Sample A: Cover Page of Thesis, Project, or Dissertation Proposal

positively predicted children‘s post-intervention affective perspective taking after
partialing the effects of experimental group assignment and initial affective perspective
taking. It was children‘s frequent exposure to discussions of emotion-laden storybook
content, rather than teachers‘ storybook reading skills, that enhanced affective
perspective taking. Perhaps demographics of the sample can explain this finding. Given
that socio-economically disadvantaged children are at risk for poor social-emotional
functioning (McLoyd, 1998) and have been reported to demonstrate frequent negative
social-emotional behaviors within the classroom context (Miller et al., 2004), mere
exposure to emotional storybook content, regardless of the depth of storybook discussion,
may provide sufficient stimulation to enhance emotion knowledge within socio-
economically disadvantaged populations. The exposure to emotional storybook content,
whether or not teachers discussed the book with children, may have enhanced children‘s
affective perspective taking.
Although it might be expected that the same variables would predict both emotion
knowledge and social skills, children‘s storybook reading participation predicted emotion
knowledge; and the mean duration of audiotaped storybook readings predicted
productiveness in the classroom. Whereas the increased frequency of children‘s exposure
to emotion-laden storybook discussions enhanced emotion knowledge, it was shorter
storybook reading duration that predicted increased productiveness within the classroom
context.
Perhaps children‘s activity level moderates the relation between storybook
reading length and productiveness, such that more hyperactive children are more focused
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