Background: Despite the evidence on anomalous attachment patterns, there has been a tendency to interpret most of these as reflecting differences in security/insecurity.
Methods: Empirical research ...findings are reviewed in relation to attachment/insecurity as evident in both infancy and later childhood, disorganised attachment, inhibited attachment disorder, and disinhibited attachment disorder.
Findings: Substantial differences are found in the correlates and meaning of these different features, as well as in the patterns associated with conditions such as autism, psychopathy, and Williams syndrome.
Conclusions: It is seriously misleading to view all of these patterns through the lens of security/insecurity. This heterogeneity in social relationship features necessarily has implications for the assessment measures for social relationships that need to be used.
One of the assumptions of attachment theory is that individual differences in adult attachment styles emerge from individuals' developmental histories. To examine this assumption empirically, the ...authors report data from an age 18 follow-up (Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2012) of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a longitudinal investigation that tracked a cohort of children and their parents from birth to age 15. Analyses indicate that individual differences in adult attachment can be traced to variations in the quality of individuals' caregiving environments, their emerging social competence, and the quality of their best friendship. Analyses also indicate that assessments of temperament and most of the specific genetic polymorphisms thus far examined in the literature on genetic correlates of attachment styles are essentially uncorrelated with adult attachment, with the exception of a polymorphism in the serotonin receptor gene (HTR2A rs6313), which modestly predicted higher attachment anxiety and which revealed a Gene × Environment interaction such that changes in maternal sensitivity across time predicted attachment-related avoidance. The implications of these data for contemporary perspectives and debates concerning adult attachment theory are discussed.
Background
Though noted in the clinical literature for more than 50 years, attachment disorders have been studied systematically only recently. In part because of the ubiquity of attachments in ...humans, determining when aberrant behavior is best explained as an attachment disorder as opposed to insecure attachment has led to some confusion. In this selective review, we consider the literature on reactive attachment disorder and disinhibited social engagement disorder and describe an emerging consensus about a number of issues, while also noting some areas of controversy and others where we lack clear answers. We include a brief history of the classification of the disorders, as well as measurement issues. We describe their clinical presentation, causes and vulnerability factors, and clinical correlates, including the relation of disorders to secure and insecure attachment classifications. We also review what little is known and what more we need to learn about interventions.
Methods
We conducted a literature search using PubMed, PsycINFO, and Cochrane Library databases, using search terms ‘reactive attachment disorder,’ ‘attachment disorder,’ ‘indiscriminate behavior,’ ‘indiscriminate friendliness,’ ‘indiscriminate socially disinhibited reactive attachment disorder,’ ‘disinhibited social engagement disorder,’ and ‘disinhibited social behavior.’ We also contacted investigators who have published on these topics.
Findings
A growing literature has assessed behaviors in children who have experienced various types of adverse caregiving environments reflecting signs of putative attachment disorders, though fewer studies have investigated categorically defined attachment disorders. The evidence for two separate disorders is considerable, with reactive attachment disorder indicating children who lack attachments despite the developmental capacity to form them, and disinhibited social engagement disorder indicating children who lack developmentally appropriate reticence with unfamiliar adults and who violate socially sanctioned boundaries.
Conclusions
Although many questions remain to be answered, especially regarding appropriate interventions, we know considerably more about attachment disorders than we did only a decade ago.
Read the Commentary on this article at doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12373
Since prior research has shown the importance of specific attachment models, we wanted to explore specific adult attachments (colleagues, leader, and workplace) in the working setting. The study ...aimed to investigate the position of specific adult attachments in the attachment hierarchy and their associations with various organizational variables. Finally, we assumed that dimensions of the colleagues-domain attachment model would cluster into attachment types at work, according to secure, preoccupied, and avoidant attachment orientations.
We carried out cross-sectional time-lagged research design. The sample consisted of 1,352 participants based on convenience and voluntary sampling procedures. Participants aged 18-78 worked in various work teams and positions. The battery consisted of the Adult Attachment in the Workplace Questionnaire, the Workplace Attachment Styles Questionnaire, the Scale of Belonging to the Organization, the Leader as Security Provider Scale, the shortened Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Questionnaire, the Czech Leadership Questionnaire, the Citizenship Organizational Behavior Questionnaire, the General Work Performance questionnaire, the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale. Data were analyzed in JASP 0.16.3 and IBM SPSS Statistics 22. Among other statistical methods, we performed factor analysis and two-step cluster analysis. The alpha level for statistical testing was set to 0.05.
The results show that the work-specific attachment models differ from the romantic domain attachment model. Moreover, the work-specific attachment models also differ among themselves. Depending on the attachment to colleagues, it is possible to distinguish two attachment orientations (secure and insecure) among working adults. These two types differ in all the variables studied (relationships with colleagues, romantic partners, belonging to people and place, and performance).
The study advances our knowledge of attachment working models and their application in the organizational context. We confirmed hierarchical attachment mental presentations and show the distinction in attachment working models at work. Colleagues and leaders form two separate domains within the workplace. Attachment to a leader is associated with the leadership style and secure workplace attachment. Attachment to colleagues might be more important in insecure workplace attachment and insecure belonging. Fostering secure attachment at work might bring together more positive outcomes for the company regarding performance and relationships at work.
Attachment between an infant and his or her parents is a major topic within developmental psychology. An increasing number of psychologists, evolutionary biologists and anthropologists are ...articulating their doubts that attachment theory in its present form is applicable worldwide, without, however, denying that the development of attachment is a universal need. This book brings together leading scholars from psychology, anthropology and related fields to reformulate attachment theory in order to fit the cultural realities of our world. Contributions are based on empirical research and observation in a variety of cultural contexts. They are complemented by careful evaluation and deconstruction of many of the underlying premises and assumptions of attachment theory and of conventional research on the role of infant-parent attachment in human development. The book creates a contextual cultural understanding of attachment that will provide the basis for a groundbreaking reconceptualization of attachment theory.
This study examined the validity of criteria for indiscriminately social/disinhibited and emotionally withdrawn/inhibited reactive attachment disorder (RAD).
As part of a longitudinal intervention ...trial of previously institutionalized children, caregiver interviews and direct observational measurements provided continuous and categorical data used to examine the internal consistency, criterion validity, construct validity, convergent and discriminant validity, association with functional impairment, and stability of these disorders over time.
As in other studies, the findings showed distinctions between the two types of RAD. Evidence-derived criteria for both types of RAD showed acceptable internal consistency and criterion validity. In this study, rates of indiscriminately social/disinhibited RAD at baseline and at 30, 42, and 54 months were 41/129 (31.8%), 22/122 (17.9%), 22/122 (18.0%), and 22/125 (17.6%), respectively. Signs of indiscriminately social/disinhibited RAD showed little association with caregiving quality. Nearly half of children with indiscriminately social/disinhibited RAD had organized attachment classifications. Signs of indiscriminately social/disinhibited RAD were associated with signs of activity/impulsivity and of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and modestly with inhibitory control but were distinct from the diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. At baseline, 30, 42, and 54 months, 6/130 (4.6%), 4/123 (3.3%), 2/125 (1.6%), and 5/122 (4.1%) of children met criteria for emotionally withdrawn/inhibited RAD. Emotionally withdrawn/inhibited RAD was moderately associated with caregiving at the first three time points and strongly associated with attachment security. Signs of this type of RAD were associated with depressive symptoms, although two of the five children with this type of RAD at 54 months did not meet criteria for major depressive disorder. Signs of both types of RAD contributed independently to functional impairment and were stable over time.
Evidence-derived criteria for indiscriminately social/disinhibited and emotionally withdrawn/inhibited RAD define two statistically and clinically cohesive syndromes that are distinct from each other, shows stability over 2 years, have predictable associations with risk factors and attachment, can be distinguished from other psychiatric disorders, and cause functional impairment.
This comment on the Special Issue contributions regarding the attachment network addresses the clinical implications of the findings from three perspectives: (1) the need to look beyond maternal ...influences on child developmental outcomes; (2) to be open to every seemingly peripheral influence on the child as this may have a central impact on the child, for example, grandmothers, the parental couple relationship, and others not living in the child's home but nonetheless influential; and (3) identify and cultivate security spreading effects that help change not only the child, but the child's relationships with others in and outside the family—to the benefit of all. Some evidence‐based attachment‐based interventions are highlighted.
Disorganized/Disoriented (D) attachment has seen widespread interest from policy makers, practitioners, and clinicians in recent years. However, some of this interest seems to have been based on some ...false assumptions that (1) attachment measures can be used as definitive assessments of the individual in forensic/child protection settings and that disorganized attachment (2) reliably indicates child maltreatment, (3) is a strong predictor of pathology, and (4) represents a fixed or static "trait" of the child, impervious to development or help. This paper summarizes the evidence showing that these four assumptions are false and misleading. The paper reviews what is known about disorganized infant attachment and clarifies the implications of the classification for clinical and welfare practice with children. In particular, the difference between disorganized attachment and attachment disorder is examined, and a strong case is made for the value of attachment theory for supportive work with families and for the development and evaluation of evidence-based caregiving interventions.
Motivated by the Attachment Security Enhancement Model (Arriaga et al., 2018), the present research investigated the associations between positive relationship experiences and romantic attachment ...avoidance in three dyadic studies that combined multiple methods, including daily diaries, laboratory observations, and longitudinal follow-ups. Frequency of daily positive relationship events (but not external positive events) during a 21-day diary period predicted declines in romantic attachment avoidance (but not anxiety) from pre- to post-diary in fledgling couples (Study 1) and newlyweds (Study 2). Video-recorded discussions of fledgling couples' shared positive experiences revealed that behaviors validating the relationship (but not simply showing conversational interest) predicted lagged declines in romantic attachment avoidance (but not anxiety) over 1 month (Study 3). The associations were mediated by positive affect during the diary period in Studies 1 and 2, and by changes in positive affect from pre- to post-discussion in Study 3. Positive relationship experiences did not significantly interact with time in predicting romantic avoidance over a 1-year follow-up with quarterly assessments of attachment orientations in Study 1, over an 8-month follow-up with monthly assessments in Study 2, or over a 2-month follow-up with monthly assessments in Study 3. Altogether, these studies provide one of the most comprehensive tests of how positive relationship experiences in nondistressing contexts are linked to romantic attachment.
Abstract Attachment theory has been proposed as one explanation for the relationship between childhood maltreatment and problematic mental and physical health outcomes in adulthood. This study seeks ...to determine whether: (1) childhood physical abuse and neglect lead to different attachment styles in adulthood, (2) adult attachment styles predict subsequent mental and physical health outcomes, and (3) adult attachment styles mediate the relationship between childhood physical abuse and neglect and mental and physical health outcomes. Children with documented cases of physical abuse and neglect (ages 0–11) were matched with children without these histories and followed up in adulthood. Adult attachment style was assessed at mean age 39.5 and outcomes at 41.1. Separate path models examined mental and physical health outcomes. Individuals with histories of childhood neglect and physical abuse had higher levels of anxious attachment style in adulthood, whereas neglect predicted avoidant attachment as well. Both adult attachment styles (anxious and avoidant) predicted mental health outcomes (higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower levels of self-esteem), whereas only anxious adult attachment style predicted higher levels of allostatic load. Path analyses revealed that anxious attachment style in adulthood in part explained the relationship between childhood neglect and physical abuse to depression, anxiety, and self-esteem, but not the relationship to allostatic load. Childhood neglect and physical abuse have lasting effects on adult attachment styles and anxious and avoidant adult attachment styles contribute to understanding the negative mental health consequences of childhood neglect and physical abuse 30 years later in adulthood.
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