Memorandum

To: From: Date: Re:

Cecelia Musselman Vy Nguyen 12/4/2012 Stephanie Ventos Unit 2 Paper

Summary
Resilience, the ability to cope with stressful situations, varies from person to person. In recent years, psychologists have developed both environmental and genetic explanations for these differences by studying individuals who have survived traumatic events. On one side, researchers have shown that resilience is linked to age and level of optimism. It is possible to strengthen a persons resilience through training. Variations in resilience have also been predicted through biological models based on genes and telomere length. The most likely explanation is a combination of both of these factors. Additional studies with more diverse test subjects are needed to validate these results.

Major Points
I personally thought this paper was excellent. It is clearly organized and remains technical while easy to follow. The argument of the paper is particularly well done. The author presents both sides of the issuebiological versus environmentalwhile subtly downplaying the biological side, pointing out flaws in the researchers experiments and discussing it less than the environmental factors. Points to improve could be further elaboration on directions for future research. Could more knowledge on resilience lead to improved therapy for PTSD? What are the implications of these studies in clinical applications? However, as this is a new line of research, these questions could be impossible to answer.

Minor Points
I did not detect any grammatical errors or typos. However, some sentences could be written more conciselya lot of the phrasing was often awkward.