(Connor-Smith, Compas, Wadsworth, Thomsen, & Saltzman, 2000) to examine coping and involuntary stress responses in reference to terrorism and across a wide age range was examined. Implications for coping theory and empirical research are explored.

OBJECTIVE: This random assignment experimental study examined the intersection of children’s coping and physiologic stress reactivity and recovery patterns in a sample of preadolescent boys and girls. METHOD: A sample of 82 fourth and fifth grade (Mage = 10.59 years old) child-parent dyads participated in the present study. Children participated in the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-C) and were randomly assigned to one of two post-TSST-C experimental coping conditions; behavioral distraction and cognitive avoidance. Children’s characteristic ways of coping were examined as moderators of the effect of experimental coping condition on cortisol reactivity and recovery patterns. RESULTS: Multi-level modeling analyses indicated that children’s characteristic coping and experimental coping condition interacted to predict differential cortisol recovery patterns. Children who characteristically engaged in primary control engagement coping strategies were able to more quickly down-regulate salivary cortisol when primed to distract themselves than when primed to avoid and vice versa. The opposite pattern was true for characteristic disengagement coping in the context of coping condition, suggesting that regulatory fit between children’s characteristic ways of coping and cues from their coping environment may lead to more and less adaptive physiologic recovery profiles. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides some of the first evidence that coping “gets under the skin” and that children’s characteristic ways of coping may constrain or enhance a child’s ability to make use of environmental coping resources.

Understanding co‐activation patterns of the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal axis (HPA) and sympathetic adrenal medullary (SAM) during early adolescence may illuminate risk for development of internalizing and externalizing problems. The present study advances empirical work on the topic by examining SAM‐HPA co‐activation during both the reactivity and recovery phases of the stress response following acute stress exposure. Fourth and fifth grade boys and girls (N = 149) provided cortisol and alpha‐amylase via saliva at seven times throughout a 95‐min assessment in which they were administered the modified Trier Social Stress Test. Parents reported on adolescents’ life stress, pubertal development, medication use, and externalizing problems. Adolescents reported their own internalizing symptoms. Multiple linear regressions tested both direct and interactive effects of SAM and HPA reactivity and recovery on internalizing and externalizing problems. Results from these analyses showed that whereas SAM and HPA reactivity interacted to predict internalizing symptoms, it was their interaction during the recovery phase that predicted externalizing. Concurrent high SAM and HPA reactivity scores predicted high levels of internalizing and concurrently low SAM and HPA recovery scores predicted high levels of externalizing. Implications of the findings for further study and clinical application are discussed.

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