Attachment representations in late-adopted children: the use of narrative in the assessment of disorganisation, mentalising and coherence of mind

Abstract

Late-adopted children have often suffered a wide range of deprivations in their pre-adoption lives. These early adverse experiences can have a negative effect on children’s attachment representations even after they have been adopted. This study assesses the attachment representations of 61 late-adopted children over the first year of placement, exploring the risk and protective factors of age at placement, length of adoption and gender. The attachment representations were captured using the Manchester Completion Attachment Story Task (MCAST), a doll-play narrative that provides four different attachment classifications – secure, avoidant, ambivalent and disorganised – and three global scorings for disorganisation, mentalising and coherence of mind.The age of adoption was negatively associated with disorganisation, while length of placement was positively correlated with mentalising. Males seemed to be more vulnerable to insecurity and disorganisation than females. The data also suggested that for children placed after the attachment-sensitive phase, the longer the time spent in the adoptive families and being female were protective factors. Moreover, attachment narratives seemed to be a useful tool to explore the inner world of late-adopted children from the first year of placement.