There is limited research examining stability and change in attachment security in middle childhood. The current study addresses this gap using data from a 3-year longitudinal study. Specifically, we examined stability and change in secure base script knowledge during middle childhood using a sample of 157 children (Wave 1 mean age [Mage] = 10.91, standard deviation [SD] = 0.87) assessed at 1-year intervals across 4 waves. Secure base script knowledge was moderately stable over time, as script scores were significantly correlated between each wave. We also investigated the impact of life stress on change in secure base script knowledge within individuals across waves. The results demonstrated that daily hassles (minor and frequently occurring stressful life events) but not major (more severe and infrequent) stressful life events predicted change in script knowledge. Implications for attachment-based interventions and, more broadly, the stability of attachment security are discussed.
Attachment expectations regarding the availability of mother as a source for support are supposed to influence distressed children’s support seeking behavior. Because research is needed to better understand the mechanisms related to support seeking behavior, this study tested the hypothesis that the cognitive processing of mother-related information is linked to proximity and support seeking behavior. Uncertainty in maternal support has been shown to be characterized by a biased attentional encoding of mother, reducing the breadth of children’s attentional field around her. We investigated whether this attentional bias is related to how long distressed children wait before seeking their mother’s proximity. Thirty-three children (9-11 years) participated in this study that consisted of experimental tasks to measure attentional breadth and to observe proximity seeking behavior and of questionnaires to measure confidence in maternal support and experienced distress. Results suggested that distressed children with a more narrow attentional field around their mother wait longer to seek her proximity. Key Message: These findings provide a first support for the hypothesis that the attentional processing of mother is related to children’s attachment behavior.
The aim of this study is to describe variability in the shape and amplitude of intensity profiles of anger episodes and how it relates to duration, and to investigate whether this variability can be predicted on the basis of appraisals and emotion regulation strategies used. Participants were asked to report on a wide range of recollected anger episodes. By means of K-spectral centroid clustering, two prototypical shapes of anger intensity profiles were identified: early- and late-blooming episodes. Early-blooming episodes are relatively short and reach their peak immediately. These profiles are associated with low-importance events and adaptive regulation. Late-blooming episodes last longer and reach their peak (relatively) late in the episode. These profiles are related to high-importance events and maladaptive regulation. For both early- and late-blooming profiles, overall amplitude is positively associated with event importance and the use of maladaptive regulation strategies and negatively with the use of adaptive ones.
Based on former research, it can be assumed that attachment relationships provide a context in which children develop both the effortful control (EC) capacity and the repertoire of responses to regulate distress. Both are important to understand children's (mal)adjustment. While the latter assumption has been supported in several studies, less is known about links between attachment and EC. We administered questionnaires to measure anxious and avoidant attachment or trust in maternal support in two samples of early adolescents. EC was reported by the child in Sample 1 (N = 244), and by mother in Sample 2 (N = 177). In both samples mothers reported children's maladjustment. Consistent with predictions, insecure attachment was related to reduced EC.Moreover, EC indirectly linked insecure attachment to maladjustment. This study provides evidence that studying EC is important to understand the self-regulatory mechanisms explaining the link between attachment and (mal)adjustment in early adolescence.Keywords: attachment, developmental psychopathology, self-regulation, effortful control ATTACHMENT AND EFFORTFUL CONTROL 3 Attachment and Effortful Control: Relationships with Maladjustment in Early AdolescenceAttachment relationships provide a context in which children develop both the selfregulatory capacity and the repertoire of responses by which they regulate affect (Bowlby, 1969;Cassidy, 1994;Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Thus far, research has mainly focused on the role of attachment in the development of emotion regulation (e.g., Kobak, Cole, Ferenz-Gillies, Fleming, & Gamble, 1993;Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007), whereas less attention has been given to the simultaneous development of self-regulatory capacity, which reflects the ability to regulate attention and behavior (Carver & Scheier, 2011;Posner & Rothbart, 1998). Since self-regulatory capacity in childhood predicts later (mal)adjustment (e.g., Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Eggum, 2010), it is important to know (1) whether this capacity is related to attachment and (2) whether deficits in self-regulatory capacity can help explain why less securely attached children are more vulnerable to maladjustment.Studying these associations seems to be especially relevant in early adolescence. At this age, children must cope with the physical, emotional and social changes that go along with puberty (Eccles, 1999). Thus, it is no surprise that the cognitive, emotional and self-regulatory capacities children develop in early adolescence predict resilience throughout adolescence (Masten, 2004; Tsukayama, Toomey, Faith, & Dukworth, 2010). Insofar as research suggests that during the transition to adolescence these capacities are especially malleable in the context of parent-child interactions (Mezulis, Hyde, & Abramson, 2006), it is surprising that little research has focused on the relationship between attachment and self-regulatory capacity in early adolescence. Self-Regulatory CapacitySelf-regulatory capacity can be defined as the ability, originating within the person, to c...
The development of depressive symptoms is rooted in childhood, but once it emerges in adolescence and translates to depressive disorders, the psychosocial and economic impact is substantial both for affected individuals as for the society (World Health Organization, 2001). Hence, longitudinal research on childhood precursors of the development of depressive symptoms is critical to understand which interventions could help promote mental health. One childhood factor often proposed to be related to the development
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