Investigating Attachment Status Effects on Preschoolers’ Empathic Perspective-Taking

Abstract

Attachment theory emphasizes that parents’ responses to children’s emotional distress might shape their ability to empathize with others. Previous research showed that securely attached preschoolers are prone to exhibiting more empathy towards others’ distress compared to insecurely attached children, but less is known about the way attachment influences a particular empathy-related skill, namely perspective-taking. The current study’s aim was to evaluate attachment status effects on preschool children’s empathic perspective-taking employing a multi-component conceptualization including affective, cognitive and behavioral perspective-taking. The sample included 212 children aged between 3 and 5. The attachment story completion task was employed to assess children’s internal working models concerning the quality of the parent–child attachment relationship. Additionally, a modified version of the Kid’s Empathic Development Scale was administered to evaluate children’s self-reported affective, cognitive and behavioral empathic perspective-taking. The results consistently revealed that the insecure avoidant group, but not the insecure ambivalent group, scored significantly lower on all dimensions of empathic perspective-taking compared to the secure category. These findings suggest that in typically developing preschoolers, insecure avoidant attachment patterns might be associated with overall difficulties in perspective-taking abilities, whereas insecure ambivalent attachment patterns could be responsible for more specific perspective-taking difficulties related to eliciting prosocial behaviors (i.e., behavioral perspective-taking). These findings could have implications for designing interventions aimed at enhancing parents’ ability to support the development of their children’s empathic perspective-taking skills.