Associations Between Attachment Narratives and Self-Report Measures of Attachment in Middle Childhood: Extending Evidence for the Validity of the Child Attachment Interview

Borelli, Jessica L.; Somers, Jennifer A.; West, Jessica; Coffey, John K.; Reyes, Andres De Los; Shmueli-Goetz, Yael

doi:10.1007/s10826-015-0310-8

Cited by 45 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In particular, preoccupied children reported more depressive symptoms (Borelli et al, 2016c), while idealizing children reported less externalizing psychopathology (Venta et al, 2014), as well as fewer depressive symptoms (Borelli et al, 2016c), thus confirming their marked tendency to minimize experiences of distress. These findings supported the notion that self-report measures are not efficient in distinguishing an idealizing state of mind regarding attachment due to the marked tendency of Idealizing individuals to normalize and embellish their experience.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Although one of the studies was conducted on a community sample of children (Borelli et al, 2016c) and the other was carried out on a clinical sample of adolescents (Venta et al, 2014), they both yielded similar findings. CAI coherence correlated significantly positively with self-reported security and negatively with self-reported overprotection, especially with respect to the mother.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Some studies investigated the CAI factor structure, and three factor structures have been identified to date (Zachrisson et al, 2011; Venta et al, 2014; Borelli et al, 2016c). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Child Attachment Interview: A Narrative Review

Privizzini¹

2017

Front. Psychol.

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Attachment theory promoted an impressive body of research on the psychic developmental processes, resulting in studies on both typical and atypical development. Much of the diffusion of the attachment theory in the clinical field was related to the design of reliable instruments to evaluate the organization of attachment in infancy as well as in adulthood. Until recently, the lack of a suitable instrument to assess attachment in middle childhood as well as in adolescence hindered the expansion of research in these developmental phases during which the parent-child relationship takes on a different, albeit still crucial, role. The Child Attachment Interview (CAI), a measure that was recently designed to assess attachment at a representational level in middle childhood and adolescence, filled the measurement gap. The aim of the current review was to summarize previous empirical investigations concerning CAI in order to (a) provide an overview of the state of current research, (b) identify unanswered questions, and (c) propose future research directions. A narrative review was conducted to map the current research findings by searching for the term “Child Attachment Interview” in the Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, and PsychINFO databases, followed by a search in Mendeley. Limits were set to exclude dissertations, chapters in books, and qualitative or theoretical papers, while empirical studies were included if they used the CAI and were published in English language, peer-reviewed journals by July, 2016. The review, which ultimately included 39 studies meeting the criteria, showed that the CAI is a reliable instrument to assess attachment organization in clinical and non-clinical samples, thus providing a worthwhile contribution to the investigation of the influence of the parent-child relationship beyond infancy and early childhood. Nevertheless, the review pointed out a number of relevant open issues, the most critical of which concerned the CAI coding and classification system. In particular, some relevant questions arose about (a) how opportune it would be to maintain a distinct classification for mother and father, (b) coding challenges regarding both the father and the Preoccupied and Disorganized classification, and finally (c) the advantage of a dimensional vs. a categorical approach.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

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The Child Attachment Interview: A Narrative Review

Privizzini¹

2017

Front. Psychol.

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“…Additionally, individual differences in children's trust were measured with a self-report questionnaire. Although previous research with that measure confirms that the trust-scale is linked to children's observable support seeking behavior and to other measures like interviews of which the validity is less questioned (Borelli et al, 2015), there is a general concern that self-report is vulnerable to false secure attachment scores (Ainsworth, 1985). In future research, it would be valuable to repeat the study with more narrative measures like interviews or secure base script tests, because they are less vulnerable to response biases (Waters et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Children's attentional breadth around their mother: Comparing stimulus‐driven vs. cognitively controlled processes

et al. 2017

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Attentional processes in children are tuned toward their mother. It is unclear whether this is a cognitively controlled or more automatic, stimulus-driven process. Therefore, 172 children (age 9-13) were assigned to either a cognitively controlled or a stimulus-driven task measuring the breadth of their attentional field around their mother.Results demonstrated a narrower field around the mother for children completing the more stimulus-driven task. Moreover, only for the stimulus-driven task, this effect was linked with the interaction between children's age and self-reported trust in maternal support.More trust was linked with a narrower attentional field around the mother in younger children, but with a less narrow field in older children. This resembles the expected age-related shift toward increased autonomy and points at stimulus-driven attentional processes.attachment, attentional bias, attentional breadth, middle childhood, mother-child relationship, trust | I NTR OD U CTI ONAccording to attachment theory, primary caregivers like mothers are crucial for children's development because young children need their mother to ensure survival (Bowlby, 1969). Bowlby (1969) proposed that care-related experiences with the mother are stored as an internal representation or internal working model. When infants repeatedly experience sensitive maternal responses to distress, they develop secure attachment representations, which means that they will trust that they can rely on the mother as a secure base from which to solicit support (Bowlby, 1969;Waters & Waters, 2006). Instead, in the context of absent or inconsistent maternal responses to distress, children develop insecure attachment representations and less trust. These internal working models determine how future information regarding caregivers will be cognitively processed (i.e., attention, memory, and interpretation), affecting perceived social Social Development. 2018;27:95-108.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/sode

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“…In some cases, they exhibit unrealistic self-representations. CAI validation studies (Target et al, 2003; Shmueli-Goetz et al, 2008; Venta et al, 2014; Borelli et al, 2016) conducted on clinical and non-clinical populations showed good psychometric properties. Inter-rater reliability was good ( k between 0.58 and 0.93), both between expert coders and between students who had received 3 days of training.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Intergenerational Transmission of Reflective Functioning

Rosso

Airaldi

2016

Front. Psychol.

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The present study investigated whether, and to what extent, reflective functioning (RF) during preadolescence is associated with maternal attachment security and RF, and with the child’s attachment security. Thirty-nine mother–preadolescent child dyads from a non-clinical population participated in the study. Maternal and child RF were assessed by applying the Reflective Functioning Scale to the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and to the Child Attachment Interview transcripts. Children of mothers who showed a secure attachment model regarding the relationship with their parents during childhood reported higher levels of RF than the children of mothers who were classified as insecure on the AAI. Child RF was positively associated with maternal “Coherence of the Mind” on the AAI and negatively associated with maternal derogation of attachment. A strong, significant association was also found between child attachment security and child RF. Children who were rated as being more emotionally open, more able to balance positive and negative descriptions of their parents, more prone to support their assertions through examples, and more able to positively resolve conflicts with their parents showed higher RF. On the contrary, children who resorted to a higher extent to idealization and dismissal toward their parents showed a lesser degree of RF. Notably, a very strong association was found between the score on the “Overall coherence” subscale and the child’s ability to mentalize mixed-ambivalent mental states in the context of their family relationships. As expected, child and maternal RF resulted significantly positively correlated with each other. In particular, only maternal RF (and not maternal attachment security) predicted child RF, and only maternal ability to mentalize mixed-ambivalent mental states predicted the corresponding ability in the children.

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Associations Between Attachment Narratives and Self-Report Measures of Attachment in Middle Childhood: Extending Evidence for the Validity of the Child Attachment Interview

Cited by 45 publications

References 40 publications

The Child Attachment Interview: A Narrative Review

The Child Attachment Interview: A Narrative Review

Children's attentional breadth around their mother: Comparing stimulus‐driven vs. cognitively controlled processes

Intergenerational Transmission of Reflective Functioning

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