The idea that attachment representations are generalized to new social situations and guide behavior with unfamiliar others is central to attachment theory. However, research regarding this important theoretical postulate has been lacking in adolescence and adulthood, as most research has focused on establishing the influence of attachment representations on close relationship dynamics. Thus, the goal of this investigation was to examine the extent to which attachment representations are predictive of adolescents' initial behavior when meeting and interacting with new peers. High school adolescents (N = 135) participated with unfamiliar peers from another school in two social support interactions that were videotaped and coded by independent observers. Results indicated that attachment representations (assessed through interview and self-report measures) were predictive of behaviors exhibited during the discussions. Theoretical implications of results and contributions to existing literature are discussed. Keywords ATTACHMENT; ADOLESCENCE; INTERACTION; BEHAVIORS; UNFAMILIAR PEERS; STRANGERSAttachment theory posits that every individual builds experience-based "representational or working models" of the world and of himself/herself in it, and with the aid of these models the individual perceives events, forecasts the future, constructs plans, and selects strategies for interacting with others (Bowlby, 1969(Bowlby, /1982(Bowlby, /1973(Bowlby, /1980. Core aspects of these models include the individual's notions of (a) who his/her attachment figures are, where they may be found, and how they may be expected to respond, (b) how acceptable or unacceptable the individual is in the eyes of his/her attachment figures, (c) whether or not the self is judged to be the sort of person toward whom anyone is likely to respond in a helpful way, (d) how accessible and responsive attachment figures are likely to be should the individual turn to them for support, Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/ NIH Public Access and (e) the probable availability of attachment figures (e.g., whether they are readily available, not available, available occasionally or contingently). According to the theory, these working models and forecasts derived from them are based on actual experiences with significant others, and once developed, they are generalized to new social situations.In his theorizing, Bowlby stated that "an unwanted child is likely not only to feel unwanted by his parents but to believe that he is essenti...

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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 present study examined whether adolescent attachment security and attachment-related representations moderate and mediate, respectively, the link between parent symptoms (depressive and anxiety) and adolescent depressive symptoms. Participants were 189 (118 girls) eleventh graders and their parents in a community sample. Results showed that adolescent attachment moderated the connection between parent and adolescent symptoms; in most cases attachment security was more protective if both parents were high on anxiety symptoms or if one parent was high on anxiety but the other parent was low on depressive symptoms. Mediational analyses indicated that representations of their mothers as a secure base mediated the link between maternal and adolescent depressive symptoms. Perceptions of fathers as a secure base did not play a mediating role, although paternal depressive symptoms were associated with lower perceptions of the father as a secure base. Neither parent's anxiety symptoms were related to perceptions of the parent as a secure base or to adolescent depressive symptoms.

Children who attribute more positive emotions to hypothetical moral victimizers are typically more aggressive and have more behavior problems. Little is known, however, about when individual differences in these moral emotion attributions first emerge or about maternal correlates of these differences. In this study, 63 4-6-year-olds judged how they would feel after victimizing peers for gain and enacted event conclusions using narrative methods adapted from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery. In addition, children's mothers completed assessments of their disciplinary styles and social support, and children's aggressive tendencies were assessed based on ratings from mothers and a second familiar adult. Results revealed that most preschoolers expected to feel happy after their victimizing acts, but variations in happy victimization were unrelated to children's aggression. Several of children's narrative themes, including making amends (e.g., apologizing, reparations), aggressive acts, and mentions of death/killing, however, were related to children's aggression. Moreover, two maternal disciplinary dimensions, higher warmth and reasoning, as well as greater social support were also related to lower child aggression. Children's emotion attributions and moral narratives, however, were unrelated to maternal disciplinary practices or social support.

This longitudinal study builds on existing research exploring the developmental course of infants’ negative reactivity to frustration in a sample of 84 irritable infants. We investigated whether infants’ negative reactivity to frustration differed during the first year as a function of infant attachment classification. Various elements of the designs of previous studies investigating negative reactivity and attachment preclude the strong conclusion that negative reactivity develops differently as a function of attachment. Thus, we utilized the same observational assessment of infant negative reactivity, conducted without parental involvement, at 5 and 12 months. One proposition, based in attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Cassidy, 1994), is that relative to secure infants, insecure-avoidant infants come to minimize their negative emotional reactions, whereas insecure-ambivalent infants come to maximize their negative emotional reactions. As expected, we found that at 5 months, attachment groups did not differ in reactivity, but at 12 months, insecure-avoidant infants were the least reactive, followed by secure infants, and insecure-ambivalent infants were the most reactive. Results are discussed in terms of conceptualizing the development of emotion regulation and their implications for future research.

This investigation examined the influence of a prior social support interaction on a subsequent interaction between new peer acquaintances. Pairs of adolescent peers (recruited in a large metropolitan area in the United States) were videotaped as they met and discussed current life concerns in 2 separate interactions. Results indicated that (a) the behaviors of new interaction partners are coordinated within an interaction (social coordination hypothesis), (b) behaviors exhibited during an initial interaction predict behaviors exhibited during a subsequent interaction (influential interaction hypothesis), (c) individuals affiliate in similar ways across interactions (cross‐situational consistency hypothesis), and (d) behaviors reflecting greater comfort with interaction increase across interactions (uncertainty reduction hypothesis). The discussion focuses on implications of results and contributions to existing literatures.