive resources between competing goals of regulating musical affect and succeeding on an attention task. Implications are discussed for selecting music specifically to facilitate older adults’ attention in everyday life. / Graduate / 2017-09-22

The ability to collaborate has been identified as an essential learning outcome for the 21st century. However, if group members lack the skills, abilities, and attitudes to work in a team, these groups may work inefficiently or fail to achieve what they set out to do. To achieve success, group members need to engage in productive regulatory processes to manage cognitions, behaviors, motivation, and emotions as needed to attain desired outcomes. One area of regulation that has been underemphasized in collaborative contexts is the regulation of emotions. Therefore, the purpose of this multi-paper dissertation was to examine the emotional experiences of undergraduate students working collaboratively on two online time-limited problem-solving tasks. Using a regulation of learning framework, the research unfolded over four studies drawing from a variety of data sources and building upon one another to explore the socio-emotional aspect of online collaboration. Study 1 (Webster & Hadwin, 2018) provides an overview of students’ emotions and plans for emotion regulation, self-reported during two collaborative tasks, offering an in-the-moment picture of how students feel and how they respond to those feelings. Study 2 (Bakhtiar, Webster, & Hadwin, 2018) consisted of a comparative case study to examine differences in regulation and socio-emotional interactions between two groups with contrasting socio-emotional climates. Findings revealed differences between these groups in terms of planning and preparation; therefore, the final two studies examined emotions and emotion regulation strategies reported during groupwork under different levels of planning and preparation at the individual or group level. Study 3 (Webster & Hadwin, 2019) documented the types of strategies students recalled using individually and as a group to regulate a salient emotion during collaboration and compared strategies between groups who were given different types of collaborative planning support. Finally, Study 4 (Webster, Davis, & Hadwin, 2019) compared emotions, emotion regulation strategies, and evaluations of strategy effectiveness for a purposeful sample of students who were well-prepared versus underprepared for the first of two collaborative working sessions. Four overarching factors emerged from this research as important for productive emotion regulation in online collaboration: (a) planning and preparation, (b) regulating both negative and positive emotions, (c) regulating at both individual and group levels, and (d) providing support for selecting and enacting helpful strategies. With further research, tools and interventions can be improved and utilized to support students to productively regulate in collaborative groups. / Graduate

The time of adolescence is marked by enhanced emotional experiences and difficulties with regulating one’s emotions. One way to improve the adolescent’s ability to regulate their emotions is to let them practice mindfulness meditation. The motivational drive behind this thesis is the question of what forms of mindfulness meditation are needed to give the highest increase in their emotion regulation-abilities. One problem is that while there exist neural studies on mindfulness meditation for adults, the research field of adolescent meditation lacks them. Because neural studies are needed to adequately answer this question, and the lack of brain imaging tools for this thesis, the focus here was to conduct some groundwork for this discussion. The first aim was to investigate the neural effects of mindfulness meditation on emotion regulation in adults and the second aim was to investigate to what extent we can generalize these neural effects to adolescents. To be able to theoretical discuss the second aim, neural and psychological studies on mindfulness meditation and emotion regulation were used as a base. The studies were grouped into five sub-categories based on age group and research field and then discussed with the help of developmental studies. Adult meditators had stronger functionality in regulatory brain regions than non-meditators during meditation and during the perception of negative stimuli. The discussion about the generalization of the adult neural patterns to adolescents showed that the findings were too diverse to come to any useful conclusions. Empirical and conceptual improvements, along with neural meditation studies on adolescents, are needed to improve the research field in both age groups.