Autism and adult attachment: Issues with current measurement practices

Abstract

Attachment styles in individuals with autism are not well understood, and research into the topic is limited to date. Authors regularly utilise standardised measures to classify attachment in adulthood, and this is the case for research with neurotypical and autistic populations. Here, we argue that there may be fundamental problems with using such measures, developed for neurotypical populations, in order to quantify attachment in those with autism. Crucially, such tools may be unable to differentiate between autistic behaviours and behaviours associated with insecure attachment styles. Furthermore, many studies which have investigated attachment and autism may lack sufficient statistical power due to the use of time-consuming attachment interviews or student populations which typically do not contain sufficient numbers of adults with autism. We argue that it is essential that measures are developed which accurately distinguish between insecure attachment styles and behaviours associated with autism, with the goal of better understanding attachment in those with autism for both parental and romantic relationships.

Attachment in individuals with eating disorders compared to community controls: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Rates of ASC are raised in ED samples, particularly in AN, with estimates of 20%–37% of AN patients scoring above threshold for an ASC (Westwood & Tchanturia, 2017). Unfortunately, attachment measures have been developed using neurotypical populations, and their use in individuals with ASC, whether using interview or self‐report, is problematic (Davis & Kramer, 2021) and could lead to inflated estimates of attachment insecurity in ED samples. Relatedly, while the attachment measures used by studies in this review were generally rated as having a low risk of bias, it should be noted that more in‐depth reviews of the psychometric properties of attachment measures have identified multiple gaps in evidence for the adequacy of such properties (Jewell et al, 2019; Justo‐Núñez et al, 2022).…”

Attachment in individuals with eating disorders compared to community controls: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Rates of ASC are raised in ED samples, particularly in AN, with estimates of 20-37% of AN patients scoring above threshold for an ASC (Westwood & Tchanturia, 2017). Unfortunately, attachment measures have been developed using neurotypical populations, and their use in individuals with ASC, whether using interview or self-report, is problematic (Davis & Kramer, 2021) and could lead to inflated estimates of attachment insecurity in ED samples. Relatedly, whilst the attachment measures used by studies in this review were generally rated as having a low risk of bias, it should be noted that more in-depth reviews of the psychometric properties of attachment measures have identified multiple gaps in evidence for the adequacy of such properties (Jewell et al, 2019;Justo-Núñez et al, 2022).…”