This meta-analytic review examines the association between attachment during the early life course and social competence with peers during childhood, and compares the strength of this association with those for externalizing and internalizing symptomatology. Based on eighty independent samples (N = 4,441), the association between security and peer competence was significant (d = 0.39, CI 0.32; 0.47) and not moderated by the age at which peer competence was assessed. Avoidance (d = 0.17, CI 0.05; 0.30), resistance (d = 0.29, CI 0.09; 0.48), and disorganization (d = 0.25, CI 0.10; 0.40) were significantly associated with lower peer competence. Attachment security was significantly more strongly associated with peer competence than internalizing (but not externalizing) symptomatology. Discussion focuses on the significance of early attachment for the development of peer competence versus externalizing and internalizing psychopathology.

This study adopted a developmental perspective on recovery from conflict in romantic relationships. Participants were 73 young adults (target participants), studied since birth, and their romantic partners. A novel observational coding scheme was used to evaluate each participant’s degree of conflict recovery, operationalized as the extent to which the participant disengaged from conflict during a 4-min “cool-down” task immediately following a 10-min conflict discussion. Conflict recovery was systematically associated with developmental and dyadic processes. Targets who were rated as securely attached more times in infancy recovered from conflict better, as did their romantic partners. Concurrently, having a romantic partner who displayed better recovery predicted more positive relationship emotions and greater relationship satisfaction. Prospectively, target participants’ early attachment security and their partners’ degree of conflict recovery interacted to predict relationship stability 2 years later, such that having a partner who recovered from conflict better buffered targets with insecure histories.

Based on a sub-sample (N = 673) of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) cohort, this paper reports data from a follow-up assessment at age 18 years on the antecedents of secure base script knowledge, as reflected in the ability to generate narratives in which attachment-related difficulties are recognized, competent help is provided, and the problem is resolved. Secure base script knowledge was (a) modestly to moderately correlated with more well established assessments of adult attachment, (b) associated with mother-child attachment in the first three years of life and with observations of maternal and paternal sensitivity from childhood to adolescence, and (c) partially accounted for associations previously documented in the SECCYD cohort between early caregiving experiences and Adult Attachment Interview states of mind (Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2014) as well as self-reported attachment styles (Fraley, Roisman, Booth-LaForce, Owen, & Holland, 2013).

There is increasing evidence that attachment representations abstracted from childhood experiences with primary caregivers are organized as a cognitive script describing secure base use and support (i.e., the secure base script). To date, however, the latent structure of secure base script knowledge has gone unexamined—this despite the fact that such basic information about the factor structure and distributional properties of these individual differences has important conceptual implications for our understanding of how representations of early experience are organized and generalized, as well as methodological significance in relation to maximizing statistical power and precision. In this study, we report factor and taxometric analyses that examined the latent structure of secure base script knowledge in two large samples. Results suggested that variation in secure base script knowledge—as measured by both the adolescent (N = 674) and adult (N = 714) versions of the Attachment Script Assessment—is generalized across relationships and continuously distributed.

This study leveraged prospective, longitudinal data to investigate the long-term predictive significance of the quality of early parent-child relationship experiences for adults’ sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity during conflict discussions with their romantic partners. Maternal sensitivity was repeatedly assessed across childhood via direct observations of mother-child interactions. During adulthood (ages 34–37 years), electrodermal activity—an index of SNS arousal and a psychophysiological marker of behavioral inhibition—was recorded for 37 participants at rest and while they attempted to resolve a conflict in their romantic relationships. Compared to individuals who had more sensitive maternal caregivers during childhood, individuals who experienced less sensitive early care experienced greater electrodermal activity during conflict discussions with their adult partners over resting conditions. This longitudinal association was not accounted for by concurrent romantic relationship quality, gender, ethnicity, or early socioeconomic factors.