Attachment in early life course

6 important questions on Attachment in early life course

Legacy of attachment security across childhood

- Associations between security and peer competence and internalizing symptoms don’t vary according to age of outcome assessment - Association between attachment and externalizing problems increased with age - Significance of early security for children’s socioemotional adaptation doesn’t wane from infancy to early adolescence

When was association between insecurity and externalizing symptomatology stronger

When either child or parent had been disnosed with psychiatric disorder
- children's sex also an important moderation
stronger association for boys

- socioeconomic did not moderate

- early insecurity places boys and children from clinical populations at heightened risk for externalizing problems

Developmental signifance of early avoidant, resistant and disorganized attachments

- All patterns of insecurity might undermine social competence

- Early avoidant, resistant, and disorganized attachments negatively associated with peer competence

- Each pattern of insecurity associated comparably with less peer competence

- Avoidance associated with externalizing and internalizing problems
- Resistance not associated with either symptom domain -

Significance of disorganization restricted to externalizing domain

- Association between insecurity and negative temperament primarily due to resistant attachment
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What are the limits in assessing infant attachment

- Factor structure of infant attachment as assessed by strange situation may be best reflected by two weakly correlated factors of attachment-related avoidance and resistance (disorganization

 Limited by reliance on a few scales that weren’t designed with psychometric modeling in mind or to capture all relevant aspects of attachment behavior - All studies on attachment and internalizing symptomatology used parent and teacher reports of symptoms -> difficult to report on such symptoms - Most studies haven’t used measures sensitive to changes such as developmental changes in peer relationships.

What are other mechanisms proposed to explain associations between attachment and later outcomes

- Social information processing

- Emotional reactivity and regulation

- Continuity in caregiving

- Neurobiological systems involved in regulating stress

What did the meta analyses provides looking at the claims of attachment theory

Meta analyses provide evidence consistent with claims of attachment theory that attachment security is not determined by infants' temperamental characteristics and have long term significance for children's socioemotional development

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

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