Attachment in infancy and personal space regulation in early adolescence

This study longitudinally assessed associations between secure and ambivalent attachment with mothers, fathers and professional caregivers in infancy, and personal space regulation and perceived interpersonal competence in 64 early adolescents (31 boys, 33 girls). Children classified as ambivalently attached to their mothers and/or professional caregivers in infancy displayed significantly larger permeability of personal space as compared with children classified as securely attached. Attachment classifications with fathers were not associated with personal space behavior at 12 years of age. Children who had an insecure attachment relationship with both the mother and the professional caregiver in infancy displayed smaller personal space boundaries, and tolerated larger intrusions into their personal space as compared with children who had two secure attachments in infancy. Finally, perceived interpersonal competence was positively correlated with personal space permeability.     

Parent-child emotion communication,attachment, and affective narratives

Forty-four pre-schoolers (ages 4.3 to 5.8 years) and their primary caregivers participated in a study on the connections between parent-child emotion communication and a narrative assessment of pre-schoolers' attachment. Children completed the Separation Anxiety Test (SAT), a narrative assessment of children's responses to attachment-related separations (including self-reliance, avoidance, attachment and coherence scores). Several aspects of parent-child discussions of emotion-eliciting events were also assessed in the Emotion Communication Task. Results indicated that SAT coherence was positively related to SAT attachment and negatively related to SAT avoidance. Furthermore, SAT coherence was positively related to parental scaffolding and negatively related to parental and child negativity during the Emotion Communication Task. Parental scaffolding and child reciprocity were positively related to each other and, in general, were negatively related to parental and child negativity. Discussion focused on the potential contributions of children's interactions with caregivers to the development of children's attachment narratives and emotion-related understanding.     

The establishment of an attachment research network in Latin America: Goals,accomplishments, and challenges

In the face of a pressing need for expanded attachment research programs and attachment informed interventions in Latin America, a research network was established: Red Iberoamericana de Apego: RIA (Iberian-American Attachment Network). The purpose of RIA is to promote human development and well being, informed by attachment theory, centering on research, and with implications for public policies, education, and intervention. We report the proceedings of the second meeting of RIA held in Panama City, Panama, in February 2010. As part of this meeting, RIA sponsored the first Latin-American attachment conference. Proceedings of the conference are described, as are future goals of this new organization.     

Understanding the link between maternal adult attachment classifications and thoughts and feelings about emotions

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between maternal representations of attachment, as assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, ), and mothers' thoughts and feelings about their own emotions and emotions emerging in their toddlers. Eighty-nine adolescent mothers completed the AAI and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, ) and Katz, Gottman, Shapiro, and Carrere's () meta-emotion interview for parents of toddlers. Autonomous mothers demonstrated the most open and flexible mindset around a variety of emotions in themselves and their toddlers. Dismissing mothers exhibited a tendency to minimize internalizing emotions in themselves and their children, while unresolved mothers described the most emotion regulatory difficulties.     

Maternal attachment influences mother–infant styles of regulation and play with objects at nine months

We examined the association between the quality of maternal representations of attachment evaluated by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and mother styles of regulating attention and emotion during free play with objects in 41 mother dyads when infants were nine months old. The secure mother dyads showed a greater duration of engagement matches, with more positive matches, and a greater capacity to move from non-matched to matched states. Secure mother dyads demonstrated greater involvement in play with objects than insecure mother dyads. Insecure mother dyads showed a greater duration of mismatches and spent more time in negative matches. Correlations between maternal AAI scores and the variables studied also showed that the maternal Passivity and Unresolved scales were associated with less adequate dyadic attention and emotion regulation, while the maternal Coherence scale was associated with more adequate dyadic attention and emotion regulation.     

Early preventive attachment-oriented psychotherapeutic intervention program with parents of a very low birthweight premature infant: Results of attachment and neurological development

The birth of a very small preterm infant ( 1500 grams) can be a traumatizing experience for many parents. A developmental risk model is presented that is the background to an early attachment-oriented preventive psychotherapeutic intervention. This comprehensive parent-centered intervention program is composed of supportive group psychotherapy, attachment-oriented focal individual psychotherapy, a home visit and video-based sensitivity training. The intervention aims at improving parental coping, the process of attachment and parent-infant interaction. In a prospective longitudinal design mothers were randomly assigned to a control (N = 44) and an intervention group (N = 43) after preterm delivery. Results show that the percentage of secure (control vs. intervention group: 77.8% vs. 59.4%) and insecure (control vs. intervention group: 8.3% vs. 31.3% avoidant, 13.9% vs. 9.4% ambivalent) attachment quality in high-risk preterm infants is comparable to results from studies with term infants. There was no significant statistical difference in terms of quality of attachment of the preterm infants between the control group and the intervention group. However, only in the control group, impaired neurological development corresponded significantly with an insecure quality of attachment, but not in the intervention group, although there were significantly more neurologically impaired infants in the intervention group. This result is discussed as an effect of the intervention program.     

Attachment in African American and European American older adults: The roles of early life socialization and religiosity

The significance of attachment relationships in later life has recently emerged as an important topic of study. Yet little attention has focused on attachment dynamics among older minority adults. This paper extends the literatures on ethnicity, attachment, and later life by examining attachment patterns in two large community-dwelling samples of older (65 + years) African American (n=671) and European American (n=447) adults. Data gathered during face-to-face interviews included demographic information, adult attachment, early rearing experiences, and current religiosity. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that adult attachment dimensions were differentially predicted by childhood socialization patterns and current religiosity. Significant ethnic differences in relations between adult attachment and childhood socialization practices also were found. The results highlight the importance of examining contextual differences in attachment in later life.     

Measuring sensitivity moment-by-moment: A microanalytic look at the transmission of attachment

Meta-analyses have indicated that the mediating power of sensitivity in the transmission of attachment across generations is not nearly as great as would be predicted by attachment theory (van IJzendoorn, 1995; De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997). To make sense of these findings, the author suggests that current measures of sensitivity should be expanded to include the assessment of mother-infant behavior on a micro-behavioral level. This paper reviews evidence for two central propositions: (1) The internal working model of mothers is expressed in subtle, fine-grained interactive behaviors with their infants, and (2) infants perceive and remember these behaviors in the form of interactional expectancies. Following these propositions, hypothesized representational micromodels for each major attachment organization are then offered, based on the Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) approach to information processing. In closing, this paper presents some of the most pressing unresolved issues for attachment researchers as they seek to empirically identify the mechanisms by which attachment is transmitted across generations.     

A picture is worth a thousand words: Children's representations of family as indicators of early attachment

To ascertain whether attachment representations at age 7 are related to early attachment behaviour, family drawings of 123 7-year-olds of known infant attachment status (25 avoidant, 80 secure, 18 resistant) were scored in four ways. Three of these were based in previous attachment research and one was based on a clinical method. The attachment-based coding schemes included specific markers for each attachment pattern (Kaplan & Main, 1985), global ratings (Fury, Carlson, & Sroufe, 1997) and efforts to classify each drawing as belonging to one of the three primary infant attachment groups (secure, avoidant, resistant). In the clinical scheme, children who had been resistant infants were distinguished from the others by use of overlapping and encapsulated figures. For the attachment based schemes, although individual markers were not successful in discriminating attachment groups, the more global approaches (aggregation of markers, global rating scales and judgments of attachment classification) succeeded in this task. In regression analyses controlling for concurrent child and parent measures, infant attachment did not make a significant contribution to predicting insecurity markers in drawings, although child current emotional functioning did. These findings linking attachment relationships with later representations of family relationships were in accord with the conception that avoidant attachment strategies de-emphasize intimate relationships, while resistant attachment strategies are preoccupied with close relationships. These links are most evident in global interpretive strategies rather than those that rely on specific markers.