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PubMed1997

Children's attachment representations: longitudinal relations to school behavior and academic competency in middle childhood and adolescence.

A longitudinal study examined children's (N = 108) attachment representations in relation to behavior and academic competency at school during middle childhood and adolescence. Attachment representations were assessed from children's responses to a separation story at age 7 years. At ages 9, 12, and 15, teachers rated children on four dimensions of school behavior: attention-participation, extroversion, disruptive behavior, and insecurity about self. Children's grade point average (GPA) in school was also examined. Children's attachment representations (secure vs. insecure) did not predict either disruptive behavior or extroversion, but they were significantly linked to attention-participation, insecurity about self, and GPA, with secure representations being associated with more favorable outcomes. The study controlled for social class, gender, IQ, perspective-taking ability, and prior competency.

Achievement↗
PubMed1999

Emotional availability and attachment representations in kibbutz infants and their mothers.

Three components of the attachment transmission model were examined in 48 kibbutz dyads from 2 kibbutz sleeping arrangements: communal and home-based. Concurrent assessments used the Strange Situation procedure (M. D. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978) for infants' attachment relations, the Adult Attachment Interview (C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1985) for mothers' attachment representations, and the Emotional Availability Scales (Z. Biringen, J. L. Robinson, & R. N. Emde, 1993) for emotional availability in the dyads. Security of infants' attachment relations as well as autonomy of mothers' attachment representations were associated with higher emotional availability scores. In addition, significantly poorer emotional availability was found in dyads in which infants were insecurely attached and mothers were nonautonomous. Results also indicate that in the ecology of collective sleeping, the associations between the experience of emotional availability in the dyads and infants' and mothers' attachment may have been disrupted.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Attachment representation and cortisol response to the adult attachment interview in idiopathic spasmodic torticollis.

OBJECTIVE: The study investigates individual differences in the mental representation of attachment and their impact on the cortisol response to psychosocial stress in idiopathic spasmodic torticollis (IST). It was hypothesized (a) that in IST insecure attachment is more prevalent than in a non-clinical control group and (b) that subjects with dismissing attachment respond with higher physiological arousal to a specific stimulus activating the attachment behavioural system than subjects with secure attachment. METHOD: 20 patients with IST and 20 healthy controls matched for age and sex underwent the Adult Attachment Interview, an hour-long, semiclinical interview on attachment experiences. During the interview salivary cortisol levels were monitored. The subjects' mental state with regard to attachment was classified using the attachment Q-sort method. Anxiety and depression were measured as potential covariates of the adrenocortical stress response. RESULTS: Compared to the non-clinical group, dismissing attachment was strongly overrepresented in IST. In IST, but not in the healthy control group, dismissing attachment correlated with an elevated cortisol response to the interview. CONCLUSION: In clinical, but not in non-clinical samples dismissing attachment may be associated with increased vulnerability to psychosocial stress. The factors contributing to this interaction are not yet fully elucidated.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Attachment representations and characteristics of friendship relations during adolescence.

Attachment theory proposes that experiences with the primary caregivers are an important basis for the development of close social relationships outside the parent-child relationship. This study examined the association between representations of attachment, as assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), representations of friendship and peer relations, as assessed with an interview in a sample of 43 adolescents. Secure attachment representations were significantly related to interview-based assessments of close friendships, friendship concept, integration in a peer group, and emotion regulation within close friendships. Attachment experiences reported during the AAI, their integration, and their coherency were related to friendship quality and friendship concept. Results show the close associations between attachment representations and friendship relationships during adolescence. The associations between peer relations and attachment representations differed depending on whether an interview approach or a questionnaire approach was used.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Mapping the intimate relationship mind: comparisons between three models of attachment representations.

This study compared three models of how attachment working models might be cognitively represented. Model 1 posits that attachment representations consist of a single global working model summarizing attachment across specific relationships and domains. Model 2 proposes three independent working models for the relationship domains of family, platonic friendships, and romantic partners. Model 3 postulates that specific relationship models are nested under relationship domain representations that are, in turn, nested under an overarching global working model. Participants completed standard attachment scales for the relationship domains of family, platonic friendships, and romantic partners and also provided attachment ratings for three specific relationships within each domain. As expected, confirmatory factor analyses showed that Model 3 attained the best fit, regardless of analysis strategy, measurement strategy, gender, and relationship status. Implications are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Associations between parental and child attachment representations.

In the present article on intergenerational transmission of attachment representations, we use mothers' and fathers' Adult Attachment Interview classifications to predict a 3-year-old's responses to the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT). We present a Q-sort coding procedure for the ASCT, which was developed for children as young as three. The Q-sort yields scores on four attachment dimensions (security, deactivation, hyperactivation, and disorganization). One-way ANOVAs revealed significant mother-child associations for each dimension, although results for the hyperactivation and disorganization dimensions were significant only according to contrast tests. Conversely, no father-child association was found, regardless of the dimension considered. Findings are discussed in terms of the respective part played by each parent in their children's emotional development.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Maternal separation anxiety: relations to adult attachment representations in mothers of infants.

Guided primarily by attachment theory, this longitudinal study explored how adult mental representations of attachment relationships and memories of childhood experiences with parents contributed to a mother's anxiety about separation from her own infant. The Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale, the Adult Attachment Interview, and the Mother-Father-Peer Scale were administered to a sample of 49 first-time mothers. The mothers with insecure attachment representations, when asked to remember details of their own childhood, reported more negative recollections of early parental caregiving, particularly rejection and discouragement of independence. When their own infants were 2 months old, these mothers experienced heightened levels of maternal separation anxiety. The findings provide theoretical and empirical support for the view that very high levels of maternal separation anxiety may indicate dysfunction.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Windows to the self in 8-year-olds: bridges to attachment representation and behavioral adjustment.

The present study investigated the links between aspects of the self (self-evaluations, self-worth), attachment representations and behavioral functioning in 8-year-old children. Self-evaluations were assessed with an interview in which children described themselves and discussed positive and negative aspects of the self; self-worth was assessed using a subscale from the Dimensions of Depression Inventory. Attachment representations were assessed using the Separation Anxiety Test. Mothers and teachers reported on children's behavior problems, school adaptation and peer competence. Following previous work with 5- (Verschueren & Marcoen, 1999; Verschueren, Marcoen, & Schoefs, 1996) and 6-year-olds (Cassidy, 1988), we predicted that aspects of the self would be positively associated with attachment security and behavioral adaptation. These predictions were confirmed. A rating of the child's ease of access to self-evaluations (EASE) during the interview was related to emotional security and coping responses during the Separation Anxiety Test. Children with greater ease of access to self-evaluations also had fewer internalizing and total behavior problems, according to both mothers and teachers, and their teachers reported more positive school adaptation, peer competence and egoresiliency.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Quality of attachment representation, social integration and use of social network resources in advanced age].

This study explores a possible biographical basis of interindividual differences in the extent of social integration and use of network resources in old age. Attachment theory was therefore integrated into a sociogerontological research approach. The attachment representations of 48 elderly people were assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview by Main and Goldwyn (31, 56, 57), whereas the subjects' social network was examined using a network questionnaire by Schütze (72). Results indicate that elderly persons' availability as well as use of social resources were, among other things, related to the biographically based attachment representation, which has been shown to be closely connected to emotional experiences usually made in one's family of origin.

Aged↗
PubMed1996

Attachment representations in mothers, fathers, adolescents, and clinical groups: a meta-analytic search for normative data.

This meta-analysis on 33 studies, including more than 2,000 Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) classifications, presents distributions of AAI classifications in samples of nonclinical fathers and mothers, in adolescents, in samples from different cultures, and in clinical groups. Fathers, adolescents, and participants from different countries show about the same distribution of AAI classifications as nonclinical mothers do. The distribution of nonclinical mothers is as follows: 24% dismissing, 58% autonomous, and 18% preoccupied mothers. About 19% of the nonclinical mothers are unresolved with respect to loss or trauma of other kinds. Mothers from low socioeconomic status show more often dismissing attachment representations and unresolved loss or trauma. Autonomous women and autonomous men are more often married to each other than can be expected by chance, and the same goes for unresolved men and women. Clinical participants show highly deviating distributions of AAI classifications, with a strong overrepresentation of insecure attachment representations, but systematic relations between clinical diagnosis and type of insecurity are absent.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Attachment representations in mothers with abnormal illness behaviour by proxy.

BACKGROUND: Abnormal illness behaviour by proxy (also known as factitious illness by proxy or Munchhausen syndrome by proxy) is a type of child maltreatment, the origins of which are poorly understood. AIMS: To describe attachment representations in a cohort of mothers demonstrating abnormal illness behaviour by proxy. METHOD: Sixty-seven mothers who had shown this behaviour took part in a semistructured interview assessing their attachment representations. RESULTS: Only 12 mothers (18%) were rated secure in terms of their own childhood attachments. There was evidence of unresolved trauma or loss reactions in 40 mothers (60%). Eighteen mothers (27%) gave unusually disorganised and incoherent accounts of attachment relationships in their own childhoods. The frequency of these attachment categories is higher than in normal non-clinical samples. CONCLUSIONS: Insecure attachment is a risk factor for this type of child maltreatment. Therapeutic interventions could be offered in relation to unresolved traumatic stress or bereavement responses. Further study of similar groups, such as mothers with sick children or mothers with histories of traumatic experience, would be a useful next step.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Generalized and specific attachment representations: unique and interactive roles in predicting conflict behaviors in close relationships.

The authors expected that associations between the representations individuals possess regarding romantic partners and their conflict behavior would be moderated by generalized attachment representations (GAR). To test this premise, college students (N =130) were administered two attachment measures and were observed during conflict negotiation with their partners. The Relationship Styles Questionnaire assessed specific representations regarding partners and GAR were measured by the Adult Attachment Interview. The relationship between romantic partner representations and conflict tactics were dependent on GAR. Individuals who possessed secure GAR generally displayed good conflict management skills, regardless of their attachment representations regarding their romantic partners. Individuals who held more anxious or avoidant perceptions of romantic partners displayed more problematic conflict tactics if they possessed insecure GAR; however, these associations were dependent on the type of conflict behavior and the type of insecure GAR. Implications for future research are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Relationships between adult attachment representations and family ritual quality: a prospective, longitudinal study.

Meaningful family rituals have been associated with positive outcomes for families and children. No studies, however, have investigated predictors of family ritual quality, the identification of which would be important for understanding why some families create and enact meaningful family rituals while others lack rituals or have problematic rituals. We propose that adult attachment security may be an important predictor of family ritual quality because family rituals may provide a sense of stability and cohesiveness for the family. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between adult attachment representations and the quality of family rituals, using a prospective, longitudinal design. Prior to the birth of their first child, 125 couples completed the Adult Attachment Interview, and a subsample of 70 mothers and 62 fathers completed the Family Rituals Questionnaire when their first child was 7 years old. Different patterns of relationships between attachment representations and family rituals were found for mothers and fathers. Maternal Insecure Attachment was associated with higher routinization of family rituals. Being in a couple with mixed attachment classifications (e.g., one Secure partner and one Insecure partner) was related to a pattern of low routinization and low meaning for family rituals. The results of this study are interpreted in terms of two patterns of rituals that have been described by clinicians--rigid ritualization and underritualization, and suggestions for working with these ritual patterns in families with Insecure attachment are provided.

Family↗
PubMed2003

Absence of Attachment Representations (AAR) in the adult years: the emergence of a new AAI classification in catastrophically traumatized Holocaust child survivors.

In the present study we present a new and rare type of discourse in the AAI which is characterized by absence of attachment representations during adulthood. Forty-eight women, who as children lost both parents as a result of the Holocaust, were administered the AAI in their late adulthood. Two cases in this sample could not be assigned to any of the traditional AAI classification system (F, Ds, E, CC), mainly because they were unable to associate themselves with any significant attachment figure throughout their life. We raise the possibility that some devastating experiences during childhood might cause an unrecoverable crash in already established patterns of attachment to an extent that adulthood will be characterized by state of mind that bears no emotional tie to even a single attachment figure. We illustrate this state of mind by presenting the life history as well as quotations from the AAI of two women, and we discuss the possibility of a new AAI classification, namely Absence of Attachment Representations--AAR. The possible effects of the AAR classification on parental caregiving behaviors are discussed.

Child↗
PubMed2001

Attachment representations in adolescence: further evidence from psychiatric residential settings.

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has afforded the opportunity to profile the various ways in which people make sense of early experience. While the initial research with the AAI was primarily based on non-clinical populations, this paper extends the growing body of knowledge concerning attachment representations in clinical samples, specifically among severely emotionally disturbed adolescents. The study investigated 39 adolescents resident on five regional adolescent units in the south-east of England. As predicted, the number of adolescents presenting as securely attached was low (n = 4), whilst the incidence of insecure attachment patterns in the sample was high (n = 35). When interviews were rated additionally in terms of lack of resolution, 59% of the sample were unresolved with respect to experiences of trauma or loss. Discussion addresses the possible uses of the AAI in therapeutic interventions for severely disturbed adolescents, which are centrally based on the formation of a secure, safe relationship with a non-threatening adult.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

Stability of attachment representations: the transition to marriage.

This study examined the stability of adult attachment representations across the transition to marriage. One hundred fifty-seven couples were assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1985), the Current Relationship Interview (J. A. Crowell & G. Owens, 1996), and measures describing relationship functioning and life events 3 months prior to their weddings and 18 months into their marriages. The authors tested the hypotheses that attachment classifications are stable and that change is related to experiences in the relationship and/or life events; 78% of the sample received the same primary AAI classification (secure, preoccupied, and dismissing) at both times. Change was toward increased security and was associated with feelings and cognitions about the relationship. Only 46% of participants initially classified as unresolved retained the classification. Stability of the unresolved classification was associated with stressful life events and relationship aggression.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Current attachment representations of incarcerated offenders varying in degree of psychopathy.

The present study sought to examine the current mental representations of early attachment relationships in 24 psychopathic criminal offenders, incarcerated in a forensic psychiatric hospital or a medium-security prison. The participants had been assessed on Hare's Psychopathy Checklist, Revised: Screening Version (PCL-R, sv, 1997) and scored either high or low. They were interviewed with the Main and Goldwyn Adult Attachment Interview (1998) and completed the EMBU, a Swedish self-report questionnaire tapping memories of the parent's rearing techniques. The results pointed to an extensive over-representation of individuals who were dismissing of attachment and attachment-related experiences (close to three times as many as in the normal population), no secure individuals, and with the remainder being either unclassifiable or unresolved with regard to severe early abuse/trauma. In addition, an examination of the EMBU data revealed an association between a higher psychopathy score and a family constellation of a rejecting father and an emotionally very warm (idealized) mother. The discussion will focus on the unique discourse of the dismissing individuals and on clinical implications.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Measuring attachment representation in an FMRI environment: a pilot study.

This exploratory study is the first to examine the neural correlates of attachment status in adults. The study examined the feasibility of assessing attachment narratives in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) environment by challenging subjects to tell attachment stories to specific attachment pictures from the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) while being scanned. We investigated theoretically derived hypotheses regarding predicted differences in the brain activation patterns of individuals whose attachment status was organized (resolved) versus disorganized (unresolved) with respect to attachment trauma (e.g., as associated with loss through death, abuse, threat of abandonment). Adult attachment was assessed using the AAP, a new representational attachment measure that we thought might be suitable for use in the fMRI environment. This measure was used to obtain a preliminary picture of the neural processes associated with the activation of attachment in 11 healthy female adults. Results are reported from a second-level analysis (p < 0.001 uncorrected) and confirm that the AAP is a feasible measure for use in a neuroimaging environment. Cerebral activation during continuous speech yielded results consistent with the literature. Brain activation was demonstrated in expected visual and semantic brain regions. Furthermore, we found that the rate of articulation was positively correlated with activation in the right superior temporal gyrus. The results of theoretically derived attachment hypotheses showed no differences at the chosen level of significance when comparing the 'all attachment pictures' effect between both groups (resolved vs. unresolved). More interestingly, we found a significant interaction effect between the sequence of pictures and attachment category. Only the unresolved participants showed increasing activation of medial temporal regions, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, in the course of the AAP task. This pattern was demonstrated especially at the end of the AAP task where the pictures are drawn to portray traumatic situations. We interpret these results as confirming our hypothesis, linking unresolved attachment to emotional dysregulation of the attachment system. These results are discussed in relation to assessing attachment in an fMRI environment and future research in this area.

Adult↗