While well-established attachment measures have been developed for infancy, early childhood, and adulthood, a "measurement gap" has been identified in middle childhood, where behavioral or representational measures are not yet sufficiently robust. This article documents the development of a new measure--the Child Attachment Interview (CAI)--which seeks to bridge this gap. The CAI is a semistructured interview, in which children are invited to describe their relationships with their primary caregivers. The coding system is informed by the Adult Attachment Interview and the Strange Situation Procedure, and produces 4 attachment categories along with a continuous measure of attachment security based on ratings of attachment-related dimensions. The main psychometric properties are presented, including interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, and concurrent and discriminant validities, both for normally developing children and for those referred for mental health treatment. The CAI correlates as expected with other attachment measures and predicts independently collected ratings of social functioning. The findings suggest that the CAI is a reliable, valid, and promising measure of child-parent attachment in middle childhood. Directions for improvements to the coding system are discussed.

Attachment representations in school-age children: The development of the child attachment interview (CAI).

Research has established the quality of attachment as an important correlate and predictor of psychological well-being. Adolescence represents an important transitional period and is associated with considerable changes in psychosocial functioning and centrally in attachment relationships. However, measures of attachment are rarely examined for their psychometric properties in adolescence. In an attempt to address this limitation, the current study reports on the use of the Child Attachment Interview (CAI) in adolescents. Our broad aim was to explore the psychometric properties of the CAI classifications and subscales among adolescents with psychiatric disorder in the United States by (a) evaluating interrater reliability of the CAI, (b) examining the factor structure of the CAI subscales in adolescents, (c) examining relations between CAI classifications and subscales, (d) evaluating concurrent validity by assessing relations between the CAI and established questionnaire-based measures of attachment routinely used in adolescent samples, and (e) evaluating convergent validity by exploring relations between the CAI and parent- and self-reported psychopathology and peer relations. One hundred ninety-four inpatient adolescents were recruited. Analyses revealed adequate interrater agreement and revealed 3 factors that generally mirror those associated with the Adult Attachment Interview. Concurrent and convergent evidence to support the use of CAI attachment classifications and subscale scores in adolescents was provided.

BackgroundTwin studies consistently point to limited genetic influence on attachment security in the infancy period, but no study has examined whether this remains the case in later development. This study presents the findings from a twin study examining the relative importance of genetic and environmental influences on attachment in adolescence.MethodsThe sample included 551 twin pairs aged 15 years recruited from the larger Twins Early Development Study (TEDS). Attachment was assessed using a semistructured interview, the Child Attachment Interview.ResultsWe found robust associations between MZ twins’ scores for Coherence and their overall security of attachment (r = .42, p < .001; kappa = .26, p < .001), but substantially lower associations for DZ twins (r = .20, p = .001; kappa = .09, p = .20), suggesting genetic influence on adolescent attachment (and substantial nonshared environment). Model-fitting analyses confirmed this impression, indicating approximately 40% heritability of attachment and negligible influence of the shared environment.ConclusionsThe results suggest that genes may play an important role in adolescent attachment and point to the potentially distinct aetiological mechanisms involved in individual differences in attachment beyond early childhood.