Assessing attachment in adolescents is important due to relations between insecurity and psychopathology. The child attachment interview (CAI) holds promise in this regard, but is time-consuming to ...code, which may render it inaccessible. The aim of this study was to develop computerized neural network models to predict attachment classifications on the CAI and to determine whether the models could achieve the CAI's benchmark qualification of 80% on reliability training cases. Four hundred and ninety interviews from inpatient adolescents served as model training and testing samples. The CAI's 30 standard reliability cases were treated as the independent holdout sample, in which the performance of the final models was evaluated against the 80% benchmark. Models demonstrated moderate accuracy and high correct classification rates, as compared to human coders. Performance was poorer when models were applied to the reliability training cases, but automated coding of the CAI holds promise for future development.
The assessment of attachment security in infancy and adulthood is well-studied, but middle childhood has been relatively neglected in the literature. The Child Attachment Interview (CAI) represents a ...promising assessment of attachment in middle childhood; recent evidence supports its reliability and validity in restricted samples. We assessed the construct validity of the CAI among a diverse sample of 104 8–12 year-old children (
M
age
= 9.80 years; 50 boys; 49 % family income <$40,000; 38 % Latino/a). We evaluated associations among CAI variables and self-report measures of attachment (convergent validity). Further, we evaluated whether CAI variables uniquely relate to theoretically-relevant constructs (internalizing symptoms) above and beyond self-reported attachment (incremental validity) and a theoretically-distinct construct, child temperament (discriminant validity). Our findings support the CAI’s validity, and have important implications for assessing and understanding attachment processes in middle childhood, as well as their development across the lifespan.
Adolescence is a critical period of rapid biological and social development and early signs of adult mental disorders emerge during this life stage. Previous studies suggest that mentalizing ...failures, specifically difficulties in reflective functioning (RF) are linked with psychological symptoms. However, relatively little is known about the association between RF and psychological adaptation in typical development. In this study, the relationship between RF, internalizing and externalizing symptoms were investigated in 95 adolescents using the revised Reflective Functioning Scale-Adolescent version. Results indicate that RF is associated with more self-reported internalizing symptoms. Moreover, the relationship between RF and externalizing symptoms are accounted for by the co-occurrence of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in typically developing adolescents. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for future studies are presented.
We were delighted to learn that Michael Rutter had written a commentary (Rutter, 2014) on our article (Fearon, Shmueli‐Goetz, Viding, Fonagy, & Plomin, 2014).
Read the full article at doi:
...10.1111/jcpp.12171
Read the Commentary at doi:
10.1111/jcpp.12301
This paper introduces a new measure of attachment in middle childhood (8 - 13 years), an interview extensively adapted from the AAI and with a new coding system. We report data from a series of ...studies with clinical and normal populations, in which the psychometric properties of reliability, stability and validity are tested and found to be satisfactory. Although work remains to be done, we see the Child Attachment Interview as a promising new attachment measure. Ce texte présente un nouvel instrument d'évaluation de l'"attachement" chez les enfants entre 8 et 13 ans. Adaptation considérablement remaniée de l'Entretien d'Attachement chez l'Adulte, cet "Entretien" est doté d'un système de codage entièrement nouveau. Les auteurs rapportent les données de plusieurs études portant sur des échantillons cliniques et normaux, dans lesquelles les propriétés psychométriques de fiabilité, de stabilité et de validité ont été testées et trouvées satisfaisantes. S'il est encore à amèliorer, l'Entretien d'Attachement chez l'Enfant s'avère déjà être un nouvel instrument d'évaluation à perspectives fort intéressantes. Questo articolo presenta un nuovo strumento di misurazione dell'attaccamento per il periodo dell'infanzia dagli 8 ai 13 anni, un metodo di intervista in gran parte preso dal AAI con un nuovo sistema di decodifica. Vengono riportati i dati derivati da una serie di studi su una popolazione normale ed una clinica, nei quali le variabili psicometriche di affidabilita', stabilita' e validita' sono state testate e ritenute soddisfacenti. Sebbene resti del lavoro da fare, gli autori ritengono che lo strumento del Child Attachment Interview sia promettente per misurare l'attaccamento. Dieser Artikel gibt eine Einfährung zu einer neuen Messung von Bindung in der mittleren Kindheit (8 - 13 Jahren), ein Interview, das ausgiebig vom AAI (Erwachsenen Bindungsinterview) angepasst und mit einem neuen Kodierungssystem versehen wurde. Wir berichten von einer Reihe von Studien mit klinischen und normalen Populationen, in denen die psychometrischen Eigenheiten von Verlässlichkeit, Stabilität und Validität getestet wurden und sich als befriedigend erwiesen. Auch wenn noch viel Arbeit geleistet werden muss, sehen wir doch das Kindbindungsinterview als eine vielversprechende neue Messung von Bindung.
In adult attachment research, a group of individuals who convey secure attachments despite recalling difficult early caregiver relationships has been identified. The term earned security refers to ...individuals in this group, whereas continuous security refers to individuals who convey secure attachments and describe caring early relationships. Evidence on the validity of earned security in adults is mixed--with one longitudinal study showing that earned secure adults, despite contrary recollections, are actually more likely to have experienced positive caregiving than continuous secure adults. There is currently no evidence of earned security in adolescence, and exploring it in this age group may help shed light on the overall problem of the validity of this construct. Therefore, the broad aim of this study was to examine the construct of earned security in a group of inpatient adolescents. First, the authors aimed to identify a group of adolescents with secure attachments and memories of difficult caregiver relationships (i.e., proposed earned secure group) in a sample of 240 inpatient adolescents. Next, to explore external validity, the authors examined whether this group differed from others with regard to internalizing distress and emotion regulation. Findings indicated that a subset of secure adolescents recall difficult caregiving, as has been noted in adults, and that they differ from others with regard to emotion regulation. Despite this preliminary evidence that earned security can be identified in adolescents, the authors conclude with a discussion of the caveats of applying this construct in adolescents as well as adults.
A prominent research tradition within the field of attachment involves analyzing relationship narratives for qualities thought to reveal important information regarding the organization of ...attachment, and the different ways in which attachment insecurity presents. Researchers increasingly use this method to assess attachment in middle childhood, but further work needs to be conducted with respect to the divergent validity of attachment narratives in this age range. Thus, the current study examined differential associations between children's discursive style and linguistic behavior when completing an attachment interview (Child Attachment Interview CAI) and Non-Relational Interview (NRI). In addition, the discriminant validity of attachment narratives was assessed in predicting children's physiological reactivity to a relational challenge. Children (N = 125) completed the NRI and the CAI at Time 1. A subset of the original sample (n = 64) completed another assessment 1.5 years later involving simulated non-relational and relational challenges. While narrative coherence was moderately associated across the two interviews, CAI narrative coherence uniquely predicted reactivity to a relational probe. We discuss implications for understanding children's narrative styles across discourse topics as well as the significance of the results for using attachment interviews in this age range.
Attachment is a behavioral and physiological system, which enables individual's dynamic adaptation to its environment. Attachment develops in close interaction between an infant and his/her mother, ...plays an important role in the development of the infant's brain, and influences the quality of interpersonal relationships throughout life. Security of attachment is believed to influence individual response to stress, exposing insecurely organized individuals to deregulated autonomic nervous system and exaggerated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal activity, which, in turn, produces increased and prolonged exposure to stress-hormones. Such stress responses may have considerable implications for the development of diverse health-risk conditions, such as insulin resistance and hyperlipidemia, shown by numerous studies. Although the mechanisms are not yet fully understood, there is compelling evidence highlighting the role of psychological stress in the development of type 1 diabetes (T1D). One of the possible contributing factors for the development of T1D may be the influence of attachment security on individual stress reactivity. Thus, the suggestion is that insecurely attached individuals are more prone to experience increased and prolonged influence of stress hormones and other mechanisms causing pancreatic beta-cell destruction. The present paper opens with a short overview of the field of attachment in children, the principal attachment classifications and their historic development, describes the influence of attachment security on individual stress-reactivity and the role of the latter in the development of T1D. Following is a review of recent literature on the attachment in patients with T1D with a conclusion of a proposed role of attachment organization in the etiology of T1D.
Navezanost je vedenjski in fiziološki sistem, ki posamezniku omogoča dinamično prilagajanje na okolje. Navezanost se razvija pri sovplivu med dojenčkom in materjo, igra pomembno vlogo pri razvoju ...otrokovih možgan in vpliva na kvaliteto posameznikovih socialnih odnosov vse življenje.
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