School readiness and preschoolers' attachment representations: possible connections

Abstract

The current study examined the possible relationship between preschooler's school readiness and their attachment representations. More specifically, the study examined preschooler's performances on standardized tests and their perceptions of close relationships. The possible connection between school readiness and attachment representations was through children's experiences of stress during standardized testing situations (Fleege, Charlesworth, Burts, & Hart, 1992) and children's stress invoking the use of their internal working models (Bowlby, 1969/1982). The children were administered the Brigance CIBS-R (Glascoe, 1999), a standardized test that was most often used in the local schools to assess school readiness. The children were also videotaped while participating in the Narrative Story Stem Technique (NSST, Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990) to observe the children's perceptions of close relationships through story completions. The results showed that the children who demonstrated a higher number of attachment representations in comparison to the other children also obtained the higher scores on the subscale of the Brigance CIBS-R. The children who demonstrated a lower number of attachment representations in comparison to the other children also obtained the lowest scores on the subscale of the Brigance CIBS-R. Using a Spearman's rank correlation coefficient within a particular group of the children, it was discovered that an identifiable relationship existed between the rank order of the children's performances on a subscale of the Brigance CIBS-R and the rank order of the number of their attachment representations. The results indicate that children who seem to have impoverished attachment representations may also experience more stress in a standardized testing situation and may consequently perform lower on standardized tests that are used to assess school readiness.