Quality of attachment in the preschool years

Abstract

This is a theoretical paper about differences in quality of attachment in preschool-aged children with emphasis on the development of the goal-corrected partnership. Inferences are made about the processes underlying preschoolers' attachment behavior. Specifically, the notion of quality of attachment is expanded to explicitly include strategy, regulation of affect, negotiation, secure base behavior, and response to maternal behavior. The classificatory system is expanded by adding two additional defended patterns, that is, compulsive caregiving and compulsive compliance, to the infant avoidant pattern. Furthermore, at the preschool age, the infant ambivalent pattern is identified as having a coercive strategy. In addition, the disorganized infant category is reconceptualized in terms of complex organization, reorganization, and disorganization. Finally, the process of generating new theories and hypotheses through a “participant observer” methodology is considered from the perspective of developmental psychopathology.

Attachment security and indiscriminately friendly behavior in children adopted from Romanian orphanages

“…In spite of the convergent validity seemingly bestowed on the attachment security items by these results, there was only partial convergence between them and those obtained by using the PAA (Crittenden, 1992). On the positive side, Orphanage and Canadian-born children classified as insecure on the PAA did score significantly Iower on the attachment security items than did Orphanage and Canadian-born children classified as secure on the PAA.…”

“…The widespread acceptance of the Strange Situation paradigm as a procedure for assessins the quality of attachment has, in some respects, limited research on attachment beyond infancy (Crittenden, 1992). Despite the amount of research generated on attachment in infancy.…”

“…In spire of this, researchers claim that the Strange Situation or other separationreunion procedures are appropriate for assessing attachment in the preschool years, if such procedures are used in conjunction with developmentally appropriate coding schemes (Cicchetti, Curnrnings, Greenberg, & Marvin, 1990;Crittenden, 1992). Two such coding schemes have been developed for assessing attachment in the preschool years (Cassidy & Marvin, 1991, as cited in Greenberg, Speltz, DeKleyen, & Endriga, 1992;Crittenden, 1992).…”

“…Two such coding schemes have been developed for assessing attachment in the preschool years (Cassidy & Marvin, 1991, as cited in Greenberg, Speltz, DeKleyen, & Endriga, 1992;Crittenden, 1992). In the present study, I used the Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) developed by Crittenden (1992).…”

“…Two such coding schemes have been developed for assessing attachment in the preschool years (Cassidy & Marvin, 1991, as cited in Greenberg, Speltz, DeKleyen, & Endriga, 1992;Crittenden, 1992). In the present study, I used the Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) developed by Crittenden (1992). The attachment patterns delineated from this system are presented in Appendix R. Given that a substantial portion of Crittenden's work on attachment has focussed on the attachment retationships of maltreated and neglected children (Crittenden, 1985(Crittenden, , 1988, 1 BZ), I…”