Protective factors enhancing resilience in children of parents with a mental illness: a systematic review.

Objectives: A systematic review was conducted to (1) investigate protective factors enhancing resilience in children of parents with a mental illness (COPMI), and (2) examine theoretical and methodological issues in the existing literature.

Method: Following guidelines for systematic reviews, searches were performed using Web of Science, Pubmed and Embase. After screening 5,073 articles 37 fulfilled inclusion criteria and were extracted for review.

The Interplay of Parent and Child Coping Responses in Understanding Child Functioning in the Context of Living With a Parent With or Without Chronic Pain.

Objectives: Pain disorders tend to run in families, and children of individuals with chronic pain have been found to report lower functioning. Drawing upon a social learning perspective, the current study examined how diverse maternal pain coping responses (ie, pain catastrophizing and distraction) may, via corresponding child pain coping responses, act as a vulnerability or protective factor for child functioning in the context of parental chronic pain (CP).

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in mothers with CP and their pain-free child (N=100) and mothers without CP and their pain-free child (N=74).

Learning to fear pain after observing another's pain: An experimental study in schoolchildren.

Background: Children of individuals with chronic pain have an increased vulnerability to experience pain problems, possibly through observation of pain in their parents. As pain-related fear (PRF) is a critical factor in the development and maintenance of chronic pain, the current experimental study examined the acquisition of PRF through observational learning and subsequent extinction after first-hand experience of the feared stimulus.

Methods: Healthy children (8-16 years) observed either their mother or a stranger performing two cold pressor tasks (CPT) filled with coloured water.

Is conflict adaptation triggered by feature repetitions? An unexpected finding.

For decades, cognitive adaptation to response conflict has been considered to be the hallmark of cognitive control. Notwithstanding a vast amount of evidence ruling out low-level interpretations of these findings, disbelief still exists with regard to the underlying cause of the observed effects. Especially when considering cognitive adaptation to unconscious conflict, it is still a matter of debate whether repetitions of features between trials might explain this intriguing finding rather than the involvement of unconscious control.

Comparing conscious and unconscious conflict adaptation.

Recently, researchers have been trying to unravel the function of consciousness by exploring whether unconscious information is (in)capable of exerting cognitive control. Theoretically, cognitive control functions, such as conflict adaptation, have often been assumed to require consciousness. However, empirical evidence on conscious versus unconscious conflict adaptation is highly contradictory and hitherto, only one study reliably demonstrated adaptation to unconscious conflict.