The development of coping

Ellen A. Skinner
Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck

The
Development
of Coping
Stress, Neurophysiology, Social
Relationships, and Resilience During
Childhood and Adolescence


The Development of Coping


Ellen A. Skinner Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck
•

The Development of Coping
Stress, Neurophysiology,
Social Relationships, and Resilience
During Childhood and Adolescence

123


Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck
School of Applied Psychology
Griffith University
Southport, QLD
Australia

Ellen A. Skinner
Psychology Department
Portland State University
Portland, OR
USA

ISBN 978-3-319-41738-7
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41740-0

ISBN 978-3-319-41740-0

(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943795
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
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To our remarkable daughter, Leona, who has
taught me so much about coping, resilience,
and the magic of development.
—Ellen A. Skinner

To Tony, my love, who has traveled alongside
me since before, and always makes me think
hard and laugh harder. Also, to my family
who know so much about coping and
resilience.
—Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck


Preface

It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox
full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of
patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said “do the best you can with these, they
will have to do.” And mostly, against all odds, they do.
Annie Lamott, Travelling Mercies

Despite the idyllic picture of childhood sometimes painted in books and films, the
lives of children and adolescents are filled with problems, challenges, and demands.
Some are seemingly minor daily hassles, such as teasing in the lunchroom about the
choice of sandwich, an argument between sisters over a television show, or disappointment at not making the soccer team. Some challenges represent normative
demands, like waiting for a turn on the slide, cleaning up one’s room, or studying for
an algebra examination. Children and adolescents are also faced with more challenging life stresses, such as when their parents argue or divorce, or when they enter
a new school without any friends. Chronic stressors often stem from a child’s or

adolescent’s larger family circumstances, for example, when a parent drinks too
much, a sibling is diagnosed with cancer, or the extended family lives in a dangerous
neighborhood. Children and youth also have a hand in creating their own stressors—
by picking fights, skipping school, or drinking and driving. Children are also the
victims of traumatic insults, when parents die or are abusive, when gang violence
kills a friend, or when natural disaster wipes out a neighborhood or village. As
pointed out by Garmezy (1983), “Children are not strangers to stress” (p. 49).

Stress, Risk, and Resilience
The study of coping during childhood and adolescence, which is the focus of this
book, is one of many rich traditions that explore how profiles of stressors, both
acute and chronic, cumulatively shape children’s pathways through life. At the

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Preface

highest level, work on risk and resilience contrasts stress-affected children, who
show the typical long-term negative effects of significant life adversity, with children who are resilient, who show positive adaptation in the face of negative life
events (Cicchetti and Rogosch 2009; Masten 2001). Starting in the 1960s, resilience
researchers have painted a compelling big picture, expanding on psychological
frameworks that emphasized individual-level characteristics, to their current focus
on multi-level systems perspectives that include larger societal forces, like poverty
and privilege, as well as factors from the neighborhood, family, school, and peer
group (Masten 2006; Werner 1993), and, most recently, that incorporate factors
from multiple levels of physiology and genetics as well (Luthar 2006; Lynch and
Cicchetti 1998; Rutter 2002). Of special interest is the identification of protective

factors that can buffer children’s long-term mental and physical health and functioning when they are exposed to potentially harmful conditions.
The effects of stress are also studied in more detail by researchers who use
observational and psychophysiological techniques in the laboratory to capture
children’s reactions to a wide variety of mild stressors. Researchers examine
infants’ and toddlers’ responses to gentle arm restraint, short separations from
caregivers, or exposure to novel objects like turning mobiles or walking toys.
Young children are asked to clean up, to refrain from playing with attractive toys, or
to wait as long as possible before eating marshmallows. Children are asked to work
on unsolvable mazes and puzzles, to listen as a child in the next room ostensibly
knocks down their block creations, or to tell interviewers how they make themselves feel better when they are feeling sad. Adolescents play computer games with
uncooperative peers, discuss controversial potentially conflictual topics with their
parents, or are observed interacting with their friends during competition. Some
of these same kinds of stressors are followed outside of the laboratory in children’s
daily lives, for example, by examining reactions to inoculations, provocations on
the playground, failure on tests, or parents’ requests for help with household chores.
Adolescents are asked to complete daily diaries about the stressful events they
encounter and their responses to them. For many researchers, a particular focus is
the analysis of subsystems (e.g., neuroanatomical, hormonal, attentional, and
cognitive) that are directly affected by stress and that also potentially shape the
effects of stress exposure on children’s subsequent functioning.

The Study of Coping
The study of children’s coping resides directly in the middle of this rich and
fascinating work. At the most general level, coping focuses on how people detect,
appraise, react to, and deal with the actual demands, stressors, and obstacles they
encounter in their daily lives. The goal of research on coping is to provide detailed
descriptions of these processes and to specify how they work together to shape each
other reciprocally over the course of a coping episode, and cumulatively how they
contribute to physical and psychological health or disorder. For example, research

Preface

ix

analyzes how the characteristics of a stressor, such as its severity, chronicity, and
controllability, influence how people react to, perceive, and cope with it. Studies
target people’s appraisals of a stressful event, that is, their take on whether it is a
challenge or threat, and whether they can do anything to evade or counteract it, and
then examine how such appraisals influence individuals’ physiological and psychological reactions to it and constrain their choices about how to cope with it.
Good empirical work also considers how the social and personal resources
available to people, and the higher-order social contexts in which they live, play a
role in the number and kinds of stressors that reach them, how they perceive those
events, and the ways they can cope with them. Interventionists are especially
interested in examining the consequences of different ways of coping, that is,
whether problem-solving, support-seeking, escape, rumination, and so on are
effective in ameliorating emotional distress and resolving the stressor, or whether
they make things worse, either today or in the future. Rare process-oriented studies
scrutinize the unfolding of coping episodes (with their feedback loops) over days
and weeks, sometimes even marking transition points that punctuate this process,
such as diagnosis, treatment, and relapse when dealing with a stressful medical
condition.
For those interested in the effects of stress and adversity on human functioning
and adaptation, the study of coping takes researchers into the heart of the struggle,
right on the ground, where stressors enter the “envelope” of daily life, and focuses
attention on how people actually resist, accommodate, or succumb to their effects.
In studying people under stress, coping represents a marker for how the entire stress
reactivity system is functioning, including social and contextual factors. At the
same time, coping can also be considered an active player, akin to the concept of
“host resistance” in the study of whether exposure to germs leads to illness,

potentially influencing whether stress “infects” or “inoculates” the organism it
contacts. Coping depicts one of the processes that mediate between adversity and
adaptation, and because it is distinguished by its focus on actual stressful
encounters and “everyday resilience,” it provides researchers with a possible
mechanism that can help to explain how, why, and for whom adversity translates
into adaptive or maladaptive short- and long-term sequelae. As such, coping also
represents a possible intervention lever to improve developmental outcomes.

Development and Coping
No one would argue with the assertion that development shapes every part of the
coping process. It delineates the kinds of stressors that enter a person’s life:
Preschoolers are not tasked with moving out on their own, and adolescents are not
typically pressured into taking naps. Development influences how stressors are
appraised: A mother packing a suitcase does not worry a newborn, and a whirling
top does not worry a 10-year-old. It decisively constrains the ways that people can
cope: The prototypical way of escaping, that is, by leaving the stressful encounter,


x

Preface

cannot be accomplished until an infant can locomote, and the prototypical way of
seeking information, that is, by asking a question, cannot be accomplished until an
infant can talk. The way that social partners participate in coping episodes also
differs across development: Parents do not help their college-age children with a
demanding school project the same way they help their first graders, and an
eight-year-old best friend does not provide a shoulder to cry on after hearing stories
of family discord in the same way as a sixteen-year-old best friend.
Given this consensus, it may be surprising to discover that no coherent body of

research on the development of coping exists today. Instead, the field as a whole has
responded to the tacit recognition that development shapes everything about coping
by dividing theories and research into narrow age-graded bands. One group of
researchers studies the coping of preschoolers, another studies the coping of
“middle-aged” children, yet another studies adolescents. Researchers focusing on
how infants and young children react to and deal with stressful encounters rarely
refer to their topic as “coping”; they are studying emotion regulation, stress reactivity, or temperament. In fact, each of the ways of responding to stress, such as
problem-solving, rumination, helplessness, help-seeking, or opposition, has its own
research tradition, largely focused on the specific ages when that particular way of
coping is most salient.
Researchers studying children and adolescents have generally adopted conceptualizations of coping from work on adults, and at each age, they focus largely on
individual differences, looking at the personal and social factors that contribute to
stress responses, and examining how different responses are in turn connected to
positive and negative consequences. However, if studies focus only on individual
differences, researchers can overemphasize individual-centric “coping-style” psychology—like some of the ego psychologists of the 1960s and 1970s or some of the
personality psychologists and neuroscientists of today—who seem to assume that
neurological factors, like high stress reactivity, and individual factors, like optimism, are immutable characteristics that determine coping now and will continue to
do so in the future. Or, investigators can overemphasize the opposite side of the
coin, as embodied by some of the work on coping in adulthood today, assuming
that all coping is a temporary installation, created de novo on the basis of
momentary circumstances and fleeting perceptions, to be expressed once and then
to disappear forever.
A developmental perspective acknowledges the incomplete validity of both
of these seemingly contradictory viewpoints and integrates them, using two key
assumptions. First, it holds that an organism always brings selected parts of its
history with it into the present, and this developmental signature can help us
understand essential things about what the organism finds stressful, how strongly it
reacts, what it is capable of pulling together in response, and what it takes away
from the encounter. Second, a developmental perspective holds that this historical
trace is brought to bear in a dynamic present. What went before constrains and

scaffolds future development, but is not deterministic: It is combined with current


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xi

conditions to create new integrations and reorganizations that can never be fully
predicted by initial conditions. In other words, although researchers can take a
snapshot at any point, coping is part of an open, dynamic, and developing system.

Purpose of this Book
The purpose of this book is to review what is known about the development of
coping from infancy to emerging adulthood and to begin to build conceptual and
empirical bridges between coping, on the one hand, and the development of regulation and resilience, on the other. In order to integrate research on age differences
and changes in coping, and to explain why this is such a challenging task, Part I
lays out a “developmentally-friendly” framework for the study of coping. Chapter 1
provides a brief outline of the history of conceptualizations of coping, as well as a
critique of the current state of the field, emphasizing recent work that defines coping
as “action regulation under stress.” Chapter 2 provides an overview of the “building
blocks” of the field, or ways of coping, along with a critique of the current state
of the field, and a summary of recent work on hierarchical families of coping, which
have allowed developmentally-graded members of those families to be identified.
This chapter also analyzes the field’s struggles to agree on which ways of coping
are “good news” and “bad news,” and to examine how a developmental perspective
can suggest criteria for making this determination.
The foundational issues covered in this first section are prelude to the next three
sections, which explore more deeply how coping develops normatively from birth
through emerging adulthood and how problems in the subsystems that underlie or
scaffold coping can predispose children to the development of psychological and

behavioral difficulties. More specifically, Part II reviews and integrates current
research on the development of coping: Chapter 3 summarizes studies on age
differences and changes in ways of coping across childhood and adolescence and
begins to integrate these age trends. Chapter 4 outlines the neurophysiological
developments that likely underlie age changes in stress and coping. Part III, in many
ways the heart of the book, outlines a theory of the normative development of
coping in the context of developing relationships, especially with caregivers.
Chapters 5 through 10 each focus on a specific developmental period and borrow
from research on the development of many different forms of regulation to sketch a
picture of how these might work together as subsystems that accumulate developmentally to shape age-graded shifts in stress reactions and coping, as they unfold
within the interpersonal relationships provided by caregivers.
Part IV, in Chaps. 11 and 12, reviews research on how early adversity, temperament, attachment, parenting, and family stress may not only undermine the
development of adaptive coping, but also lead individuals to rely more heavily on
maladaptive coping strategies, and reviews evidence that, in combination, these
may be the foundations for diverging developmental cascades toward risk or
resilience. Chapters in Part IV also consider how the different ways these qualitative


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transitions are resolved may place children and adolescents at risk for the development of psychopathology or may allow them to build personal and social
resources to cope more constructively with future challenges. We end with a final
chapter that summarizes key themes in the book, outlines some suggestions for
strategies that may be useful in making progress on the further study of coping, and
attempts to articulate three big lessons we learned while writing the book—about
what it means to try to understand the development of coping.
Portland, Oregon, USA
Southport, Queensland, Australia

Ellen A. Skinner
Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck


Contents

Part I
1

2

Constructing “Developmentally-Friendly”
Conceptualizations of Coping

Coping as Action Regulation under Stress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1 Coping as a Fundamental Adaptive Process. . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.1 Overview of Conceptualizations of Coping
and a Focus on Individual Differences . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.2 Multi-level Integrative Systems Frameworks: Coping,
Regulation, and Resilience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Developmentally-Friendly Conceptualizations of Coping . . . .
1.2.1 Coping as Regulation under Stress . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.2 Coping and Emotion Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.3 Action and Action Theories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.4 The Nature of Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.5 Coping Is Built on Action Tendencies . . . . . . . . . .
1.2.6 Stress and Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 Summary of Developmental Conceptualizations of Coping . .
Ways and Families of Coping as Adaptive Processes . . . . . . . .

2.1 The Structure of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.1 Lower-Order Ways of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.2 Higher-Order Dimensions and Categories
of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.3 Families of Coping as Serving Adaptive Functions.
2.2 “Good News” and “Bad News” Ways of Coping . . . . . . . .
2.2.1 Developmentally Adaptive Families of Coping . . .
2.2.2 The Balance Between Challenge and Threat . . . . .
2.2.3 Good News Families of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 Summary of Ways and Families of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Part II
3

4

Age Differences and Changes in Ways of Coping across
Childhood and Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.1 Looking for Qualitative Shifts in Coping across
Childhood and Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Age Differences and Changes in Each of the Coping
Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3 Beyond Quantitative Changes in Mean Levels
of Individual Ways of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4 Summary of Age Differences and Changes in Ways
of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Neurophysiological Developments that underlie Age-related
Changes in Coping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1 Neuroanatomical Systems involved in Stress Reactivity,
Regulation, and Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1.1 Neurophysiology of Stressful Encounters . . . . .
4.1.2 Stress Reactivity and Regulation as Complex
Dynamic Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 The Assessment of Neurophysiological Structure
and Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3 The Development of the Multi-level Neurophysiological
Systems that Underlie Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3.1 Development of the Neurophysiology of Stress
Reactivity, Threat Detection, and Coping . . . . .
4.3.2 Development of the Neurophysiology
of Regulation and Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4 Summary of the Development of the Neurophysiological

Systems Underlying Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Part III
5

Review of Research on the Development
of Stress Reactivity and Ways of Coping

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Normative Development of Adaptive Coping within the
Context of Relationships with Caregivers

Development of “Coping” in Newborns: Neurophysiological
Stress Reactivity and “External Coping” via the Caregiver . .
5.1 Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity: Development
of Neurophysiological Subsystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2 Attachment, the Development of “External” Coping,
and the Omnibus Coping Strategy of “Proximity Seeking”
5.3 Development of a Neurophysiological System
that Responds to “External Coping” by the Caregiver . . . .

. . . . 103
. . . . 104
. . . . 107
. . . . 108

Contents

5.4
5.5
5.6
6

7

8

xv

Social Tuning of the Neurophysiological Stress
Reactivity and Recovery System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
The Emergence of a Hierarchy of Reactivity, Regulatory,
and Coping Processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Summary of Transformations of the Coping System
during the Neonatal Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Development of Coping during Infancy: Implicit Appraisals,
Intentional Action Regulation, and Co-regulated
Coping Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.1 Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity: Emergence
of Appraisal Systems that Increasingly Guide Action
Readiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.2 Action Regulation: Development of Intentionality
and Goal-Directed Coping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6.3 Changing Role of Social Partners: Development
of a Co-regulatory Coping System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6.4 Development of Stress Resistance and Stress Resilience . .
6.5 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System
during Infancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Development of Coping during Toddlerhood: Explicit
Appraisals, Emotional Action Regulation, and Cooperative
Coping Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.1 Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity: Explicit
Appraisals of Threat and Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2 Action Regulation: From Emotional Action Regulation
to Self-awareness in Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3 Changing Role of Social Partners: Emotion Socialization
and Coping “Coaching” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.4 Shared Intentionality and the Emergence of a Cooperative
Coping System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.5 Reorganization of the Coping System during Toddlerhood
7.6 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System
during Toddlerhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . 115

. . . . 116
. . . . 119
. . . . 122
. . . . 124
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. . . . 129
. . . . 130
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. . . . 138
. . . . 139
. . . . 141

Development of Coping during Early Childhood: Inferential
Appraisals, Voluntary Action Regulation, and Individual Coping
Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.1 Threat Detection and Appraisal: Incorporating Emotion
Understanding and Theory of Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.2 Regulatory Subsystems: Development of Attention
Networks and Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.3 Emergence of Voluntary Self-regulation and Coping . . . . . .

. . 143
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Contents

8.4
8.5
8.6
8.7
8.8
9

Integration of Appraisal and Regulation: Development
of Understanding and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Development of Voluntary Action Regulation
and the Emergence of Intrapersonal Coping. . . . . . . .
Development of Conscience and the Emergence
of Autonomous Coping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Changing Role of Social Partners: Development
of Intrapersonal Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Summary of Transformations of the Coping System
during Early Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . 154
. . . . . . . 155
. . . . . . . 156
. . . . . . . 158
. . . . . . . 160

Development of Coping during Middle Childhood: Cognitive
Reappraisal, Mental Modes of Coping, and Coordination
with Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.1 Threat Detection and Appraisal: Emotional Understanding
and Intentional Regulation of Stressful Experiences . . . . . .
9.2 Reappraisal as an Emotion Regulation and Coping Strategy
9.3 Development of Problem-Focused Coping and Executive
Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.4 Action Regulation and the Emergence of Mental Means
of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.5 Expanding Repertoire of Coping Strategies and Better
Coordination with Demands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.6 “Mental” Participation of Social Partners and Coping

Coaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.7 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System
during Middle Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 Development of Coping during Adolescence: Heightened
Reactivity, Pro-active Regulation, and Increased Coping
Flexibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.1 Enhanced Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity:
Recalibrating Neurophysiological Systems. . . . . . . . . . .
10.2 Development of Appraisals: Affective Theory of Mind
and a Two-Level Emotion Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.3 Development of Regulatory Capacity: Changing Balance
among Multiple Subsystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10.4 Emergence and Integration of Meta-capacities in Coping
10.5 Changing Role of Social Partners as Proactive
Monitoring and Dependable Backup Systems . . . . . . . .
10.6 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System
during Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . 163
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. . . . . 203
. . . . . 205


Contents

Part IV

xvii

Foundations of Coping and Its Differential Development

11 Early Adversity, Temperament, Attachment,
and the Differential Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.1 Early Adversity and the Differential Development
of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.1.1 Possible Mechanisms through which Adversity
Shapes Stress Reactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.1.2 Developmentally-Graded Effects of Adversity
on Coping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.1.3 Intervention Implications of Neuroplasticity and
Experience-Dependent Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.2 Temperament and the Differential Development of Coping .
11.2.1 Differential Patterns of Temperamental Dimensions
11.2.2 Balance and Regulation of the Defensive
and Appetitive Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.3 Attachment Relationships and the Differential

Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11.3.1 Caregiving and the Development of Coping . . . . .
11.3.2 Qualities of Attachment and the Differential
Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12 Parenting, Family Stress, Developmental Cascades,
and the Differential Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.1 Parent–Child Relationships and the Differential
Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.1.1 Dimensions of Parenting and Children’s Coping . .
12.1.2 A Systems View on Parenting and Children’s
Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.1.3 Goals of Parenting and the Differential
Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2 The Stress of Caregiving: Stressful Family Systems
and the Differential Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . .
12.2.1 Stressful Family Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.3 Cascades in the Differential Development of Coping . . . . .
12.3.1 Maladaptive Coping as a Marker
of Developmental Difficulties. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.3.2 Internal Dynamics Can Amplify Maladaptive
Patterns of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.3.3 Maladaptive Coping as an Active “Trouble Maker”
in Developmental Cascades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
12.3.4 Self-righting Tendencies in Developmental
Cascades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . 215
. . . 216
. . . 218
. . . 222

. . . 225
. . . 226
. . . 227
. . . 231
. . . 232
. . . 232
. . . 234
. . . 239
. . . 239
. . . 242
. . . 244
. . . 249
. . . 250
. . . 253
. . . 255
. . . 257
. . . 258
. . . 260
. . . 260


xviii

13 Conclusion: Goals and Strategies for Studying the Development
of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.1 Surfacing and Consolidating Key Themes
in the Development of Coping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.1.1 Qualitative Shifts in the Development
of the Coping System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.1.2 Multiple Pathways in the Development of Coping . .

13.2 Future Study of the Development of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.3 Three Closing Ideas about Lines of Sight into
the Development of Coping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.3.1 The Dangers and Safeguards in Developing
a System of Coping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13.3.2 The Origami of Coping’s Development. . . . . . . . . .
13.3.3 The Place and Purpose of the Study of Coping . . . .
13.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Contents

. . 263
. . 264
. . 265
. . 268
. . 271
. . 273
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

274
278
282

285

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329


About the Authors

Ellen A. Skinner Ph.D. is a leading expert on the development of children's
motivation, coping, and academic identity in school. She is a professor in the
Psychology Department at Portland State University, in Portland Oregon. As part
of the Psychology Department’s concentration in Developmental Science and
Education, her research explores ways to promote students' constructive coping,
ongoing classroom engagement (marked by hard work, interest, and enthusiasm),
and perseverance in the face of obstacles and setbacks. She is especially focused on
two ingredients that shape motivational resilience: (1) close relationships with
teachers, parents, and peers, and (2) academic work that is authentic and intrinsically motivating.
Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck Ph.D. is a leading expert on social relationships,
stress and coping, and autonomy and identity during adolescence. She is a professor
in the School of Applied Psychology and Menzies Health Institute of Queensland,
at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. She also directs The Family
Interaction Program, a center that develops, pilots, evaluates, and disseminates
innovative programs for children, adolescents, and families, focusing especially on
building family supports for children aged 1 to 12. Her broad range of research
interests and funded projects include parent-infant attachment, stress and other
important family issues, adolescent development as associated with couple (dating),
peer and family relationships, adolescent sexual behavior and sexuality, the
development of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral regulation, interpersonal
rejection and sensitivity to rejection, and appearance-related concerns.

xix


Part I

Constructing “Developmentally-Friendly”
Conceptualizations of Coping


Chapter 1

Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

Because of its “bewildering richness” (Pearlin and Schooler 1978, p. 4), coping has
always been a challenging phenomenon to conceptualize. Coping incorporates
stress physiology and temperament, and involves the coordination of emotion,
behavior, attention, motivation, and cognition. Hundreds of ways of coping have
been studied. Individual attributes, relationships, and social contexts influence how
coping unfolds. Families, peers, neighborhoods, and schools present demands and
act as filters for resources and stressors, forming back-up systems that protect
children and adolescents (or leave them vulnerable) while their coping capacities
are developing. Children’s coping, in turn, influences the reactions of social partners and contributes to the accumulation of short-term resources and liabilities.
Coping is part of an iterative process that both reflects and contributes to the
development of mental and physical health and disorder.
Despite this complexity, however, coping, at its heart, is a process of adaptation,
“adaptation under relatively difficult circumstances” (White 1974, p. 49).
Adaptation is, of course, something that living systems do in interaction with their
environments. And the function of coping is to help organisms deal with transactions with the environment that tax or exceed their resources (Lazarus and Folkman
1984), that can’t be dealt with “in a purely mechanical or habitual way” (White
1974, p. 49). Typically, when a living system is challenged, threatened, or harmed,

it “fights back,” attempting to resist personal damage and struggling to remain
intact. That is coping. But because it is a living system, the object of these extensive
re-balancing processes is not merely to fend off harm and maintain homeostasis. It
also strives to reach its proximal goals and to use exchanges with the environment
as a source of growth and development. That is coping, too.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
E.A. Skinner and M.J. Zimmer-Gembeck, The Development of Coping,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41740-0_1

3


4

1.1

1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

Coping as a Fundamental Adaptive Process

A view that ties coping back to its most basic function as a set of fundamental
adaptive processes has implications for its conceptualization: Coping is a system
that comprises transactions with the social and physical environments; the consequences of coping are not limited to the resolution of stressful episodes, but accrue
in the health, development, and survival of individuals, relationships, and groups;
and coping incorporates evolution-based species general innate structures or stress
physiology. Moreover, it implies that “ways of coping” are not simply lists of
things people can do in times of trouble. Instead, their taxonomy should reflect
basic sets of adaptational processes and should help differentiate the effects of stress
on functioning and adaptation. Finally, it focuses coping on “action” as the unit of

study. Other facets of coping, such as emotions, appraisals, and motivations, can be
designated as adaptive or maladaptive only after considering how they influence
action. Actions are the means by which individuals interact with the environment,
and it is to actions that social and physical environments respond.
Capacities of the coping system. The core questions of a theory of coping focus
on what is needed for “successful” transactions with a challenging or threatening
environment. Since its goal is to detect and respond to danger, a coping system
needs several capacities: First, it needs to monitor and detect threats and problems,
and secure clear and accurate information (White 1974). Second, it needs to calibrate its responses to actual issues: Under-reactions based on ignorance or denial
can render the system vulnerable to attack, but over-reactions based on panic or fear
can use up needed resources and lead to exhaustion (Williams 2010). Third, the
system needs to maintain its internal organization (White 1974), that is, its composure or equanimity, so that it has full access to accurate information about its
internal states and resources: emotions, cognitions, motivations, energy level,
capabilities, strategies, and especially its own genuine priorities and commitments.
Fourth, the coping system needs the capacity to act in concert with external and
internal conditions, that is, the self-discipline, skill, and will to do what is needed
and to do its part in dealing with stressors. Fifth, it needs the capacity to access and
benefit from additional resources, both social and material, when environmental
demands overwhelm its own resources. Sixth, it needs the capacity to flexibly adjust
actions as conditions on the ground change, to recover from setbacks, and keep its
options open (White 1974). Seventh, it needs to do all this as automatically as it
can, with as little energy as possible, in order to preserve resources. And finally, the
system needs to remember and learn from past stressful transactions, so as to act
more effectively in present circumstances and also to anticipate and prevent
problems in the future.
Developmental potentials of the coping system. It is clear that newborns come
with rudimentary equipment to detect and respond to threats. In fact, it could be
argued that an important function of the sensory system is detection of threats, and
an important function of the motor system is responding to them. At the same time,
the limitations of both these systems are also apparent: Although newborns never

1.1 Coping as a Fundamental Adaptive Process

5

Table 1.1 Developmental potentials of the coping system
Coping system that can
1. increasingly monitor and appropriately appraise more (current and future) demands using its
own and other’s “radar”;
2. maintain composure under higher levels of appraised threat with more capacity to withstand
multiple demands and better “fallbacks”;
3. respond increasingly in measured socially competent ways that reflect integration of ongoing
emotional, attentional, and motivational reactions;
4. more flexibly adjust actions to meet changing environmental demands without losing sight of
genuine priorities;
5. recover more quickly from setbacks; and
6. take more away from stressful encounters, learning how to prevent and deal with future
challenges and how to deploy coping in line with future goals.
Note: From Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck (2007), p. 136

fret about the future, their detection of problems is so late in the point of attack that
it is not possible for them to prepare for or escape stressors; and although infants’
response systems are loud, they are not very effective in actually changing anything
about most environmental stressors. Hence, a great deal of development is needed
for the coping system of a newborn to reach its full developmental potential.
At the most general level, a developmental theory of coping would describe and
explain how this is accomplished. It would describe the steps people take toward (or
away from) a coping system that realizes its developmental potential. As we tried to
make clear in our earlier work (Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2007),

These developmental potentials depict a system that can increasingly monitor and appropriately appraise more (current and future) demands using its own and other’s “radar;”
maintain composure under higher levels of appraised threat with more capacity to withstand
multiple demands and better “fallbacks”; respond increasingly in measured socially competent ways that reflect integration of ongoing emotional, attentional, and motivational
reactions; more flexibly adjust actions to meet changing environmental demands without
losing sight of genuine priorities; recover more quickly from setbacks; and at the same time
take more away from stressful encounters, learning how to prevent and deal with future
challenges and how to deploy coping in line with future goals (p. 136).

Theses capacities are summarized in Table 1.1. But before we describe the kinds of
developmental conceptualizations that have been constructed to frame this empirical endeavor, we provide a brief overview of current conceptualizations of coping
and critique their utility for the developmental study of coping.

1.1.1

Overview of Conceptualizations of Coping
and a Focus on Individual Differences

Given its complexity, it is not surprising that coping has been studied under many
incarnations—ones that typically acknowledge the role of coping in adaptation, but
often highlight its other features more emphatically. Since its appearance in


6

1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

mainstream psychology as an explicit concept, coping has been defined as an
indicator of competence, a specific person–context transaction, personality in action
under stress, a repertoire of strategies, a function of emotion, an outcome of temperament, an expression of stress physiology, and a quality of action regulation.
(For historical overviews, see Aldwin 2007; Lazarus 1993; Lazarus and Folkman

1984; Murphy 1974; Parker and Endler 1996; Snyder 1999.)
Current conceptualizations in adulthood have their early roots in the psychological and medical literatures, which introduced key ideas that shaped the field
long before “coping” first appeared as a term in Psychological Abstracts in 1967. Its
early forerunners in psychoanalytic work on defenses (Freud 1894/1962) influenced
several generations of ego psychologists (Haan 1977; Valliant 1986; see Cramer
1998), who viewed coping as part of a taxonomy of ego processes. From this work,
current conceptualizations have incorporated the idea that coping occurs not only in
response to environmental demands, but also in reaction to intrapsychic pressures;
that some modes of adaptation are unintentional or even unconscious; and that the
ego (or self) and its regulatory functions are central to processes of coping.
A second strand of work on coping emerged from research on stress, a concept
prominent in the health and social sciences since the early 1930s. Notions of coping
surfaced as part of the recognition that exposure to toxins did not lead in any linear
fashion to specific psychological or somatic outcomes. Living organisms display
“host resistance” to the effects of stress. From this work, current conceptualizations
have incorporated the importance of considering the stressors or specific demands
with which an individual is actually dealing; the idea of the active individual; and
the view that coping is a process that stands between stressful life events and their
consequences for mental and physical health and functioning.
The study of coping during childhood has its own historical roots in child
psychologists’ long-standing interest in the impact of stress on children, starting in
the early 1900s with attempts to document the effects of, for example, maternal
deprivation, hospitalization, serious illness, and exposure to wartime conditions, as
well as more recent attention to the effects of poverty, parental unemployment,
divorce, and maternal physical and mental illness. However, the field of coping in
childhood and adolescence began in earnest in the 1980s with the publication of
two seminal works: the volume Stress, Coping, and Development edited by
Garmezy and Rutter (1983) and the Psychological Bulletin paper by Bruce Compas,
entitled “Coping with Stress during Childhood and Adolescence” (1987). These
publications made clear that coping is an inherently social enterprise; that it is built

on stress physiology and temperament; and that its study permeates a range of
topics considered by researchers of child and adolescent development.
Transactional models of coping. Today, transactional conceptualizations
dominate the field of stress and coping during adulthood (Aldwin 2007). In these
approaches, coping is defined as “constantly changing cognitive and behavioral
efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as
taxing or exceeding the resources of the person” (Lazarus and Folkman 1984,
p. 141). Because these conceptualizations arose partly as a reaction to definitions of
coping as an outcome of personality processes ordered along a hierarchy of ego


1.1 Coping as a Fundamental Adaptive Process

7

maturity, transactional perspectives emphasize the importance of the actual demands
a person is facing, and the impossibility of judging a priori which coping strategies
are adaptive, without knowing the context and the social and personal resources
available. They focus especially on the individual’s appraisal of the significance and
meaning of the stressful encounter. Coping is viewed as a process, taking place in
cycles, iterations, or episodes that unfold over time (Folkman and Lazarus 1985).
A transactional perspective specifies the essential elements of a conceptualization
of coping as an episodic process (see Fig. 1.1) and has guided much of the research
on coping in childhood over the last 30 years. Following work with adults, the vast
majority of this research focuses on individual differences in each of the links in the
coping process. A wide variety of ways of coping have been considered—including
problem-solving, support-seeking, escape, rumination, focus on the positive, distraction, negotiation, direct action, social withdrawal, helplessness—that have been
assessed using a number of methodologies, most commonly open-ended interviews,
observations, reports from parents or teachers, and, for older children and adolescents, self-report questionnaires. Studies have examined how the different ways of
coping are connected to a variety of outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, externalizing behavior, and adjustment, in an attempt to identify adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies (Compas et al. 2001). Complementary studies examine the

predictors or antecedents of different ways of coping, focusing on both individual
characteristics (such as self-efficacy, optimism, or perceptions of the availability of
social support) and characteristics of the social context (such as parental warmth,
provision of instrumental aid, or emotional comfort).
Individual differences in coping. Much has been learned from these decades of
research on individual differences and correlates of coping. Certain ways of coping,
such as problem-solving, effort exertion, negotiation, and focus on the positive,
seem to be “adaptive” in that they are linked with indicators of mental health and
functioning. In contrast, certain ways of dealing with stress, such as escape,
avoidance, rumination, or venting, seem to be maladaptive in that they are associated with mental distress, disorder, and poor functioning. The jury is still out
about other ways of coping, such as help-seeking, support-seeking, secondary
control, and emotion-focused coping, which are inconsistent in their connections to
outcomes. A number of individual and social resources for coping have also been
Fig. 1.1 Coping depicted as
a transactional process of
appraising and dealing with
demands

Personal Resources

STRESS

APPRAISAL

COPING

Social Resources

OUTCOME

8

1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

identified, chief among them intelligence, sociability, perceived control, and social
support from parents, teachers, and peers.

1.1.2

Multi-level Integrative Systems Frameworks:
Coping, Regulation, and Resilience

As productive as these conceptualizations have been for the study of individual
differences during adulthood, taken by themselves, they have turned out to be a
dead end for the study of the development coping during infancy, childhood, and
adolescence (Compas 1998; Coping Consortium 1998; Skinner and Edge 1998).
The focus during adulthood on individual differences, cognitive appraisals, and lists
of ways people respond to challenges and threats, on the one hand, alternating with
the examination of stable personality characteristics, traits, and coping styles, on the
other hand, do not seem to provide much guidance for developmentalists, who are
interested in studying the kinds of involuntary reactions to stress evinced by
newborns, and understanding how these are transformed across childhood and
adolescence; how children accomplish the enormous qualitative shifts in dealing
with challenges and threats that are so apparent not only over the first year of life,
but also by the time a child starts preschool at age 3, enters puberty at age 12, or
leaves home at age 18.
To make progress on a developmental agenda for the study of coping,
“developmentally-friendly” conceptualizations were needed (Coping Consortium
1998). By “developmentally-friendly,” we mean definitions that tie coping back to

its roots as a fundamental adaptive process and that make clear the reciprocal
relationship between coping and development. Such a conceptualization needs to
provide entry points for determining how development influences coping, that is,
how coping is shaped, not only by individual differences, but also by a child or
adolescent’s past experiences, current developmental organization, and ongoing
normative developmental changes. And in turn, it needs to show how coping
influences development, that is, it needs to explain how the processes through
which children and adolescents adapt to stress, master challenge, and deal with
failure cumulatively shape their development, for better or for worse. Overall, it
needs to create a framework broad enough to recognize “coping” at birth and to
connect it to homologous and emergent processes across the lifespan.
Over the last 15 years, developmentalists have converged on a multi-level
integrative systems framework that integrates the prototypical view of coping as an
episodic process, with work on resilience and on regulation (Coping Consortium
1998; Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2007, 2009). According to this framework,
which draws from closely related lifespan developmental (Baltes et al. 1998),
dynamic systems (Ford and Lerner 1992), contextual-ecological (Bronfenbrenner
and Morris 2006), and action (Brandtstädter 2006) perspectives, development
emerges from the confluence of processes ranging from genetic and physiological
to societal. Dynamic systems views point out that it is the ongoing recursive