Parental support and insecure attachment development: the cortisol stress response as a moderator

Abstract

The current study investigated whether variations at the level of the cortisol stress response moderate the association between parental support and attachment development. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a one-year longitudinal study with two waves in which 101 children (56% girls, M age = 11.15, SD age = 0.70) participated. Attachment anxiety and avoidance were measured at baseline (Wave 1) and one year later (Wave 2). Parental support and children's cortisol stress response during the Trier Social Stress Test were measured at Wave 2. Children's cortisol stress response was found to moderate the association between parental support and relative change in anxious attachment. A strong cortisol stress response weakened the associated between parental support and relative change in anxious attachment. No moderation effects were found for relative change in avoidant attachment.

Attachment and the Development of Psychopathology: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Hence, it was important to see in Dekkers’ study (the current issue) that ADHD children’s attachment development was not linked to their behavior problems nor to parents’ expressed emotions. This suggests that the ADHD itself created problems to learn from interactions with parents, a finding that is in keeping with a recent cortisol study showing that the attachment development of children with higher levels of cortisol reactivity to stress is less linked to parents’ ability to provide support during distress [ 11 ]. Taken together, the current Special Issue confirmed first that not all insecurely attached children develop psychopathology (Dagan and Dekkers, this issue).…”

State Attachment Variability: Between- and within-Person Level Associations with Trait Attachment and Psychological Problems

“…Additionally, priming studies conducted in adults suggest that brief exposure to secure attachmentrelated stimuli can evoke a sense of felt security or secure state attachment [24,27]. Other factors are child-related, such as biases in the cognitive processing of attachment-related information [28,29] or differential endocrinologically based responsivity to stress and care [30,31] affecting inter-personal variation in state attachment variability. These factors move the attachment research focus beyond mere sensitive parenting as explanation of children's (in)secure attachment development.…”

Attachment and Maladjustment: The Role of Effortful Control Development During Middle Childhood

“…Hence, it does not seem that at the end of middle childhood, there is a strong bidirectional link between attachment and EC development. It is premature to fully exclude such bidirectional links because other research does show that biological dysregulations in the stress response system does moderate the effect of parenting on attachment development (e.g., Houbrechts et al, 2021) and because such associations are expected according to the Learning Theory of Attachment (Bosmans et al, 2020). Testing similar effects in a more heterogeneous sample or in larger samples could still reveal such effects.…”