Infant Attachment Classification Research Articles

Disorganized Infant Attachment Classification and Maternal Psychosocial Problems as Predictors of Hostile-Aggressive Behavior in the Preschool Classroom

Disorganized Infant Attachment Classification and Maternal Psychosocial Problems as Predictors of Hostile-Aggressive Behavior in the Preschool Classroom

Representations of Attachment in Mothers and Their One-Year-Old Infants

Attachment classifications in mothers and their 1 -year-old infants were independently and concurrently assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview and the Strange Situation Procedure. Overall concordance was significant (k = 0.62), with strong links apparent between mothers classified dismissing and infants classified avoidant and between mothers classified autonomous and infants classified secure. Mothers' classified preoccupied were not more likely to have infants classified resistant. Mothers' perceptions and interpretations of the emotional distress of an infant observed in a 4-minute videotape were related to both infant and mother attachment classifications. These results are compatible with the suggestion that attachment classifications reflect differences in internal working models of relationships. Other measures of maternal psychosocial adjustment were not related to infant attachment classifications.

Disorganized attachment behavior in infancy: Short-term stability, maternal and infant correlates, and risk-related subtypes

AbstractThis study of 71 low-income mothers and infants examined whether the disorganized/disoriented (D) infant attachment classification is best viewed as a single category or whether at least two subgroups exist, corresponding to the forced-secure and forced-insecure alternate classifications. Correlates of the D classification as a whole, and of the two subtypes of disorganized behavior, were examined in five domains, including 6-month stability, maternal childhood history of loss, severity of maternal psychosocial risk, maternal behavior toward the infant at home, and infant mental development. Results indicated that the two subtypes of disorganized infant attachment behavior differed in age of emergence, maternal childhood history, severity of associated family risk factors, and the extent of the mother's lack of involvement with the infant at home. Across both D subtypes, disorganization of attachment strategies was associated with less optimal maternal behavior at home and with decreased mental development scores at 18 months. Results are discussed in relation to Main and Hesse's (1990) theory of the role of fear-inducing parental behavior in the genesis of disorganized infant attachment behavior and in relation to Aber, Allen, Carlson, and Cicchetti's (1989) concept of secure readiness to learn.

Attachment to Mother/Attachment to Father: A Meta-Analysis

An important tenet of attachment theory is that classification of security or insecurity as derived from the Strange Situation reflects the quality of an infant's relationship with its caregiver. One piece of evidence supporting this claim is the lack of concordance of classification between an infant and its mother and father. We performed a meta-analysis of the 11 studies that have examined the concordance of mother/father attachment to an infant. We found that security of attachment to one parent was dependent upon security to the other parent, that type of insecurity (avoidant/resistant) to one parent was dependent upon type of insecurity to the other, and that subcategory classification within the secure category (B1B2/B3B4) to one parent was dependent upon subcategory classification to the other. These data raise important questions regarding the meaning of infant attachment classification as derived from the Strange Situation. Among the possible explanations for the pattern of data are existence of concordant parenting styles and/or influence of infant temperament (possibly the tendency to cry upon separation) on classification of security/insecurity in the Strange Situation.

Affordances, affective behaviours, attachments and assistance

This paper consists of four sections. It opens by suggesting parents offer affordances, which are behavioural expressions of invariants, to their infants. Next, nine classes of relationship affordance are identified. Results from separate groups of respondents providing semantic‐scale ratings for these classes revealed a single sequence with “aggressive” at one extreme and “tender contact” at the other. Third, descriptions of parental behaviours corresponding to the four infant attachment classification groups were gleaned from the literature. When these descriptions were aligned with the nine affordance terms a strong correspondence emerged; infant attachment classifications could also be arranged into a single sequence, each with distinct peak performance indicators. In the final section it is suggested this sequence has as a major invariant “parental mourning” since parallels between the separation‐reunion process, attachment classifications and parental affordances occur.

Infant Proneness-to-Distress Temperament, Maternal Personality, and Mother-Infant Attachment: Associations and Goodness of Fit

66 mother-infant pairs were examined when the infants were 9 and 13 months. The purpose of this report was to examine relations between infant proneness-to-distress temperament, maternal personality characteristics, and mother-infant attachment. There were no main-effect relations between infant proneness-to-distress temperament as assessed at 9 months and infant attachment classification at 13 months. This was true whether security of attachment (A and C vs. B) or proposed temperament (A1-B2 vs. B3-C2) groupings of attachment classifications were examined. Infant proneness-to-distress temperament, however, was associated with maternal behavior and personality. Furthermore, security of attachment could be predicted by an interaction between maternal personality and infant proneness-to-distress. The importance of considering goodness-of-fit relations in predicting attachment security is discussed.

Categories of response to reunion with the parent at age 6: Predictable from infant attachment classifications and stable over a 1-month period.

Categories of response to reunion with the parent at age 6: Predictable from infant attachment classifications and stable over a 1-month period.

Categories of response to reunion with the parent at age 6: Predictable from infant attachment classifications and stable over a 1-month period.

Categories of response to reunion with the parent at age 6: Predictable from infant attachment classifications and stable over a 1-month period.

Early prediction of attachment security: A multivariate approach

This study was designed to explore the possibility that variations in attachment security exhibited by infants in the Ainsworth Strange Situation at 13 months could be predicted from the behovior of mothers ond infants in an analogous preseparation, separotion and reunion situation at 7 months, when specific attachments begin to emerge. Data obtoined on a large sample of 7-month-old infonts and their mothers were subjected to factor analyses to identify important variables and interrelationships. Bosed on these analyses, variobles were incorporated into multiple discriminont function analyses of a subsample of infants, with infant attachment classification at 13 months as the criterion. The results suggest that a) attachment security at the end of the first year can be significantly predicted from a brief observation of mother-infant interaction at seven months; b) predictability is influenced by observational context (e.g., preseporotion vs reunion); ond c) multivariate procedures ore useful in detecting relotionships and continuities among attachment indices.