This study tested whether maternal sensitivity and child security are related during early childhood and whether such an association is found in different cultural and social contexts. Mother-child dyads (N = 237) from four different countries (Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States) were observed in naturalistic settings when children were between 36 and 72 months of age. Maternal and child behavior during interactions at home and in the playground were described using Q methodology. Findings reveal that across cultures, concurrent maternal sensitivity and more specific behavioral domains of maternal care (e.g., contributions to harmonious interactions and secure base support) are important for children's attachment security during early childhood. Implications for the study of attachment relationships beyond infancy and in diverse contexts are highlighted.
The secure-base phenomenon is central to the Bowlby/Ainsworth theory of attachment and is also central to the assessment of attachment across the lifespan. The present study tested whether mothers' knowledge about the secure-base phenomenon, as assessed using a recently designed wordlist prompt measure for eliciting attachment-relevant stories, would predict their children's securebase behavior, as assessed by observers in the home and summarized with the Attachment Q-set (AQS). In each of three sociocultural groups (from Colombia, Portugal, and the US), scores characterizing the quality of maternal secure-base narratives elicited using the word-list prompt procedure were internally consistent, as indicated by tests of cross-story reliability, and they were positively and significantly associated with the child's security score from the AQS for each subsample. The correlation in the combined sample was r(129) = .33, p < .001. Subsequent analyses with the combined sample evaluated the AQS item-correlates of the secure-base script score.These analyses showed that mothers whose stories indicate that they have access to and use a positive secure-base script in their story production have children who treat them as a “secure base” at home. These results suggest that a core feature of adult attachment models, in each of the three sociocultural groups studied, is access to a secure-base script. Additional results from the study indicate that cross-language translations of the maternal narratives can receive valid, reliable scores even when evaluated by non-native speakers.
According to attachment theory, the quality of care plays a key role in the organization of infants' secure base behavior across contexts and cultures. Yet information about attachment relationships in a variety of cultures is scarce, and questions remain as to whether Ainsworth's conceptualization of early care quality (sensitivity; M. D. S. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978) is appropriate for characterizing caregiving behavior in different groups and whether culturally specific descriptions of early care are related to conventional measures of maternal sensitivity and to infants' security. In this naturalistic study of mother-infant interactions in Colombia, scores on different domains of maternal care were obtained through ethnographic methodology, and conventional Q-sort scores for maternal and infant behavior were obtained. Findings are discussed in terms of the cross-cultural generality of the sensitivity construct and the sensitivity-security link and of the relevance of naturalistic open-ended studies in different contexts.
The evolutionary rationale offered by Bowlby implies that secure base relationships are common in child-caregiver dyads and thus, child secure behavior observable across diverse social contexts and cultures. This study offers a test of the universality hypothesis. Trained observers in nine countries used the Attachment Q-set to describe the organization of children's behavior in naturalistic settings. Children (N = 547) were 10-72 months old. Child development experts (N = 81) from all countries provided definitions of optimal child secure base use. Findings indicate that children from all countries use their mother as a secure base. Children's organization of secure base behavior was modestly related to each other both within and across countries. Experts' descriptions of the optimally attached child were highly similar across cultures.The secure base phenomenon is at the core of Bowlby and Ainsworth's analysis of the infant-mother relationship. Ainsworth coined the term "secure base behavior" based on her naturalistic observations of infant-mother interactions in rural Uganda. When reviewing her field notes, she noticed that infants "do not always stay close to the mothers but rather make little excursions away from her, exploring other objects and interacting with other people, but returning to the mother from time to time" (Ainsworth, 1967, p. 345). The hallmark of secure base behavior is the seemingly purposeful balance between excursions or explorations away from the
Introducción: la depresión es una enfermedad de alta prevalencia en adultos mayores. En Colombia su prevalencia se ha descrito entre 1,2 a 12% en mayores que viven en comunidad. Objetivo: estimar la prevalencia de depresión en un muestra de adultos mayores de Bogotá y describir los factores de riesgo psicosocial asociados. Material y métodos: se realizó un estudio de corte transversal observacional-descriptivo, en 889 adultos mayores autónomos. La depresión fue evaluada con el test de depresión geriátrica Yesavage y los factores de riesgo con la sección de acontecimientos vitales del cuestionario Predict. Resultados: el 74% de la muestra estuvo constituida por mujeres, la media de edad fue de 72,51 (DS 9,4) años y la escolaridad promedio en años fue de 7,50 (DS 5,64). Así mismo, se estimó una prevalencia de depresión del 18,6%, siendo mayor en mujeres (20%) y (18%) en sujetos entre 70 y 79 años, los adultos con baja escolaridad sumaron un 43%, y el 22% lo constituyeron personas dependientes económicamente. Por otra parte, se encontró relación entre la depresión y cinco de los factores de riesgo psicosocial conocidos como acontecimientos vitales adversos: insomnio, vivir solo, padecer enfermedades crónicas, haber sufrido una crisis económica, y la muerte de un familiar o amigo cercano en el último año. Conclusión: la prevalencia de depresión en un grupo de personas mayores de la comunidad en Bogotá es más alta que lo descrito previamente en Colombia y por la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS). Programas que reduzcan la soledad en la vejez y protejan a la mujer y a los mayores con menos escolaridad podrían mitigar esta condición.
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