Emotion Reporting Using Electronic Diaries Reduces Anxiety Symptoms in Girls With Emotion Dysregulation

Theory and empirical research suggest that electronic diaries, which require children to report on their emotional experiences,
might encourage emotional processing and facilitate a reduction in symptoms of anxiety, particularly for children exhibiting
emotion-related deficits. Electronic diaries were given to 52 children (aged 7–12) to track their emotions and associated
intensity for 7 days; anxiety was assessed prior to and after the use of the electronic diary by both parent- and child-report.
It was hypothesized that the use of an electronic diary to track emotional experiences would lead to a reduction in anxiety
symptoms for those children high in poor awareness, high in expressive reluctance, and low in emotion coping. The use of electronic
diaries was effective at reducing child self-reported anxiety symptoms in girls who reported low emotion coping and reducing
parent-reported anxiety for girls who reported a high reluctance to express emotions. Current findings suggest that having
children identify their emotions using electronic diaries may be particularly beneficial for girls who are reluctant to express
emotions and who report poor coping abilities.