Middle Childhood Problem Behaviors: Testing the Transaction Between Responsive Parenting, Temperament, and Attachment-Related Processing Biases

Attachment to mothers and fathers during middle childhood: an evidence from Polish sample

“…Those findings suggest that high degrees of child’s sensitivity to distressing stimuli and a tendency to experience negative emotions might impact a child’s perceptions of caregiver’s availability in middle childhood. It also might make those children interpret parent’s ambiguous behaviour as unsupportive and unresponsive, regardless of the objective meaning of his behaviour [36]. Although the quality of the early child-parent attachment depends at most on the caregiver’s sensitivity and availability to the child’s cues, the concern arises that as children grow older and their cognitive processes develop, those with high negative emotionality might relatively more intensively assimilate biased interpretations of attachment figure secure base and secure haven behaviour in their internal working models.…”

“…Admittedly, one of the core tenets of attachment theory states that the quality of the child-parent attachment depends at most on the caregiver’s sensitivity and availability to the child’s cues, and his response is learned in the interaction with the caregiver and set in internal working models. However, it was observed that in middle childhood, children who are more emotionally reactive tended to be more vulnerable to experience distress and interpreted mother’s ambiguous behaviour as unsupportive, regardless of the objective meaning of her behaviour [36]. Hence, the concern arises that as children grow older and their thinking becomes more abstract and reflective, those with high negative emotionality might relatively more intensively assimilate such biased interpretations in their attachment representations, and they might use specific secondary attachment strategies more profoundly than children with low negative emotionality.…”

“…Another aim of the present study was to test the role of emotionality (a temperamental trait depicting the negative emotionality and intensity of emotional reactions) in middle childhood attachment. It was observed that in middle childhood, children who are more emotionally reactive tended to be more vulnerable to experience distress, and learn to interpret the mother’s ambiguous behavior as unsupportive [36]. Given that biologically determined factors might have more substantial effects on attachment than during infancy [4], it was expected that emotionality would be positively linked to avoidant (hypothesis 6a) and preoccupied (hypothesis 6b) coping, and negatively to attachment security (hypothesis 6c) only in older children.…”

Children’s Attention to Mother and Adolescent Stress Moderate the Attachment-Depressive Symptoms Link

“…It has been proposed that these biases develop through classical and operant learning processes (Bosmans et al, 2020) and further shape which expectations children derive from support-related learning experiences (Verhees et al, 2019). Attachmentrelated information processing biases have been demonstrated at the level of attachment-related memory biases (Dujardin et al, 2014), interpretation biases (De Winter et al, 2018), and attentional biases (e.g., Bosmans et al, 2009).…”

“…This raises the question whether moderators might affect the direct association between attachment and depressive symptoms and whether one can identify which (in)securely attached children are more or less vulnerable to develop depressive symptoms. Prior research has pointed to distress (Dujardin et al, 2016) and to attachment-related information processing biases moderating the link between attachment and symptoms of psychopathology (Bosmans et al, 2013;Claes et al, 2016;De Winter et al, 2018;Van de Walle et al, 2017). Research suggests that both moderators might interact as well and that less securely attached children's risk to develop depressive symptoms in adolescence might depend on whether they are exposed to distress and on whether or not they more easily focus their attention on mother during distress.…”