Attachment Stories in Middle Childhood: Reliability and Validity of Clinical and Nonclinical Children's Narratives in a Structured Setting

Middle childhood is one of the most understudied periods of development and lacks a gold standard for measuring attachment representations. We investigated the reliability and validity of a Dutch version of the Story-Stem Battery coded using the Little Piggy Narrative (LPN) Coding System in a clinical (N = 162) and a nonclinical group (N = 98) of 4–10-year-old children. Their attachment stories were furthermore coded using the coherence scale. Factor analyses showed that the items of the LPN system formed four attachment scales and a separate scale reflecting distress/anxiety, with sufficient internal consistency for the scales and high interrater reliability (n = 20). Furthermore, we studied construct and discriminatory validity. The attachment scores correlated with coherence and child behavioral problems in the expected direction. Results showed age and gender differences, indicating that separate norm groups are necessary. In particular, disorganized attachment, coherence and distress/anxiety differ between clinical and nonclinical children across age and gender. Results for the other three organized attachment scales were more complex. For instance, older boys from the nonclinical group had higher scores on secure attachment than their clinical peers, while girls from the clinical and nonclinical groups did not differ, even though girls in the nonclinical group had higher secure attachment scores than boys. Results are discussed in light of attachment theory and developmental pathways in middle childhood, as well as their clinical implications.

+Fièr : une application mobile pour aider les jeunes issus de la communauté LGBTQ+ et leur famille

Les personnes LGBTQ+ sont 1,5 à 4 fois plus à risque que les personnes hétérosexuelles de souffrir de troubles de santé mentale (p. ex. dépression, anxiété, comportements suicidaires).

Objectif L’objectif est de décrire le processus de développement d’une application mobile pour les jeunes LGBTQ+ et leur famille. L’article fait partie d’un programme de recherche ayant comme but général de doter les jeunes LGBTQ+ et leur famille d’outils technologiques leur permettant de développer et soutenir des stratégies d’adaptation face à la stigmatisation. En effet, ceux-ci sont confrontés à des stresseurs uniques, à la fois dans la sphère publique (p. ex. victimisation) et personnelle (p. ex. développement identitaire et le processus de coming out).

Méthode Nous adapterons l’application mobile +Fort © développée par l’équipe dirigée par de la docteure Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, conçue pour soutenir les jeunes vivant de l’intimidation à réduire ces expériences, et nous créerons +Fièr/+ Proud, qui fera l’objet d’un codesign et d’une étude pilote auprès de participants LGBTQ+ âgés de 13 à 25 ans.

Retombées À terme, notre espoir est que les jeunes LGBTQ+, à l’échelle nationale et internationale, puissent explorer et développer des stratégies d’adaptation soutenant leur mieux-être, apprendre à l’aide d’outils personnalisés, partager leurs expériences uniques et informer leurs proches des défis auxquels ils font face et se battent en silence.

Representations of attachment security, attachment avoidance, and gender in Ugandan children

Researchers returned to the home of Mary Ainsworth's original attachment study to explore the contributions of Ugandan children's representations of attachment interactions with their caregivers to their perceptions about gender. Researchers administered the Attachment Story-Completion Task (ASCT) and applied three attachment narrative coding systems and a gender stereotypes typology to the ASCT stories of 51 Ugandan children ages 5-7. Nine attachment narrative variables were applied to the children's responses to a series of five attachment story stems told using a family of dolls. The narratives emerging from the children's responses to these story stems were also coded independently for 14 masculine and 14 feminine gender stereotypes. Empathic relations among the dolls and narrative coherence were positively correlated with counterstereotypical gender representations only in girls. Attachment representations of a rejecting father were positively correlated with stereotypical gender representations only in boys. Representations of attachment avoidance were negatively correlated with counterstereotypical gender representations in both boys and girls. The findings suggested two different trajectories for the development of gender representation flexibility in boys and girls. This study contextualizes these findings against the backdrop of a country with rigid sex roles and a fast-growing child population.

A Comparison of Attachment representations to Mother and Father using the MCAST

The aim of the current study was to examine the factorial structure of the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST), using a father doll to address the child's attachment representation to father. While the MCAST, a doll story completion task measuring attachment representations in early childhood, has been validated for use with a mother doll, its use for assessing attachment to father is relatively unexplored. Thus, an additional aim was to compare the factorial structure of the child's attachment representation to father and mother, respectively. We analyzed data from 118 first-grade children who underwent counterbalanced administration of the MCAST with a mother and father doll, respectively, within a period of three months. Exploratory factorial analysis revealed similar, three-factor solutions for attachment to father and mother, with a first factor capturing the child's (scripted) knowledge of secure base/safe haven and a second factor reflecting intrusive and conflict behavior. The third factor was different in the father and mother representations, capturing self-care and role-reversal in attachment to father and disorganization in attachment to mother. Findings support the potential usefulness of the MCAST for exploring the father-child relationship and highlight a need for further research on early attachment representations to father.

Parental Emotion Socialization and Child Psychological Adjustment among Chinese Urban Families: Mediation through Child Emotion Regulation and Moderation through Dyadic Collaboration

The theoretical model of emotion regulation and many empirical findings have suggested that children's emotion regulation may mediate the association between parents' emotion socialization and children's psychological adjustment. However, limited research has been conducted on moderators of these relations, despite the argument that the associations between parenting practices and children's psychological adjustment are probabilistic rather than deterministic. This study examined the mediating role of children's emotion regulation in linking parents' emotion socialization and children's psychological adjustment, and whether dyadic collaboration could moderate the proposed mediation model in a sample of Chinese parents and their children in their middle childhood. Participants were 150 Chinese children (87 boys and 63 girls, Mage = 8.54, SD = 1.67) and their parents (Mage = 39.22, SD = 4.07). Parent-child dyadic collaboration was videotaped and coded from an interaction task. Parents reported on their emotion socialization, children's emotion regulation and psychopathological symptoms. Results indicated that child emotion regulation mediated the links between parental emotion socialization and child's psychopathological symptoms. Evidence of moderated mediation was also found: supportive emotion socialization and child emotion regulation were positively correlated only at high and medium levels of dyadic collaboration, with child's psychopathological symptoms as the dependent variables. Our findings suggested that higher-level parent-child collaboration might further potentiate the protective effect of parental supportive emotion socialization practices against child psychopathological symptoms.

The Student-Teacher Relationship Quality of Abused Children

Considering the association between children's quality of relationships with teachers and their academic adjustment, information pertaining to how abused children are functioning in their relationships with teachers could be useful in promoting their academic success- yet there has been limited research in this area. The purpose of this study was to use cluster analyses to explore within-group differences in relational schemas and quality of student-teacher relationships for 70 abused children. Two clusters of abused children emerged, and as hypothesized, there were significant differences in student-teacher relationships for the two clusters. The cluster with more positive relational schemas had less conflict and less dependency reported by their teachers compared to the cluster with negative relational schemas. However, there were no differences between the clusters in terms of closeness with teachers. Implications for practice in schools is discussed.

Internal working models and adjustment of physically abused children: the mediating role of self-regulatory abilities

BACKGROUND

Abused children's internal working models (IWM) of relationships are known to relate to their socioemotional adjustment, but mechanisms through which negative representations increase vulnerability to maladjustment have not been explored. We sought to expand the understanding of individual differences in IWM of abused children and investigate the mediating role of self-regulation in links between IWM and adjustment.

METHODS

Cluster analysis was used to subgroup 74 physically abused children based on their IWM. Internal working models were identified by children's representations, as measured by a narrative story stem task. Self-regulation was assessed by teacher report and a behavioral task, and adjustment was measured by teacher report.

RESULTS

Cluster analyses indicated two subgroups of abused children with distinct patterns of IWMs. Cluster membership predicted internalizing and externalizing problems. Associations between cluster membership and adjustment were mediated by children's regulation, as measured by teacher reports of many aspects of regulation. There was no support for mediation when regulation was measured by a behavioral task that tapped more narrow facets of regulation.

CONCLUSIONS

Abused children exhibit clinically relevant individual differences in their IWMs; these models are linked to adjustment in the school setting, possibly through children's self-regulation.

Early mother-child attachment and behavior problems in middle childhood: the role of the subsequent caregiving environment

The current study investigated associations between early mother-child attachment, as well as mother-child and teacher-child relationships, and internalizing and externalizing behaviors in middle childhood. Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were used. Findings from a series of individual growth curve analyses revealed that attachment security was negatively related to internalizing and externalizing behaviors, while insecure/other and avoidant attachment were positively related to internalizing behaviors. In addition, longitudinal associations were found between mother-child and teacher-child relationships and internalizing and externalizing behaviors across middle childhood. Implications for attachment theory are discussed.

Romanian Children’s Representations of Negative and Self-Conscious Emotions in a Narrative Story Stem Technique

This research uses children’s story-stem play narratives to investigate dimensions of negative emotional expression. Fifty-one Romanian children between 6 and 11-years old participated in the study. Children’s narratives were coded for three basic negative emotions and five self-conscious emotions. Parents completed a general questionnaire for demographic data and the amount of time they spent with their children. Differences were found for frequencies of negative emotional representations in relation to the specific story-stems in which they occurred. Girls were more likely than boys to enact in their narratives guilt feelings coupled with apology following some wrongdoing. Children who spent more time with parents enacted significantly less anger and fear. Simultaneous expressions of multiple negative emotions were observed in the narrative responses of these middle childhood-aged Romanian children. While findings should be viewed with caution, owing to the small and homogeneous sample, new directions for future research with this assessment method are indicated.

The anchoring function: parental authority and the parent-child bond

Descriptions of parental authority and of the formation of a secure parent-child bond have remained unconnected in conceptualizations about parenting and child development. The parental anchoring function is here presented as an integrative metaphor for the two fields. Parents who fulfill an anchoring function offer a secure relational frame for the child, while also manifesting a stabilizing and legitimate kind of authority. The anchoring function enriches the two fields by: (1) adding a dimension of authority to the acknowledged functions of the safe haven and the secure base that are seen as core to a secure parent-child bond, and (2) adding considerations about the parent-child bond to Baumrind's classical description of authoritative parenting.

The Bears Family Projective Test: evaluating stories of children with emotional difficulties

The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the storytelling of children with emotional difficulties. Forty children with emotional and relational difficulties (inhibited and impulsive), ages between 5.5 and 9.4 years old, were assessed by a multiaxial procedure and the bears family projective test. The bears family test is a constructive-thematic-projective method based on an anthropomorphic family of bears that children can manipulate to tell a story. The stories of 40 children without emotional difficulties (matched by IQ, socio-economic status, and gender) and 322 typically developing children, aged between four and 10 years old, were used as a reference for comparisons. Results indicated that the stories of children with emotional difficulties showed many unsolved problematic events, unclear characters, negative relationships, and negative behaviors. Unlike the stories of children without emotional difficulties, positive contents didn't prevail over negative, and there wasn't a positive compensation for negative elements.

Disorganized attachment and inhibitory capacity: predicting externalizing problem behaviors

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether attachment insecurity, focusing on disorganized attachment, and the executive function (EF) component of inhibition, assessed at age 5, were longitudinally related to general externalizing problem behaviors as well as to specific symptoms of ADHD and Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. General externalizing problem behaviors were also measured at age 5 to allow for a developmental analysis. Outcome variables were rated by parents and teachers. The sample consisted of 65 children with an oversampling of children with high levels of externalizing behaviors. Attachment was evaluated using a story stem attachment doll play procedure. Inhibition was measured using four different tasks. The results showed that both disorganized attachment and poor inhibition were longitudinally related to all outcome variables. Controlling for initial level of externalizing problem behavior, poor inhibition predicted ADHD symptoms and externalizing problem behaviors, independent of disorganized attachment, whereas for ASD symptoms no predictive relations remained. Disorganized attachment independently predicted CU traits.

Associations between mothers' and children's secure base scripts in ADHD and community cohorts

This study explored the relation between mothers' and their children's secure base scripts in two samples of school-aged children: a community sample (N = 29; mean age 8.9) and a sample of children diagnosed with ADHD (N = 50; mean age 8.9). Using the Attachment Script Representation Task, mothers and children were asked to construct narratives using word prompt outlines. In addition, mothers and children completed questionnaires focusing on symptoms. The results revealed that while the link between mothers' and children's scriptedness was significant in the community, no significant association was found in the ADHD sample. In the ADHD group, maternal reports of children's symptoms were negatively linked to children's secure-base scriptedness. Implications of these findings for theory and intervention are discussed.

Early maladaptive schemas and child and adult attachment: a 15-year longitudinal study

OBJECTIVES

To examine the relation between early maladaptive schemas (EMS), as defined in schema therapy, and both child and adult attachment.

DESIGN

A 15-year longitudinal design in which child attachment groups (secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized) were compared in early adulthood on their profile of scores across EMS domains. A similar strategy was used to examine EMS profiles as a function of adult attachment groups (secure, preoccupied, and fearful).

METHODS

Sixty participants, recruited from Montreal day-care centres, were assessed at 6 (Time 1) and 21 years of age (Time 2). Time 1 attachment was assessed using a separation-reunion procedure and Time 2 attachment, using the Experiences in Close Relationships questionnaire. EMS were evaluated with the Young Schema Questionnaire (Time 2).

RESULTS

There were more signs of EMS among young adults with either an insecure ambivalent child attachment, or an insecure preoccupied adult attachment style, compared to their secure peers. These differences were not specific to one domain of EMS; they were reported for various EMS.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that specific elements of representational models are more likely to be related to the development of EMS: high anxiety over abandonment, negative self-view, and explicit manifestations of personal distress. Unmet childhood needs for secure attachment may lead to a large variety of EMS as defined in schema therapy.