Can Production Systems Cope with Coping?

This article uses Anderson's ACT* theory (1983, 1987) to analyze the cognitive processes underlying stress, coping, and social problem solving. In ACT*, knowledge of how to do things is represented by a set of condition–action rules known as productions. This theory provides a unified framework for representing the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of coping as well as interactions among these components. This framework has several implications for stress and coping. First, it distinguishes between interpretive coping and procedural coping. In interpretive coping, novel problems are addressed using slow, effortful, general-purpose problem-solving rules. In procedural coping, familiar problems are addressed using fast, automatic, task-specific rules. Second, ACT* provides a framework for analyzing how interpretive coping becomes “proceduralized,” that is, converted through practice into faster, more automatic, and more domain-specific coping rules. Third, because coping often occurs in unstable environments with ambiguous and delayed feedback, increasing practice will not always lead to the acquisition of more effective coping skills. Thus, the ACT* learning mechanisms explain why bad coping skills and maladaptive ways of thinking about ourselves often persist. Fourth, these learning mechanisms imply that attempts to modify coping skills through active practice of problem-solving procedures in the context of specific coping tasks will be more beneficial than “formal instruction.”