A Longitudinal Investigation of Family-Wide Emotion Dynamics and Links to Children's Emotional Development
About the Project
Emotions are central to our behaviours, interactions with others, and day-to-day functioning. Children who do not develop good emotion-related skills (i.e., the ability to identify, label, and properly regulate emotional experiences) are at great risk for poor academic, social, and psychological functioning. It is thus critical to understand how society can facilitate children's development of good emotion skills and the precise processes underlying this development.
The overarching aim of the current research is to study emotion exchanges during family-wide interactions and how these exchanges contribute to children's emotional development. Specifically, my students and I will (a) measure how these interactions develop over 2 years and predict children's development of emotion skills, (b) investigate how family members (i.e., mother, father, sibling) exert unique influences over children's emotional development, and (c) examine how day-to-day emotion dynamics within the family impact children. To my knowledge, no published research has addressed these important questions using a family-wide approach. Finally, the research will engage with families as key stakeholders, and an extensive knowledge mobilization plan will disseminate findings to academic and community audiences.
Studying the complexities of family dynamics will provide necessary information to more accurately understand the current landscape of Canadian families. It is expected that this research will yield important knowledge about the specific aspects of family interactions that impact child development. In addition, knowledge mobilization efforts will investigate ways to effectively share knowledge within the broader community and to parents as key stakeholders.
The current program promotes research training at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The varied training opportunities offered by the proposed research will prepare students for various career paths. For example, students will receive training in foundational research skills (e.g., day-to-day lab tasks such as recruitment, scheduling, and managing data collection) and professional skills (e.g., skills for community involvement, teamwork, academic integrity and ethics, and effective communication). Finally, students will receive training in high-level, specialized research skills in the following areas: physiological data acquisition, observational methods, ecological momentary assessment, rigorous statistical approaches, and knowledge mobilization.