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

Abstract

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.

The latent structure of secure base script knowledge.

“…Even so, a large gap remains in our understanding of the latent structure of attachment representations in childhood through early adolescence . A variety of measures have been used in this age range but their latent structure has largely gone unexplored (see Kerns & Seibert, in press for a review of measures; see also Waters et al under review). The continued development, validation, and standardization of methods probing individual differences in attachment representations in childhood and early adolescence is therefore vital given that the initially independent attachment representations for maternal and paternal caregivers apparently converge sometime during this period of life, and ultimately generalize to include script-like expectations for romantic partners.…”

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

“…Cronbach’s alpha for this composite was .78. See T. Waters et al (2015) for additional information regarding the latent structure of the ASA.…”

“…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.…”

Attachment in middle childhood: predictors, correlates, and implications for adaptation

“…Those methodologies, however, have targeted primarily the level of children’s attachment representation, and relied mostly on narratives and self-reports. Those measures include narrative-based assessments, such as story stems (e.g., Cassidy, 1988; Green, Stanley, Smith, & Goldwyn, 2000; Granot & Mayseless, 2001), secure base scripts (Psouni & Apetroaia, 2014; T. Waters, Bosman, Vandevivere, Dujardin, & Waters, 2015), attachment interviews (e.g., Child Attachment Interview, Target, Fonagy, & Shmueli-Goetz, 2003; Friends and Family Interview, Steele & Steele, 2005), and self-reports (e.g., Kerns Security Scale, Kerns, Klepac, & Cole, 1996; People in my Life, Ridenour, Greenberg, & Cook, 2006).…”