Stress reactivity and attachment security

Abstract

Seventy-three 18-month-olds were tested in the Ainsworth Strange Situation. These children were a subset of 83 infants tested at 2, 4, 6, and 15 months during their well-baby examinations with inoculations. Salivary cortisol, behavioral distress, and maternal responsiveness measures obtained during these clinic visits were examined in relation to attachment classifications. In addition, parental report measures of the children's social fearfulness in the 2nd year of life were used to classify the children into high-fearful versus average- to low-fearful groups. In the 2nd year, the combination of high fearfulness and insecure versus secure attachment was associated with higher cortisol responses to both the clinic exam-inoculation situation and the Strange Situation. Thus, attachment security moderates the physiological consequences of fearful, inhibited temperament. Regarding the 2-, 4-, and 6-month data, later attachment security was related to greater maternal responsiveness and lower cortisol baselines. Neither cortisol nor behavioral reactivity to the inoculations predicted later attachment classifications. There was some suggestion, however, that at their 2-month checkup, infants who would later be classified as insecurely attached exhibited larger dissociations between the magnitude of their behavioral and hormonal response to the inoculations. Greater differences between internal (hormonal) and external (crying) responses were also negatively correlated with maternal responsiveness and positively correlated with pretest cortisol levels during these early months of life.

Adult attachment measures: A 25-year review

“…A partial survey of findings to date demonstrates its relevance to stress response [9,14,15]; relationship with care providers in diabetic patients [10,70]; pain [12,32,94]; chronic diseases, including ulcerative colitis [9]; alopecia, leg ulcers, and breast cancer [13,95]; somatization [11,96]; hypochondriacal concerns [31]; and health care utilization [72]. In psychosomatic research, the most commonly used scales to date are the AAI, the ECR-R, the RQ, the AAS, and the ASQ.…”

“…The ambivalent/resistant infant also shows distress on separation, but signals for and resists contact upon the caregiver's return. The avoidant infant may or may not manifest behavioral signs of distress upon separation from the caregiver, although physiological indices suggest high reactivity [15,16]. The infant essentially ignores the caregiver on re-union and shows little outward indication of distress.…”

“…Despite good evidence to support the theoretically derived links between the quality of patient-provider relationship, health care utilization, and other medical outcomes [9,11,12,14,15,[28][29][30][31][32], it may be off-putting for patients with serious medical conditions to report on attitudes towards romantic relation- ships, which, on the face of it, seem to have little relevance to their most pressing concerns. Thus, the apparent relevance of questions or items in an attachment measurement to the situations of the persons who are being evaluated will be a consideration in choosing an attachment measure.…”

A Life History Approach to Understanding Youth Time Preference

“…Among first-graders in the United States, DeCaro and Worthman (2008) show that greater instability in the maternal-child relationship is associated with higher evening cortisol levels. Research on attachment and cortisol finds that infants and toddlers classified as highly fearful and insecure or as having disorganized/disoriented attachment have higher cortisol levels than those children classified as securely attached (Gunnar et al 1996;Hertsgaard et al 1995). Further evidence suggests that parental mood can be internalized by children into a stress response: a study of children aged 6-10 years from low, middle, and high socioeconomic backgrounds found that children from the low SES group had the highest salivary cortisol profiles and that cortisol values were correlated with mother's score on a depression scale (Lupien et al 2000).…”

Attachment in Toddlers with Autism and Other Developmental Disorders

“…This gave rise to a number of studies on the role of cortisol in attachment. Several studies have shown cortisol reactivity in 1-yearolds to be related to attachment security (Gunnar, Brodersen, Nachmias, Buss, & Rigatuso, 1996;Hertsgaard, Gunnar, Erickson, & Nachmias, 1995;Nachmias, Gunnar, Mangelsdorf, Parritz, & Buss, 1996;Spangler & Schieche, 1998). The adrenocortical system appears to react most strongly in potentially threatening situations, when the resources to cope with the threat are lacking (Kirschbaum & Hellhammer, 1994;McEwen & Sapolsky, 1995;Nachmias et al, 1996;Spangler & Scheubeck, 1993).…”