To investigate potential infant-related antecedents characterizing later attachment security, this study tested whether attention to facial expressions, assessed with an eye-tracking paradigm at 7 ...months of age (N = 73), predicted infant–mother attachment in the Strange Situation Procedure at 14 months. Attention to fearful faces at 7 months predicted attachment security, with a smaller attentional bias to fearful expressions associated with insecure attachment. Attachment disorganization in particular was linked to an absence of the age-typical attentional bias to fear. These data provide the first evidence linking infants' attentional bias to negative facial expressions with attachment formation and suggest reduced sensitivity to facial expressions of negative emotion as a testable trait that could link attachment disorganization with later behavioral outcomes.
Summary The neuropeptide oxytocin has a popular reputation of being the ‘love’ hormone. Here we test meta-analytically whether experiments with intranasal administration of oxytocin provide support ...for the proposed effects of oxytocin. Three psychological effects were subjected to meta-analysis: facial emotion recognition (13 effect sizes, N = 408), in-group trust (8 effect sizes, N = 317), and out-group trust (10 effect sizes; N = 505). We found that intranasal oxytocin administration enhances the recognition of facial expressions of emotions, and that it elevates the level of in-group trust. The hypothesis that out-group trust is significantly decreased in the oxytocin condition was not supported. It is concluded that a sniff of oxytocin can change emotion perception and behavior in trusting relationships.
This meta-analytic review examines the association between attachment and internalizing symptomatology during childhood, and compares the strength of this association with that for externalizing ...symptomatology. Based on 42 independent samples (N = 4,614), the association between insecurity and internalizing symptoms was small, yet significant (d = 0.15, CI 0.06~0.25) and not moderated by assessment age of internalizing problems. Avoidance, but not resistance (d = 0.03, CI - 0.11~0.17) or disorganization (d = 0.08, CI - 0.06~0.22), was significantly associated with internalizing symptoms (d = 0.17, CI 0.03~0.31). Insecurity and disorganization were more strongly associated with externalizing than internalizing symptoms. Discussion focuses on the significance of attachment for the development of internalizing versus externalizing symptomatology.
This study addresses the extent to which insecure and disorganized attachments increase risk for externalizing problems using meta-analysis. From 69 samples (N -5,947), the association between ...insecurity and externalizing problems was significant, d = 0.31 (95% CI: 0.23, 0.40). Larger effects were found for boys (d = 0.35), clinical samples (d = 0.49), and from observation-based outcome assessments (d = 0.58). Larger effects were found for attachment assessments other than the Strange Situation. Overall, disorganized children appeared at elevated risk (d = 0.34, 95% CI: 0.18, 0.50), with weaker effects for avoidance (d = 0.12, 95% CI: 0.03, 0.21) and resistance (d = 0.11, 95% CI: -0.04, 0.26). The results are discussed in terms of the potential significance of attachment for mental health.
After decades of research on early attachment relationships, questions remain concerning whether the evidence supports claims made by attachment theory, in particular, that variation in early ...attachment predicts children's developmental adaptation or maladaptation, and that characteristics of children's temperament does not determine attachment. To evaluate these claims, we conducted meta‐analyses on early attachment and children's social competence with peers, externalizing problems, internalizing symptoms, and temperament. In this article, we summarize our findings, which support attachment theory—though we note caveats. We also call for new measurement models, a focus on mediating and moderating mechanisms, and multisite replications.
The efficacy of interventions might be underestimated or even go undetected as a main effect when it is hidden in gene-by-environment (G×E) interactions. This review moves beyond the problems ...thwarting correlational G×E research to propose genetic differential susceptibility experiments. G×E experiments can test the bright side as well as the dark side of the moderating role of genotypes traditionally considered to represent vulnerability to negative conditions. The differential susceptibility model predicts that carriers of these risk genotypes profit most from interventions changing the environment for the better. The evolutionary background of G×E and differential susceptibility is discussed, and statistical methods for the analysis of differential susceptibility (versus diathesis stress) are reviewed. Then, based on results from 22 randomized G×E experiments, meta-analytic evidence for the differential susceptibility model is presented. Intervention effects are much stronger in the susceptible genotypes than in the nonsusceptible genotypes. The final sections suggest possibilities to broaden the G component in the G×E equation by including genetic pathways, and to broaden the E component by including methylation level and gene expression as promising ways to probe the concept of the environment more deeply and address the perennial issue of what works for whom.
Purpose
The aim of the current meta-analysis was to provide an estimate of the prevalence of physical and emotional neglect by integrating prevalence figures from the body of research reporting on ...neglect. An attempt was also made to unravel the substantial variation in prevalence figures reported in primary studies by analyzing the effects of procedural factors and sample characteristics on combined prevalence rates.
Methods
Studies providing prevalence rates of child neglect were searched using electronic databases, exploring specialized journals, and by searching references of publications for other relevant studies. Data were extracted using a coding system. Intercoder reliability was satisfactory. A comprehensive meta-analysis was conducted.
Results
Child physical neglect prevalence rates were found for 13 independent samples with a total of 59,406 participants, and child emotional neglect prevalence rates were found for 16 independent samples with a total of 59,655 participants. The overall estimated prevalence was 163/1,000 for physical neglect, and 184/1,000 for emotional neglect, with no apparent gender differences. The influence of research design factors on the prevalence of physical neglect was more pronounced than on the prevalence of emotional neglect. Studies on physical neglect in ‘low-resource’ countries were conspicuously absent.
Conclusions
Child neglect is a problem of considerable extent, but seems to be a neglected type of maltreatment in scientific research. This is illustrated by the deplorable dearth of studies on child neglect, especially in low-resource countries. Recommendations for the design of future prevalence studies are proposed.
Child maltreatment in the family context is a prevalent and pervasive phenomenon in many modern societies. The global perpetration of child abuse and neglect stands in stark contrast to its almost ...universal condemnation as exemplified in the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. Much work has been devoted to the task of prevention, yet a grand synthesis of the literature is missing. Focusing on two core elements of prevention, that is, antecedents for maltreatment and the effectiveness of (preventative) interventions, we performed an umbrella review of meta‐analyses published between January 1, 2014, and December 17, 2018. Meta‐analyses were systematically collected, assessed, and integrated following a uniform approach to allow their comparison across domains. From this analysis of thousands of studies including almost 1.5 million participants, the following risk factors were derived: parental experience of maltreatment in his or her own childhood (d = .47), low socioeconomic status of the family (d = .34), dependent and aggressive parental personality (d = .45), intimate partner violence (d = .41), and higher baseline autonomic nervous system activity (d = .24). The effect size for autonomic stress reactivity was not significant (d = −.10). The umbrella review of interventions to prevent or reduce child maltreatment showed modest intervention effectiveness (d = .23 for interventions targeting child abuse potential or families with self‐reported maltreatment and d = .27 for officially reported child maltreatment cases). Despite numerous studies on child maltreatment, some large gaps in our knowledge of antecedents exist. Neurobiological antecedents should receive more research investment. Differential susceptibility theory may shed more light on questions aimed at breaking the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment and on the modest (preventive) intervention effects. In combination with family‐based interaction‐focused interventions, large‐scale socioeconomic experiments such as cash transfer trials and experiments with vouchers to move to a lower‐poverty area might be tested to prevent or reduce child maltreatment. Prevalence, antecedents, and preventive interventions of prenatal maltreatment deserve continuing scientific, clinical, and policy attention.
Read the Commentary on this article at doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13175
Matters of Significance van IJzendoorn, Marinus H; Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian
2024, 2024-02-15
eBook
Open access
Application of scientific findings to effective practice and informed policymaking is an aspiration for much research in the biomedical, behavioural, and developmental sciences. But too often ...translations of science to practice are conceptually narrow, ethically underspecified, and developed quickly as salves to an urgent problem. For developmental science, widely implemented parenting interventions are prime examples of technical translations from knowledge about the causes of children’s mental distress. Aiming to support family relationships and facilitate adaptive child development, these programmes are rushed through when the scientific findings on which they are based remain contested and without ethical grounding of their aims. In Matters of Significance, Marinus van IJzendoorn and Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg draw on 40 years of experience with theoretical, empirical, meta-analytic, and translational work in child development research to highlight the complex relations between replication, translation, and academic freedom. They argue that challenging fake facts promulgated by under-replicated and under-powered studies is a critical type of translation beyond technical applications. Such challenges can, in the highlighted field of attachment and emotion regulation research, bust popular myths about the decisive role of genes, hormones, or the brain on parenting and child development, with a balancing impact for practice and policymaking. The authors argue that academic freedom from interference by pressure groups, stakeholders, funders, or university administrators in the core stages of research is a necessary but besieged condition for adversarial research and myth busting. Praise for Matters of Significance ‘This thoughtful volume is an accessible overview of the authors’ field-shaping collaborative research on attachment and an indispensable primer on differentiating between sense and nonsense in the service of producing cumulative developmental science and ethically translating its core insights.’ Glenn I. Roisman, University of Minnesota ‘The truly original arguments presented in Matters of Significance go beyond attachment, as they concern the nature of developmental science and its relation to ethical, cultural, legal, and political issues.’ Jay Belsky, University of California, Davis
Twenty years ago, meta-analytic results (k = 19) confirmed the association between caregiver attachment representations and child-caregiver attachment (Van IJzendoorn, 1995). A test of caregiver ...sensitivity as the mechanism behind this intergenerational transmission showed an intriguing "transmission gap." Since then, the intergenerational transmission of attachment and the transmission gap have been studied extensively, and now extend to diverse populations from all over the globe. Two decades later, the current review revisited the effect sizes of intergenerational transmission, the heterogeneity of the transmission effects, and the size of the transmission gap. Analyses were carried out with a total of 95 samples (total N = 4,819). All analyses confirmed intergenerational transmission of attachment, with larger effect sizes for secure-autonomous transmission (r = .31) than for unresolved transmission (r = .21), albeit with significantly smaller effect sizes than 2 decades earlier (r = .47 and r = .31, respectively). Effect sizes were moderated by risk status of the sample, biological relatedness of child-caregiver dyads, and age of the children. Multivariate moderator analyses showed that unpublished and more recent studies had smaller effect sizes than published and older studies. Path analyses showed that the transmission could not be fully explained by caregiver sensitivity, with more recent studies narrowing but not bridging the "transmission gap." Implications for attachment theory as well as future directions for research are discussed.
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