Cynthia A. Berg

A developmental-contextual model of couples coping with chronic illness across the adult life span

A developmental-contextual model of couples coping with chronic illness is presented that views chronic illness as affecting the adjustment of both the patient and the spouse such that coping strategies enacted by the patient are examined in relation to those enacted by the spouse, and vice versa. The developmental model emphasizes that dyadic coping may be different at various phases of the life span, changing temporally at different stages of dealing with the illness as well as unfolding daily as spouses interact around dyadic stressors. In addition, couples engaged in dyadic coping are affected by broad sociocultural factors (culture and gender) as well as more proximal contextual factors (quality of the marital relationship and the specific demands of the chronic illness). The model provides a framework for understanding how couples coping with chronic illness may together appraise and cope with illness during adulthood and for determining when spousal involvement is beneficial or harmful to both patient and spousal adjustment. The developmental-contextual model to dyadic appraisal and coping has numerous research implications for the field, and the authors conclude with specific recommendations for future research.

A Social-contextual Model of Coping with Everyday Problems across the Lifespan

The paper describes a social-contextual model of the process whereby individuals in connection with others anticipate and cope with everyday life problems. From this model, appraisal and stress are conceptualised at a variety of levels, ranging from solely individual appraisal of everyday problems to integrated and shared relational appraisal by a social unit. Coping efforts likewise range from solely individual efforts to highly collaborative efforts. Our developmental work on everyday problem solving is used to illustrate how coping efforts are embedded in a rich social context, are appraised within that context, and frequently involve the use of others in ways that extend beyond using individuals for support. Our work suggests a reorientation of stress and coping research away from documenting general developmental differences in coping strategies to understanding the process whereby individuals and others in their social context anticipate and cope with everyday life problems. We suggest that this process is a dynamic one in which microdevelopmental change across a current coping situation and macrodevelopmental change across the lifespan are examined.

A triarchic theory of intellectual development during adulthood

Abstract A triarchic theory of intellectual development during adulthood is proposed. The theory comprises three parts: a contextual part that emphasizes the role of intelligence in successful adaptation to the environment; a componential part that specifies the mental mechanisms and processes underlying intelligent behavior; and an experiential part that indicates that intelligence is best manifested in instances in which the task or situation requiring the application of these processes is relatively novel or is becoming automatized. A selective and brief review of the literature on adult intellectual development is provided as evidence for the triarchic theory. The triarchic theory is then compared with four other theoretical approaches to adult intellectual development. It is argued that the triarchic theory provides new insights regarding the ways in which intelligence changes from early to middle to late adulthood and suggests certain properties of tasks and situations that make them more or less useful as measures of intelligence at various points in adult intellectual development.

Age-Related Differences in Ambulatory Blood Pressure During Daily Stress: Evidence for Greater Blood Pressure Reactivity With Age

Prior research on age and emotions has found that older adults may show better physiological regulation to stressful stimuli than do younger adults. However, the stress reactivity literature has shown that age is associated with higher cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory stress (J. R. Jennings et al., 1997). The authors investigated these conflicting findings further by examining daily ambulatory blood pressure in 428 middle-aged to older adults. Consistent with the age and reactivity literature, relatively old individuals showed significantly greater increases in ambulatory diastolic blood pressure compared with younger individuals when dealing with daily stressors. However, results also revealed that relatively old individuals reported less of an increase in negative affect during daily stress compared with their younger counterparts. The results of this study are consistent with the age-related increase in cardiovascular risk but highlight the complex links between stress and different facets of the aging process.

Contexts, functions, forms, and processes of collaborative everyday problem solving in older adulthood

The present paper reviews the extant literature on collaborative everyday problem solving in older adulthood and explicates the contexts, functions, forms, and processes of collaboration in daily life. In this review, we examine collaboration as it occurs in the daily lives of older adults in addition to the specified intelligence-like tasks more typical of the current literature. Drawing from multiple literatures that have examined collaboration, including sociocultural perspectives within child development, life-span cognition, educational psychology, and social psychology, we illuminate the changing contexts of collaboration across the life span and examine the role of potential collaborators, the multiplicity of forms and functions of collaboration, and the social processes that may facilitate or hinder collaborative performance.

Are Older Adults Less or More Physiologically Reactive? A Meta-Analysis of Age-Related Differences in Cardiovascular Reactivity to Laboratory Tasks

In this meta-analytic review of 31 laboratory studies, we examined if relatively older adults showed lower or higher cardiovascular reactivity compared with relatively younger adults. Results revealed that age was associated with lower heart rate reactivity but higher systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity during emotionally evocative tasks. Consistent with the predictions of dynamic integration theory, the result for SBP was moderated by the degree of task activation. These data are discussed in light of existing self-regulatory models and important future research directions.

Subjective social status: construct validity and associations with psychosocial vulnerability and self-rated health.

BackgroundSubjective social status (SSS) predicts health outcomes independently of traditional, objective indicators of socioeconomic status (SES). However, the potential confounding and mediating effects of negative affect and similar psychosocial risk and resilience factors have not been adequately addressed through formal studies of convergent and discriminant validity of SSS measures.PurposeThe current study provides such a test of construct validity and subsequently examines whether psychosocial factors mediate the relationship between SSS and self-rated health.MethodsWe examined the convergent and discriminant validity of the MacArthur scales of SSS relative to measures of psychosocial risk and resilience (i.e., neuroticism, depressive symptoms, optimism, and marital quality) as well as SES (i.e., income) in 300 middle-aged and older married US couples. We also tested a factor of psychosocial vulnerability as a mediator of the relationship between SSS and self-rated health.ResultsFindings indicated clear convergent and discriminant validity of the MacArthur scales. Further, controlling age and income, both the US and community measures of SSS predicted psychosocial factors for men, however, only the community measure was independently predictive for women. Psychosocial vulnerability significantly mediated the pathway between SSS and self-rated health for men and women after controlling age and income.ConclusionsThese results provide strong support for the construct validity of the MacArthur scales and provide additional evidence of the role of psychosocial risk and resilience factors as mediators of the effects of SSS on health.

Response to novelty: continuity versus discontinuity in the developmental course of intelligence.

In this article, we have reviewed research in diverse domains that has provided evidence for the assertion that intelligence can be construed, in part, as a response to novelty. We began by distinguishing two types of continuities, namely, the continuity in the fundamental nature of intelligence throughout development and the relative stability of individual differences in intellectual abilities at various ages. Current empirical and theoretical work has culminated in a proposition that the actual nature of intelligence is discontinuous, at least in the early years of life, and that individual differences in intellectual functions are unstable (Bayley, 1970; McCall, 1979a,b). Research on aspects of an infants response to novelty and the relationship between this response and later intellectual functioning was examined and interpreted as reflective not only of one element of continuity in the actual nature of intelligence throughout development but also of a stable source of individual differences in intellectual development. Other literature reviewed suggested that the interest in and ability to deal with novelty remains an integral component of individual differences in intelligence throughout the life span. A framework for conceptualizing intelligence as, in part, the response to novelty was offered to provide some synthesis to the literature we have reviewed on the relationship between ones response to novelty and intelligence across the life span. This framework comprises two major aspects: a motivational aspect, referring to interest in, curiosity about, and preference for novelty, and an information-extraction aspect, referring to component processes that are involved in the acquisition of novel information. These two aspects of dealing with novelty were evident in the literature that was reviewed above. They seem integral to intellectual development. We are not alone in positing the importance of ones response to novelty as a major element of individual differences in intelligence across the life span. Other researchers and theorists from diverse disciplines within psychology, such as artificial intelligence, Piagetian psychology, and psychometric intelligence, as well as laypersons commonsense notions about intelligence, have also indicated the importance of the ability to deal with novelty in intelligent functioning. We view the motivational and information-processing response to novelty as a source of stability in intellectual functions across development and as an element of continuity in the actual nature of intelligence.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Parent-adolescent discrepancies in adolescents' competence and the balance of adolescent autonomy and adolescent and parent well-being in the context of Type 1 diabetes.

This study examined whether intrafamily discrepancies in perceptions of the adolescents competence and independence were associated with autonomy and well-being for adolescents and parents. The ways in which mothers and fathers consistently differed from their adolescent across measures of independence and competence regarding Type 1 diabetes, a stressful context for families, were examined with the latent discrepancy model. A sample of 185 adolescents (mean age = 12.5 years, SD = 1.3), their mothers, and participating fathers completed measures of the adolescents independence in completing diabetes tasks, problems with diabetes management, adherence to the medical regimen, measures of well-being, and metabolic control. The latent discrepancy model was conducted via structural equation modeling that generated latent discrepancies from the adolescent for mothers and fathers. Both mothers and fathers viewed the adolescents competence more negatively than did the adolescent. These discrepancies related to more parental encouragement of independence and adolescent autonomy but also to poorer metabolic control and poorer parental psychosocial well-being. The results are interpreted within a developmental perspective that views discrepancies as reflecting normative developmental processes of autonomy but as being associated with disruptions in well-being in the short term.

Adapting to the Environment across the Life Span: Different Process or Different Inputs?.

A model of the process through which individuals adapt to their environment across the life span is presented. The model illustrates how contextual and individual characteristics affect an individuals performance on an activity through their effects on how the individual defines the activity. Empirical support for the model is presented based on results from a life span study of everyday experiences and problems, and from a number of laboratory-based studies. The model and research emanating from the model suggests that what may appear to be developmental and individual differences in components of the problem-solving process may be explained by individual differences in activity definitions.