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At least 793 records · Page 44Linked to original sources
PubMed2000

Infancy predictors of emotional availability in middle childhood: the roles of attachment security and maternal depressive symptomatology.

This investigation examined the longitudinal prediction of emotional availability in mother-child interaction during middle childhood from two indicators of socioemotional functioning in infancy: security of infant-mother attachment; and maternal depressive symptoms. Forty-five children and their mothers were seen during infancy: security of attachment was assessed in the laboratory Strange Situation; and mothers completed a self-report of depressive symptoms. At age 7, children were observed with their mothers in a lab playroom. The dyad's emotional availability was assessed during reunion following an hour-long separation. Results demonstrated significant associations between infancy and middle childhood socioemotional organization, both for mothers and for children. Security of attachment in infancy was related to maternal sensitivity and structuring, and to child responsiveness and involvement at age 7. Maternal depressive symptoms in infancy were associated with maternal sensitivity and structuring at age 7. Greatest differentiation was found between infants with secure attachments and those with insecure-disorganized attachments.

Child↗
PubMed2002

Individual differences in children's understanding of emotion: the roles of attachment and language.

There is accumulating evidence of a relationship between secure attachment and children's understanding of emotion (Fonagy & Target, 1997; Harris, 1999). The current experiment asked if this relationship is particularly evident when the test of emotion understanding includes attachment-related material or is equally marked on tests with and without attachment-related material. Children ranging from 3-6 years were given a novel test of emotion understanding (the Mother-Infant Separation Test Video) that incorporated provocative attachment themes and also an affectively neutral test of emotion understanding. They performed quite consistently on both types of test-either passing both or failing both. In addition, attachment security, measured concurrently by means of the Separation Anxiety Test, contributed to a correct performance on both tests. This contribution remained when other individual differences were controlled for (age, verbal mental age and gender). Possible explanations of the relationship between attachment and emotion understanding are discussed.

Anxiety, Separation↗
PubMed2002

Attachment and dysthymia: the contributions of preoccupied attachment and agency of self to depression in women.

The present research evaluated a conceptual model that links preoccupied attachment to dysthymic disorder in women. From an original community sample of 420 women, 129 women were identified with depressive symptomatology as assessed by the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale (CES-D). Twenty-four of these 129 women were diagnosed as dysthymic disordered according to the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R-non-patient edition (SCID-NP). Attachment patterns were assessed using the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP). The results indicate that preoccupied attachment was associated with dysthymia. Discussion concerns the processes that may underlie the association between preoccupied attachment and depression, with attention to the possibly complicating factor of unresolved mourning.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Separation and loss through immigration of African Caribbean women to the UK.

This paper reports on 20 women born in the Caribbean whose birth mothers left them there as young children in the care of grandmothers or other members of their extended family. This was in order to migrate to Great Britain during the late 1950s through the 1970s in search of economic prosperity, and reunification with the father/husband already working in the UK. The reunions occurred typically more than a decade later, in the child's adolescence, when mother and child were meeting as if for the first time. The sample of women was divided into two groups, one who was receiving or had received counselling or psychotherapy, and those who had no experience of therapy. Using a semi-structured Interview Schedule (the Separation Reunion Interview Schedule developed for this study), the narratives obtained suggested coherence and reflection. There was little difference in the reactions to the separation -- reunion experience of the women in both groups. They all expressed difficulties in trusting others. They also expressed longing to be loved by their own mothers and they felt less wanted than any children (siblings) born in Britain to their mothers. They attributed their resilient stance and survival to their ability to recall the memories of care received during their early years. The study raises many questions and highlights the need for further research on broken attachments, separation, and loss among entire Caribbean families.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1999

Attachment representation and emotion regulation in adolescents: a psychobiological perspective on internal working models.

Attachment theory claims that inner working models of attachment substantially control behavioral and emotional regulation. There are different levels of organization of the attachment system following a developmental sequence from basic attachment behaviors at newborn age to a procedural organization in terms of behavioral strategies at the end of the first year to a representational organization later on. Also, the organismic systems underlying emotions and emotional regulation may occur and may be described on different organizational levels. Inner working models are seen as regulatory mechanisms for the interplay between the different organismic systems underlying emotions and emotional regulation. This paper will concentrate on biobehavioral organization. Combining assumptions of attachment theory with assumptions about biobehavioral function may provide the possibility of validating theoretically derived interpretations of the attachment system. Including the physiological processes in addition to the psychological processes enables us to test assumptions about the function of the inner working model with respect to processes that are not accessible by verbal communication and that are not expressed through overt behavior. The paper will provide theoretical and empirical evidence for the contribution of the inner working model of attachment to emotional perception, emotional expression and the coherence of inter-modal organization. The empirical findings suggest that from a developmental perspective the inclusion of different levels of regulation may provide possibilities of studying continuity and stability of individual differences of the attachment system during the life-course both within and across levels.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A secure base from which to explore close relationships.

The theory of attachment as a secure-base relationship integrates insights about affect, cognition, and behavior in close relationships across age and culture. Empirical successes based on this theory include important discoveries about the nature of infant-caregiver and adult-adult close relationships, the importance of early experience, and about stability and change in individual differences. The task now is to preserve these insights and successes and build on them. To accomplish this, we need to continually examine the logic and coherence of attachment theory and redress errors of emphasis and analysis. Views on attachment development, attachment representation, and attachment in family and cross-cultural perspective need to be updated in light of empirical research and advances in developmental theory, behavioral biology, and cognitive psychology. We also need to challenge the theory by formulating and testing hypotheses which, if not confirmed, would require significant changes to the theory. If we can accomplish these tasks, prospects for important developments in attachment theory and research are greater than ever, as are the prospects for integration with other disciplines.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Child emotionality and maternal responsiveness as predictors of reunion behaviors in the strange situation: links mediated and unmediated by separation distress.

Children's emotionality--fear, anger, and joy--observed outside of the relationship with the mother (in standard laboratory paradigms), and within that relationship (in mother-child interactions), and mothers' responsiveness, all at 9 and 14 months, were examined as predictors of the reunion behaviors in the Strange Situation at 14 months in 112 children. Many predictors were linked to the reunion behaviors, but most of those relations were at least partially mediated by children's separation distress, which itself strongly predicted the reunion behaviors. Those relations were no longer significant when distress was controlled. Several links, however, remained significant, and they were unmediated by distress: Almost all involved measures assessed within the context of the mother-child relationship. In particular, possible markers of a suboptimal relationship (children's dampened joy and increased anger in interactions with the mother, poor maternal responsiveness) were associated with more avoidance and resistance upon reunion, even after accounting for the strong impact of distress. Studying how factors measured outside of and within early relationships influence the components of the attachment system may foster understanding of child behavior in the Strange Situation.

Anxiety, Separation↗
PubMed1990

Does infant carrying promote attachment? An experimental study of the effects of increased physical contact on the development of attachment.

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that increased physical contact, experimentally induced, would promote greater maternal responsiveness and more secure attachment between infant and mother. Low-SES mothers of newborn infants were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 23) that received soft baby carriers (more physical contact) or to a control group (n = 26) that received infants seats (less contact). Using a transitional probability analysis of a play session at 31/2 months, it was demonstrated that mothers in the experimental group were more contingently responsive than control mothers to their infants' vocalizations. When the infants were 13 months old, the Ainsworth Strange Situation was administered. Significantly more experimental than control infants were securely attached to their mothers. We infer from these results that for low-income, inner-city mothers, there may be a causal relation between increased physical contact, achieved through early carrying in a soft baby carrier, and subsequent security of attachment between infant and mother.

Attention↗
PubMed2004

Autism and attachment: a meta-analytic review.

METHOD: Sixteen studies on attachment in children with autism were reviewed, and ten studies with data on observed attachment security (N = 287) were included in a quantitative meta-analysis. RESULTS: Despite the impairments of children with autism in reciprocal social interaction, the majority of the studies found evidence for attachment behaviours in these children. In four samples using the Strange Situation procedure the average percentage of secure attachments amounted to 53% (n = 72). Meta-analytic results showed that children with autism were significantly less securely attached to their parents than comparison children, and the combined effect size for this difference was moderate (r =.24). Children with autism displayed less attachment security than comparisons without autism, but this difference disappeared in samples with children with higher mental development, and in samples in which autism was mixed with less severe symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that attachment security is compatible with autism, and can be assessed with Strange Situation type of procedures. The co-morbidity of autism and mental retardation appears to be associated with attachment insecurity.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1995

Post-adoption incest and phenotypic matching: experience, personal meanings and biosocial implications.

Recent changes in British law have enabled adults who were adopted when young to trace their biological relatives. The reported frequency of incestuous sentiments and relationships in these reunions, together with the individual experiences and the meanings which are attached to them, challenge fundamental assumptions of both Westermarck's and Freud's theories. Post-adoption incest is characterized experientially by a romantic search for attachment followed by a recognition of oneself in the other. The question of incest has been fundamental to biosocial theories of individual and cultural development. Some revisions are proposed, principally that adult sexual interests remain constrained both by early attachments and later phenotypic matching, reinforced by personal contingencies and cultural rules.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Developing a sense of safety: the neurobiology of neonatal attachment.

Clinical data suggests a strong negative impact of traumatic attachments on adult mental illness, presumably through organizing brain development. To further explore this clinical issue, a mammalian model of imprinting was developed to characterize the neural basis of attachment in both healthy and traumatic attachments. The altricial neonatal rat must learn the mother's odor for nipple attachment, huddling, and orienting to the mother, all of which are required for pup survival. While it appears maladaptive to depend upon learning for attachment, the unique learning system of neonatal pups greatly enhances odor-preference learning and attachment while pups are confined to the nest. This heightened learning is expressed behaviorally as an enhanced ability to acquire learned odor preferences and a decreased ability to acquire learned odor aversions. Specifically, both odor-milk and odor-shock (0.5 mA) conditioning result in odor-preference acquisition. It appears as though there are at least three brain structures underlying the neonatal rat's sensitive period for heightened odor learning: (1) odor learning is encoded in the olfactory bulb; (2) the hyperfunctioning noradrenergic locus coeruleus (LC) appears to support preference conditioning through release of NE; and (3) the hypofunctioning amygdala appears to underlie pups' difficulty in learning odor aversions. Overall, this suggests that the CNS of altricial infants is specialized for optimizing attachments to their caregiver.

Amygdala↗
PubMed1997

Intervention in transmission of insecure attachment: a case study.

Several attachment-based intervention studies have been performed, with varying success. An important question is whether short-term interventions can be successful in promoting parental sensitivity and security of infant-parent attachment as well as in changing parental representations of attachment. We investigated this issue in an exploratory way in a case study. A short-term home-based intervention with written material and video feedback, which was effective regarding parental sensitivity and infant security in a former study, was provided a parent who revealed an insecure attachment representation in the Adult Attachment Interview. The intervention sessions were expanded with discussions about past and present experiences of attachment. After four intervention sessions the mother's behavior towards her child was rated as more sensitive than before the intervention. Also, the infant-mother attachment, as observed in the Strange Situation, appeared to be more secure. Nevertheless, in a second Adult Attachment Interview administered after the intervention, the mother showed again an insecure representation of attachment. Possible implications of these results are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Stamina in adults: is attachment style a factor?

The study was designed to extend inquiry on adult attachment style to include the variable of personal stamina. The data were derived from an anonymous survey administered to 163 college students (82 women and 81 men) in introductory psychology classes. Attachment style was measured by the Close Relationship Questionnaire, based on a four-category scheme suggested by Bartholomew. Stamina was evaluated with a self-report scale developed by R. A. Hicks. The pattern of statistically significant differences (p < .001) in the relative frequency with which respondents self-identified with descriptions of each of the four attachment styles on the questionnaire diverged somewhat from those reported previously. Respondents who identified themselves as most accurately described by the questionnaire's alternative defined as characterizing secure attachment had significantly higher stamina scores than did those who self-endorsed the fearful or preoccupied alternatives in that categorical measure. No other pairwise comparisons of stamina scores were statistically significant. The results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that secure attachment is more facilitative of personal stamina than are insecure styles. Methodological limits on inferences and corresponding alternative interpretations, the potential effectiveness of defensive suppression of the attachment system in dismissing-avoidant adults, and directions for research are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Attachment theory and reactions to others' needs:' evidence that activation of the sense of attachment security promotes empathic responses.

Five studies examined the effects of chronic and contextual activation of attachment security on reactions to others' needs. The sense of attachment security was contextually primed by asking participants to recollect personal memories, read a story, or look at a picture of supportive others or by subliminally exposing them to proximity-related words. This condition was compared against the priming of neutral themes, positive affect, or attachment-insecurity schemas. Then reports of empathy and personal distress or the accessibility of empathy and personal-distress memories were assessed. Attachment-security priming strengthened empathic reactions and inhibited personal distress. Self-reports of attachment anxiety and avoidance were inversely related to empathy, and attachment anxiety was positively related to personal distress. The discussion emphasizes the relevance of attachment theory for explaining reactions to others' needs.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

[Neurophenomenological analysis of the therapeutic relationship in ritual healing].

In this essay we examine some phenomena of community rituals, especially healing ceremonials, which are considered neurobiologically mediated, complex forms of attachment. Recent studies in medical anthropology have pointed out that the ritual therapeutic experience relies on the patients' own healing processes by means of various altered states of consciousness that healers are able to control. Ritual trance invariably occurs in social context, and the healer's personality and the expectations of the community are profoundly involved in the induction of altered states of consciousness. Trance state is regarded as a result of the mobilisation of endogenous opiates, as an activation of the organism's defensive mechanisms in face of the stress of ceremonial. On the other hand, there is a growing body of evidence that opiate mechanisms are involved in social behaviour as well, especially in symbiotic bonds. It is suggested that this is the neurobiological reason why attachment facilitates trance induction. The homeostatic role of social relationships as physiological regulators is also discussed.

Ceremonial Behavior↗
PubMed1987

Mother's versus father's role in causing delinquency.

This study examines parent-child relationships and self-reported delinquent behavior in a sample of over 700 adolescents. Family structure is controlled, and males and females are examined separately. Results indicate that males are more delinquent than females, that the gender of the adolescent is not related to the strength of parental attachment, that both males and females are closer to their mother than to their father, but that closeness to father is the better predictor of delinquent behavior--especially among the males. Finally, it is suggested that a revision of the conceptualization of parental attachment may make it a more useful variable in explaining delinquency.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Physiological Responses to parental separation and a strange situation are related to parental care received in juvenile Goeldi's monkeys (Callimico goeldii).

The relationship between parental care received and physiological and behavioral responses to parental separation, isolation, and reunion was investigated in seven juvenile Goeldi's monkey living in their family groups. Physiological responses were measured non-invasively: the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis via urinary cortisol output and the autonomic nervous system via piloerection on the tail. Parent-infant aggression demonstrated high intergroup variation and predicted: (a) an increase in urinary cortisol output, r(s) = 0.86, p = 0.04, and duration of piloerection, r(s) = 0.71, p = 0.08, at initial separation-isolation; (b) adaptation of piloerection, r(s) = -0.89, p = 0.03, to repeated separation-isolation. Juvenile Goeldi's monkeys that had received high parental aggression were more physiologically responsive to separation; they also sought more contact with their mothers at reunion, rs = 0.93, p = 0.02. We propose that these data are consistent with the hypothesis that high emotional reactivity is related to insecure attachment to aggressive parents in this New world primate.

Animals↗