E. Mazur et al., Cognitive moderators of children's adjustment to stressful divorce events:The role of negative cognitive errors and positive illusions, CHILD DEV, 70(1), 1999, pp. 231-245
This study examined whether children's cognitive appraisal biases moderate
the impact of stressful divorce-related events on psychological adjustment
in 355 children ages 9 to 12, whose families had experienced divorce within
the past 2 years. Multiple regression indicated that endorsement of negati
ve cognitive errors for hypothetical divorce events moderates the relations
between stressful divorce events and self- and maternal reports of interna
lizing and externalizing symptoms, but only for older children. Positive il
lusions buffer the effects of stressful divorce events on child-reported de
pression and mother-reported externalizing problems. Implications of these
results for theories of stress and coping, as well as for interventions for
children of divorced families, are discussed.