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

In Garner et al.‘s (1997) study, mother-child dyads read a wordless picture book
depicting happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, guilt, and excitement. Results
demonstrated links between maternal dialogue and children‘s emotional expression
knowledge, emotional role-taking, and emotional situation knowledge. Mothers‘
explanations of emotional causes and consequences were positively related to children‘s
emotional expression knowledge and positively predicted children‘s emotional role-
taking above the effects of children‘s emotion language during storybook reading.
Mothers‘ statements encouraging children to demonstrate empathy during storybook
reading were positively related to children‘s emotional expression knowledge and
positively predicted emotion situation knowledge and emotional role-taking. Children‘s
commenting about emotions and explanations of emotional causes and consequences
depicted in the storybook were positively related to emotional expression knowledge.
Further, children‘s commenting about emotions was also positively related to emotional
situation knowledge and positively predicted emotional role-taking (Garner et al., 1997).
Clearly, both mothers‘ and children‘s contributions to the emotional storybook
discussion, and particularly mothers‘ emotional explanations and empathy-related
statements and children‘s emotional comments, were related to children‘s emotional
competence. As was the case in socio-economically advantaged families, children‘s
participation in emotion-laden storybook discussions, and not only mothers‘ modeling
emotional expressions, reacting to children‘s emotional expressions, and coaching
children‘s emotions, contributed to the development of social-emotional competence in
socio-economically disadvantaged families.
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