Cognitive moderators of children's adjustment to stressful divorce events:The role of negative cognitive errors and positive illusions

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.