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PubMed2001

The development and preliminary validation of a new measure of adult attachment: the adult attachment projective.

In this paper, we describe the development of and our preliminary work to empirically validate the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP), a new adult attachment classification system that is based on the analysis of individuals' responses to a set of seven attachment-related drawings. The AAP classification system uses evaluations of three dimensions (Discourse, Content and Defensive Processing) to designate four major adult classification groups: Secure, Dismissing, Preoccupied, and Unresolved. Preliminary validation of the AAP is based on 75 participants drawn from three separate samples. The results indicate strong interjudge reliability and convergent agreement between the AAP and Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) classifications. The AAP, thus, appears to be a promising developmental measure for assessing the representation of attachment in adults. Contributions of the AAP to attachment theory and research are discussed. The similarities and differences between AAP stories and other child and adult representational measures are also discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Attachment theory and group processes: the association between attachment style and group-related representations, goals, memories, and functioning.

Four studies examined attachment-style differences in group-related cognitions and behaviors. In Studies 1-2, participants completed scales on group-related cognitions and emotions. In Studies 3-4, participants were divided into small groups, and their performance in group tasks as well as the cohesion of their group were assessed. Both attachment anxiety and avoidance in close relationships were associated with negative group-related cognitions and emotions. Anxiety was also related to the pursuit of closeness goals and impaired instrumental performance in group tasks. Avoidance was related to the pursuit of distance goals and deficits in socioemotional and instrumental performance. Group cohesion significantly moderated the effects of attachment anxiety. The discussion emphasizes the relevance of attachment theory within group contexts.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

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, 1996), 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, 1977) and Katz, Gottman, Shapiro, and Carrere's (1997) 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.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Unresolved states of mind, anomalous parental behavior, and disorganized attachment: a review and meta-analysis of a transmission gap.

The current meta-analysis examines the links between unresolved representations of attachment, anomalous parental behavior, and disorganized attachment relationships in 12 studies including 851 families. We found moderate effect sizes for the associations between unresolved states of mind and anomalous behavior (r = .26), unresolved states of mind and infant disorganized attachment relationships (r = .21), and anomalous behavior and disorganized attachment relationships (r = .34). Sample characteristics, observational context, and observational measure were not associated with differences in effect sizes. Only a small part of the association between unresolved states of mind and disorganized attachment relationships was explained by the mediation of anomalous parental behavior (.26* .34 = .09). Other factors yet to be uncovered must mediate the influence of unresolved states of mind on infant disorganized attachment; thus, further exploration of infant, parental, ecological, and genetic factors are warranted.

Behavioral Symptoms↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Representation of self and socioemotional competence in kindergartners: differential and combined effects of attachment to mother and to father.

In the present study, we examined the differential predictive power and the joint or compensatory effects of representations of child-mother and child-father attachment for children's representation of self and their socioemotional competence. The representations of attachment were assessed by an attachment story completion task, completed once for mother and once for father (in counterbalanced order). Eighty participants (40 boys and 40 girls), aged between 55 and 77 months (M = 5 years 3 months), took place in the study. The socioemotional competence (peer social competence, disruptive behavior, anxious/withdrawn behavior, and school adjustment) and behavioral manifestations of self-esteem were evaluated by the kindergarten teacher. The inner representation of self (positiveness of self, perceived competence, and social acceptance) was assessed in a subgroup of 50 children. Results showed that the relative predictive power of child-mother and child-father attachments differed according to the domain of child functioning that was assessed. More specifically, it was found that the child's positiveness of self was better predicted by the quality of the child-mother attachment representation than by the quality of the child-father attachment representation. In contrast, the child's anxious/withdrawn behavioral problems were better predicted by the quality of the child-father attachment representation than by the quality of the child-mother attachment representation. With regard to the joint effects of child-mother and child-father attachment, it was found that a secure attachment to one parent can compensate for or buffer against an insecure attachment to the other parent. However, the buffering effect was not complete.

Affect↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Perceived parental rearing behaviour and adult attachment patterns in intimate relationships].

Based on the assumption that the parental rearing behaviour recalled by adults can be conceptualized as a specific mental representation of attachment, the study examines the associations between these rearing-related memories and adult attachment patterns in intimate relationships. The data for this study were obtained from a large community-based sample of the German population (1509 subjects between the ages of 18 and 50 years). Both, the perceived parental rearing behaviour and the adult attachment patterns have been assessed via questionnaires (Questionnaire of Recalled Parental Rearing Behaviour [Fragebogen zum erinnerten elterlichen Erziehungsverhalten, FEE] and Bielefeld Partnership Expectations Questionnaire [Bielefelder Fragebogen zu Partnerschaftserwartungen, BFPE]). As the result of the study it could be shown that a secure adult attachment pattern in intimate relationships is associated with a parental rearing behaviour that has been perceived as positive, while on the other hand insecure attachment patterns are rather associated with more negative experiences of parental rearing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Thinking about children's attachments.

Disordered parental attachment can commit children to lives characterised by relationship difficulties, behaviour problems, educational failure, and poor self-esteem. It is a major root of trans-generational neglect and abuse and frequently underlies mental health problems, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, and crime. Early childhood setting of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis function appears to contribute to these costly difficulties. More broadly, the concept of attachment can contribute to defining and managing the psychosocial dimension of routine paediatric care. The current under-representation of attachment in paediatric education, practice, and research needs to be rectified.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

Who benefits from disclosure? Exploration of attachment style differences in the effects of expressing emotions.

Pennebaker's disclosure paradigm is a powerful manipulation: writing or talking about emotional experiences has positive effects on health. Nevertheless, the effect does not work for all people and some studies, including those of the highly emotional event of bereavement, have failed to demonstrate any effect at all. This paper reviews empirical evidence and proposes an integrative model to help explain discrepant findings and assess individual differences in the manipulation's effectiveness. Taking bereavement as exemplary of an attachment-related loss experience, it examines the relationship between styles of attachment, internal representations of the self and other, and patterns of disclosure in the coping process. Research has shown disturbances in disclosure among insecurely attached persons. We argue that secure persons are less likely to benefit from the disclosure paradigm, since they are better able to disclose in ways that further the adjustment process in their everyday lives. Targeting persons with insecure attachment styles and providing attachment-style-specific disclosure instructions are likely to increase the power of the manipulation. Our examination of these individual difference patterns is compatible with recent cognitive and linguistic analyses underlying the disclosure paradigm's impact on health.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1996

Associations among attachment classifications of mothers, fathers, and their infants.

Associations are reported among classifications of Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs) obtained from expectant parents and subsequent classifications of their infants in the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP). Mothers' AAIs predicted infant-mother SSPs (chi 2 = 41.87, N = 96, df = 9, p < or = .0001), and fathers' AAIs predicted infant-father SSPs (chi 2 = 18.94, N = 90, df = 6, p < or = .005). Associations between parents' AAIs and infant-parent SSPs were lessened by the failure to predict the insecure-resistant pattern with mother and the absence of this pattern with father. Counter to expectation, infant-father SSPs were associated with infant-mother SSPs (chi 2 = 3.78, N = 90, df = 1, p < or = .05), which could not be accounted for in terms of an overlap between parental AAIs. A secondary analysis of the data suggested that this dependency effect of SSPs may be explained by the influence of maternal AAIs upon child-father SSPs. Results are discussed in terms of intergenerational and relationship-specific influences upon attachment during infancy, the possible influence of infant temperament, and the relative influence of mother and father upon the child's evolving representations of attachments within the family.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

The coherence of dyadic behavior across parent-child and romantic relationships as mediated by the internalized representation of experience.

Attachment theory suggests, first, that patterns of dyadic behavior cohere across salient relationships and, second, that such linkages are mediated by working models, defined as cognitive/emotional representations of relationships abstracted from dyadic experience. In this longitudinal study, adolescents' (age 19) Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) coherence ratings and classifications (e.g. working model proxies) were related prospectively to their observed dyadic behaviors with romantic partners in young adulthood (age 20-21). Results demonstrated significant associations between adolescents' representations of their relationships with parents and the later quality of their interactions with romantic partners. Next, a model was tested whereby participants' working models, as inferred from the AAI, mediate the across-time correlation between a subset of observationallv assessed parent-child dyadic behaviors (age 13) and the romantic relationship behaviors of these participants eight years later in young adulthood (age 20-21). Results of mediational analyses were consistent with the fundamental tenet of the organizational-developmental model that salient parent-child experiences are internalized and carried forward into adult relationships.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Attachment and motivational strategies in adolescence: exploring links.

Within the framework of attachment theory and of motivation goal theory, this study explored the relation between quality of attachment strategies and quality of motivational strategies in a sample of young adolescents. Specifically, this study examined patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and emotions as they related to representations of attachment and motivational functioning in situations that challenge or threaten three psychological needs (emotional security, competence, and autonomy). Forty-four students, aged 11 to 14 years, responded to imagined stressful situations in order to: (a) assess attachment strategies; (b) identify and assess students' motivational strategies in stressful classroom circumstances; (c) assess motivational strategies of students with high and low control and agency beliefs; and (d) examine the relations between attachment and motivational strategies. Four distinct action patterns were identified: flexible action, rigid action, passive behavior, and disorganized behavior. Significant relations were found between control beliefs and motivational strategies, as well as a trend toward relations between attachment and motivational strategies, suggesting that secure adolescents show more constructive motivational strategies and less disorganized strategies when compared to insecure adolescents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

The attachment working models concept: among other things, we build script-like representations of secure base experiences.

Mental representations are of central importance in attachment theory. Most often conceptualized in terms of working models, ideas about mental representation have helped guide both attachment theory and research. At the same time, the working models concept has been criticized as overly extensible, explaining too much and therefore too little. Once unavoidable, such openness is increasingly unnecessary and a threat to the coherence of attachment theory. Cognitive and developmental understanding of mental representation has advanced markedly since Bowlby's day, allowing us to become increasingly specific about how attachment-related representations evolve, interact, and influence affect, cognition, and behavior. This makes it possible to be increasingly specific about mental representations of attachment and secure base experience. Focusing on script-like representations of secure base experience is a useful first step in this direction. Here we define the concept of a secure base script, outline a method for assessing a person's knowledge/access to a secure base script, and review evidence that script-like representations are an important component of the working models concept.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed2001

Attachment in mental health institutions: a critical review of assumptions, clinical implications, and research strategies.

Attachment is relevant to institutionalized treatment and the therapeutic process in three identifiable ways: (1) patients bring their mental representations of previous and existing attachment relationships to the treatment; (2) attachment is relevant to the extent to which a therapeutic alliance is established and maintained, both in terms of the mental representations of attachment in the patient and in the therapist and how these influence interactive behaviour and expectations in each partner to the therapeutic work; (3) the outcome of the treatment may be related to attachment; for example, when institutional experiences have an enduring impact on attachment representations and the future attachment behaviour of the patient. However, this brief review of attachment concepts reveals that several theoretical, conceptual and empirical questions remain to be answered before evidence-based clinical attachment guidelines can be formulated concerning patient-staff relationships.

Hospitals, Psychiatric↗
PubMed2006

Attachment and psychopathology in a community sample.

The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID-I) and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) were administered to 60 women participating in a study (n=226) of mother-child interaction. These women were not referred to the study for psychiatric care. The 60 women interviewed with the AAI were selected from the first 190 women who completed the SCID-I, so that 30 received a diagnosis and 30 did not. Analyses indicated that psychopathology diagnoses were associated significantly with mental representations of attachment classified in the AAI. The non-autonomous groups had increased likelihood of SCID diagnosis, compared to the autonomous group. While 32% of women with autonomous AAI transcripts received SCID diagnoses, 63% of women with Dismissing, 100% of woman with Preoccupied, and 65% of women with Unresolved transcripts received diagnoses. Secondary analyses indicated that Dismissing classifications were associated with Axis I diagnoses and Preoccupied classifications with affective disorders. Of note was that among women with Unresolved classifications, underlying secure attachment was associated with low risk of psychopathology, while underlying anxious attachment was associated with elevated risk of diagnosis. These findings support the premise from attachment theory that early relationships affect patterns of interpersonal expectations and behavior and affect regulation.

Adjustment Disorders↗
PubMed2002

Maternal predictors of children's social cognition: an attachment perspective.

BACKGROUND: This paper assumes that the capacities to (1) openly acknowledge, and (2) elaborate a resourceful plan for coping with distress in the self and others are central features of social cognition. METHOD: These capacities were assessed in a sample (N = 51) of 11-year-old children whose mothers and fathers had previously provided Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs) before their children were born. The children were shown six line-drawn sequences of child(ren), with peer(s) and/or family in diverse situations involving some moderate distress. The experimenter described the adversity shown in the sequence (e.g., bully pushing over another school-aged child in the presence of onlookers) and then invited the child to attribute thoughts and feelings to the characters, and comment upon what might happen next. RESULTS: Children whose responses scored highly for acknowledgement of the distress, and elaborating a resolution, were significantly more likely to have had mothers (but not fathers) whose AAIs were judged autonomous-secure as opposed to insecure (i.e., dismissing, preoccupied and/or unresolved). The significant influence of maternal representations of attachment upon the 11-year outcome remained even after taking account of concurrent parenting attitudes, children's verbal intelligence, as well as the previously assessed infant-parent attachment patterns. CONCLUSIONS: Discussion concerns the differential predictive power of maternal responses to the Adult Attachment Interview as related to the domain of children's social and emotional understanding.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2002

Caregiver models of self and others, coping, and depression: predictors of depression in children with chronic pain.

In a sample of 59 chronically ill pediatric patients and their maternal caregivers, both child-reported pain and caregiver-reported depression predicted child-reported depression. Results further suggested that the association between pain and depression in children is ameliorated by caregiver coping strategies and that how caregivers cope is a function of their attachment-related representations of the self and others. Caregivers with a negative model of the self were more depressed. and those with a negative model of others were more prone to use avoidant coping strategies, and, in turn, to be more depressed. However, the extent to which caregivers with negative models of self used more avoidant and less approach coping appeared to depend on whether they perceived that others were likely to respond to their needs.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

Parenting stress and parental bonding.

Attachment experiences are thought to be important because of their implications for later development. The authors' aim with the questionnaire-based study was to investigate the differences between recalled parental bonding regarding 4 types of maternal and paternal bonding with respect to experienced parenting stress caused by child characteristics, parent attributes, and life events under the consideration of the child's gender and age. The authors gathered parental bonding behavior data with the German version of the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI). The authors assessed parenting stress with their German version of the "Parenting Stress Index (PSI)." They found significant differences among 120 mothers grouped in the 4 maternal and the 4 paternal bonding types regarding parenting stress caused by child, maternal bonding: F(5, 113) = 4.13, p = .002, paternal bonding: F(5, 111) = 8.50, p < or = .0001, and parent characteristics, maternal bonding: F(5, 113) = 3.33, p = .008, paternal bonding: F(5, 111) = 7.80, p < or = .0001. The lowest level of parenting stress was experienced by mothers who themselves recalled the "optimal parental bonding type" with respect to the child and parental domain. The authors did not find any significant differences between the 4 maternal, F(5, 113) = 1.25, p = .29, and the 4 paternal, F(5, 111) = 1.87, p = .106, bonding types with respect to the life stress. According to the authors' findings, the representation of attachment relationships seems to have a special impact on the adult's capacity to cope with challenges and stress, either directly or indirectly as an internal working model of attachment. For the clinical practice, these findings seem to recommend the combination of both the PSI and PBI regarding the diagnostic of stressful mother-child system to plan an optimal intervention program.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

[The schizophrenic world view--psychopathologic aspects of ontogenetic regression].

If reality is represented in the neuronal structures of mans central nervous system, any disturbance of cognitive functions must necessarily change mans concept of his reality. The hypothesis presented in this study is that an ontogenetic regression of cognitive processes to an "actional-concretistic" level of "representations" is attached to a reduction of the "sphere of action" (by analogy with the territorial zones in ethology) to the immediate "individual area". The main features of the psychopathology of schizophrenic experience and behavior such as the concrete and the overinclusive thinking, the impairment of selective attention, hyper- and hyposensitivity, the ambivalence concerning separatism (minus) and egocentrism (plus), ideas of reference and the disturbance of identity are seen under this new aspect.

Defense Mechanisms↗