Attachment & Human Development最新文献

This study examined the contribution of early vs. concurrent maternal guidance of emotion dialogues with their children to the security and coherence of the children's attachment representations as adolescents. Maternal Sensitive Guidance was assessed from mother-child emotion dialogues when participants were preschoolers (approximate age 4 years) and young adolescents (approximate age 12.5 years), along with an assessment of adolescents' attachment representations using the Friends and Family Interview (FFI). Mothers' Sensitive Guidance in preschool predicted adolescents' coherence in the FFI, secure maternal (but not paternal) representations, and a positive representation of sibling relationships. In contrast, mothers' concurrent Sensitive Guidance was related only to adolescents' sibling relationships. These results highlight the significance of mothers' sensitive guidance of emotion dialogues during the early years for their children's later attachment representations, and point to the need for further examination of mothers' role when they guide emotion dialogues with their adolescents.

This study used the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to examine how parents' adult attachment influences their their own and the partners' co-parenting and parent-child relationships. Participants were from a cross-sectional sample of 1313 Chinese heterosexual married couples (fathers' M_age = 39.74, SD = 5.61; mothers' M_age = 37.55, SD = 5.04) whose biological children were pupils (M_age = 10.25, SD = 2.35). Results revealed that: (a) Couple members' actor effects from adult attachment avoidance to positive and negative co-parenting and parent-child closeness and conflict were found both significant; (b) The actor effects from adult attachment anxiety to negative co-parenting and parent-child conflict were found significant, whereas only partner effect from attachment avoidance to positive co-parenting and from attachment anxiety to parent-child conflict were significant. The results highlight the negative effects of parents' attachment avoidance and anxiety on their partners' parenting function.

Social processing, namely the ability to understand others' cognitive and affective states, is crucial for successful social interaction. It encompasses socio-affective abilities such as empathy and compassion, as well as socio-cognitive abilities such as theory of mind (ToM). This study examined the link between social processing and attachment. Our study goes beyond previous research in that social processing abilities were assessed in a single, state-of-the-art behavioral paradigm using video narratives, the EmpaToM. Attachment was captured with the Adult Attachment Interview (N = 85; 50.60% women, M_age = 25.87 ± 4.50 years) measuring participants' present-day capacity to think about and communicate attachment-relevant information about the past. Additionally, a self-report attachment questionnaire was employed (N = 158). We found that AAI-based attachment security (vs. insecurity) was associated with higher behavioral ToM abilities. Furthermore, self-reported attachment avoidance was negatively correlated with behavioral compassion abilities. Our findings provide further evidence that interview-based and self-reported attachment measures do not converge, but may rather be understood as capturing different facets of attachment that relate to different components of social processing. We conclude that individuals with secure, non-avoidant attachment show social abilities that allow them to better understand others' thoughts and generate positive, caring emotions in face of others' distress.

Parental representations of the child are linked to positive developmental outcomes in children, but the impact of prenatal representations on early social-emotional development, particularly from fathers, is less understood. This study explores how fathers' and mothers' prenatal representations within two-parent families are associated with early social-emotional development. Prenatal representations of fathers (n = 88) and mothers (n = 92) were assessed between 28 and 32 weeks of gestation using the Working Model of the Child Interview, categorizing them as balanced or nonbalanced. The children's (n = 97; 49.5% girls) social-emotional and behavioral problems and competencies were measured at 18 months using the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment. Balanced prenatal representations of both parents were related to higher social-emotional competence in toddlers. However, prenatal representations were not related to social-emotional and behavioral problems. The results highlight the benefits of balanced prenatal representations in promoting early social-emotional competence in children.

Fathers play a critical yet underappreciated role in adolescent development. To examine contributions of fathers' parenting to attachment in adolescence and adulthood, this longitudinal study followed 184 adolescents from ages 13-24. At age 13, adolescents reported on their fathers' parenting behavior and were observed in a father-teen conflict task; at ages 14 and 24, they completed the Adult Attachment Interview. Adolescents who lived with their father showed higher attachment security at age 14 (Cohen's d = .72), compared to those with non-residential fathers. Fathers' positive relatedness and support for teens' psychological autonomy predicted attachment security at age 14. Fathers' physical aggression predicted attachment insecurity in adolescence, whereas fathers' verbal aggression predicted insecurity in adulthood, illuminating developmental shifts. Pathways to security were moderated by father residential status, adolescent gender, and race. Findings underscore the importance of fathers' presence, autonomy support, and non-aggression in predicting adolescents' state of mind in close relationships.

A fundamental principle of attachment theory is that threatening situations give rise to individual differences in the extent to which people seek proximity to close others. The current research examines the way in which attachment styles predict individual differences in attachment-relevant behavior during threatening events. We tested alternative theoretical perspectives concerning the association between adult attachment (specifically, attachment avoidance) and attachment behavior in the presence of natural clues to danger by observing couples (N = 204) when they were watching horror vs. control film excerpts. Results suggest that highly avoidant people engaged in less attachment behavior across both threatening and non-threatening situations. These findings have implications for the understanding of attachment-related processes and how working models of the self and others facilitate (or inhibit) the expression of attachment behavior.

This longitudinal study assessed how parent-child relationship quality during the first COVID-19 lockdown was related to changes in internalizing, externalizing, and sleep problems during the first months of the pandemic: during lockdown, partial deconfinement, and total deconfinement. Participants included 167 children (9-12 year) and their parents recruited in the province of Quebec, Canada. Child behavior problems decreased between lockdown and the two deconfinement assessments, but more sleep and behavior problems were associated with lower levels of relationship quality (more conflict, less closeness, and more insecure attachment). Significant interaction effects showed that changes in externalizing and sleep problems varied as a function of parent-child relationship. Results support the critical importance of the parent-child relationship with regard to child adjustment in middle childhood in times of crisis such as a pandemic. They also highlight resilience in children aged 9 to 12, with a decrease in problems over time.