Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Poster
Presentation #1 Title
Emotion Socialization in Rural Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Emotion coaching is a style of parental communication that validates and encourages children’s expression of emotions (Gottman et al., 1996). A parent education curriculum, Tuning in to Kids (TiK), has well-documented beneficial effects on children’s social competence in Australian communities (Havighurst et al., 2009, 2010). We combine perspectives from psychology, linguistics, and Appalachian Studies to examine parents’ views of emotion socialization with the goal of adapting the TiK program to benefit families in rural Appalachia. We examined two parents’ level of comfort in discussing emotions while participating in 6 TiK sessions. Each session was transcribed, then analyzed using a discourse analytic approach focused on the presence of discomfort markers such as silence, laughter, and disfluencies/repairs such as false starts, self-interruptions, repetition, and hesitation markers. While both participants were raised in rural Southwest Virginia, one participant represents a lower SES and a more local-facing set of values and the other participant represents an upper-middle SES with a more cosmopolitan set of values. Both participants featured linguistic markers of discomfort during discussions about emotions, particularly negative emotions, suggesting it is likely TiK training could be adapted to better suit their needs. Participants differed on whether discomfort markers were higher during emotion discussion focused on personal vs. hypothetical situations (the latter of which represents a central tool within TiK), with the lower SES participant exhibiting greater comfort with hypothetical scenarios. Our future work will explore whether increasing focus on hypothetical situations may result in improved outcomes for lower SES parents in rural Appalachia.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Erika Hernandez is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Katie Carmichael is an Assistant Professor of linguistics in the English Department at Virginia Tech.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Emily Satterwhite is Associate Professor in the Appalachian Studies program at Virginia Tech.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Thomas Ollendick is University Distinguished Professor and Director of the Child Study Center at Virginia Tech.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #5
Julie Dunsmore is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech.
Emotion Socialization in Rural Appalachia
Emotion coaching is a style of parental communication that validates and encourages children’s expression of emotions (Gottman et al., 1996). A parent education curriculum, Tuning in to Kids (TiK), has well-documented beneficial effects on children’s social competence in Australian communities (Havighurst et al., 2009, 2010). We combine perspectives from psychology, linguistics, and Appalachian Studies to examine parents’ views of emotion socialization with the goal of adapting the TiK program to benefit families in rural Appalachia. We examined two parents’ level of comfort in discussing emotions while participating in 6 TiK sessions. Each session was transcribed, then analyzed using a discourse analytic approach focused on the presence of discomfort markers such as silence, laughter, and disfluencies/repairs such as false starts, self-interruptions, repetition, and hesitation markers. While both participants were raised in rural Southwest Virginia, one participant represents a lower SES and a more local-facing set of values and the other participant represents an upper-middle SES with a more cosmopolitan set of values. Both participants featured linguistic markers of discomfort during discussions about emotions, particularly negative emotions, suggesting it is likely TiK training could be adapted to better suit their needs. Participants differed on whether discomfort markers were higher during emotion discussion focused on personal vs. hypothetical situations (the latter of which represents a central tool within TiK), with the lower SES participant exhibiting greater comfort with hypothetical scenarios. Our future work will explore whether increasing focus on hypothetical situations may result in improved outcomes for lower SES parents in rural Appalachia.
