Unlocking the Black Box: A Multilevel Analysis of Preadolescent Children’s Coping

Publication Date

7-2018

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Children, Coping, Stress, Behavioral distraction, Cognitive avoidance

Abstract

This random assignment experimental study examined the intersection of children’s coping and physiologic stress reactivity and recovery patterns in a sample of preadolescent boys and girls. A sample of 82 fourth-grade and fifth-grade (Mage = 10.59 years old) child–parent dyads participated in the present study. Children participated in the Trier Social Stress Test and were randomly assigned to one of two post–Trier Social Stress Test experimental coping conditions—behavioral distraction or cognitive avoidance. Children’s characteristic ways of coping were examined as moderators of the effect of experimental coping condition on cortisol reactivity and recovery patterns. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that children’s characteristic coping and experimental coping condition interacted to predict differential cortisol recovery patterns. Children who characteristically engaged in primary control engagement coping strategies were able to more quickly down-regulate salivary cortisol when primed to distract themselves than when primed to avoid, and vice versa. The opposite pattern was true for characteristic disengagement coping in the context of coping condition, suggesting that regulatory fit between children’s characteristic ways of coping and cues from their coping environment may lead to more and less adaptive physiologic recovery profiles. This study provides some of the first evidence that coping “gets under the skin” and that children’s characteristic ways of coping may constrain or enhance a child’s ability to make use of environmental coping resources.

Copyright Date

3-30-2016

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Wadsworth, M. E., Bendezú, J. J., Loughlin-Presnal, J., Ahlkvist, J. A., Tilghman-Osborne, E., Bianco, H., . . ., & Hurwich-Reiss, E. (2016). Unlocking the black box: A multilevel analysis of preadolescent children’s coping. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 47(4), 527-541. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2016.1141356

Accepted Manuscript is openly available through the "Link to Full Text" button.

The published Version of Record is available at libraries through Compass or Worldcat.

Rights Holder

Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

16 pgs

File Size

690 KB

Publication Title

Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Volume

47

Issue

4

First Page

527

Last Page

541

ISSN

1537-4424

PubMed ID

27029784

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