Temperament as a moderator of the association of cumulative risk with pre-adolescent appraisal and coping

Abstract

Aims: Individual differences in temperament, particularly emotionality and self-regulation, have been found to predict internalizing and externalizing problems during children’s transition to adolescence. Temperament has also been linked both concurrently and longitudinally to appraisal and coping processes, which in turn have been found to mediate the effect of cumulative risk on internalizing and externalizing problems in children of the same age. While prior research has begun to document how cumulative risk shapes the development of appraisal and coping processes over time, there remains a dearth of longitudinal research, particularly in representative samples, on the factors that may exacerbate or mitigate the effect of cumulative risk on appraisal and coping in pre-adolescents. Thus, given previous literature on the relations among temperament, cumulative risk, and appraisal and coping processes, the goal of the present study is to clarify how individual differences in temperament moderate the effect of cumulative risk on coping and appraisal. Method: The present research examined temperament negative emotionality and effortful control as moderators of the prospective effects of cumulative risk on appraisal and coping styles using a community sample (N=316) of preadolescent children (M age =9.5 at T1) studied longitudinally across 1 year. Findings: Overall, cumulative risk predicted greater use of threat appraisal relative to positive appraisal and greater use of avoidant coping relative to active coping. Effortful control predicted greater use of positive appraisal relative to threat appraisal and greater use of active coping relative to avoidant coping. Negative emotionality predicted greater use of threat appraisal relative to positive appraisal and greater use of avoidant coping relative to active coping. Prospective analyses evaluating the interactive effect of cumulative risk and temperament predicting distinct appraisal and coping strategies one year later, controlling for initial levels, revealed four moderation effects. Effortful control interacted with cumulative risk to predict rank order changes in positive appraisal, active coping, and avoidant coping, such that higher effortful control lead to greater use of positive appraisal and avoidant coping in high risk settings. In contrast, lower effortful control lead to less use of active coping in high risk settings. Negative emotionality also interacted with cumulative risk to predict rank order changes in active coping, such that lower negative emotionality tended to lead to greater use of active coping in high risk settings, whereas higher negative emotionality tended to lead to greater use of active coping in low risk settings (although neither of the slopes for high and low levels of negative emotionality were significant). Conclusions: Overall, findings help to elucidate how exposure to an accumulation of risks interacts with temperament to shape the development of appraisal and coping in preadolescence. Further, although separate moderation findings must be interpreted in consideration of the overall use of appraisal and coping strategies, effortful control appears to be a potential resource to children for the future use of positive appraisal, active coping, and avoidant coping, whereas negative emotionality may serve as a vulnerability factor for the use of less active coping in the context of risk.