Ann S. Masten

Ordinary magic. Resilience processes in development.

The study of resilience in development has overturned many negative assumptions and deficit-focused models about children growing up under the threat of disadvantage and adversity. The most surprising conclusion emerging from studies of these children is the ordinariness of resilience. An examination of converging findings from variable-focused and person-focused investigations of these phenomena suggests that resilience is common and that it usually arises from the normative functions of human adaptational systems, with the greatest threats to human development being those that compromise these protective systems. The conclusion that resilience is made of ordinary rather than extraordinary processes offers a more positive outlook on human development and adaptation, as well as direction for policy and practice aimed at enhancing the development of children at risk for problems and psychopathology.

The development of competence in favorable and unfavorable environments: Lessons from research on successful children.

The development of competence holds great interest for parents and society alike. This article considers implications from research on competence and resilience in children and adolescents for policy and interventions designed to foster better outcomes among children at risk. Foundations of competence in early development are discussed, focusing on the role of attachment relationships and self-regulation. Results from studies of competence in the domains of peer relations, conduct, school, work, and activities are highlighted. Lessons are drawn from studies of naturally occurring resilience among children at risk because of disadvantage or trauma and also from efforts to deliberately alter the course of competence through early childhood education and preventive interventions. Converging evidence suggests that the same powerful adaptive systems protect development in both favorable and unfavorable environments.

Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity

This article reviews the research on resilience in order to delineate its significance and potential for understanding normal development. Resilience refers to the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances. Three resilience phenomena are reviewed: (a) good outcomes in high-risk children, (b) sustained competence in children under stress, and (c) recovery from trauma. It is concluded that human psychological development is highly buffered and that long-lasting consequences of adversity usually are associated with either organic damage or severe interference in the normative protective processes embedded in the caregiving system. Children who experience chronic adversity fare better or recover more successfully when they have a positive relationship with a competent adult, they are good learners and problem-solvers, they are engaging to other people, and they have areas of competence and perceived efficacy valued by self or society. Future studies of resilience will need to focus on processes that facilitate adaptation. Such studies have the potential to illuminate the range and self-righting properties of, constraints on, and linkages among different aspects of cognitive, emotional, and social development.

Risk and Protective Factors in the Development of Psychopathology

This important volume presents a definitive review of the origins and implications of developmental psychopathology and what has been learned about the phenomenon of psychosocial resilience in diverse populations at risk. Chapters by distinguished investigators in clinical psychology, psychiatry, and child development, many of whose work led to the new developmental model of psychopathology, provide a unique review of research on vulnerability and resistance to disorder spanning from infancy to adulthood. The volume is a tribute to Professor Norman Garmezy, a pioneer in developmental psychopathology and a renowned researcher of resilience in children at risk. Highlighted throughout the volume is Professor Garmezys theme that it is as important to understand successful outcomes as it is to study pathology in the search for better treatments and the prevention of developmental behavioural problems.

The study of stress and competence in children: a building block for developmental psychopathology

This article discusses the building blocks for a developmental psychopathology, focusing on studies of risk, competence, and protective factors. The current Project Competence studies of stress and competence are described, with particular attention to the methodology and strategies for data analysis. The authors present a 3-model approach to stress resistance in a multivariate regression framework: the compensatory, challenge, and protective factor models. These models are illustrated by selected data. In the concluding section, an evaluation of the project is offered in terms of future directions for research.

Competence in the context of adversity: Pathways to resilience and maladaptation from childhood to late adolescence

Competent outcomes in late adolescence were examined in relation to adversity over time, antecedent competence and psychosocial resources, in order to investigate the phenomenon of resilience. An urban community sample of 205 (114 females, 90 males; 27% minority) children were recruited in elementary school and followed over 10 years. Multiple methods and informants were utilized to assess three major domains of competence from childhood through adolescence (academic achievement, conduct, and peer social competence), multiple aspects of adversity, and major psychosocial resources. Both variable-centered and person-centered analyses were conducted to test the hypothesized significance of resources for resilience. Better intellectual functioning and parenting resources were associated with good outcomes across competence domains, even in the context of severe, chronic adversity. IQ and parenting appeared to have a specific protective role with respect to antisocial behavior. Resilient adolescents (high adversity, adequate competence across three domains) had much in common with their low-adversity competent peers, including average or better IQ, parenting, and psychological well-being. Resilient individuals differed markedly from their high adversity, maladaptive peers who had few resources and high negative emotionality. Results suggest that IQ and parenting scores are markers of fundamental adaptational systems that protect child development in the context of severe adversity.

Developmental cascades : Linking academic achievement and externalizing and internalizing symptoms over 20 years

A developmental cascade model linking competence and symptoms was tested in a study of a normative, urban school sample of 205 children (initially 8 to 12 years old). Internalizing and externalizing symptoms and academic competence were assessed by multiple methods at the study outset and after 7, 10, and 20 years. A series of nested cascade models was tested through structural equation modeling. The final model indicated 2 hypothesized cascade effects: Externalizing problems evident in childhood appeared to undermine academic competence by adolescence, which subsequently showed a negative effect on internalizing problems in young adulthood. A significant exploratory effect was consistent with internalizing symptoms containing or lowering the net risk for externalizing problems under some conditions. These 3 cascade effects did not differ by gender and were not attributable to effects of IQ, parenting quality, or socioeconomic differences. Implications are discussed for developmental models of cascades, progressions, and preventive interventions.

Resilience in developing systems: progress and promise as the fourth wave rises.

Perspectives based on the first three waves of resilience research are discussed with the goal of informing the fourth wave of work, which is characterized by a focus on multilevel analysis and the dynamics of adaptation and change. Resilience is defined as a broad systems construct, referring to the capacity of dynamic systems to withstand or recover from significant disturbances. As the systems perspective on resilience builds strength and technologies of measuring and analyzing multiple levels of functioning and their interactions improve, it is becoming feasible to study gene-environment interactions, the development of adaptive systems and their role in resilience, and to conduct experiments to foster resilience or reprogram the fundamental adaptive systems that protect development in the context of adversity. Hot spots for future research to study and integrate multiple levels of analysis are delineated on the basis of evidence gleaned from the first waves of resilience research.

Competence and resilience in development

Abstract:  The first three waves of research on resilience in development, largely behavioral in focus, contributed a compelling set of concepts and methods, a surprisingly consistent body of findings, provocative issues and controversies, and clues to promising areas for the next wave of resilience research linking biology and neuroscience to behavioral adaptation in development. Behavioral investigators honed the definitions and assessments of risk, adversity, competence, developmental tasks, protective factors, and other key aspects of resilience, as they sought to understand how some children overcome adversity to do well in life. Their findings implicate fundamental adaptive systems, which in turn suggest hot spots for the rising fourth wave of integrative research on resilience in children, focused on processes studied at multiple levels of analysis and across species.

Risk, Vulnerability, and Protective Factors in Developmental Psychopathology

In recent years a set of concepts that had originated in the lexicon of the layman has come to exert a powerful influence on scientific research in epidemiology, psychology, and psychopathology. Risk, protective factors, stress, vulnerability, and coping are now a significant part of a scientific agenda aimed at understanding the nature of etiological, maintenance, and outcome factors that influence the course of adaptation and maladaptation in human behavior. In many respects, these concepts and the research they engender capture an essential component of the emergent field of developmental psychopathology (Sroufe & Rutter, 1984). They focus attention on the precursors of disordered and nondisordered outcomes and on the concomitant issue of continuity-discontinuity in behavior from childhood to adult psychopathology. They speak to issues related to the attributes of vulnerable and stress-resistant individuals, their environments, and the interactions that predict successful and unsuccessful adaptation. And finally, because they emphasize the need to identify the factors and processes associated with disorder, competence, and recovery, they can lead in time to a body of knowledge essential to the development of effective prevention strategies for containing mental disorders.