Attachment and Temperament in the Early Life Course: A Meta‐Analytic Review

Abstract

This meta-analytic review examines the association between early attachment (assessed at 1-5 years) and child temperament (assessed at birth-12 years), and compares the strength of this association with recently documented meta-analytic associations between early attachment and social competence, externalizing behavior, and internalizing symptoms. Based on 109 independent samples (N = 11,440) of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, temperament was weakly associated with attachment (in)security (d = .14, CI [0.08, 0.19]) but modestly associated with resistant attachment (d = .30, CI [0.21, 0.40]). Temperament was not significantly associated with avoidant (d = .10, CI [-0.02, 0.19]) or disorganized (d = .11, CI [-0.03, 0.25]) attachment. Across developmental domains, early attachment security was more strongly associated with social competence and externalizing behaviors than internalizing symptoms and temperament.

Attachment in the Early Life Course: Meta‐Analytic Evidence for Its Role in Socioemotional Development

“…Moreover, early disorganization placed children at the greatest risk for externalizing problems (relative to other insecure categories), but was not significantly associated with internalizing problems (11,12), suggesting that instead of having broad implications for psychopathology (21), the significance of disorganization was restricted to the externalizing domain. Consistent with conclusions from prior narrative reviews (9,22), the association between insecurity and negative temperament was primarily due to resistant attachment, as neither avoidance nor disorganization was significantly associated with temperament (13). Findings from our meta-analysis on internalizing symptomatology converged with those from a similar meta-analysis (23), but diverged from other quantitative and narrative reviews (24,25).…”

“…Regarding the origins of attachment, security is thought to be rooted in the caregiving environment and thus to have little relation to temperament . In our meta‐analysis, attachment security was associated with lower levels of negative temperament ( d = .13; ). However, this association was significantly weaker than that between security and social competence and externalizing (but not internalizing) problems (see Figure ), providing little evidence that temperament determines security status.…”

“…Meta‐analysis provides a structured, principled way to quantitatively summarize complex literatures, test theories, and generate new hypotheses. Accordingly, we conducted quantitative reviews examining the relation between early attachment and children's peer competence (i.e., social skills, the quality of children's interactions with peers, and social status; ), externalizing symptoms (i.e., aggression, oppositional problems, conduct problems, and hostility; ), internalizing symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and somatic complaints; ), and temperament (i.e., negative emotional reactivity and regulation; ).…”

Mothers' Physiological and Affective Responding to Infant Distress: Unique Antecedents of Avoidant and Resistant Attachments

“…Second, although it is noteworthy that, similar to Fraley and Spieker (2003), indicators of resistance and disorganization loaded onto the same factor, both the NICHD SECCYD (the sample used by Fraley and Spieker) and the current sample would not be considered high risk and, thus, would not be expected to yield higher rates of disorganization. Indeed, the percentage of infants classified as disorganized (14%) is in line with estimates of disorganization in normal population samples from recent meta-analyses (16%; Groh et al, 2017). This is notable, as the resistance and disorganization scales might be distinguished in higher risk samples in which greater variation in such attachment behavior is observed.…”

Infant Attachment Insecurity and Baseline Physiological Activity and Physiological Reactivity to Interpersonal Stress: A Meta‐Analytic Review

“…Given the concurrent nature of the associations examined in this meta‐analysis, findings presented here are unable to distinguish between these two perspectives. However, it is important to note that prior meta‐analytic research indicates that infant attachment security and behavioral manifestations of infant negative temperamental emotional responding are only weakly associated ( d = .14; Groh, Narayan, et al., ), and evidence from the current meta‐analysis indicates that attachment security is not significantly associated with baseline physiological activity thought to reflect trait‐like variation in emotional reactivity. That said, to more directly evaluate these conceptual models of the developmental origins of attachment‐physiology linkages, longitudinal research examining links between attachment variation and infant physiological reactivity to interpersonal stress overtime is needed.…”