Fifty-nine male and female Israeli students were interviewed twice by 2 different interviewers at 3month intervals to assess the Adult Attachment Interview's (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. test-retest reliability and the effects of the interviewers on the interview itself as well as its subsequent classification. Various memory measures were used to obtain a wide range of information about subjects' memory abilities. Information was also obtained from the students' records about various intelligence-related skills. Results showed high degree of interjudge and test-retest reliabilities, irrespective of interviewers. The classifications on the AAI were not found to be associated with nonattachment-related memory and intelligence abilities.The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, has recently come into increasing use in connection with the study of intergenerational transmission of attachment. The AAI represents an attempt to assess current mental representation by adults of their childhood attachment experiences (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Even when applied before the birth of a child, the AAI has been found to predict the quality of infant-parent attachment relationships (Benoit & Parker, in press;Fonagy, Steele, & Steele, 1991; Radojevic, 1992; Ward & Carlson, in press). In a meta-analysis of 18 studies involving a total of 854 families, Van Uzendoorn (in press) found that there is a substantial overall effect size for the relation between adult-attachment security and infant-attachment security (combined r = .47).The psychometric properties of the AAI have received much less attention (Bakermans-Kranenburg & Van Uzendoorn, 1993;Waters et al., 1993), although the precise meaning of developmental measures can only be established by psychometric

The Haifa Study of Early Child Care recruited a large-scale sample (N = 758) that represented the full SES spectrum in Israel, to examine the unique contribution of various child-care-related correlates to infant attachment. After controlling for other potential contributing variables--including mother characteristics, mother-child interaction, mother-father relationship, infant characteristics and development, and the environment--this study found that center-care, in and of itself, adversely increased the likelihood of infants developing insecure attachment to their mothers as compared with infants who were either in maternal care, individual nonparental care with a relative, individual nonparental care with a paid caregiver, or family day-care. The results suggest that it is the poor quality of center-care and the high infant-caregiver ratio that accounted for this increased level of attachment insecurity among center-care infants.

Three components of the attachment transmission model were examined in 48 kibbutz dyads from 2 kibbutz sleeping arrangements: communal and home-based. Concurrent assessments used the Strange Situation procedure (M. D. Ainsworth, M. C. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978) for infants' attachment relations, the Adult Attachment Interview (C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1985) for mothers' attachment representations, and the Emotional Availability Scales (Z. Biringen, J. L. Robinson, & R. N. Emde, 1993) for emotional availability in the dyads. Security of infants' attachment relations as well as autonomy of mothers' attachment representations were associated with higher emotional availability scores. In addition, significantly poorer emotional availability was found in dyads in which infants were insecurely attached and mothers were nonautonomous. Results also indicate that in the ecology of collective sleeping, the associations between the experience of emotional availability in the dyads and infants' and mothers' attachment may have been disrupted.

To determine whether the transmission of attachment across generations is free from contextual constraints, adult attachment representations were assessed in two kibbutz settings, home-based and communal sleeping. It was hypothesised that under extreme child-rearing circumstances, such as the communal sleeping arrangement, the transmission of attachment is not evident, whereas in the more regular home-based environment the expected transmission of attachment will be found. The participants were 45 mothers and 45 infants, about equal numbers of boys and girls, from 20 kibbutz infant houses with communal sleeping arrangements, and from 25 kibbutz infant houses with home-based sleeping arrangements. Mothers were administered the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), and infants were assessed through the Ainsworth Strange Situation.

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