Measuring coping flexibility

Abstract

The present study examined coping flexibility and correlates of this style of approaching stressful situations. Two methods for assessing coping flexibility, the Flex (Schwartz and Daltroy, 1991) and a modification of the Ways of Coping Checklist (Folkman and Lazarus. 1980) were administered to 28 men and 32 women, who were also asked questions about their age, gender, style of impression management (self-monitoring and social desirability), and basic personality variables from the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (Tellegen. 1982). Subjects responded to four common scenarios described by a 2 (social/nonsocial) × 2 (minor/major) matrix. Gender differences were not found for the Flex, but men exhibited more flexibility than did women when determined by the WOC range score. Older subjects exhibited smaller ranges on both the Flex and the WOC, suggesting that they were less flexible in coping than were younger subjects. Correlations with the Self-Monitoring scale approached significance for the Flex and were significant for the WOC. Greater flexibility was associated with greater well-being and achievement and negatively correlated with stress reactions and alienation.     

Cognitive structure of emotion terms in Indonesia and The Netherlands

The rapid detection of facial expressions of anger or threat has obvious adaptive value. In this study, we examined the efficiency of facial processing by means of a visual search task. Participants searched displays of schematic faces and were required to determine whether the faces displayed were all the same or whether one was different. Four main results were found: (1) When displays contained the faces, people were slower in detecting the absence of a discrepant face when the faces displayed angry (or sad/angry) rather than happy expressions. (2) When displays contained a discrepant face people were faster in detecting this when the discrepant face displayed an angry rather than a happy expression. (3) Neither of these patterns for same and different displays was apparent when face displays were inverted, or when just the mouth was presented in isolation. (4) The search slopes for angry targets were significantly lower than for happy targets. These results suggest that detection of angry facial expressions is fast and efficient, although does not “pop-out” in the traditional sense.     

Enhancing Family Resilience Through Family Narrative Co-construction

We draw upon family resilience and narrative theory to describe an evidence-based method for intervening with military families who are impacted by multiple wartime deployments and psychological, stress-related, or physical parental injuries. Conceptual models of familial resilience provide a guide for understanding the mechanics of how families respond and recover from exposure to extreme events, and underscore the role of specific family processes and interaction patterns in promoting resilient capabilities. Leading family theorists propose that the family’s ability to make meaning of stressful and traumatic events and nurture protective beliefs are critical aspects of resilient adaptation. We first review general theoretical and empirical research contributions to understanding family resilience, giving special attention to the circumstances, challenges, needs, and strengths of American military families. Therapeutic narrative studies illustrate the processes through which family members acquire meaning-making capacities, and point to the essential role of parents’ in facilitating discussions of stressful experiences and co-constructing coherent and meaningful narratives. This helps children to make sense of these experiences and develop capacities for emotion regulation and coping. Family-based narrative approaches provide a structured opportunity to elicit parents’ and children’s individual narratives, assemble divergent storylines into a shared family narrative, and thereby enhance members’ capacity to make meaning of stressful experiences and adopt beliefs that support adaptation and growth. We discuss how family narratives can help to bridge intra-familial estrangements and re-engage communication and support processes that have been undermined by stress, trauma, or loss. We conclude by describing a family-based narrative intervention currently in use with thousands of military children and families across the USA.     

Family Systems and Ecological Perspectives on the Impact of Deployment on Military Families

The scope of sustained military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has placed great demands on the Armed Forces of the United States, and accordingly, military families have been faced with deployments in more rapid succession than ever before. When military parents fulfill occupational duties during wartime, military children and families face multiple challenges, including extended separations, disruptions in family routines, and potentially compromised parenting related to traumatic exposure and subsequent mental health problems. Such challenges can begin to exert a significant toll on the well-being of both individuals and relationships (e.g., marital, parent–child) within military families. In order to respond more effectively to the needs of military families, it is essential that mental health clinicians and researchers have a better understanding of the challenges faced by military families throughout the entire deployment experience and the ways in which these challenges may have a cumulative impact over multiple deployments. Moreover, the mental health field must become better prepared to support service members and families across a rapidly evolving landscape of military operations around the world, including those who are making the transition from active duty to Veteran status and navigating a return to civilian life and those families in which parents will continue to actively serve and deploy in combat zones. In this article, we utilize family systems and ecological perspectives to advance our understanding of how military families negotiate repeated deployment experiences and how such experiences impact the well-being and adjustment of families at the individual, dyadic, and whole family level.     

The limits of visual resolution in natural scene viewing

We examined the limits of visual resolution in natural scene viewing, using a gaze-contingent multiresolutional display having a gaze-centred area-of-interest and decreasing resolution with eccentricity. Twelve participants viewed high-resolution scenes in which gaze-contingent multiresolutional versions occasionally appeared for single fixations. Both detection of image degradation (five filtering levels plus a no-area-of-interest control) in the gaze-contingent multiresolutional display, and eye fixation durations, were well predicted by a model of eccentricity-dependent contrast sensitivity. The results also illuminate the time course of detecting image filtering. Detection did not occur for fixations below 100 ms, and reached asymptote for fixations above 200 ms. Detectable filtering lengthened fixation durations by 160 ms, and interference from an imminent manual response occurred by 400-450 ms, often lengthening the next fixation. We provide an estimate of the limits of visual resolution in natural scene viewing useful for theories of scene perception, and help bridge the literature on spatial vision and eye movement control.     

The Meaning of Empirically Supported Treatment Research for Psychoanalytic and Other Long-Term Therapies

Two ways of evaluating the implications of empirically supported treatment research for psychoanalysis and other long-term therapies are considered. The first involves the comparison of the relative benefits of various psychotherapies; the second involves the comparison of short-term and long-term psychotherapies. The major findings are that (a) each of the different types of psychological treatments shows benefits, (b) the amount of benefits from each type of therapy shows mainly nonsignificant differences, (c) these nonsignificant differences are especially evident when the researcher's therapeutic allegiance is taken into account, (d) both short-term and long-term treatments show some positive benefits for some patients, and (e) there is a tendency for longer treatments to show more lasting benefits. The main gap in research studies consists of a lack of comparative studies of psychoanalysis versus other treatments. This review highlights the virtue of “methodological pluralism,” which means here applying to the same data a variety of methods for comparing psychotherapies with one another and for comparing long-term and short-term psychotherapies.     

Family Involvement in a Whole-School Bullying Intervention: Mothers’ and Fathers’ Communication and Influence with Children

Research indicates that involving families in school efforts to prevent and manage bullying behaviour is essential to success. Parents can influence their children's involvement in bullying situations by modelling positive social behaviour, offering advice about appropriate responses to bullying, and encouraging help-seeking. This paper reports family-related findings from the three-year group randomized control trial of the Friendly Schools Friendly Families (FSFF) intervention, which provided training and whole-school, classroom and family resources to build the capacity of schools to prevent bullying victimization and perpetration. Over 1400 parents and carers of Grades 2, 4 and 6 school students completed a survey at baseline and two post-tests. Parents exposed to the FSFF parent component received resources about ways to reduce bullying, build parenting skills and enhance parent–child communication; they also completed home activities with their children; and were encouraged to engage with their children’s school to reduce bullying. Mothers and fathers reported significant increases in the frequency of discussions with their child about bullying. Mothers were more likely than fathers to give pro-social, passive and help-seeking advice compared to fathers, who were more likely to encourage their child to ‘fight back’. The intervention improved fathers’ perceptions of their influence on children’s responses to being bullied. These results highlight the importance of working with both male and female caregivers when addressing children’s bullying behaviour. The findings also demonstrate that a parent intervention can have a positive impact on parent–child communication about bullying when it is an integral part of a whole-school approach.     

They are afraid of the animal, so therefore I am too: Influence of peer modeling on fear beliefs and approach-avoidance behaviors towards animals in typically developing children

This study investigated the effect of filmed peer modeling on fear beliefs and approach–avoidance behaviors towards animals in 8- to 10-year-old typically developing children. Ninety-seven children randomly received either a positive or negative modeling film in which they saw peers interact with a novel animal. Before and after this film, children’s fear beliefs and avoidance tendencies towards the modeled and non-modeled control animal were measured. A behavioral approach task was also administered post-modeling. Following positive peer modeling, children’s fear beliefs and avoidance tendencies towards the modeled but also towards the non-modeled animal decreased significantly. After negative modeling, children’s fear beliefs towards the modeled animal increased significantly, but did not change for the non-modeled animal. Negative modeling did not change avoidance tendencies for the modeled animal, while it decreased children’s avoidance of the non-modeled animal. No significant effects were observed on the behavioral approach task. These results support Rachman’s indirect pathway of modeling/vicarious learning as a plausible mechanism by which children can acquire fears of novel stimuli and stresses the important fear-reducing effects of positive peer modeling. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.