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At least 595 records · Page 33Linked to original sources
PubMed1999

Attachment and anger in an anxiety-provoking situation.

In this study, women were told they would engage in an anxiety-provoking activity. Women then waited with their dating partner for the activity to begin. During this 5-min "stress" period, each couple's interaction was videotaped unobtrusively. Each couple was then told that the woman would not have to do the stressful activity, and each couple was unobtrusively videotaped again during a 5-min "recovery" period. The behavior of both partners was then coded during both periods. The major results revealed that more-avoidant men displayed greater anger during the stress period, especially if their partners were more anxious or distressed or sought more support from them. More-avoidant women also displayed greater anger, particularly if they were highly anxious or distressed and received little support or encountered anger from their partners. During the recovery period, highly ambivalent women behaved more negatively toward their partners if they had been more anxious in the stress period or had sought more support from their partners. These results are discussed in terms of attachment theory.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

The development of attachment: from control system to working models.

After two decades of theoretical and descriptive work, we know a great deal about the developmental course of early attachment relationships. We know considerably less about the mechanisms underlying consistency and change. Indeed, the most pressing issue in attachment theory is to explain well-replicated correlations between early care and subsequent patterns of secure base behavior, and between secure base behavior in infancy and subsequent behavior with parents and siblings, social competence, self-esteem, and behavior problems. As a step in this direction, we examine Bowlby's developmental outline, with an eye toward providing greater detail and incorporating traditional learning mechanisms into Bowlby's attachment theory.

Humans↗
PubMed2004

Attachment, ethology and adult psychotherapy.

This article discusses Bowlby's development of an ethological-evolutionary perspective, and its implications for psychotherapy with adults. According to Bowlby, attachment behavior is instinctive, having emerged throughout the course of evolution to ensure protection and actual survival. Because the environment affects how attachment behavior unfolds, adverse experiences can divert developmental pathways away from resilience, toward dysfunction and emotional distress. Psychotherapy offers the experience of an attachment relationship. Part of the process involves helping patients understand that feelings such as fear and anxiety are inherent responses to safeguard affectional relationships when they are endangered. As working models are re-appraised and revised, there is emphasis on clarifying the attachment experiences that may have intensified these natural feelings.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Developing a secure-enough base: teaching psychotherapists in training the relationship between attachment theory and clinical work.

I present an account of a post-graduate training module I have developed for psychotherapy training students at The Centre for Attachment-based Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy entitled From Attachment Theory to Clinical Practice. I situate my interest in this work in my own life and my background in education. In describing the curriculum content, I focus in particular on an educational process that enables students to engage with the concepts from attachment theory which are both relevant to their own lives and their future work as psychotherapists. I show how the findings of the Adult Attachment Interview can be understood more deeply through a project the students are asked to present and evaluate. The article also includes some personal reflections on my experience of attachment research training from a clinician's perspective as a way to think about the divide between these two worlds. I conclude with a consideration of the strengths and limitations of attachment theory to understanding the effects of inequalities of power relations on the formation of intimate bonds.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Coherence of mind in daughter caregivers of mothers with dementia: links with their mothers' joy and relatedness on reunion in a strange situation.

This paper reports on a small sample (n = 17) of daughter caregivers of mothers with dementia who were interviewed with the Adult Attachment Interview, while their mothers stayed in an adjoining university room. Daughters were then reunited with their mothers, after a one-hour separation. Joyful and related 'secure' maternal behaviors, including proximity seeking, contact maintaining and overall responsiveness, were positively correlated with coherence of mind, and coherence of transcript ratings derived from the daughters' AAIs. Controlling for the severity of dementia in the mothers did not alter the power of these associations. Discussion addresses the lifelong significance of reunion behavior, the survival of 'secure' attachment behavior even into the late stages of dementia, and the clinical relevance of the Adult Attachment Interview.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Attachment in deaf mothers and their children.

In attachment research, there has been a growing interest in how adults conceptualize their relationships with their own parents as well as in the transmission of attachment status from parent to child and the variables that influence that transmission. The primary goal of the present study was to examine the transmission of attachment from deaf mother to child. Adult Attachment Interviews were collected on 32 deaf women and Strange Situation Procedure data were obtained from their children. While the distribution of deaf mother attachment classifications was similar to that found with hearing samples, the concordance between mother and child in terms of attachment status was lower than in hearing samples. Having a deaf parent did not affect a deaf adult's attachment status. Post hoc analyses suggested a trend towards a dismissing stance in attachment relationships. Results are discussed in terms of variables affecting attachment status as well as the transmission of attachment.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The stability of attachment security from infancy to adolescence and early adulthood: general introduction.

Current attachment theory hypothesizes that attachment security during infancy influences individual differences in adult representations of attachment. We present three long-term longitudinal studies using three different samples relevant to this hypothesis. Each study assesses infant attachment by using the Ainsworth Strange Situation and adult attachment by using the Berkeley Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Attachment security was significantly stable in the first two studies. Discontinuity in all three studies was related to negative life events and circumstances. Comparison of the results across these complementary studies affords a degree of replication and sheds light on alternative interpretations. Various mechanisms underlying the stability and instability of attachment security are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The mother-infant relationship and infant attachment in a South African peri-urban settlement.

A sample of 147 mother-infant dyads was recruited from a peri-urban settlement outside Cape Town and seen at 2- and 18-months postpartum. At 18 months, 61.9% of the infants were rated as securely attached (B); 4.1% as avoidant (A); 8.2% as resistant (C); and 25.8% disorganized (D). Postpartum depression at 2 months, and indices of poor parenting at both 2 and 18 months, were associated with insecure infant attachment. The critical 2-month predictor variables for insecure infant attachment were maternal intrusiveness and maternal remoteness, and early maternal depression. When concurrent maternal sensitivity was considered, the quality of the early mother-infant relationship remained important, but maternal depression was no longer predictive. Cross-cultural differences and consistencies in the development of attachment are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Security of attachment in 8-12-year-olds: a revised version of the Separation Anxiety Test, its psychometric properties and clinical interpretation.

This study examined the reliability and validity of an adapted version of the Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) for 8-12-year-old children. Clinical (N = 21) and nonclinical (N = 21) participants were compared on responses to the SAT coded using the Seattle scoring indices. Inter-rater reliability was established at an acceptable level, however, test-retest reliability and internal test construction were less satisfactory. Sample comparisons found the clinical participants described themselves as less securely attached and more avoidant of emotional expression than the control participants. The indices of attachment security were also related to various socioemotional aspects of functioning. In addition, the results indicated that describing "self" as different from a similar "other" child was significantly related to parental reports of poor social competence. Results are discussed in relation to an Attachment Theory framework as well as from a clinical perspective.

Anxiety, Separation↗
PubMed2005

Comparison of Attachment theory and Cognitive-Motivational Structure theory.

Attachment theory and Cognitive-Motivational Structure (CMS) are similar in most respects. They differ primarily in their proposal of when, during development, one's sense of the self and of the outside world are formed. I propose that the theories supplement each other after about age seven years--when Attachment theory's predictions of social function become unreliable, CMS theory comes into play.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Hyperkinetic or attention deficit disorder.

BACKGROUND: In the face of rapidly expanding empirical knowledge about this common childhood condition, there is a need for an up-to-date synthesis, especially for the use of practising clinicians. METHOD: The main epidemiological, experimental and clinical studies over the past decade are selectively reviewed. RESULTS: Hyperkinetic/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is common, with young school-age males most frequently affected. The prevalence figures vary depending on the criteria used. Overlap with conduct disorder is high. The causes are likely to stem from a combination of biological, often genetically determined neurochemical disturbances, and environmental disadvantages, with the biological risk tending to be highest in severely hyperactive girls. Good clinical management combines pharmacological, psychological and educational approaches in a sustained manner. Even then, the outcome is often equivocal and the long-term psychosocial adaptation unpredictable. CONCLUSIONS: Clinically significant hyperactivity is rooted in biological, often genetically transmitted vulnerabilities, upon which environmental disadvantages transect. It may be viewed as a disorder of self-regulation with its roots partly in strained early caregiver-child interactions and disrupted primary attachments.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗
PubMed2001

Experimental protocols for investigating relationships among mother-infant interaction, affect regulation, physiological markers of stress responsiveness, and attachment.

Gergely and Watson's (1996) social biofeedback theory of parental affect mirroring applies the conditional probability model of contingency perception to parent-child interactions. Infants are first evaluated at birth on neurological and temperament measures. Infants are also evaluated at 6 and 12 months on tasks that study social interactional determinants, infant attachment, and physiological reactions. The Strange Situation is completed at 12-15 months of age. The authors describe how the combination of these experimental and observational procedures allows specific developmental hypotheses to be investigated about the quality of contingent parental affect regulation, sensitivity to internal states, and security of attachment.

Affect↗
PubMed2004

What's in a (neutral) face? Personality disorders, attachment styles, and the appraisal of ambiguous social cues.

Attachment theory suggests that borderline, avoidant, and schizoid personality disorders are differentially associated with anxious and avoidant attachment styles. The variations of insecure attachment in these disorders, in turn, might influence how others are perceived or appraised. To test these ideas, 176 college students completed questionnaires measuring attachment styles and personality disorder features, and each rated 10 emotionally neutral faces on 18 bipolar appraisal dimensions. As expected, borderline personality was associated with anxious attachment, avoidant personality was associated with anxious and avoidant attachment, and schizoid personality was weakly associated only with avoidant attachment. Furthermore, path analyses showed that borderline and avoidant personality features were associated with anxious attachment, which in turn related to negative face appraisals (e.g., tendencies to rate faces as less friendly and more rejecting). Discussion highlights the potential of simultaneously studying biases in social information processing and attachment disturbances among individuals with personality disorders.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

Attachment, adolescent competencies, and substance use: developmental considerations in the study of risk behaviors.

Social-control-based deviance theories highlight parental bonding as a protective factor for problem behaviors in that bonds are viewed as reflecting the adolescent's adoption of conventional societal attitudes and values. Developmental theory and research suggest an alternative conceptualization of the linkages between family bonding and adolescent risk behaviors. This conceptualization requires concurrent examination of a range of adolescent competencies as well as consideration of parent and peer contexts. Support is found for several hypotheses derived from a developmental approach proposing: (a) positive associations between adolescent-parent attachment and adolescent competencies--autonomy, peer relationship competency, and coping; (b) coherence in the pattern of negative associations between attachment/competencies and substance use problems; and (c) a disjunctive pattern of associations with substance use reflected by positive associations with peer competencies but not with parental attachment.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1985

[The attachment structure and the heterosexual relationship among university students].

Research on adolescents in romantic love has suggested that their heterosexual relationship may be influenced by their attachment to their mothers and to friends of the same sex. Three hundred fifty-nine college students responded to a questionnaire designed to explore this correlation. The results indicated that male sexual behavior and feelings of romantic love towards their girl friends were not influenced by the attachment to their mothers nor to their friends whereas those of the females were. Females who were involved in intimate sexual relationship had weaker attachment to their mothers; on the other hand, females who had strong romantic feelings, yet without sexual relationships, tended to have strong attachment to their friends of the same sex.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

[Transmission of binding over generations--contribution of the Adult Attachment Interview].

A new domain has been established within attachment research that deals with mental representations of attachment in adults, particularly in parents. This contribution describes the procedure of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) developed by George et al. (1996) and the scoring and classification system by Main and Goldwyn (1994). This method allow trained coders a reliable classification of different states of mind with respect to attachment based on a content and discourse analysis of the interview transcripts. By means of observational procedure of the Strange Situation for infants and the AAI for the adults, several studies support the assumption of a transmission of attachment relationships from one generation to the next one. These findings reveal that parents with secure autonomous attachment representations predominantly have infants with secure attachment patterns, parents with insecure-dismissing attachment representations mostly have children with an avoidant attachment and parents with insecure-preoccupied representations often have children with an insecure-ambivalent attachment. Less consistent results have been found for the correspondence between parents unresolved attachment status with respect to traumatic experiences and their infants' disoriented/disorganized attachment patterns. A recent study assessing attachment in six year olds revealed as well the transmission from mothers' attachment representations to those of their children for this older age. Since many studies have confirmed the correspondence of parents' and infants' attachment classifications, research interests are now directed towards the mediating processes of transmission.

Adult↗