Children Coping with Crisis: an Analogue Study

Abstract

To test the effects of some characteristics of a crisis on subsequent behaviour, the extinction period of an instrumental learning paradigm was employed with kindergarten‐age children who were working with a three‐choice discrimination task. The analysis of the data showed that: (a) a ‘crisis’ involving loss of reward from a social rather than a non‐social source leads to greater disorganization and more fixed or rigid response from the children; (b) a ‘crisis’ requiring social rather than non‐social responses results in the trying of more new responses and less frustration in boys and less ‘giving up’ by girls; and (c) girls who have experienced more reliable previous social sources of supplies withdraw less after a ‘crisis’ than those with less reliable sources. Both psychoanalytic and learning approaches were employed in discussing these findings and their implications for the future use of this laboratory analogue.