Investigating Relations Between Writers' Emotional Experiences and Attention Regulation: A Daily Diary Study

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Examining the Role of Identity and Emotion in the Experience of Literacy

Abstract

In the current study, we used a daily diary design to investigate relations between writers’ emotional experiences and their daily attention regulation during writing. Over the course of four weeks, 1934 valid observations were collected from 183 graduate students enrolled in writing-intensive disciplines. Results of modified autoregressive models in a generalized estimating equation framework indicate that writers’ daily experiences of enjoyment, pride, and contentment positively predicted daily attention regulation, whereas daily experiences of anxiety and boredom negatively predicted daily attention regulation. Further, person-level averages of emotional experiences were not associated with daily attention regulation, suggesting that writers’ departures from their typical emotional experiences may be more related to proximal behaviors than are their typical emotional experiences.

Authors

• Eric Ekholm, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Sharon Zumbrunn, Virginia Commonwealth University