Gender and Attachment Representations in the Preschool Years

Abstract

Bowlby proposed that the individual's social experiences, as early as in infancy, contribute to the construction of Internal Working Models (IWMs) of attachment, which will later guide the individual's expectations and behaviors in close relationships all along his or her life. The qualitative, individual characteristics of these models reflect the specificity of the individual's early experiences with attachment figures. The attachment literature globally shows that the qualities of IWMs are neither gender specific nor cultural specific. Procedures to evaluate IWMs in adulthood have been well established, based on narrative accounts of childhood experiences. Narrative procedures at earlier ages (e.g., in the preschool years) have been proposed, such as Bretherton's Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), to evaluate attachment representations. More than 500 ASCT narratives of preschoolers, coming from five different countries, have been collected, in the perspective of examining possible interactions between gender and culture regarding attachment representations. A specific Q-Sort coding procedure (CCH) has been used to evaluate several dimensions of the narratives. Girls' narratives appeared as systematically more secure than those of same-age boys, whatever their culture. The magnitude of gender differences, however, varied between countries. Taylor's model of gender-specific responses to stress and Harwood's and Posada's hypothesis on inter-cultural differences regarding caregiving are evoked to understand the differences across gender and countries.

The reciprocal relation between children’s attachment representations and their cognitive ability

“…They were similar to those that were recently reported with ASCT in a Swiss and a Spanish sample of respectively 68 and 30 cases randomly selected with a total of 10 judges. Intraclass coefficients for the four Q-scores were for the Swiss sample, .94, .94, .85, .90, and for the Spanish sample, .81, .74, .69, .81 and .76 for the four Q-scores (Pierrehumbert et al, 2009). In our study, a K-Cohen coefficient for the coding of attachment patterns was also computed.…”

When there seem to be no predetermining factors: Early child and proximal family risk predicting externalizing behavior in young children incurring no distal family risk

“…To maximize the coding validity, 20% of the video-recorded ASCTs were coded separately by two independent coders. The agreement between the two coders was computed using intraclass correlation and was .80, similar to that recently reported with ASCTs in a Spanish sample of 30 randomly selected cases, with a total of 10 judges (Pierrehumbert et al, 2009). Data were checked for normality.…”

From foundling homes to day care: a historical review of childcare in Chile

“…With the exception of two papers by Valenzuela 49,52 , all studies found were published in the last five years 74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82 . The investigations carried out by Valenzuela 49,52 were the first in Chile to utilize the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) to assess mother-child attachment.…”

“…Recent studies have shown that the distribution of attachment classifications in Chile's population is comparable to international patterns. Roughly two-thirds of children experience secure attachment, and attachment security is greater in boys than in girls 78 and in children born through vaginal delivery. It was also found that attending day care centers was positive for the development of children in terms of the quality of social interaction 81 .…”