Emotions in Narratives

Emotions in Narratives examines how people express and understand emotions across childhood and into adulthood. Across several studies, this project investigates how emotion knowledge is shaped and socialized within and through narrative—by parents, teachers, peers, and communities—and how these processes unfold in everyday conversations, cultural traditions, and diverse social contexts. We explore how personal stories and books can be used as powerful tools to intentionally support children’s social and emotional learning. By analyzing natural language use in conversation and storytelling, we examine how emotional development is shaped by language and narrative within relationships across cultures. Our interdisciplinary approach blends developmental psychology, linguistics, and computational methods to understand how narrative can promote emotional intelligence and well-being across the lifespan.

This program of research includes three areas focused on supporting children’s emotional development through story and language:

We are studying how children and adults use emotion language in everyday conversations at home, school, and in community settings. We analyze transcripts and observational data to understand how emotion words develop and are used in context as well as how emotions are socialized. These patterns help us understand how emotion knowledge is shared and shaped through social interaction. Future work will examine how often and in what ways teachers and children use emotion language during the day, how teachers’ emotion talk relates to children’s own emotion talk, and how teachers socialize children’s emotions.

Publications

• Bailey, C. S., Ingram, M., Soule, M., Wang, Z. (under review). Children’s use of emotion and emotion-related words across childhood.
• Bouffard, J. & Bailey, C. S. (under review). Children’s emotion vocabulary: What can words tell us?
• Mazhar, A. & Bailey, C. S. (2025). Biases in young children's emotional knowledge. Cognition & Emotion, 39(2), 320–338. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2408652
• Bailey, C. S., Ondrusek, A. R., Curby, T. W., & Denham, S. A. (2022). Teachers’ consistency of emotional support moderates the association between young children’s regulation capacities and their adjustment to preschool. Psychology in the Schools, 59, 1051–1074. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22659
• Bailey, C. S., Denham, S. A., Curby, T. W., & Bassett, H. H. (2016). Emotional and organizational supports for preschoolers’ regulation: Relations with school adjustment. Emotion, 16(2), 263–279. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0039772

Presentations

• Bailey, C. S. & Bouffard, J. (2025, August). Beyond prototypical responses in young children’s emotion labeling [Poster presentation]. American Psychological Association 2025 Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
• Bailey, C. S., Ingram, M., Soule, M., Wu, F., & Wang, Z (2025, August). Children’s differential use of emotion vocabulary across childhood [Poster presentation]. American Psychological Association 2025 Annual Meeting, Denver, CO.
• Bailey, C. S. (2025, May). Teaching social and emotional skills in preschool classrooms [Paper presentation]. Society for Research in Child Development 2025 Biennial Meeting, Minneapolis, MN.
• Bailey, C. S. (2023, April). Reliability and validity of the Emotionally Intelligent Teaching Checklist across preschool and educator characteristics [Paper presentation]. In H. Runke [Chair] & R. Gosavi [Discussant], Measurement and early childhood education: Challenges and opportunities [Symposium]. American Educational Research Association 2023 Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.
• Bailey, C. S. [Chair] (2023, March). New directions in studying adult and children’s emotion knowledge [Symposium]. Society for Research in Child Development 2023 Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.
• Mazhar, A. & Bailey, C. S. (2023, March). Understanding children’s emotion-specific biases: How they relate to child-level factors, emotion recognition accuracy, and social behaviour. In C. S. Bailey (Chair), New directions in studying adult and children’s emotion knowledge [Symposium]. Society for Research in Child Development 2023 Biennial Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT.
• Bailey, C. S., Luetzgendorf, T., Olsen, S. G., Tominey, S. L., Rivers, S. E., & Brackett, M. A. (2017, April). Using Item Response Theory to explore the reliability and validity of the Emotionally Intelligent Teaching Checklist [Poster presentation]. Society for Research in Child Development 2017 Biennial Meeting, Austin, TX.
• Bailey, C. S., Olsen S. G., Sneeden, C. K., & Tominey, S. L. (2016, April). Emotionally intelligent teaching: What is it and how do we measure it? In C. C. Crowe (Chair), Advancing the science of classroom observations: New findings from four tools in the field [Roundtable session]. American Education Research Association 2016 Annual Meeting, Washington, DC.

We are creating a free, user-friendly app to help educators and parents find children’s books that effectively teach emotion concepts in culturally relevant ways. The tool catalogs books based on emotional content and cultural themes, making it easy to select stories that fit learners’ needs. This will support richer, more intentional use of storybooks to foster emotional understanding. Planned work includes:

• Partnering with educators and librarians to co-create and refine the tool
• Studying how educators select books and what supports they need
• Piloting and digitizing the tool for broader use

We are developing and testing pedagogy that helps teachers explicitly teach emotion concepts through dialogic reading, storytelling, and language-rich conversations. Designed to work alongside our free book-finder app, it will provide educators with strategies to engage children in meaningful discussions about emotions. This work extends and enhances the RULER Classroom Curriculum.

Publications

• Bailey, C. S., Martinez, O., & DiDomizio, E. (2023). Social and emotional learning and pre-literacy skills: A quasi-experimental study of RULER. Education Sciences, 13(4), 397, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13040397
• Bailey, C. S., Denham, S. A., & Curby, T. W. (2013). Questioning as a component of scaffolding in predicting emotion knowledge in preschoolers. Early Child Development and Care, 183, 265–279. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2012.671815

Presentations

• Xie, F., Wang, Z., Park, N., & Bailey, C. S. (2023, April). Storytelling as a tool for SEL: Lessons from Chinese and American early childhood educators. In X. Gong [Chair] & J. G. Green [Discussant], Social emotional learning across various contexts within schools and beyond [Symposium]. American Educational Research Association 2023 Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.

Connection to Research Agenda: Emotion Science