The attachment of prematurely born children at school age: A pilot study

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Validity of the School-age Assessment of Attachment for moderate-risk, rural early adolescents

Kidwell

Sizemore

Jin

et al. 2015

“…The finding regarding risk versus non-risk was replicated by Kwako, Noll, Putnam, and Trickett (2010) on an American sample; Crittenden, Robson, and Tooby (this issue) on a British sample; and Nuccini, Paterlini, Gargano, and Landini (this issue) on an Italian sample. Strikingly, the greatest differences were not in protective attachment strategy, but rather in depression and unresolved trauma.…”

Section: Validating the Saamentioning

confidence: 84%

“…They found that conversion disorders were heterogeneous with three types (A, C, and A/C), reflecting different neurobiological processes for coping with stress and requiring different forms of treatment. Nuccini and her colleagues explored the relation of very low birth weight to children’s attachment strategies (Nuccini et al, this issue). They found that low birth weight children used extreme self-protective strategies, particularly feigned helplessness.…”

Section: Validating the Saamentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding children: Assessing school-aged children’s self-protective attachment strategies

Crittenden

2015

School-aged children who present for psychotherapy are often very perplexing. Their symptoms are clear and concerning, but the reasons for the symptoms are obscure. The parents describe the progress of the symptoms, but usually have little understanding of the process that resulted in problems. The children are even less informative and, when the symptoms are quite severe, children's communication may become almost inscrutable. Nevertheless, astute clinicians have often felt the children had a coherent story to tell if we just knew how to listen. The papers presented in this Special Section of Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry (CCPP) describe the process and outcomes of a series of studies exploring the reliability, validity, and utility of the School-aged Assessment of Attachment (SAA). The SAA uses children's narratives about threats that school-aged children fear (and sometimes experience) and the self-protective attachment strategies that they organize to protect and comfort themselves. Clinicians need an assessment that discriminates within the group of risk children and does so by adding to what is already known (as opposed to corroborating the known risk/non-risk status of the child). Furthermore, the new information must have implications for more precise treatment than would have been offered without the assessment. This is the issue of utility. Researchers need an assessment with construct validity (as opposed to the face validity of calling it "attachment") and reliability among coders. Children need an assessment that engages them in ways that are suitable for their age and development, and that addresses their concerns. However, the two best validated assessments of attachment (the Ainsworth Strange Situation and George/Main Adult Attachment Interview) are inappropriate for school-aged children. Short separations do not elicit attachment strategies in school-aged children and Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)-style questions, aimed at integrating early and current events with their implications for the self in the present, are beyond children's maturational capacity. Although a number of approaches have been offered for the school years, none has yet achieved wide acceptance, nor has any been validated sufficiently to justify such acceptance. Constructing a developmentally attuned and clinically informative assessment Attachment and school-aged children's development In infancy, attachment is person-specific, that is, the attachment between an infant and a specific parent. By adulthood, attachment can be integrated to a generalized pattern that adults use in many 588650C CP0010.

Section: B the Studies By Dmm Researchers Produced Many Clinically Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prematurity: Prematurely born children used risk protective attachment strategies, thus suggesting their interpersonal needs and adding to the validity of the SAA as a risk-sensitive assessment (Nuccini et al, 2015). Cultural context: Community and national contexts that contained danger adversely affected children's developmental experience.…”

Section: Special Risk Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

CCPP’s contribution to the maturing of the DMM

Crittenden

2020

Over a decade, CCPP published many articles, a special issue and two special sections that enabled the DMM to become established as an alternative to both attachment disorganization and psychiatric diagnoses. New clinical authors from many countries contributed to an empirical set of assessment validity studies and findings regarding troubled and highrisk children and families. The outcome was a validated life-span series of assessments of attachment, a coherent body of important clinical findings, especially regarding school-aged children, and family functional formulations as laying the basis for DMM Integrative Treatment.