Measuring scripted attachment-related knowledge in middle childhood: the Secure Base Script Test

Psouni, Elia; Apetroaia, Adela

doi:10.1080/14616734.2013.804329

Cited by 81 publications

(122 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Although both ECR-RC [29] and PIML [26] have excellent psychometric properties, attachment researchers traditionally advocate the use of interview measures like the Child Attachment Interview [40]. However, recent research [41] has shown that self-reported attachment and narrative attachment measures are significantly correlated in childhood. These findings suggest that self-reported measures might be a valid way to measure attachment in this specific age-group.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attachment and Children’s Biased Attentional Processing: Evidence for the Exclusion of Attachment-Related Information

Vandevivere

Braet

Bosmans³

et al. 2014

PLoS ONE

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Research in both infants and adults demonstrated that attachment expectations are associated with the attentional processing of attachment-related information. However, this research suffered from methodological issues and has not been validated across ages. Employing a more ecologically valid paradigm to measure attentional processes by virtue of eye tracking, the current study tested the defensive exclusion hypothesis in late childhood. According to this hypothesis, insecurely attached children are assumed to defensively exclude attachment-related information. We hypothesized that securely attached children process attachment- related neutral and emotional information in a more open manner compared to insecurely attached children. Sixty-two children (59.7% girls, 8–12 years) completed two different tasks, while eye movements were recorded: task one presented an array of neutral faces including mother and unfamiliar women and task two presented the same with happy and angry faces. Results indicated that more securely attached children looked longer at mother’s face regardless of the emotional expression. Also, they tend to have more maintained attention to mother’s neutral face. Furthermore, more attachment avoidance was related to a reduced total viewing time of mother’s neutral, happy, and angry face. Attachment anxiety was not consistently related to the processing of mother’s face. Findings support the theoretical assumption that securely attached children have an open manner of processing all attachment-related information.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attachment and Children’s Biased Attentional Processing: Evidence for the Exclusion of Attachment-Related Information

Vandevivere

Braet

Bosmans³

et al. 2014

PLoS ONE

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“…Children’s secure base script scores were significantly associated with both mood (child report) and emotion regulation (teacher report). Further, Psouni and Apetroaia (2014) examined convergent validity between the secure base script construct using the Secure Base Script Test (SBST) and the Kerns Security Scale (KSS; e.g. Kerns, Klepac, & Cole, 1996) and the Friends and Family Interview (FFI; Kriss, Steele, & Steele, 2012) in a large middle childhood sample.…”

Section: Script-like Attachment Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secure base representations in middle childhood across two Western cultures: Associations with parental attachment representations and maternal reports of behavior problems.

Waters¹,

Bosmans²,

Vandevivere³

et al. 2015

Developmental Psychology

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Recent work examining the content and organization of attachment representations suggests that one way in which we represent the attachment relationship is in the form of a cognitive script. That said, this work has largely focused on early childhood or adolescence/adulthood, leaving a large gap in our understanding of script-like attachment representations in the middle childhood period. We present two studies and provide three critical pieces of evidence regarding the presence of a script-like representation of the attachment relationship in middle childhood. We present evidence that a middle childhood attachment script assessment tapped a stable underlying script using samples drawn from two western cultures, the United States (Study 1) and Belgium (Study 2). We also found evidence suggestive of the intergenerational transmission of secure base script knowledge (Study 1) and relations between secure base script knowledge and symptoms of psychopathology in middle childhood (Study 2). The results from this investigation represent an important downward extension of the secure base script construct.

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“…describing a mother and child spending a morning playing together) provided reliable assessments of secure base script use in a sample of adolescents. More recently, the ASA has been successfully revised for middle childhood samples (Psouni, & Apetroaia, 2014; Waters, Bosmans, Vandevivere, Dujardin, & Waters, 2015). Both Dykas et al (2006) and Steele et al (2014) found that adolescent ASA script scores were significantly correlated with established measures of adult attachment (e.g., Adult Attachment Interview, AAI, George et al, 1985; Experiences in Close Relationships–Revised questionnaire, ECR-R, Fraley et al, 2000) and had similar patterns of associations with parental sensitivity measures from infancy through early adolescence and early attachment histories as did scale scores derived from the AAI completed by these SECCYD participants.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple domains of parental secure base support during childhood and adolescence contribute to adolescents’ representations of attachment as a secure base script

Vaughn

Waters

Steele

et al. 2016

Attachment & Human Development

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Although attachment theory claims that early attachment representations reflecting the quality of the child’s “lived experiences” are maintained across developmental transitions, evidence that has emerged over the last decade suggests that the association between early relationship quality and adolescents’ attachment representations is fairly modest in magnitude. We used aspects of parenting beyond sensitivity over childhood and adolescence and early security to predict adolescents’ scripted attachment representations. At age 18 years, 673 participants from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) completed the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA) from which we derived an assessment of secure base script knowledge. Measures of secure base support from childhood through age 15 years (e.g., parental monitoring of child activity, father presence in the home) were selected as predictors and accounted for an additional 8% of the variance in secure base script knowledge scores above and beyond direct observations of sensitivity and early attachment status alone, suggesting that adolescents’ scripted attachment representations reflect multiple domains of parenting. Cognitive and demographic variables also significantly increased predicted variance in secure base script knowledge by 2% each.

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Measuring scripted attachment-related knowledge in middle childhood: the Secure Base Script Test

Cited by 81 publications

References 34 publications

Attachment and Children’s Biased Attentional Processing: Evidence for the Exclusion of Attachment-Related Information

Attachment and Children’s Biased Attentional Processing: Evidence for the Exclusion of Attachment-Related Information

Secure base representations in middle childhood across two Western cultures: Associations with parental attachment representations and maternal reports of behavior problems.

Multiple domains of parental secure base support during childhood and adolescence contribute to adolescents’ representations of attachment as a secure base script

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