Effectiveness of Cognitive Emotional Regulation Training on Emotional Knowledge and Emotional Control of Poorly Supervised Students

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Children and teenagers who are poorly supervised, experience different psychological traumatic damages. These students have inappropriate developmental background that makes them prone to suffering from psychological and emotional disturbances. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive emotion regulation training on emotional knowledge and emotional control of poorly supervised students. Method: The research method was semi-experimental with pre-test and post-test with control group. The statistical population of this study consisted of all poorly supervised students between the ages of 12 to 16 years old in the academic year of 2017-18. The sample consisted of 30 people who were selected by purposeful sampling and were assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received cognitive emotion regulation intervention in eight 90-minute sessions over two and a half months, while the control group did not receive this intervention during the research process. Questionnaires used in this study included Emotional Control Questionnaire (Roger and Nesshoever, 1987) and Emotional Knowledge Test (Izard et al., 2003). The data were analyzed using SPSS 23 software using covariance analysis. Results: The results of data analysis showed that cognitive emotion regulation was effective on emotional knowledge and emotional control of poorly supervised students (p <0.001). The effect size also showed that 84% and 77% of changes in emotional knowledge and emotional control of poorly supervised students, respectively, were explained by cognitive emotion regulation intervention. Conclusion: Cognitive emotion regulation using techniques such as recognizing different types of emotions, teaching ways to reduce negative emotions, conscious attention to current emotions, reevaluating and expressing positive and negative emotions, and training to change negative emotions can affect the emotional processing and emotional control of poorly supervised students.