Compensating for Psychological Deficits and Declines

Managing Losses and Promoting Gains

Roger A. Dixon, Lars B"ckman, Lars Backman, Roger A. Dixon, Lars B"ckman, Lars Backman

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134785896
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The concept of compensation in psychology refers to processes through which a gap or mismatch between current accessible skills and environmental demands is reduced or closed. These gaps can be principally the result of losses, such as those associated with aging or interpersonal role changes; injuries, such as those that may occur to the neurological or sensory systems; organic or functional diseases, such as the dementias or schizophrenia; and congenital deficits, such as those apparent in autism or some learning disabilities. Whether the demand-skill gaps can be bridged completely, reduced only moderately, or are impossible to close, depends on a variety of factors. In every case, however, the guiding notions of compensation are that:
* some such deficits may be amendable,
* the continuation of the effects of the gap may be avoidable, and
* some functioning may be recoverable.
In this sense, compensation is related to adaptation; it is about overcoming deficits, managing the effects of losses, and promoting improvement in psychological functioning. Compensation is a concept that has a long and rich history in numerous domains of psychological research and practice. To date, however, few of the relevant research domains have benefitted explicitly or optimally from considering alternative perspectives on the concept of compensation. Although researchers and practitioners in several areas of psychology have actively pursued programs with compensation as a central concept, communication across disciplinary divides has been lacking. Comparing and contrasting the uses and implications of the concept across neighboring (and even not-so-adjacent) areas of psychology can promote advances in both theoretical and practical pursuits. The goal of this book is to carry inchoate integrative efforts to a new level of clarity. To this end, the editors have recruited major authors from selected principal areas of research and practice in psychological compensation. The authors review the current state of compensation scholarship in their domains of specialization. State-of-the-art reviews of this rapidly expanding area of scholarship are, therefore, collected under one cover for the first time. In this way, a wide variety of readers who might otherwise rarely cross professional paths with one another, can quickly learn about alternative preferences, agendas and methods, as well as novel research results, interpretations, and practical applications. Designed to contain broad, deep, and current perspectives on compensation, this volume continues the processes of:
* explicating the concept of compensation;
* linking and distinguishing compensation from neighboring concepts;
* describing the variety of compensatory mechanisms operating in a wide range of phenomena; and
* illustrating how compensatory mechanisms can be harnessed or trained to manage losses or deficits and to promote gains or at least maintenance of functioning.

PART ONE

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPENSATION

CHAPTER ONE

Concepts of Compensation: Integrated, Differentiated, and Janus-Faced

Roger A. Dixon

University of Victoria

Lars Bäckman

University of Gothenburg and Stockholm Gerontology Research Center

Although the concept of compensation is an important and growing concern in numerous literatures in psychology, relatively few efforts have been made to explore the variety of definitions and uses of the term. Still fewer attempts have been aimed at differentiating or integrating the meanings of compensation appearing in these literatures. In this chapter, we explore questions such as the following: What degree of commonality exists in definitions and uses of compensation across literatures in psychology? Is there a core concept of compensation—are there even core features to a single concept—or is the concept, like so many in psychology, composed of fuzzy boundaries and fluid (but detectable) features? Is one universal feature of the concept its apparent Janus-like quality—of having immediate relevance to both psychological theory and practice? The concept of compensation in psychology, the possibility of multiple concepts of compensation, and the degree to which we can learn about the concept through consulting neighboring disciplines are the concerns at the heart of this chapter and this book.

VIEWS OF COMPENSATION

What is psychological compensation, and what do we know about it? Compensation has been referred to poetically as a “sublime law” of life, as a means of restoring balance: “Every excess causes a defect; every defect an excess.… For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something” (Emerson, 1900, p. 85). With some differences in meaning, the term compensation has appeared in a variety of psychological and nonpsychological literatures, and even predating psychology (e.g., Brandtstädter & Wentura, chap. 4, this volume). In psychology, compensation has been operationally referred to as a behavior or action, the goal of which is “to make amends for some lack or loss in personal characteristics or status” (English & English, 1958, p. 101). As much as 40 years ago, it was believed that compensatory behavior could take any one of several different forms. For example, the mechanism for restoring balance or achieving satisfaction can include employing different (substitutable) activities, increasing the effort expended at achieving the original goal, modifying the degree to which the original goal is valued, and, perhaps, pursuing alternatives (English & English, 1958). Today, both the principle of compensation—overcoming an imbalance or deficit—and the range of mechanisms for achieving balance or satisfaction are cornerstones of a growing number of areas in psychology. In becoming more generally recognized and relevant in psychology, the concept of compensation may have become more adapted to particular domains, and perhaps more differentiated and specific.

Within particular literatures, especially, we know a great deal about compensatory mechanisms, and the chapters in this volume give explicit testimony to this. We know how it works or might work in some domains, and we know how it does not work in these and others. We know that it is one of those unique processes that has almost immediate contact with the two faces of psychology. For want of better terms, we refer to these two faces as theoretical and practical. In many literatures in psychology, compensation reaches deeply into fundamental theoretical concerns, and yet it always rapidly returns with practical implications for human lives. In theoretical aspects of psychology, compensation is sometimes associated with reversibility or plasticity—the extent and means through which acquired losses, normal declines, or congenital deficits may be less permanent, less debilitating, less global, more recoverable, and more reversible than might otherwise be indicated. In a wide variety of literatures, the issue of whether and how a decrement or deficit can be reversed or overcome has important theoretical implications. In the applied psychologies, research on compensatory processes can lead to the development and evaluation of effective means of managing losses, overcoming deficits, or even promoting gains. It can lead to knowledge of the possibilities for successful adjustment to a variety of challenges, and to programs and regimens designed to close the gap between the demands of the environment and the skills of the individual. More specific theoretical and practical implications are increasingly well articulated in the relevant literatures of psychology. The chapters in this book present the most recent information available.

SOME FOCI OF COMPENSATION RESEARCH

In fact, many, if not most, of the principal literatures with active interest in the concept of compensation—whether theoretical, practical, or both—are represented in this book. Conceptual issues of this evolving concept are discussed in this chapter, as well as chapters by Timothy A. Salthouse (chap. 2, this volume) and Michael Marsiske, Frieder R. Lang, Paul B. Baltes, and Margret M. Baltes (chap. 3, this volume). A variety of compensatory mechanisms employed by adults faced with challenges—such as planning the life course, shifting cultural expectations, and personal role changes or losses—are examined by Jochen Brandtstädter and Dirk Wentura (chap. 4, this volume), Laura L. Carstensen, Kaaren A. Hanson, and Alexandra M. Freund (chap. 5, this volume), and Kenneth F. Ferraro and Melissa M. Farmer (chap. 6, this volume). Compensation is linked to the promotion of successful life-span human development in the earlier chapter by Marsiske et al. (chap. 3). Compensating for decrements or deficits through psychological mechanisms is obviously quite important, but in chapter 7, Neil Charness and Elizabeth A. Bosman focus on compensation through modifying the environment.

Neurological changes—whether the result of aging, disease, or injury—may result in impairments for which compensation is possible. Clinical and neuropsychological research and practice have led to considerable advances in understanding memory rehabilitation (Barbara A. Wilson, chap. 8, this volume), biological compensation in Alzheimer’s disease (Cheryl L. Grady and Raja Parasuraman, chap. 11, this volume), and compensation in language disorders (Leslie J. Gonzalez Rothi, chap. 10, this volume). Compensation as it relates to plasticity in the aging brain is addressed by Diana S. Woodruff-Pak and Catherine Hanson (chap. 9, this volume). In addition to the neurological system, other specific performance domains have been explored for compensation. Regarding cognitive skills, Richard F. West, Keith E. Stanovich, and Anne E. Cunningham (chap. 13, this volume) describe their program of research on compensation for reading deficits, and Timothy A. Salthouse (chap. 2, this volume) offers examples of his work on compensation in cognitive aging. The possibility of compensation in the sensory realm (for vision and hearing losses) is examined by Jerker Rönnberg (chap. 12, this volume). Examining exceptional athletic achievement and, especially, the challenges facing aging athletes, M. J. Stones and Albert Kozma (chap. 14, this volume) focus on an important frontier of compensation research.

In an earlier review (Bäckman & Dixon, 1992), we began a process of analyzing the concept of compensation in some of the previously cited (and several other) literatures. Although some literatures on psychological compensation could be dated as early as the 1920s and 1930s, most literatures seem to have emerged with some force in the 1960s and 1970s. Examples of the earlier literatures include the notion that a loss in one sensory system was balanced by a gain in sensitivity in another (e.g., Hayes, 1933) and Adler’s (1920/1927) initial view of compensation in personality as a crucial defense mechanism. Although the evidence for such early views is mixed, the use of the concept of compensation has spread in the intervening years.

Our analysis led us to offer a working definition and theory of compensation that cut across the main trends in these literatures. In our definition, compensation was presented as a process of overcoming losses or deficits through one of several recognizable mechanisms. These compensatory mechanisms included: (a) investing more time and effort in performing a task reflective of a loss or decline; (b) substituting a latent skill for a declining one; (c) developing a new skill to take over the performance of an absent, lost, or declining skill; (d) altering one’s goals and expectations to be more concordant with the demands of the niche in which they are operating; or (e) selecting alternative niches or alternative goals (Bäckman & Dixon, 1992). One purpose of our analysis was to provoke integrative activities within and across psychological disciplines, such that innovative basic research and comprehensive intervention and evaluation practices could be promoted. It became clear to us as we reviewed the extensive literatures accumulating in many areas of psychological research that little cross-fertilization had occurred. Although the actual concept(s) of compensation in each of the areas shared a great deal, the pattern of referencing suggested neither a common origin to the concepts of compensation present in the literatures nor an immediate prospect for effective integration.

GOALS OF THE CHAPTER

Although the purpose of this book is to carry the integrative efforts of our earlier article much further—through the invaluable contributions of eminent scholars—the goals of the present chapter are more modest. We introduce the concept of psychological compensation in its broadest sense, foreshadowing its appearance, usually in more specific senses, in each of the following chapters. Of course we have our own perspective on the contours and details of the concept, and we describe the evolution of our perspective and its current state in the next section. Afterward, we briefly compare the concept(s) of compensation as represented in several chapters in this book. We hope to provide guidance both to the reader interested in the esoteria of conceptual issues in compensation and to the reader seeking further understanding of how psychological compensation occurs for a set of common life challenges, aging decrements, or physical deficits.

STRUCTURING THE CONCEPT OF COMPENSATION

We begin by briefly mentioning a fundamental issue in science with immediate repercussions for our discussion of compensation. The issue is where the definition of a scientific concept should be located on a continuum from a precise set of pure, explicit, and exclusive criteria, to a multifarious sense in which a range of meanings and uses of the concept are valued and incorporated. Should compensation theories be held to the criteria that the principal concept be unarguably specific, crystalline, and unwavering? Should the boundaries between compensation and neighboring concepts be firmly delineated and impenetrable? Overall, is the scientific value of a concept lessened proportionally to the degree it does not meet such strict and rigid standards? Although we embrace the goal of moving toward clarity of the concept of compensation—and we hope our work contributes to this end—we argue that the analysis and evaluation of this concept should be flavored with its actual use by psychologists, whether working in the armchair, lab, or field.

This position may imply that such concepts will be defined more functionally, and less unanimously, and have relatively fuzzy or overlapping boundaries. It may also imply that it is possible—in the life history of a concept—to too hastily foreclose its opportunities for change, or to too rigidly circumscribe its malleability. Without engaging in an immense digression into philosophy of science, we note only that we take some support for our approach by linking it with the views of the later Wittgenstein (1958; see also Toulmin, 1972), who maintained that relatively fuzzy or blurred concepts were, in fact, normal in philosophy and science, and no less a concept than those with specific and well-defined boundaries. The degree of precision should reflect the purpose or context in which the concept is being communicated. That compensation may have blurred boundaries may reflect not simply imprecision, but that it is in fact a multifarious, essentially contested, and still-evolving concept.

We certainly do not propose to abandon rigorous conceptual analysis and evaluation. If compensation is one of the (many?) dynamic, somewhat fuzzy concepts in psychology, there is still sufficient conceptual clarity associated with it to locate it at a safe distance from careless imprecision or bland amorphousness. Both of these conditions could indicate either that key conceptual features have yet to be examined or profitably linked, or even that the concept is not a fertile one. As it stands now, however, despite considerable scholarly attention, the concept of compensation is also at some distance from a universal and consummate definition. As we noted earlier, this condition may be a suitable goal, but it could also signal a premature finality or stagnation to the evolution of the concept. Our earlier work was designed both to reveal and construct some structure and integrity to the concept. To be sure, if this were not possible, one must face the possibility that one is not dealing (at least yet) with a scientific concept.

To this end, we reviewed a wide range of literature, from the prose of Emerson (1900) to biographies of famous highly achieving compensators (such as the Greek orator, Demosthenes, and the American figure skater, Scott Hamilton); from the psychodynamic views of Alfred Adler to the sciences of the sensory and neurological systems; from the cognitive sciences to the social sciences. True to our expectations, we uncovered a set of commonalities, both principles and features, that cut across nearly all of the literatures in compensation. We hasten to note that we did not have many specific expectations about precisely what these principles and features would be. Rather, we had the general expectation that similarities undergirded the diversity, and that a more useful and better defined concept of compensation could emerge.

Features of an Inclusive Definition

Some examples of the diversity—and of the underlying commonality—in uses of the term compensation may clarify our own definition. First, consider our own definition, as it was formulated in 1992:

Compensation can be inferred when an objective or perceived mismatch between accessible skills and environmental demands is counterbalanced (either automatically or deliberately) by investment of more time or effort (drawing on normal skills), utilization of latent (but normally inactive) skills, or acquisition of new skills, so that a change in the behavioral profile occurs, either in the direction of adaptive attainment, maintenance, or surpassing of normal levels of proficiency or of maladaptive outcome behaviors or consequences. (Bäckman & Dixon, 1992, p. 272)

We concede (then as now) that this is a complex definition. However, it was designed to reflect a complex phenomenon—one that is dynamic, fuzzy, and yet remarkably coherent. The definition was derived primarily from an extensive review of research and theory in psychological compensation. Although abstract and ideal principles informed our original perspective and the ways in which the term has been used in the literature we reviewed, the definition reflects our observations of its continuing appearance and evolving application in several domains of research, theory, and practice. The definition also reflects our comparison of the evolving concept across these domains and our goal of developing an integrated framework. In the original article, we unpacked the key elements of the definition, focusing on them individually and in combination. In subsequent writings, we continued this explicative process by examining compensation as it relates to reading comprehension skills and aging (Dixon & Bäckman, 1993a), intelligence (Dixon & Bäckman, in pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Part I: Conceptual Issues in Psychological Compensation
• Part II: Compensation in the Life Course
• Part III: Compensation for Neurological Impairments
• Part IV: Compensation in Sensory and Skill Domains
• Author Index
• Subject Index