Internal Working Models Of Attachment Research Articles

Attachment security and attention to facial emotional expressions in preschoolers: An eye-tracking study.

According to attachment theory, internal working models of attachment affect the way in which social and emotional information is processed. The current study examined this theoretical claim by investigating the association between attachment security and attention to facial emotional expressions in 5-year-old children. Attachment security was assessed on a representational level using an Attachment Story Completion Task. Children's attention to facial emotional expressions was measured during an eye-tracking task. Gaze data (fixation duration) were collected during the presentation of pictures displaying five different facial emotional expressions (neutral, angry, fearful, sad, and happy) of unfamiliar persons. Moreover, the Emotionality-Activity-Sociability Temperament Inventory was used to control for children's temperament and was filled out by children's mothers. Regression analyses revealed that attachment security was a significant predictor of children's attention to neutral and sad expressions while controlling for age, gender, and temperament. Moreover, a t-test revealed that securely attached children looked longer at the fearful expression than insecurely attached children. These findings provide direct evidence that even on a basic perceptional level attachment security is a predictor of children's emotional information processing. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Attachment representations substantially affect the way in which emotional information is processed. Insecure attachment representations are negatively related to children's attention to emotional stimuli. What does this study add? Eye-tracking technology was used to measure children's visual attention to facial emotional expressions. Secure attachment was related to prolonged visual attention to neutral and negative facial emotional expressions. Attachment security influences children's emotional information processing even on a basic perceptual level.

Attachment and loss in the context of US immigration: caregiver separation and characteristics of internal working models of attachment in high school students

ABSTRACT Attachment affects a child’s well-being across their lifespan. This study aimed to describe internal working models of attachment in immigrant adolescents – an often overlooked population that frequently experiences caregiver separation. Data were collected from a high school for recently immigrated youth. Attachment was assessed using the Child Attachment Interview (CAI; n = 35) and personal experiences of separation from caregivers were assessed using a semi-structured interview (n = 31). Findings indicated 62.1% of respondents experienced the migration of one of their caregivers. Separation from mothers was linked to lower maternal attachment security. Descriptive data supported this result. Despite a small sample size, the current study utilized interview-based methods to provide in-depth characterizations of parental separation and adolescent attachment in an understudied population. Finally, the current study has implications for public policy debates regarding immigrant families, which have recently surged.

Education and Attachment: Guidelines to Prevent School Failure

Portuguese schools have high student failure and early school leaving rates (Pordata, 2017) giving rise to a number of initiatives aimed at their reduction. The “Alternative Curricular Course” (ACC) promotes the learning of basic skills, specifically in Portuguese language and Mathematics, to support logical reasoning and artistic, vocational, and professional development. Its main goal is the fulfilment of compulsory schooling and the reduction of academic failure. Research based on attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969) suggests that different internal working models of attachment are associated with different characteristics of social, academic, emotional, and behavioural competencies that may interfere in the quality of relationships that young people establish in school, especially with teachers, and also influence their academic performance. This study evaluates the relationship between internal working models of students, their perceptions of the quality of their relationships with teachers, and their academic performance using three measures: (i) the “Inventory of Attachment in Childhood and Adolescence” (IACA) measure, (ii) the “Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment” (IPPA) measure—concerning the attachment to teacher”, and (iii) a socio-demographic questionnaire on a sample of 305 students from the 8th grade of regular education (RE) and the ACC. The results reveal that students on the ACC exhibit a less secure internal working model than students in RE, and that the perception of the quality of the student-teacher relationship, regarding the dimension of acceptance and understanding by the teachers, is associated with a better academic performance. These results align with those of other recent studies in support of the conclusion that the process of attachment has a significant influence on educational contexts, consistent with attachment and related theories.

Effects of implicit and explicit internal working models of attachment on empathy

Effects of implicit and explicit internal working models of attachment on empathy

Fear of death mediates ostracism distress and the moderating role of attachment internal working models

AbstractOstracism is known to cause psychological distress; however, it remains unclear why ostracism evokes this response. Two experiments tested empirically whether fear of death mediates ostracism effects and whether attachment internal working models moderate this role. A total of 288 participants played Cyberball with two other ostensible players. After the game the accessibility of their death‐related thoughts was assessed by a word completion task, and the Needs Satisfaction Scale was used to measure their distress. Participants’ attachment orientation was measured using the Experiences in Close Relationship scale. Death anxiety fully mediated ostracism distress. However, this effect was stronger in low‐anxiety individuals. These studies contribute to the ostracism literature by providing further empirical support that death anxiety mediates ostracism distress, and to the attachment literature by documenting the moderation effect of attachment anxiety.

Adult Attachment, Role Balance, and Depressive Symptoms in Emerging Adulthood

Given the large body of evidence linking attachment insecurity to psychological distress (e.g., depression) in the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood and across the lifespan, there is a need to better understand how attachment dimensions (e.g., anxious, avoidant) influence depressive symptoms during this developmental period. Based on limited findings that difficulties with role balance may uniquely contribute to depression among college students (Lopez and Fons-Scheyd in J Coll Couns 11:133–147, 2008; Marks and McDermid in J Marriage Family 58:417–432, 1996) and may be associated with individual factors such as internal working models of attachment, this study tested the indirect effects of anxious and avoidant attachment on depression through role balance using a college student sample (n = 299). Structural equation modeling indicated that role balance partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and depression. Results of this study suggest that difficulty in balancing individual (i.e., autonomy-focused) and relational (i.e., intimacy-focused) role commitments might help to explain depressive symptoms above and beyond insecure attachment for anxiously attached emerging adults and serve as a mechanism by which anxious attachment influences depressive symptoms during this developmental period. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System: a pilot study of inter-rater reliability and face validity with adults with intellectual disabilities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess whether the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) Picture System is a reliable and face valid measure of internal working models of attachment in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID).Design/methodology/approachThe AAPs of 20 adults with ID were coded blind by two reliable judges and classified into one of four groups: secure, dismissing, preoccupied, or unresolved. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using κ. Six participants repeated the assessment for test-retest reliability. Two independent experts rated ten cases on the links between the AAP analysis and the clinical history.FindingsThere was significant agreement between AAP judges, κ=0.677, p<0.001. Five out of six participants showed stability in their classifications over time. The majority of expert ratings were “good” or “excellent”. There was a significant inter-class correlation between raters suggesting good agreement between them r=0.51 (p<0.05). The raters’ feedback suggested that the AAP had good clinical utility.Research limitations/implicationsThe inter-rater reliability, stability, face validity, and clinical utility of the AAP in this population is promising. Further examination of these findings with a larger sample of individuals with ID is needed.Originality/valueThis is the first study attempting to investigate the reliability and validity of the AAP in this population.

Effects of childhood abuse and internal working models of attachment on interpretation bias for face: Focusing on strength of expressions

Effects of childhood abuse and internal working models of attachment on interpretation bias for face: Focusing on strength of expressions

Effect of explicit / implicit internal working models of attachment on frequency of experience in interpersonal life events: Using ST-IAT

Effect of explicit / implicit internal working models of attachment on frequency of experience in interpersonal life events: Using ST-IAT

Effects of internal working models of attachment on global/local processing: Changes in information processing by negative mood

Effects of internal working models of attachment on global/local processing: Changes in information processing by negative mood

What Language Does Your Internal Working Model of Attachment Speak?

Nonnative English speakers are a growing population in the United States and United Kingdom, yet nothing is known about how second-language interviewing affects the assessment (or classification) of internal working models (IWM) of attachment. We suggest that these assessments may be subject to deleterious effects when conducted in an individual’s second language, because they (and the IWM structure itself) are linguistically bound, emotionally laden, and complicated by cultural loading. In this review, research regarding how the language of assessment broadly affects language production, interview content, emotional expression, and interviewee behavior is reviewed. We close with areas for future research and a table of existing attachment assessments by language in an effort to spur cross-cultural and bilingual research in this area. This review can therefore serve as a resource for clinicians wishing to assess attachment with linguistically diverse clients and researchers wishing to address the basic qu...

SECURE BASE SCRIPT CONTENT EXPLAINS THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN ATTACHMENT AVOIDANCE AND EMOTION-RELATED CONSTRUCTS IN PARENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN.

The secure base script (SBS) framework is one method of assessing implicit internal working models of attachment; recently, researchers have applied this method to analyze narratives regarding relationship experiences. This study examines the associations between attachment avoidance and SBS content when parents recall a positive moment of connection between themselves and their children (relational savoring) as well as their association with parental emotion and reflective functioning (RF). Using a sample of parents (N = 155, 92% female) of young children (53% boys, Mage = 12.76 months), we found that parental attachment avoidance is inversely associated with SBS content during relational savoring, and that SBS content is an indirect effect explaining the association between attachment avoidance and postsavoring (positive and negative) emotion as well as avoidance and poststressor RF. Findings have implications for understanding attachment and parenting.

A Reaction Time Experiment on Adult Attachment: The Development of a Measure for Neurophysiological Settings.

In the last few decades, there has been an increase of experimental research on automatic unconscious processes concerning the evaluation of the self and others. Previous research investigated implicit aspects of romantic attachment using self-report measures as explicit instruments for assessing attachment style. There is a lack of experimental procedures feasible for neurobiological settings. We developed a reaction time (RT) experiment using a narrative attachment measure with an implicit nature and were interested to capture automatic processes, when the individuals’ attachment system is activated. We aimed to combine attachment methodology with knowledge from implicit measures by using a decision RT paradigm. This should serve as a means to capture implicit aspects of attachment. This experiment evaluated participants’ response to prototypic attachment sentences in association with their own attachment classification, measured with the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP). First the AAP was administered as the standardized interview procedure to 30 healthy participants, which were classified into a secure or insecure group. In the following experimental session, both experimenter and participants were blind with respect to classifications. One hundred twenty eight prototypically secure or insecure sentences related to the eight pictures of the AAP were presented to the participants. Their response and RTs were recorded. Based on the response (accept, reject) a continuous security scale was defined. Both the AAP classification and security scale were related to the RTs. Differentiated study hypotheses were confirmed for insecure sentences, which were accepted faster by participants from the insecure attachment group (or with lower security scale), and rejected faster by participants from secure attachment group (or with higher security scale). The elaborating unconscious processes were more activated by insecure sentences with potential attachment conflicts. The introduced paradigm is able to contribute to an experimental approach in attachment research. The RT analysis with the narrative procedure might be of interest for a broader variety of questions in experimental and neurophysiological settings to capture unconscious processes in association with internal working models of attachment. An electrophysiological model based on preliminary research is proposed for assessing the preconscious neuronal network related to secure or insecure attachment representations.

An encounter between 4e cognition and attachment theory

ABSTRACTThis paper explores a constructive revision of the conceptual underpinnings of Attachment Theory through an encounter with the diverse elements of 4e cognition. Attachment relationships involve the development of preference for one or a few carers and expectations about their availability and responsiveness as a haven of safety and a base from which to explore. In attachment theory, mental representations have been assigned a central organising role in explaining attachment phenomena. The 4e cognition approaches in cognitive science raise a number of questions about the development and interplay of attachment and cognition. These include: (1) the nature of what Bowlby called ‘internal working models of attachment’; (2) the extent to which the infant–carer dyad functions as an extension of the infant's mind; and (3) whether Bowlby's attachment control system concept can be usefully re-framed in enactive terms where traditional cognitivist representations are: (3i) substituted for sensorimotor skill-focused mediating representations; (3ii) viewed as arising from autopoietic living organisms; and/or (3iii) mostly composed from the non-contentful mechanisms of basic minds? A theme that cross-cuts these research questions is how representations for capturing meaning, and structures for adaptive control, are both required to explain the full range of behaviour of interest to Attachment Theory researchers.

Beyond DSM-5 and IQ Scores: Integrating the Four Pillars to Forensic Evaluations

The current adult and child forensic psychiatrist is well trained, familiar, and comfortable with the use of the semi-structured Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, APA 2013 (DSM-5) [In APA, 2003] interview style. The author's assertion is not that this method is invalid or unreliable; rather, that it can be complemented by integrating elements of the defendant's four pillar assessment. Assessing the four pillars expands on the information provided by a semi-structured DSM-5-style interview in psychiatry. The four pillars are the foundation of a person's personality; temperament, cognition (learning abilities or weaknesses), cognitive flexibility (theory of mind) and internal working models of attachment, within the backdrop of the family and of the social and cultural environment in which they have lived. The importance of the study of four pillars is based on the understanding that human behavior and psychopathology as a complex and multifaceted process that includes the level of social-emotional maturity and cognitive abilities (In Delgado et al. Contemporary Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents: Integrating Intersubjectivity and Neuroscience. Springer, Berlin, 2015). The four pillars are not new concepts, rather they had been studied by separate non-clinical disciplines, and had not been integrated to the clinical practice. As far as we know, it wasn't until Delgado et al. (Contemporary Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents: Integrating Intersubjectivity and Neuroscience. Springer, Berlin, 2015) incorporated the four pillars in a user-friendly manner to clinical practice.

Attachment and maternal sensitivity are related to infants' monitoring of animated social interactions.

Infants have been shown to possess remarkable competencies in social understanding. Little is known, however, about the interplay between the quality of infants' social-emotional experiences with their caregivers and social-cognitive processes in infancy. Using eye-tracking we investigated the relation of infant attachment quality and maternal sensitivity with 12-month-old infants' monitoring patterns during the observation of abstractly depicted interactions of a "parent" and a "baby" figure. We found that secure infants focused their attention on the "parent" figure relative to the "baby" figure more than insecure infants when the two figures got separated. Infants with more sensitive mothers focused their attention more on the ongoing behavior of the "parent" figure after the separation than infants with less sensitive mothers when distress of the "baby" figure was implied by accompanying baby crying sounds. Our findings support the notion that early social-emotional experiences with the caregiver are related to social information processing and that these social information processing patterns might be markers of infants' developing internal working models of attachment.

Effects of internal working models of attachment on &lt;cannot be obedient&gt; of caregivers

Effects of internal working models of attachment on &lt;cannot be obedient&gt; of caregivers

Insecure attachment representations and child personal narrative structure: implications for delayed discourse in preschool-age children

The internal working model of attachment has been assessed through attachment interviews and story-stems that exhibit differentiated patterns in adult and child narratives. This study examined variation in length and structure of children’s independent personal narratives by attachment representations, discriminating between insecure-avoidant and insecure-ambivalent, and we tested attachment insecurity as a predictor of developmental delay in narrative discourse. Sixty-five preschool-age children completed the Attachment Story Completion Task-Revised and recalled three recent past events. Secure children told longer personal narratives than both avoidant and ambivalent children, and secure children’s narrative structure was more coherent than that of ambivalent children but not avoidant children. Likewise, the two insecure categories differentially predicted delayed discourse. Ambivalent children were 10 times more likely to exhibit delayed discourse than secure children, whereas avoidant children were not at significantly greater risk. Differential developmental outcomes of avoidant and ambivalent children are discussed and conclusions are drawn about the role of child attachment in storing, accessing and communicating memories about everyday lived experiences.

回避型依恋风格记忆加工的认知–情绪特点

依恋的内部工作模式是一个认知/情感性的组织，个体的依恋风格在这两个系统的转变中起到了非常重要的作用，有研究表明这两个系统处于动态平衡的状态，但很容易受压力因素的影响。回避型个体在压力状态下更容易引发抑郁、焦虑，为了避免依恋系统的激活，他们会抑制依恋相关信息的加工，表现出情绪表征的特异性；在认知加工中回避型个体则采用“自上而下”的去激活策略抑制对依恋相关负性信息的记忆加工，导致了回避型个体的非精细编码和提取失败，这需要认知努力。说明去激活策略在构建和维持回避型个体的防御性心理系统上有很大的作用。未来研究可从依恋启动、记忆加工的神经机制，以及内隐记忆等角度进行进一步探讨。 Attachment style plays an important role between the transition of the cognitive and affective or-ganization in the internal working models of attachment. Studies have shown that these two sys-tems are in a state of dynamic balance, but they are easily affected by stress factors. Avoidant indi-viduals who are under stress are more likely to be depressed and anxious. In order to avoid the activation of attachment system, they will inhibit the processing of attachment-related information, exhibiting specificity of emotional representation. In addition, avoidant individuals show controlled “top-down” suppressing manner in cognitive level to memory of attachment-related negative information, which results in rough coding and extracting failure. More researches are needed to focus on the effects of attachment activation, mechanism of encoding and retrieving with neurophysiologic methods, and implicit memory.

Reflective functioning moderates the association between perceptions of parental neglect and attachment in adolescence.

Preliminary evidence suggests that reflective functioning (RF), or the ability to understand that mental states underlie behavior in the self and others (also called mentalizing), appears to be a protective factor against the development of psychopathology among adults who have experienced early abuse and neglect. The associations among early adverse experiences, RF, and attachment security have yet to be examined in adolescence. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether RF moderates the link between early neglect from primary caregivers and insecure attachment in adolescents. Specifically, in this study the authors test the hypothesis that neglect is less strongly associated with insecure attachment among adolescents with high RF. Seventy-nine adolescents (39 male) recruited from a community research center completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Three sets of independent raters scored the AAI for inferred parental neglect, attachment classification, and RF, respectively. The results of a binary logistic regression revealed that RF moderated the association between neglect and attachment: Neglect was only associated with insecure attachment among adolescents with low to moderate RF. The results of the study have the potential to inform our understanding of the evolution of the internal working model of attachment and mentalization during adolescence.