Maternal secure-base scripts and children’s attachment security in an adopted sample

Abstract

Studies of families with adopted children are of special interest to attachment theorists because they afford opportunities to probe assumptions of attachment theory with regard to the developmental timing of interactions necessary to form primary attachments and also with regard to effects of shared genes on child attachment quality. In Bowlby's model, attachment-relevant behaviors and interactions are observable from the moment of birth, but for adoptive families, these interactions cannot begin until the child enters the family, sometimes several months or even years post-partum. Furthermore, because adoptive parents and adopted children do not usually share genes by common descent, any correspondence between attachment representations of the parent and secure base behavior of the child must arise as a consequence of dyadic interaction histories. The objectives of this study were to evaluate whether the child's age at the time of adoption or at the time of attachment assessment predicted child attachment security in adoptive families and also whether the adoptive mother's internal attachment representation predicted the child's attachment security. The participants were 106 mother -child dyads selected from the 406 adoptions carried out through the Lisbon Department of Adoption Services over a period of 3 years. The Attachment Behavior Q-Set (AQS; Waters, 1995) was used to assess secure base behavior and an attachment script representation task was used to assess the maternal attachment representations. Neither child's age at the time of adoption, nor age of the child at assessment significantly predicted the AQS security score; however, scores reflecting the presence and quality of maternal secure base scripts did predict AQS security. These findings support the notion that the transmission of attachment security across generations involves mutual exchanges and learning by the child and that the exchanges leading to secure attachment need not begin at birth. These results complement the findings and conceptual arguments offered by Bowlby and Ainsworth concerning the critical influence of maternal representations of attachment to the quality of attachment security in children.

Secure base representations for both fathers and mothers predict children's secure base behavior in a sample of Portuguese families

“…In our data, secure base scriptedness in parent narratives predicted the child's attachment security as characterized by the Attachment Q-set. These results are consistent with a large literature relating adult attachment organization to child attachment security (van IJzendoorn, 1995) and serves as additional evidence (see also Vaughn et al, 2007;Verı´ssimo & Salvaterra, 2006) for the validity of the Attachment Script Representation measure. As with Steele et al, we found that child attachment security was similar across parents and we attempted to probe the sources of this dependency.…”

“…Because no data for the Attachment Script Representation (Waters & RodriguesDoolabh, 2004) have been published to date for fathers, our data served as an opportunity to explore the psychometric attributes of this measure with a sample of fathers and to examine whether the instrument is used by fathers in the same manner that we have found it used by mothers (e.g., Vaughn et al, 2007;Verı´ssimo & Salvaterra, 2006). The data also afford the opportunity to consider previously reported findings regarding similarities of child attachment assessments across parents (i.e., Steele et al, 1996).…”

“…Validity data for the scriptedness scores include significant correlations with the coherence scale from the AAI (e.g., Coppola, Vaughn, Cassibba, & Costantini, 2006;Waters & Rodrigues-Doolabh, 2001), significant associations with classifications from the AAI in an adolescent sample (Dykas et al, 2006), correspondence between maternal secure base script scores and infant Strange Situation classifications (e.g., Tini, Corcoran, Rodrigues-Doolabh, & Waters, 2003), and significant correlations between the scriptedness scores for mothers and Attachment Q-sort security scores (Vaughn et al, 2007;Verı´ssimo & Salvaterra, 2006). In a study of associations among attachment variables and mother-child reminiscences concerning emotionally charged events in the child's life, Bost et al (2006) found that the mother's scriptedness score was positively associated with child participation and with the use of emotion words by both mother and child.…”

Parentalidad Adoptiva Y Problemas De Conducta Infantil

“…Profundizar en estas cuestiones en el contexto "natural" de la adopción permite contar con un entorno único para abordar el efecto de las variables ambientales antes y después de la adopción (Palacios, Román, Moreno y León, 2009;Palacios, Sánchez-Sandoval y León, 2005;Veríssimo y Salvaterra, 2006;Rutter, 2005; entre otros). En este sentido, explorar el papel que juega el nuevo contexto de crianza en la recuperación y ajuste de los niños adoptados adquiere una gran relevancia en el ámbito de la psicología evolutiva.…”

Factores sociodemográficos explicativos del guion de base segura materno

“…La existencia de este prototipo del guion de base segura ha sido empí-ricamente comprobada en diversos países y contextos (Coppola, Vaughn, Cassibba & Costantini, 2006;Rodrigues-Doolabh, Zevallos, Turan & Green, 2003;Verissimo & Salvaterra, 2006;.…”