The development of coping

Stress, Risk, and Resilience The study of coping during childhood and adolescence, which is the focus of thisbook, is one of many rich traditions that explore how profiles of stressors, b

Stress, Neurophysiology, Social

Relationships, and Resilience During Childhood and Adolescence

Ellen A Skinner • Melanie J Zimmer-Gembeck

The Development of Coping

Stress, Neurophysiology,

Social Relationships, and Resilience

During Childhood and Adolescence

123

Portland State University

Portland, OR

USA

Griffith UniversitySouthport, QLDAustralia

ISBN 978-3-319-41738-7 ISBN 978-3-319-41740-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41740-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943795

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

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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

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 andfilms, thelives of children and adolescents arefilled with problems, challenges, and demands.Some are seemingly minor daily hassles, such as teasing in the lunchroom about thechoice of sandwich, an argument between sisters over a television show, or disap-pointment at not making the soccer team Some challenges represent normativedemands, 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 lenging life stresses, such as when their parents argue or divorce, or when they enter

chal-a new school without chal-any friends Chronic stressors often stem from chal-a child’s oradolescent’s larger family circumstances, for example, when a parent drinks toomuch, a sibling is diagnosed with cancer, or the extended family lives in a dangerousneighborhood Children and youth also have a hand in creating their own stressors—

by pickingfights, skipping school, or drinking and driving Children are also thevictims of traumatic insults, when parents die or are abusive, when gang violencekills a friend, or when natural disaster wipes out a neighborhood or village Aspointed 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 thisbook, is one of many rich traditions that explore how profiles of stressors, bothacute and chronic, cumulatively shape children’s pathways through life At the

vii

highest level, work on risk and resilience contrasts stress-affected children, whoshow the typical long-term negative effects of significant life adversity, with chil-dren who are resilient, who show positive adaptation in the face of negative lifeevents (Cicchetti and Rogosch 2009; Masten 2001) Starting in the 1960s, resilienceresearchers have painted a compelling big picture, expanding on psychologicalframeworks that emphasized individual-level characteristics, to their current focus

on multi-level systems perspectives that include larger societal forces, like povertyand privilege, as well as factors from the neighborhood, family, school, and peergroup (Masten 2006; Werner 1993), and, most recently, that incorporate factorsfrom multiple levels of physiology and genetics as well (Luthar 2006; Lynch andCicchetti 1998; Rutter 2002) Of special interest is the identification of protectivefactors that can buffer children’s long-term mental and physical health and func-tioning when they are exposed to potentially harmful conditions

The effects of stress are also studied in more detail by researchers who useobservational and psychophysiological techniques in the laboratory to capturechildren’s reactions to a wide variety of mild stressors Researchers examineinfants’ and toddlers’ responses to gentle arm restraint, short separations fromcaregivers, 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 ostensiblyknocks down their block creations, or to tell interviewers how they make them-selves feel better when they are feeling sad Adolescents play computer games withuncooperative peers, discuss controversial potentially conflictual topics with theirparents, or are observed interacting with their friends during competition Some

of these same kinds of stressors are followed outside of the laboratory in children’sdaily lives, for example, by examining reactions to inoculations, provocations onthe playground, failure on tests, or parents’ requests for help with household chores.Adolescents are asked to complete daily diaries about the stressful events theyencounter and their responses to them For many researchers, a particular focus isthe analysis of subsystems (e.g., neuroanatomical, hormonal, attentional, andcognitive) that are directly affected by stress and that also potentially shape theeffects 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 andfascinating work At the most general level, coping focuses on how people detect,appraise, react to, and deal with the actual demands, stressors, and obstacles theyencounter in their daily lives The goal of research on coping is to provide detaileddescriptions of these processes and to specify how they work together to shape eachother reciprocally over the course of a coping episode, and cumulatively how theycontribute to physical and psychological health or disorder For example, research

analyzes how the characteristics of a stressor, such as its severity, chronicity, andcontrollability, influence how people react to, perceive, and cope with it Studiestarget people’s appraisals of a stressful event, that is, their take on whether it is achallenge or threat, and whether they can do anything to evade or counteract it, andthen examine how such appraisals influence individuals’ physiological and psy-chological reactions to it and constrain their choices about how to cope with it.Good empirical work also considers how the social and personal resourcesavailable to people, and the higher-order social contexts in which they live, play arole in the number and kinds of stressors that reach them, how they perceive thoseevents, and the ways they can cope with them Interventionists are especiallyinterested in examining the consequences of different ways of coping, that is,whether problem-solving, support-seeking, escape, rumination, and so on areeffective in ameliorating emotional distress and resolving the stressor, or whetherthey make things worse, either today or in the future Rare process-oriented studiesscrutinize the unfolding of coping episodes (with their feedback loops) over daysand weeks, sometimes even marking transition points that punctuate this process,such as diagnosis, treatment, and relapse when dealing with a stressful medicalcondition.

For those interested in the effects of stress and adversity on human functioningand 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 focusesattention on how people actually resist, accommodate, or succumb to their effects

In studying people under stress, coping represents a marker for how the entire stressreactivity system is functioning, including social and contextual factors At thesame 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 itcontacts Coping depicts one of the processes that mediate between adversity andadaptation, and because it is distinguished by its focus on actual stressfulencounters and “everyday resilience,” it provides researchers with a possiblemechanism that can help to explain how, why, and for whom adversity translatesinto adaptive or maladaptive short- and long-term sequelae As such, coping alsorepresents a possible intervention lever to improve developmental outcomes

Development and Coping

No one would argue with the assertion that development shapes every part of thecoping 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 nottypically pressured into taking naps Development influences how stressors areappraised: A mother packing a suitcase does not worry a newborn, and a whirlingtop does not worry a 10-year-old It decisively constrains the ways that people cancope: The prototypical way of escaping, that is, by leaving the stressful encounter,

cannot be accomplished until an infant can locomote, and the prototypical way ofseeking information, that is, by asking a question, cannot be accomplished until aninfant can talk The way that social partners participate in coping episodes alsodiffers across development: Parents do not help their college-age children with ademanding school project the same way they help their first graders, and aneight-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 ofresearch on the development of coping exists today Instead, thefield as a whole hasresponded to the tacit recognition that development shapes everything about coping

by dividing theories and research into narrow age-graded bands One group ofresearchers studies the coping of preschoolers, another studies the coping of

“middle-aged” children, yet another studies adolescents Researchers focusing onhow infants and young children react to and deal with stressful encounters rarelyrefer to their topic as“coping”; they are studying emotion regulation, stress reac-tivity, or temperament In fact, each of the ways of responding to stress, such asproblem-solving, rumination, helplessness, help-seeking, or opposition, has its ownresearch tradition, largely focused on the specific ages when that particular way ofcoping is most salient

Researchers studying children and adolescents have generally adopted tualizations of coping from work on adults, and at each age, they focus largely onindividual differences, looking at the personal and social factors that contribute tostress responses, and examining how different responses are in turn connected topositive and negative consequences However, if studies focus only on individualdifferences, researchers can overemphasize individual-centric “coping-style” psy-chology—like some of the ego psychologists of the 1960s and 1970s or some of thepersonality psychologists and neuroscientists of today—who seem to assume thatneurological factors, like high stress reactivity, and individual factors, like opti-mism, are immutable characteristics that determine coping now and will continue to

concep-do so in the future Or, investigators can overemphasize the opposite side of thecoin, as embodied by some of the work on coping in adulthood today, assumingthat all coping is a temporary installation, created de novo on the basis ofmomentary circumstances andfleeting 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 keyassumptions First, it holds that an organism always brings selected parts of itshistory with it into the present, and this developmental signature can help usunderstand essential things about what the organismfinds stressful, how strongly itreacts, what it is capable of pulling together in response, and what it takes awayfrom the encounter Second, a developmental perspective holds that this historicaltrace is brought to bear in a dynamic present What went before constrains andscaffolds future development, but is not deterministic: It is combined with current

conditions to create new integrations and reorganizations that can never be fullypredicted by initial conditions In other words, although researchers can take asnapshot 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 ofcoping from infancy to emerging adulthood and to begin to build conceptual andempirical bridges between coping, on the one hand, and the development of reg-ulation and resilience, on the other In order to integrate research on age differencesand changes in coping, and to explain why this is such a challenging task, Part Ilays out a“developmentally-friendly” framework for the study of coping Chapter1

provides a brief outline of the history of conceptualizations of coping, as well as acritique of the current state of thefield, emphasizing recent work that defines coping

as“action regulation under stress.” Chapter2provides an overview of the“buildingblocks” of the field, or ways of coping, along with a critique of the current state

of thefield, and a summary of recent work on hierarchical families of coping, whichhave allowed developmentally-graded members of those families to be identified.This chapter also analyzes thefield’s struggles to agree on which ways of copingare“good news” and “bad news,” and to examine how a developmental perspectivecan suggest criteria for making this determination

The foundational issues covered in thisfirst section are prelude to the next threesections, which explore more deeply how coping develops normatively from birththrough emerging adulthood and how problems in the subsystems that underlie orscaffold coping can predispose children to the development of psychological andbehavioral difficulties More specifically, Part II reviews and integrates currentresearch on the development of coping: Chapter 3 summarizes studies on agedifferences and changes in ways of coping across childhood and adolescence andbegins to integrate these age trends Chapter 4 outlines the neurophysiologicaldevelopments that likely underlie age changes in stress and coping Part III, in manyways the heart of the book, outlines a theory of the normative development ofcoping in the context of developing relationships, especially with caregivers.Chapters5through10each focus on a specific developmental period and borrowfrom research on the development of many different forms of regulation to sketch apicture of how these might work together as subsystems that accumulate devel-opmentally to shape age-graded shifts in stress reactions and coping, as they unfoldwithin the interpersonal relationships provided by caregivers

Part IV, in Chaps.11 and 12, reviews research on how early adversity, perament, attachment, parenting, and family stress may not only undermine thedevelopment of adaptive coping, but also lead individuals to rely more heavily onmaladaptive coping strategies, and reviews evidence that, in combination, thesemay be the foundations for diverging developmental cascades toward risk orresilience Chapters in Part IV also consider how the different ways these qualitative

tem-transitions are resolved may place children and adolescents at risk for the opment of psychopathology or may allow them to build personal and socialresources to cope more constructively with future challenges We end with afinalchapter that summarizes key themes in the book, outlines some suggestions forstrategies that may be useful in making progress on the further study of coping, andattempts to articulate three big lessons we learned while writing the book—aboutwhat it means to try to understand the development of coping.

Part I Constructing “Developmentally-Friendly”

Conceptualizations of Coping

1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress 3

1.1 Coping as a Fundamental Adaptive Process 4

1.1.1 Overview of Conceptualizations of Coping and a Focus on Individual Differences 5

1.1.2 Multi-level Integrative Systems Frameworks: Coping, Regulation, and Resilience 8

1.2 Developmentally-Friendly Conceptualizations of Coping 12

1.2.1 Coping as Regulation under Stress 12

1.2.2 Coping and Emotion Regulation 14

1.2.3 Action and Action Theories 15

1.2.4 The Nature of Regulation 17

1.2.5 Coping Is Built on Action Tendencies 19

1.2.6 Stress and Regulation 21

1.3 Summary of Developmental Conceptualizations of Coping 24

2 Ways and Families of Coping as Adaptive Processes 27

2.1 The Structure of Coping 28

2.1.1 Lower-Order Ways of Coping 30

2.1.2 Higher-Order Dimensions and Categories of Coping 31

2.1.3 Families of Coping as Serving Adaptive Functions 34

2.2 “Good News” and “Bad News” Ways of Coping 41

2.2.1 Developmentally Adaptive Families of Coping 42

2.2.2 The Balance Between Challenge and Threat 44

2.2.3 Good News Families of Coping 46

2.3 Summary of Ways and Families of Coping 48

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Part II Review of Research on the Development

of Stress Reactivity and Ways of Coping

3 Age Differences and Changes in Ways of Coping across

Childhood and Adolescence 533.1 Looking for Qualitative Shifts in Coping across

Childhood and Adolescence 543.2 Age Differences and Changes in Each of the Coping

Families 563.3 Beyond Quantitative Changes in Mean Levels

of Individual Ways of Coping 603.4 Summary of Age Differences and Changes in Ways

of Coping 62

4 Neurophysiological Developments that underlie Age-related

Changes in Coping 634.1 Neuroanatomical Systems involved in Stress Reactivity,

Regulation, and Coping 634.1.1 Neurophysiology of Stressful Encounters 644.1.2 Stress Reactivity and Regulation as Complex

Dynamic Systems 724.2 The Assessment of Neurophysiological Structure

and Function 744.3 The Development of the Multi-level Neurophysiological

Systems that Underlie Coping 774.3.1 Development of the Neurophysiology of Stress

Reactivity, Threat Detection, and Coping 794.3.2 Development of the Neurophysiology

of Regulation and Coping 864.4 Summary of the Development of the Neurophysiological

Systems Underlying Coping 91Part III Normative Development of Adaptive Coping within the

Context of Relationships with Caregivers

5 Development of“Coping” in Newborns: Neurophysiological

Stress Reactivity and“External Coping” via the Caregiver 1035.1 Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity: Development

of Neurophysiological Subsystems 1045.2 Attachment, the Development of“External” Coping,

and the Omnibus Coping Strategy of“Proximity Seeking” 1075.3 Development of a Neurophysiological System

that Responds to“External Coping” by the Caregiver 108

5.4 Social Tuning of the Neurophysiological Stress

Reactivity and Recovery System 1105.5 The Emergence of a Hierarchy of Reactivity, Regulatory,

and Coping Processes 1125.6 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System

during the Neonatal Period 113

6 Development of Coping during Infancy: Implicit Appraisals,

Intentional Action Regulation, and Co-regulated

Coping Systems 1156.1 Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity: Emergence

of Appraisal Systems that Increasingly Guide Action

Readiness 1166.2 Action Regulation: Development of Intentionality

and Goal-Directed Coping 1196.3 Changing Role of Social Partners: Development

of a Co-regulatory Coping System 1226.4 Development of Stress Resistance and Stress Resilience 1246.5 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System

during Infancy 128

7 Development of Coping during Toddlerhood: Explicit

Appraisals, Emotional Action Regulation, and Cooperative

Coping Systems 1297.1 Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity: Explicit

Appraisals of Threat and Challenge 1307.2 Action Regulation: From Emotional Action Regulation

to Self-awareness in Coping 1337.3 Changing Role of Social Partners: Emotion Socialization

and Coping “Coaching” 1367.4 Shared Intentionality and the Emergence of a Cooperative

Coping System 1387.5 Reorganization of the Coping System during Toddlerhood 1397.6 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System

during Toddlerhood 141

8 Development of Coping during Early Childhood: Inferential

Appraisals, Voluntary Action Regulation, and Individual Coping

Systems 1438.1 Threat Detection and Appraisal: Incorporating Emotion

Understanding and Theory of Mind 1448.2 Regulatory Subsystems: Development of Attention

Networks and Coping 1478.3 Emergence of Voluntary Self-regulation and Coping 151

8.4 Integration of Appraisal and Regulation: Development

of Understanding and Control 1548.5 Development of Voluntary Action Regulation

and the Emergence of Intrapersonal Coping 1558.6 Development of Conscience and the Emergence

of Autonomous Coping 1568.7 Changing Role of Social Partners: Development

of Intrapersonal Coping 1588.8 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System

during Early Childhood 160

9 Development of Coping during Middle Childhood: Cognitive

Reappraisal, Mental Modes of Coping, and Coordination

with Demands 1639.1 Threat Detection and Appraisal: Emotional Understanding

and Intentional Regulation of Stressful Experiences 1649.2 Reappraisal as an Emotion Regulation and Coping Strategy 1689.3 Development of Problem-Focused Coping and Executive

Functions 1719.4 Action Regulation and the Emergence of Mental Means

of Coping 1769.5 Expanding Repertoire of Coping Strategies and Better

Coordination with Demands 1799.6 “Mental” Participation of Social Partners and Coping

Coaching 1819.7 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System

during Middle Childhood 182

10 Development of Coping during Adolescence: Heightened

Reactivity, Pro-active Regulation, and Increased Coping

Flexibility 18510.1 Enhanced Threat Detection and Stress Reactivity:

Recalibrating Neurophysiological Systems 18710.2 Development of Appraisals: Affective Theory of Mind

and a Two-Level Emotion Theory 18910.3 Development of Regulatory Capacity: Changing Balance

among Multiple Subsystems 19210.4 Emergence and Integration of Meta-capacities in Coping 20010.5 Changing Role of Social Partners as Proactive

Monitoring and Dependable Backup Systems 20310.6 Summary of Transformations of the Coping System

during Adolescence 205

Part IV Foundations of Coping and Its Differential Development

11 Early Adversity, Temperament, Attachment,

and the Differential Development of Coping 21511.1 Early Adversity and the Differential Development

of Coping 21611.1.1 Possible Mechanisms through which Adversity

Shapes Stress Reactivity 21811.1.2 Developmentally-Graded Effects of Adversity

on Coping 22211.1.3 Intervention Implications of Neuroplasticity and

Experience-Dependent Effects 22511.2 Temperament and the Differential Development of Coping 22611.2.1 Differential Patterns of Temperamental Dimensions 22711.2.2 Balance and Regulation of the Defensive

and Appetitive Systems 23111.3 Attachment Relationships and the Differential

Development of Coping 23211.3.1 Caregiving and the Development of Coping 23211.3.2 Qualities of Attachment and the Differential

Development of Coping 234

12 Parenting, Family Stress, Developmental Cascades,

and the Differential Development of Coping 23912.1 Parent–Child Relationships and the Differential

Development of Coping 23912.1.1 Dimensions of Parenting and Children’s Coping 24212.1.2 A Systems View on Parenting and Children’s

Coping 24412.1.3 Goals of Parenting and the Differential

Development of Coping 24912.2 The Stress of Caregiving: Stressful Family Systems

and the Differential Development of Coping 25012.2.1 Stressful Family Systems 25312.3 Cascades in the Differential Development of Coping 25512.3.1 Maladaptive Coping as a Marker

of Developmental Difficulties 25712.3.2 Internal Dynamics Can Amplify Maladaptive

Patterns of Coping 25812.3.3 Maladaptive Coping as an Active“Trouble Maker”

in Developmental Cascades 26012.3.4 Self-righting Tendencies in Developmental

Cascades 260

13 Conclusion: Goals and Strategies for Studying the Development

of Coping 263

13.1 Surfacing and Consolidating Key Themes in the Development of Coping 264

13.1.1 Qualitative Shifts in the Development of the Coping System 265

13.1.2 Multiple Pathways in the Development of Coping 268

13.2 Future Study of the Development of Coping 271

13.3 Three Closing Ideas about Lines of Sight into the Development of Coping 273

13.3.1 The Dangers and Safeguards in Developing a System of Coping 274

13.3.2 The Origami of Coping’s Development 278

13.3.3 The Place and Purpose of the Study of Coping 282

13.4 Conclusion 285

References 287

Index 329

Ellen A Skinner Ph.D is a leading expert on the development of children'smotivation, coping, and academic identity in school She is a professor in thePsychology Department at Portland State University, in Portland Oregon As part

of the Psychology Department’s concentration in Developmental Science andEducation, 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 ontwo ingredients that shape motivational resilience: (1) close relationships withteachers, parents, and peers, and (2) academic work that is authentic and intrinsi-cally 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 FamilyInteraction Program, a center that develops, pilots, evaluates, and disseminatesinnovative programs for children, adolescents, and families, focusing especially onbuilding family supports for children aged 1 to 12 Her broad range of researchinterests and funded projects include parent-infant attachment, stress and otherimportant family issues, adolescent development as associated with couple (dating),peer and family relationships, adolescent sexual behavior and sexuality, thedevelopment of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral regulation, interpersonalrejection and sensitivity to rejection, and appearance-related concerns

xix

Part I

Constructing “Developmentally-Friendly”

Conceptualizations of Coping

Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

Because of its“bewildering richness” (Pearlin and Schooler 1978, p 4), coping hasalways been a challenging phenomenon to conceptualize Coping incorporatesstress physiology and temperament, and involves the coordination of emotion,behavior, attention, motivation, and cognition Hundreds of ways of coping havebeen studied Individual attributes, relationships, and social contexts influence howcoping unfolds Families, peers, neighborhoods, and schools present demands andact as filters for resources and stressors, forming back-up systems that protectchildren and adolescents (or leave them vulnerable) while their coping capacitiesare developing Children’s coping, in turn, influences the reactions of social part-ners and contributes to the accumulation of short-term resources and liabilities.Coping is part of an iterative process that both reflects and contributes to thedevelopment 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 theirenvironments And the function of coping is to help organisms deal with transac-tions with the environment that tax or exceed their resources (Lazarus and Folkman1984), 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 remainintact That is coping But because it is a living system, the object of these extensivere-balancing processes is not merely to fend off harm and maintain homeostasis Italso 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

1.1 Coping as a Fundamental Adaptive Process

A view that ties coping back to its most basic function as a set of fundamentaladaptive processes has implications for its conceptualization: Coping is a systemthat comprises transactions with the social and physical environments; the conse-quences 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 stressphysiology Moreover, it implies that “ways of coping” are not simply lists ofthings people can do in times of trouble Instead, their taxonomy should reflectbasic 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 ofstudy Other facets of coping, such as emotions, appraisals, and motivations, can bedesignated as adaptive or maladaptive only after considering how they influenceaction 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 threateningenvironment Since its goal is to detect and respond to danger, a coping systemneeds several capacities: First, it needs to monitor and detect threats and problems,and secure clear and accurate information (White 1974) Second, it needs to cali-brate its responses to actual issues: Under-reactions based on ignorance or denialcan render the system vulnerable to attack, but over-reactions based on panic or fearcan use up needed resources and lead to exhaustion (Williams 2010) Third, thesystem needs to maintain its internal organization (White 1974), that is, its com-posure or equanimity, so that it has full access to accurate information about itsinternal 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 andinternal conditions, that is, the self-discipline, skill, and will to do what is neededand to do its part in dealing with stressors Fifth, it needs the capacity to access andbenefit from additional resources, both social and material, when environmentaldemands overwhelm its own resources Sixth, it needs the capacity toflexibly adjustactions as conditions on the ground change, to recover from setbacks, and keep itsoptions open (White 1974) Seventh, it needs to do all this as automatically as itcan, with as little energy as possible, in order to preserve resources Andfinally, thesystem needs to remember and learn from past stressful transactions, so as to actmore effectively in present circumstances and also to anticipate and preventproblems in the future

Developmental potentials of the coping system It is clear that newborns comewith rudimentary equipment to detect and respond to threats In fact, it could beargued 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

4 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

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 anythingabout most environmental stressors Hence, a great deal of development is neededfor the coping system of a newborn to reach its full developmental potential

At the most general level, a developmental theory of coping would describe andexplain how this is accomplished It would describe the steps people take toward (oraway from) a coping system that realizes its developmental potential As we tried tomake clear in our earlier work (Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2007),

These developmental potentials depict a system that can increasingly monitor and priately 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 com- petent ways that re flect 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).

appro-Theses capacities are summarized in Table1.1 But before we describe the kinds ofdevelopmental conceptualizations that have been constructed to frame this empir-ical endeavor, we provide a brief overview of current conceptualizations of copingand 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 manyincarnations—ones that typically acknowledge the role of coping in adaptation, butoften highlight its other features more emphatically Since its appearance in

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 re flect 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

mainstream psychology as an explicit concept, coping has been defined as anindicator of competence, a specific person–context transaction, personality in actionunder stress, a repertoire of strategies, a function of emotion, an outcome of tem-perament, an expression of stress physiology, and a quality of action regulation.(For historical overviews, see Aldwin 2007; Lazarus 1993; Lazarus and Folkman1984; Murphy 1974; Parker and Endler 1996; Snyder 1999.)

Current conceptualizations in adulthood have their early roots in the logical and medical literatures, which introduced key ideas that shaped the fieldlong before“coping” first appeared as a term in Psychological Abstracts in 1967 Itsearly forerunners in psychoanalytic work on defenses (Freud 1894/1962) influencedseveral generations of ego psychologists (Haan 1977; Valliant 1986; see Cramer1998), 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 inresponse to environmental demands, but also in reaction to intrapsychic pressures;that some modes of adaptation are unintentional or even unconscious; and that theego (or self) and its regulatory functions are central to processes of coping

psycho-A second strand of work on coping emerged from research on stress, a conceptprominent in the health and social sciences since the early 1930s Notions of copingsurfaced as part of the recognition that exposure to toxins did not lead in any linearfashion to specific psychological or somatic outcomes Living organisms display

“host resistance” to the effects of stress From this work, current conceptualizationshave incorporated the importance of considering the stressors or specific demandswith which an individual is actually dealing; the idea of the active individual; andthe view that coping is a process that stands between stressful life events and theirconsequences for mental and physical health and functioning

The study of coping during childhood has its own historical roots in childpsychologists’ long-standing interest in the impact of stress on children, starting inthe early 1900s with attempts to document the effects of, for example, maternaldeprivation, hospitalization, serious illness, and exposure to wartime conditions, aswell as more recent attention to the effects of poverty, parental unemployment,divorce, and maternal physical and mental illness However, thefield of coping inchildhood and adolescence began in earnest in the 1980s with the publication oftwo seminal works: the volume Stress, Coping, and Development edited byGarmezy and Rutter (1983) and the Psychological Bulletin paper by Bruce Compas,entitled “Coping with Stress during Childhood and Adolescence” (1987) Thesepublications 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 oftopics considered by researchers of child and adolescent development

Transactional models of coping Today, transactional conceptualizationsdominate thefield of stress and coping during adulthood (Aldwin 2007) In theseapproaches, coping is defined as “constantly changing cognitive and behavioralefforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised astaxing or exceeding the resources of the person” (Lazarus and Folkman 1984,

p 141) Because these conceptualizations arose partly as a reaction to definitions ofcoping as an outcome of personality processes ordered along a hierarchy of ego

6 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

maturity, transactional perspectives emphasize the importance of the actual demands

a person is facing, and the impossibility of judging a priori which coping strategiesare adaptive, without knowing the context and the social and personal resourcesavailable They focus especially on the individual’s appraisal of the significance andmeaning of the stressful encounter Coping is viewed as a process, taking place incycles, 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 vastmajority of this research focuses on individual differences in each of the links in thecoping process A wide variety of ways of coping have been considered—includingproblem-solving, support-seeking, escape, rumination, focus on the positive, dis-traction, negotiation, direct action, social withdrawal, helplessness—that have beenassessed using a number of methodologies, most commonly open-ended interviews,observations, reports from parents or teachers, and, for older children and adoles-cents, self-report questionnaires Studies have examined how the different ways ofcoping are connected to a variety of outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, exter-nalizing behavior, and adjustment, in an attempt to identify adaptive and maladap-tive coping strategies (Compas et al 2001) Complementary studies examine thepredictors or antecedents of different ways of coping, focusing on both individualcharacteristics (such as self-efficacy, optimism, or perceptions of the availability ofsocial 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 ofresearch 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 andfunctioning In contrast, certain ways of dealing with stress, such as escape,avoidance, rumination, or venting, seem to be maladaptive in that they are asso-ciated with mental distress, disorder, and poor functioning The jury is still outabout other ways of coping, such as help-seeking, support-seeking, secondarycontrol, and emotion-focused coping, which are inconsistent in their connections tooutcomes A number of individual and social resources for coping have also been

Personal Resources

COPING APPRAISAL

identified, chief among them intelligence, sociability, perceived control, and socialsupport 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 individualdifferences during adulthood, taken by themselves, they have turned out to be adead end for the study of the development coping during infancy, childhood, andadolescence (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 withthe examination of stable personality characteristics, traits, and coping styles, on theother hand, do not seem to provide much guidance for developmentalists, who areinterested in studying the kinds of involuntary reactions to stress evinced bynewborns, and understanding how these are transformed across childhood andadolescence; how children accomplish the enormous qualitative shifts in dealingwith challenges and threats that are so apparent not only over thefirst year of life,but also by the time a child starts preschool at age 3, enters puberty at age 12, orleaves home at age 18

To make progress on a developmental agenda for the study of coping,

“developmentally-friendly” conceptualizations were needed (Coping Consortium1998) By“developmentally-friendly,” we mean definitions that tie coping back toits roots as a fundamental adaptive process and that make clear the reciprocalrelationship between coping and development Such a conceptualization needs toprovide entry points for determining how development influences coping, that is,how coping is shaped, not only by individual differences, but also by a child oradolescent’s past experiences, current developmental organization, and ongoingnormative developmental changes And in turn, it needs to show how coping

influences development, that is, it needs to explain how the processes throughwhich children and adolescents adapt to stress, master challenge, and deal withfailure cumulatively shape their development, for better or for worse Overall, itneeds to create a framework broad enough to recognize“coping” at birth and toconnect it to homologous and emergent processes across the lifespan

Over the last 15 years, developmentalists have converged on a multi-levelintegrative systems framework that integrates the prototypical view of coping as anepisodic process, with work on resilience and on regulation (Coping Consortium1998; 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 (Bronfenbrennerand Morris 2006), and action (Brandtstädter 2006) perspectives, developmentemerges from the confluence of processes ranging from genetic and physiological

to societal Dynamic systems views point out that it is the ongoing recursive

8 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

interactions among subsystems that produce the patterning of processes over timeknown as development.

The key idea is that coping, although manifest at the level of individual action, isthe product of a multi-level system, including the subsystems (physiological,neurological, emotional, attentional, cognitive, motivational) that give rise to cop-ing, and the social, relational, and cultural contexts in which it is embedded Asgraphically depicted in Fig.1.2, processes of coping can operate on multiple levels

Fig 1.2 Multi-level conceptualization of coping as a developmental process, an episodic process, and an interactional process

and time scales: Coping operates as an adaptive process as part of resilience on thescale of developmental time; it functions as an episodic process across days andmonths; and it operates in real time as an interactive regulatory process If the goal

is to construct a view of coping that works on all three levels, then adevelopmentally-friendly conceptualization must meet many criteria The mostimportant are listed in Table1.2

Coping as an episodic process As mentioned previously, for the most part,coping has been viewed as an episodic process From this perspective (see themiddle portion of Fig.1.2), coping is recruited in response to demands (environ-mental or intrapsychic) and is shaped by the individual’s appraisals of thosedemands and the social and individual resources available in the situation to meetthem Coping can be seen as organized into episodes that unfold over days, weeks,and months Depending on how encounters play out, different outcomes result, andthese feed back into subsequent demands and resources Operationally, episodesmay be most clearly captured by stories or narratives that individuals (or theircompanions) tell about how they came to deal with a specific class of demand.Self-report assessments typically tap the ways of coping used in episodes, espe-cially when aggregated over time but not over kind of stressor

Table 1.2 Criteria for a developmental conceptualization of coping

Coping as a episodic (cumulative) process

1 gives traction with respect to the ways in which social contexts, settings, partners, and individual characteristics shape how it unfolds;

2 has a place to carry forward previous coping episodes; and

3 shows how short-term coping resources and vulnerabilities (both individual and social) accumulate over time.

Coping as an interactive (coordinating) process

4 is built on what we know about temperament and physiology —particularly from a

developmental perspective;

5 has a place for physiology, behavior, emotion, attention, cognition, and motivation; and

6 explains how they are organized and change in response to changing demands, appraisals, and resolutions.

Coping as an adaptive (proximal) process

7 speci fies function in adaptation under stress and role in development of mental and physical health, problems, and disorder;

8 can be part of an iterative process of change in response to environmental and intrapsychic demands, including individual and social interactional processes; and

9 functions as a mediating process between adversity and resilience or vulnerability.

Coping as a systemic, cumulative, coordinating, proximal developmental process

10 applies across the lifespan, but looks different at different ages;

11 provides an avenue for determining how coping is shaped by normative developmental changes; and

12 operates as a mechanism of the development of coping capacity.

10 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

When viewed as an episodic process, the primary criterion for a useful ceptualization of coping is that it specifies how coping itself functions with respect

con-to the other environmental, social, and personal components involved in copingepisodes Specifically, a conceptualization of coping must provide traction withrespect to the ways in which specific social contexts, settings, demands, socialfactors, and individual characteristics shape how it unfolds This is listed as thefirst criteria in Table1.2 However, for episodes to meaningfully contribute tolong-term outcomes, the effects of episodes need to accumulate Hence, additionalcriteria for a conceptualization of coping are that it needs a place to carry forwardprevious coping episodes, and must demonstrate how short-term coping resourcesand liabilities (both individual and social) accumulate over time These aredepicted in the middle panel of Fig.1.2and listed as the second and third criteria inTable1.2

Coping as an interactional regulatory process Coping also operates in realtime, at the level of interactions with the social and physical context As depicted inthe bottom of Fig.1.2, coping interactions can be viewed as a series of reciprocalexchanges between person and context As these interactions take place, the indi-vidual may be forming and revising appraisals; at the same time, progress may bemade toward alternative resolutions of the exchange Operationally, real-timecoping can be captured on videotape, in the laboratory, or using event momentaryanalysis or daily diaries

For a conceptualization to be useful in capturing coping as an interactionalprocess, it needs to include the multiple components of reactions to stress which areevoked in real time, and to specify how these work together in interactions In thissense, coping is a coordinating concept To fulfill this goal, we argue that a con-ceptualization of coping must be built on what is known about temperament andstress physiology, and needs a place for behavior, emotion, attention, cognition,and motivation (the fourth andfifth criteria in Table1.2) Moreover, it must explainhow these components are organized, work together, and change in response tochanging demands, appraisals, and resolutions (criterion six) This is depicted inFig.1.2in the bottom portion of the panel, in which multiple components feed intocoping, which in turn interacts with actual demands, guided by changing appraisalsand resolutions of the stressful situation

Coping as an adaptive process At the highest level of aggregation, coping isalso a process that takes place over developmental time As depicted in the topportion of Fig.1.2, coping can be seen as part of resilience, that is, of the adaptiveprocesses through which exposure to stress or adversity has a long-term impact onindividual functioning and development From this view of coping as a“proximalprocess” follows the seventh, eighth, and ninth criteria in Table 1.2

A conceptualization of coping, in order to be a part of resilience, needs to explainhow coping mediates between adversity and development; it needs to specify itsfunction in adaptation under stress and its role in the development of mental andphysical health, problems, and disorder In addition, coping must be conceptual-ized as part of an iterative process of adaptation to stress, including individual andsocial interactional processes

1.2 Developmentally-Friendly Conceptualizations

of Coping

Developmental and clinical psychologists who study coping during childhood andadolescence have taken seriously the demands of a “developmentally-friendly”conceptualization and converged on a definition that ties coping back to its mostbasic function as a set of fundamental adaptive processes (Compas 1998, 2009;Coping Consortium 1998; Skinner and Edge 1998; Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck

2007, 2009; Wolchik and Sandler 1997) This perspective locates the field ofcoping within the many areas that study children’s reactions to stress: Copingincorporates immediate ongoing interactions with actual demands into episodes ofcoping, which in turn can serve to buffer or exacerbate the effects of exposure toadversity In other words, the place of coping as a phenomenon (and an area ofstudy) is between regulation and resilience A developmental conceptualization ofcoping builds a bridge to regulation by defining coping as “regulation under stress”(as described in this chapter), and builds a bridge to resilience by organizing ways

of coping according to their functions in adaptation to stress (as described in thenext chapter)

Together, these advances have created a developmental conceptualization thatprovides links from coping to the rich explanatory frameworks of regulation, whileorganizing the sometimes dizzying number of regulatory strategies with respect tothe functions they serve in adapting to stress (Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2007).One of the most important implications of defining coping as “regulation understress,” is that this perspective de-emphasizes the traditional view that the primarypurpose of coping is to fend off or minimize the harmful consequences of stress,and highlights the idea that a critical function of coping is to contribute to thedevelopment of regulatory capacities and everyday resilience

1.2.1 Coping as Regulation under Stress

The activities of coping have always been described using terms that are cent of the notion of regulation, such as manage and deal with The concept ofregulation elaborates these notions, using verbs such as initiate, energize, mobilize,modulate, coordinate, deploy, guide, maintain, dampen, coordinate, and organize.Hence, in thefield of coping during childhood and adolescence, in order to describehow people manage or deal with stressful person–context transactions, coping hascome to be defined as “regulation under stress” (Compas 1997; Compas et al 2001;Eisenberg et al 1997; Rossman 1992; Sandler et al 1997; Skinner and Wellborn1994; Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2007, 2009) For example, one leadingresearcher in thefield, Bruce Compas, and his colleagues (Compas 1997; Compas

reminis-et al 2001) defined coping as, “conscious and volitional efforts to regulate emotion,cognition, behavior, physiology, and the environment in response to stressful events

12 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

or circumstances” (Compas et al 2001, p 89) Our own definition of coping as

“action regulation under stress” (Skinner and Wellborn 1994; Skinner 1995) refers

to“how people mobilize, guide, manage, energize, and direct behavior, emotion,and orientation, or how they fail to do so” (p 113) under stressful conditions.Despite their slight variations, these definitions converge on the multiple features ofcoping targeted by regulation, the nature of regulation as a dual process, and theimportance of stress in shaping regulation and its development

Targets of regulation If coping is defined as “regulation under stress,” thenresearch under the general rubric of regulation (studied using a variety of specificterms, such as self-, ego-, behavioral, emotion, attention, and action regulation,self-control, compliance, and volition) can contribute to an understanding of coping(Coping Consortium 1998; Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2009) However, thestudy of coping places two demands on theories of regulation First, it focuses on

“regulatory processes in a subset of contexts—those involving stress” (Eisenberg

et al 1997, p 42) Second, coping involves the regulation of multiple components

of action As pointed out by White (1974), “adaptive behavior entails managingseveral different things at once” (p 55) Because problems and demands are dis-tressing, coping often requires the regulation of emotion Because stress can triggerbiological reactions, coping can involve the regulation of physiology Becausecoping requires the monitoring and detection of threats, it can involve the regulation

of attention Because coping describes what people do (or fail to do) when facedwith challenging events, it can entail the regulation of behavior Because stresstypically involves obstacles that interfere with goals and commitments, coping canrequire the regulation of motivation Finally, because difficulties can activateappraisals and thoughts, coping can involve the regulation of cognition

An important way in which definitions of coping as “regulation under stress” can

be distinguished from other theories of regulation is that coping explicitly focuses

on the regulation of these multiple components simultaneously Typical theories ofregulation focus on only one component, and their target constructs, not surpris-ingly, are named for these components Theories of emotion regulation focus onemotion, attention regulation on attention, behavioral self-regulation on behavior,and so on And, despite the fact that they share a common root term, the study ofthese different kinds of regulation are typically carried out in relative isolation fromeach other However, because every stressful encounter produces a set of emotional,attentional, motivational, and motor responses, theories of coping must include theregulation of all of these components of action at the same time As a result, to beuseful in understanding adaptation under stress, coping needs to be seen as a

“coordinating concept” that subsumes all these kinds of regulation, consideringthem as regulatory subsystems and explaining how they are coordinated, that is,how they all work together synergistically or antagonistically, to produce theactions known as coping

1.2.2 Coping and Emotion Regulation

The kind of regulation most obviously called upon during coping is emotion ulation (ER; Barrett and Campos 1991; Bridges and Grolnick 1995; Compas et al.2014; Eisenberg et al 1997; Folkman and Moskowitz 2004; Kopp 1989; Rossman1992) As pointed out by Rossman (1992), coping and ER share many features:

reg-“Models for both stress/coping and the ER process include an appraisal of thesignificance of the environmental circumstance, the attendant emotional experience,the selection of some action to regulate the heightened emotion and perhaps alterthe environment, and some kind of feedback regarding the success of the regulationattempt” (p 1375) In fact, Kopp (1989), in a seminal piece on the development of

ER, argues that,“Emotion regulation is a term used to characterize the processesand characteristics involved in coping with heightened levels of positive andnegative emotions” (p 343) Eisenberg et al (1997) make a cogent case for a closeconnection, noting that coping is “motivated by the presence or expectation ofemotional arousal (generally resulting from stress or danger)” (p 288)

Dodge (1989) argues that ER can be understood as“coordinating responses toaversive stimuli,” a definition which places ER squarely inside the field of coping.Some researchers have argued that all forms of ER are ways of coping (Bridges andGrolnick 1995), and have noted that “many forms of coping are very similar totypes of regulation discussed in the emotion regulation literature” (Eisenberg et al

1997, p 288) In fact, because the strategies that have been studied as ER borrowheavily from the lexicon of ways of coping, “emotion-focused coping” and

“emotion regulation” are virtually synonymous (Kopp 2009; Rossman 1992).Emotion in coping It is clear that emotion permeates all parts of the copingprocess, from vigilance, detection, and appraisals of threat to action readiness andcoordinating responses during stressful encounters The importance of emotion tocoping is highlighted by functionalist theories, in which emotion is considered“akind of radar and rapid response system,” or as “biologically endowed processesthat permit extremely quick appraisals of situations and equally rapid preparedness

to act to sustain favorable conditions and deal with unfavorable conditions” (Barrettand Campos 1991; Cole et al 2004, p 319; Lazarus 1999) According to Diamondand Aspinwall (2003), “emotions are evolved situation-response tendencies thatinvolve (a) subjective feeling states, (b) cognition and information processing,(c) expressive displays and behavior, (d) motivation, and (e) physiologicalresponses Emotions can be viewed as a temporary—albeit loose (Lang et al 1972)

—coordination and synchronization of these systems (Scherer 1984) that evolved toorganize and motivate adaptive, survival-promoting responses to environmentaldemands and opportunities” (p 127) It is clear that emotion, and the regulation of

it, are integral parts of coping

In functionalist theories, behavior, feeling state, and motivation have all beenincluded as features of emotion itself Although including these as part of theconstruct of emotion emphasizes their interconnectedness, it may also obscure thecomplexity of the task presented by coping Under stress, people do not“merely”

14 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

deal with their emotions Individuals must realize an entire action sequence, ofwhich emotions are but a part It is a critical and defining part, given emotion’spotential to energize and direct behavior and to mobilize and guide the actions ofothers However, a focus on coping insists that any account of regulation understress must include additional crucial and defining features as well.

1.2.3 Action and Action Theories

Adaptive coping requires the simultaneous coordination not only of emotion, butalso of physiology, attention, behavior, motivation, and cognition, all of which can

be disturbed or activated by stressful encounters with the environment (Compas

et al 2001) These multiple, sometimes competing, facets of adaptation, which havelong been considered parts of coping (Lazarus and Folkman 1984), can allfind atheoretical home in the construct of action (Skinner 1999) In this context, action isnot used in its commonsense meaning of“behavior.” Instead, consistent with thelong European tradition of action theories (Brandtstädter 2006; Chapman 1984;Heckhausen 1991; Kuhl and Beckmann 1985), action is defined as a goal-directedemotion-laden motor program and is considered to be the irreducible unit ofanalysis when considering people’s transactions with the social or physicalenvironment

Actions are the key to studying adaptation, because it is to actions, and notbehaviors, that the environment responds That is, people take into considerationthe intentions and emotions inherent in actions when they appraise the meaning ofothers’ behaviors, and it is to this unit (this amalgam) that they respond The samebehavior, such as turning one’s back on a conversation partner, has very differentmeanings and as a result elicits very different reactions, when it is carried out as part

of different actions, for example, as an effort to express displeasure and shun thepartner, as an attempt to mask a sneeze, or as the result of being called by someoneelse from behind Action is considered to have dynamic reciprocal relations withculture and with development (Brandtstädter 2006): Social contexts limit andfacilitate actions at the same time that actions select and provoke social contexts;likewise, development constrains and enables actions, while actions in turn channeland shape development

Action as the target of regulation During coping, then, action is the target ofregulation If actions are the unit to which the environment responds, then actionsare the unit that is either adaptive or maladaptive in coping Emotions, thoughts,motivations, or attention cannot be adaptive or maladaptive on their own, becausethey only reach the environment through their participation in actions The regu-lation of the multiple components of action can be challenging, especially if theyare simultaneously and powerfully activated by encounters that are stressful (or areanticipated to be so) One way to help conceptualize this task would be to imaginecoping as a table surrounded by all the components of action—with a seat foremotion, behavior, physiology, motivation, cognition, etc When it is time to take

action, for example, in response to an important upcoming examination, each ofthese components weighs in on the agenda (e.g., cognition thinks it would be agood idea to study, motivation would rather play computer games, emotion isworried, physiology is tired, etc.) The actions that result will depend on how thesedifferent urges are negotiated and coordinated If the urges can be aligned, smoothflexible organized actions will result—in which engaged behavior is energized bymotivation and supplemented by emotions such as interest and enthusiasm.Now imagine that afire alarm goes off during this meeting of action components.Suddenly, a highly stressful event turns up the temperature on decision-making.Some components may overpower or infuriate other components Some of thecomponents may start yelling and try to push for their urges; some freeze and fallsilent in panic The components may remain stuck in the meeting arguing, or theymay race for the door forgetting to determine whether it is hot beforeflinging itopen These actions are dysregulated: Their different components are not workingwell together; they are not aligned Energy is wasted, information is lost, andactions may result that are not well suited to internal and/or external conditions.Hence, in the area of coping, the unit of study is how these multiple components(emotion, behavior, motivation, cognition, physiology) are mobilized, guided,managed, coordinated, and directed, that is, how they are regulated, under stressfulconditions.

Access to action components A key task in regulating action under stress, incoping, is maintaining access to information from all parts of the coping system Inwork on coping and emotion regulation, a sotto voce theme is that emotion inter-feres with adaptive coping In fact, although it was never the intention of Lazarusand Folkman (1984) when they made the distinction between problem-focused andemotion-focused coping (Lazarus 1999), decades of research have often beeninterpreted as documenting that emotion-focused coping is maladaptive Withnoteable exceptions (Barrett and Campos 1991; Cole et al 1994), this conclusion isoften echoed in work on emotion regulation, in which the goal seems to be thedown-regulation or dampening of unruly emotions tofit in with social demands.However, from an action perspective, adaptive actions rely on emotions Asemphasized by functionalist theories, even “negative” emotions serve crucialadaptive functions for individuals and their social groups For example, sadnessallows an individual to withdraw from experiences of uncontrollable loss, to con-serve resources, and to signal to social others that comfort is needed; fear allows anindividual to escape from dangerous interactions and to alert others to the danger;and anger provides energy to overcome obstacles and warns others to get out of theway (Barrett and Campos 1991, Table 2.1)

Adaptive coping profits from flexible access to the full range of genuine tions (Barrett 2006; Cole et al 1994; Flynn and Rudolph 2010) Hence, as shown inresearch on the costs of emotion suppression and the benefits of emotion approach(John and Gross 2004; Stanton et al 1994), the goal in coping is not to block outemotions, but to maintain access to all of them in ways that allow them to par-ticipate in ongoing cooperation with other components of the action system(Holodynski and Friedlmeier 2006) This same general principle applies to all

emo-16 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

components of the coping system Adaptive coping benefits from information aboutthe individual’s genuine priorities and preferences, even if they cannot be realizedduring stressful encounters; from information about the energetic resources avail-able even if they are depleted; from information about the individual’s currentphysiological state even if it is agitated; and so on.

Action phases in coping episodes Action theorists identify two phases ofaction regulation: the deliberation phase and the implementation phase(Heckhausen and Gollwitzer 1987) During the deliberation phase, all relevantinformation is used to make a decision about the intended course of action This isthe phase during which open access to all action components is most important.Then, during the implementation phase, action is shielded from all informationexcept that which is needed to carry out the strategy effectively (Carver and Scheier1985) Such shielding protects intentions from distraction and boosts energy forcarrying out the chosen action During deliberation, the wrong course of action can

be chosen if information about external or internal conditions is limited or pressed, and during the implementation phase, the quality of action can be degraded

sup-if second guessing or doubts intrude In any episode of coping, multiple tion and implementation phases are likely to be needed Hence, switching,flexibleaccess, and cooperation of action components are key to adaptive actions andadaptive coping

delibera-1.2.4 The Nature of Regulation

Most models of regulation posit dual processes, distinguishing the target to beregulated from the processes that are used to regulate it In work on emotion, theseare referred to as emotion and emotion regulation (Cole et al 2004); in work ontemperament, “reactivity” and “regulation” (Rothbart et al 1994); in work onwillpower, the “hot” emotional and the “cool” cognitive systems (Metcalfe andMischel 1999); and in work on motivation,“intrinsic” and “extrinsic” motivation(Deci and Ryan 1985)

In general, the targets of regulation are the result of a fast, reactive, impulsive,emotionally-driven “hot” system that appreciates and reacts to external eventsrelatively automatically and with little conscious control Sometimes referred to as

“go” responses, reactions can be of many types: fear reactions to strangers, interest

to novelty, attention to a looming object, protest to restraint, or grabbing anattractive toy.“Go” responses refer, not to an approach movement per se, but toaction readiness—the hot system brings the organism into a state of readiness to act

in accordance with the emotional urge, whether that be to approach,flee, or freeze.The hot system has a strong foundation in temperament but also incorporatesexperiences through conditioning and learning It is adaptive when dealing withstress: It is moreflexible and differentiated than innate reflexes, while at the sametime it triggers environmentally-tuned actions faster and with less energy than morecognitively-mediated systems

In contrast, regulatory processes have the task of working with the hot system toguide, redirect, boost, interfere with, organize, and/or sequence the actions it urges.Although some of the most effective strategies are cognitive and deliberate, part ofthe“cool” system (Metcalfe and Mischel 1999), there seem to be many regulatoryprocesses, including neurophysiological, habitual, attentional, and social, thatoperate already in neonates and infants and do not require higher-order cognitiveprocesses (e.g., Kopp 1989) Regulatory processes are also adaptive: They allowactions to be more informed andflexible, and less reactive to local conditions.Stress reactivity and regulation Consistent with theories of regulation, copingresearchers posit dual-process models Compas et al (1997, 1999) distinguishbetween involuntary stress responses, which describe immediate and automaticreactions to stressful situations, and coping, which refers to“regulatory efforts thatare volitionally and intentionally enacted specifically in response to stress”(Compas et al 2001, p 89) In our work, we refer to these two processes as“actiontendencies” and “action regulation” (Skinner 1999) As in other areas of regulation,there is active discussion about how stress reactions and regulation work together.Some researchers suggest that they are parallel processes—in that a reaction can bedescribed as either a stress reaction or a coping response (Compas et al 1997,1999); some suggest that they are sequential, with the regulation following andmodifying reactivity (Cole et al 2004); some argue that they are simultaneous andcontinuous (Campos et al 2004).

In general, researchers agree that they reciprocally influence each other over time(Compas et al 2001; Eisenberg et al 1997; Skinner 1999) For example, an extremereaction to stress may block regulatory responses Or, conversely, proactive copingcan be used to prevent the occurrence of stressful situations and overly intenseresponses (Aspinwall and Taylor 1997) It is our view that “manifest copingresponses reflect the balance (or more precisely, the imbalance) between reactionsand regulation, with involuntary stress responses the result of extreme stressreactions combined with weak or disabled regulatory systems; and volitional copingresponses the result of weak stress reactions and/or well-developed action regula-tion systems (Metcalfe and Mischel 1999)” (Skinner and Zimmer-Gembeck 2009,

pp 9–10)

Action tendencies From an action-theoretical perspective, the objects to beregulated are“action tendencies” (Brandtstädter 2006) The idea of an action ten-dency has been most fully elaborated in work on volition (Heckhausen 1977, 1991;Kuhl and Fuhrmann 1998) and in functionalist theories of emotion (Barrett andCampos 1991; Fridja 1987, 1988; Saarni et al 1998) For emotion theorists, the

defining features of action tendencies are emotions, but action theories, not prisingly, focus on actions and so characterize action tendencies in terms of theirjoint properties in creating an “urge,” “desire,” “want,” or “impulse” that isredundantly experienced as a goal orientation (e.g., the desire to overcome anobstacle), a motor program (e.g., the urge to attack or sweep the obstacle aside), and

sur-an emotion (e.g., determination or sur-anger; Skinner 1999)

Action tendencies are potentially adaptive under stressful conditions becausethey organize action and speed up response time At the same time, they are more

18 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

flexible than reflexes and so can respond more sensitively to local conditions.Action tendencies are triggered by specific kinds of interactions with the context,such as encounters with non-contingency or obstacles They are initiated by anindividual’s appreciation of the significance of the interaction, but they do notrequire higher-order forms of cognition or representation Starting at birth andcontinuing over development, action tendencies, through their use and modification

in interactions, become refined, elaborated, and hierarchically organized

Species general action tendencies Coping researchers recognize three speciesgeneral action tendencies in response to stress—fight, flight, and freeze These threetendencies involve action (and not just emotion) because each describes a dis-tinctive pattern of motor, emotional, and orienting responses.“Fight,” for example,includes anger, an orientation toward the stressor, and the urge to attack or removethe obstacle In contrast,“freeze” includes panic, the desire to hide, inhibition of allmovement, and a continued monitoring of the stressor, whereas “flight” includesfear, the urge to get away, and an orientation toward routes of escape Thesepatterns make sense as basic action tendencies, because they are functional andadaptive in protecting individuals from harm

Many theories argue for the presence of inborn action tendencies, includingtheories of attachment, temperament, competence, mastery, reactance, and help-lessness Organizational constructs, such as proximity-seeking, effectance motiva-tion, reactance, sociability, and contingency detection, contain the essentialelements of action tendencies: Appreciation of the significance of certain kinds ofinteractions with the context triggers distinctive patterns of goal-directed,emotion-flavored behavior For example, mastery or competence motivation(Koestner and McClelland 1990) depicts a system in which encounters with noveltytrigger interest and the desire to explore, experiment with, and repeat contingentinteractions

1.2.5 Coping Is Built on Action Tendencies

A key implication of the idea that coping includes action regulation is that allcoping efforts are constructed on the foundation of action tendencies In fact, a moredetailed definition of coping specifies it as consisting of action tendencies wrapped

in regulation embedded in a set of social relationships in a specific context (seeFig.1.3) At its core, this means that in response to environmental demands (ormore specifically, individuals’ appreciations of those demands), people experiencethe urge or desire to act If unobstructed (by the self or the social or physicalcontexts), this urge is followed; in other words, the action tendency is realized—thedesired action is implemented

Stressful encounters trigger action tendencies At the same time, stressful ations are often ones in which desired action tendencies are blocked and so requireregulation Hence, the targets of regulation during coping episodes are always theindividual’s own action tendencies In many cases, adaptive coping can be carried

situ-out—for example, if the individual’s action tendencies are compatible with thesituational demands and can be boosted enough to be effective, or if action ten-dencies are incompatible but can easily be diverted by the regulatory capacitiesavailable to the person in the situation Maladaptive coping occurs when the actiontendency is incompatible with situational or personal demands, when the urge isintense, or when compensatory regulatory capacities are lacking, incapacitated, orotherwise insufficient.

Adaptive coping and action tendencies If coping is built on action tendencies,then a crucial implication is that individuals who show more adaptive coping arenot necessarily better at regulation than people who show maladaptive coping.Instead, it is possible that they have very different action tendencies to regulate Asdescribed in our previous work, consider, as an example, the differences in copingbetween children who show a mastery-oriented versus a helpless pattern of coping:

[I]n work on helplessness, a pattern of responding to failure and noncontingency has been identi fied that includes passivity, dejection, self-blame, rumination, and the desire to withdraw from the situation (Dweck 1991) The contrasting mastery pattern, in which children improve performance under the same conditions, does not seem to be a function of the mastery-oriented children ’s superior regulatory skills That is, it is not as if, when faced with failure, mastery-oriented children also ruminate and want to escape, but yet are somehow better at keeping themselves in the situation or at stopping intrusive thoughts Instead, the action tendencies of mastery-oriented children seem to be completely different They are attracted by the dif ficulties they encounter; they are more concentrated, focused, and involved in problem-solving These initial patterns of responding are not the result of intentional regulation; rather they are built on relatively automatized action tendencies (Skinner 1999, p 482)

Personal

Resources

Personal Resources

Social

Resources

Social Resources SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS

CONTEXT

DEMAND Stressful Interactions

The notion of coping as an action tendency shaped by regulation suggests thatcoping researchers should be interested in not only the development of regulation(in all its forms) but also in the development of action tendencies, and the longstrings of person–context interactions that shape appreciations and appraisals of

“apparent reality,” as well as their temperamental and social roots Work outside ofthe study of coping proper that focuses on appraisals and action tendencies, such astheories and research on attachment and perceived control, might be especiallyinformative Clearly, action tendencies describe one important route through whichprevious experiences, both good and bad, are carried forward into current copingepisodes

Action regulation, dysregulation, under-regulation, and over-regulation Ifaction regulation describes how people coordinate and organize their action ten-dencies, then the term dysregulation is used to describe situations in which peoplefail to accomplish these activities or accomplish them ineffectively, resulting instates sometimes referred to as under-regulation or over-regulation Although, bothcoping theories and theories of regulation acknowledge the importance of activa-tion and modulation in calibrating actions to internal and external demands, adifference in emphasis can be discerned Coping theories, because they focus onexternal stressors, seem to highlight the adaptive nature of activity, initiation, andapproach (Roth and Cohen 1986), sometimes even labeling the most adaptive forms

of coping as“active” coping In contrast, theories of regulation, especially emotionand behavior regulation, tend to highlight the adaptive functions of inhibitingbehavior or dampening emotions, especially in service of rule following, socialrelations, and access to cognitive resources

Integrating these two perspectives underscores the idea that, when dealing withstress, both initiation and modulation of action are essential As explained by White(1974): “adaptation often calls for delay, strategic retreat, regrouping of forces,abandoning of untenable positions, seeking fresh intelligence, and deploying newweapons” (p 50) In fact, all the important questions posed in stressful situationsrequire answers that specify energization and inhibition of action That is, the basicquestion,“What should I do?” requires answers that inform the individual not onlyabout the actions that should be implemented, but also about those actions thatshould not be implemented, essentially answering the complementary question,

“What should I not do?” Adaptive action always involves both boosting behaviorsthat are helpful, and refraining from behaviors that are harmful (i.e., behaviors thatwould interfere with effective actions or behaviors that would make things worse,which never seem to be in short supply)

1.2.6 Stress and Regulation

In addition to the notion that coping involves the regulation of multiple components

of action, the second major demand that a coping framework puts onto concepts ofregulation is that coping takes place under conditions of“stress.” Although there is no

single accepted definition of stress, in general, stress arises from person–environmentinteractions in which people experience (or anticipate) that their needs, goals, values,

or well-being are (or will be) challenged, threatened, or harmed (Lazarus andFolkman 1984) Developmentalists are interested in a broad range of stressful con-ditions experienced by children and youth, including large traumatic events, ongoingchronic stressful conditions, normative and non-normative developmental demands,acute threats, challenges, and daily hassles Since coping describes how peopleactually deal with specific stressful encounters, researchers focus on the stressors thatmake it into the“envelope” of the daily lives of children and adolescents

Regulation under stress is interesting for two complementary reasons Thefirst isthat stressful encounters (e.g., difficulties, obstacles, potential losses) are situationsthat, by definition, require better than average regulation These are encounters inwhich the person has something at stake, and in which the coordination andeffective deployment of action should make a material difference to the outcome,and hence, to the person’s physical or mental well-being The second reason stress

is interesting to researchers is that, in the very situations in which individuals need

to operate at their best, where high-quality regulation is needed, stress can interferewith regulation, for example, by blocking access to cognitive resources, such asworking memory capacity, higher-order problem-solving skills, or informationabout genuine preferences (Kofta and Sedek 1989; Kuhl and Fuhrmann 1998;Sedek et al 1993) Hence, of special interest to coping researchers are the specificprocesses and qualities of regulation in stressful situations—that is, in situationsthat both require and interfere with optimal action regulation

Stress, reactivity, and regulation The exact effects of stress on reactivity andregulation are not completely understood However, a common working hypothesis

is that stress influences these two systems in different fashions The relationbetween stress and reactivity seems to be linear, in which higher levels of actual andperceived stress result in higher levels of reactivity In contrast, stress and regula-tion seem to have a curvilinear relationship (see Fig.1.4) At low levels of stress,people can respond using their more or less automatic reactions As stress increases,however, demands exceed habitual responses Regulation is needed and peoplerespond by going off“automatic pilot” and taking “manual control” of their actions.Hence, moderate levels of stress may create a zone of heightened regulation, duringwhich subsystems are likely to become more cooperative and integrated, and duringwhich regulatory capacities can be practiced and consolidated (e.g., Kopp 1989).However, at some point, as stress increases, it can provoke levels of reactivity sohigh that they disrupt, disorganize, or overwhelm regulatory capacities At thispoint, regulation typically fails and people are left with their unregulated reactions

to stress So stress is a double-edged sword Depending on its level, it can promotedevelopment by requiring regulation and offering opportunities for practice ofregulatory capacities However, too much stress can overwhelm children andadolescents, and prevent them from accessing the regulatory capacities of whichthey would otherwise be capable

Stress, social relationships, and regulation It is impossible to study reactivity

or regulation without considering the critical role played by social partners and

22 1 Coping as Action Regulation under Stress

contexts Traditional perspectives have sometimes been accused of consideringcoping as an enterprise carried out largely by isolated individuals (Berg et al 1998).However, more recent conceptualizations (Aldwin et al 2011; Berg and Upchurch2007; Bodenmann et al 2006; Cutrona and Gardner 2006; Revenson and Pranikoff2005) converge with action theories, theories of regulation, and work on copingduring childhood and adolescence, to highlight the social embeddedness of allcoping processes (Compas 1987; Maccoby 1983; Murphy and Moriarity 1976;Rutter 1983) In fact, research on attachment, social support, parenting, parent–child interactions, family processes, peer relationships, and teaching has demon-strated connections between availability of support and quality of relationships, onthe one hand, and children and adolescents’ physiological and psychological stressreactivity, regulation, and coping, on the other hand Social partners, especiallysensitive and responsive caregivers, seem to be a fundamental part of the stressreactivity systems of newborns, influencing not just how infants respond butwhether they even physiologically register an event as stressful (Gunnar andCheatham 2003).

Social partners play important roles in every step of the coping process at everyage Social partners, especially parents, teachers, and other adults, are crucialdeterminants of the stressors, both chronic and acute, that are allowed to reachchildren and adolescents Social partners and their problems, such as illness ordivorce, can themselves become stressors for children; at all ages, the events peopleexperience as most stressful are interpersonal ones (Donaldson et al 2000; Spirito

et al 1991; Zimmer-Gembeck et al 2009, 2011) Social partners can promote (orundermine) the development of coping resources, such as perceived control andworking models of attachment figures Over time, they can shape children andyouth’s action tendencies, and they can participate directly in coping episodesthrough their own stress reactions and ways of coping Importantly, social partners,

Overwhelmed

PLANE OF PRACTICE

Zone of Proximal Development

Support

Challenge

Fig 1.4 The curvilinear relationship between demands and regulation, in which moderate levels

of demand create a “plane of challenge” at which optimal levels of regulation are practiced Supports, which allow children and adolescents to practice their regulation at higher levels of demand, can expand this plane of challenge and so create a zone of proximal development