Emotions pervade academic situations and influence the ways that learners think, behave, and achieve (Pekrun, 2006; Schutz & Lanehart, 2002). Writing may be a particularly emotion-laden activity, and especially so for students concentrating in fields that value writing production. However, very few studies have quantitatively investigated writers’ emotional experiences. The goal of the current study was to examine the writing-related emotions of graduate students enrolled in writing-intensive disciplines as well as how these emotions related to writers’ daily productivity and attention-regulation behaviors. To do so, the study employed a daily diary design (Gunthert & Wenze, 2012) in which participants completed brief daily surveys over 28 days. Data from a final sample of 183 participants were analyzed in several frameworks, including descriptive statistics, reliable change indices, and longitudinal modeling via generalized estimating equations. Results from these analyses indicate that writers tend to experience positive valence emotions (e.g. enjoyment, pride) more strongly than negative valence emotions (e.g. anxiety, shame) and that, for most of the emotions studied, writers’ emotional states tended to vary considerably from day to day. Furthermore, results indicate that writers’ emotional states are differentially related to daily writing outcomes such as attention regulation, time spent writing, and number of words written, and that state emotions are more predictive of these outcomes than are trait emotions. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research are also presented.

Research examining emotion regulation has indicated that children's success at home and school is enhanced through adaptive emotion regulation skills (Eisenburg, Spinrad & Morris, 2002). This is particularly true in the areas of social competence and academic functioning (Harris, Robinson, Chang & Burns, 2007). Because the development of emotion regulation skills is supported by the scaffolding of adaptive strategies in children may through parental responsivity to needs (Robinson, Morris, Heller, Scheeringa, Boris, & Smyke, 2009), the current study examined pathways through which quality of parent-child interactions impacted later emotion regulation. The effect of attention regulation on emotion regulation was also considered. Participants in the analysis included families from the longitudinal National Institute of Child Health and Development Study of Early Child Care (NICHD-SECC). Variables in the study were measured from infancy through 3 rd grade. Results indicated that the quality of mother child interactions at 54 months was directly associated with both attention regulation at 1 st grade and emotion regulation at 3 rd grade. Results also suggested the presence of an indirect effect of maternal positive caregiving at 54 months on emotion regulation at 3 rd grade through attention regulation at 1 st grade. Father-child interactions were not found to be directly associated with attention regulation at 1 st grade or emotion regulation at 3 rd grade. The results of this study may be beneficial in supporting school psychologists and other clinicians in targeting specific components of parent-child interactions for intervention to support the development of proactive emotion regulation strategies in children.