Attachment patterns and emotion regulation strategies in the second year

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Abstract

With the aim of studying the relationship between methods of emotion regulation and quality of attachment we examined 39 infants with different patterns of attachment, of whom 20 were classified as secure (B), 12 as avoidant (A) and 7 as resistant (C), assessing the regulatory strategies adopted by them during the Strange Situation at 13 months. Secure infants used strategies of positive social engagement more than insecure avoidant infants, while resistant infants displayed greater negative social engagement and less object orientation than the other two groups. Avoidant infants adopted positive and negative hetero-regulatory strategies less than the other groups, also differing from resistant infants in their greater use of object regulatory strategies. There were no significant differences as regards self-comforting regulation. Thus, the findings showed how the most significant differences to emerge between the groups concerned hetero-regulatory strategies, developed by the infant in interaction with attachment figures, and regulatory strategies oriented towards objects. Further analysis showed how the use by part of each attachment group of the emotion regulation strategies varies, differentiating the episodes of the SSP according to their level of stress.

Research highlights

▶ Secure infants used positive social engagement more than avoidant infants. ▶ Resistant infants used more negative social engagement and less object orientation. ▶ Avoidant infants adopted hetero-regulatory strategies less than the other groups. ▶ Avoidant infants adopted object regulatory strategies more than resistant infants.

Introduction

It is well-known that emotion regulation is an important objective for the socio-emotional development of an infant (Bridges and Grolnick, 1995, Calkins, 1994, Sroufe, 1995, Tronick, 1989, Tronick, 2007). Although conceptualizations of emotion regulation may differ (Campos et al., 2004, Cole et al., 2004, Eisenberg and Spinrad, 2004, Gross and Thompson, 2007, Thompson, 1994), many authors agree in considering it a mix of “physiological, behavioral and cognitive processes that enables individuals to modulate the experience and the expression of positive and negative emotions” (Bridges, Denham, & Ganiban, 2004, p. 340; Cole, Michel, & Teti, 1994). This skill allows an individual to adapt in interacting with the environment (Calkins and Hill, 2007, Campos et al., 2004) making it possible to maintain behavioral organization in the face of high levels of tension, not simply concerning the regulation of negative emotions, but leading more broadly to “initiation and maintenance of emotional states, both positive and negative” (Bridges et al., 2004, p. 344). As is well-known this regulatory capacity develops within the ambit of the attachment relations which the infant experiences in his first years (Cassidy, 1994, Sroufe, 1995), as these relations can be considered specific methods of social regulation of the emotions (Coan, 2008).

A common approach to studies into emotion regulation in early infancy was to identify the behavioral strategies adopted by the infant to regulate his emotions. Various researchers (Braungart-Rieker et al., 1998, Buss and Goldsmith, 1998, Mangelsdorf et al., 1995, Tronick, 1989) demonstrated the presence of regulatory strategies in the first year of life, subdivided into self-regulatory strategies, such as those centred on looking away and on self-comforting, and hetero-regulatory strategies, such as protesting, crying or attracting the attention of the adult with a look or a smile, aimed at mobilizing the regulatory intervention of the caregiver. Tronick, in studies conducted through the Still Face Paradigm (Cohn and Tronick, 1983, Gianino and Tronick, 1988), demonstrated that from the age of 3 months infants adopt early skills for self-regulation of the emotions when confronted by inexpressiveness of the mother's face. Of these, one of the earliest appears to be that of looking away from the stressful stimulus. Other early skills are those of self-comforting by sucking or manipulating parts of the body (e.g. finger and hand in the mouth, touching the hair, ears, etc.).

Other studies have analyzed the development of regulatory strategies in the first years. Of these, that of Bridges and Grolnick (1995) shows how regulatory strategies centred on looking away and self-comforting are present from 2 to 4 months and then decrease at the end of the first year, a period in which hetero-regulatory strategies aimed at using the caregiver as a regulator become more important (Kopp, 1989). Such strategies, which some authors call parent-focused emotion regulation strategies (Diener, Mangelsdorf, McHale, & Frosch, 2002), manifest themselves through the emotional communication which the infant uses with the adult in order to mobilize a response with the aim of obtaining regulation of his/her emotional states. Of these Weinberg and Tronick (1994) distinguish strategies centred on positive social engagement in which the infant smiles, looks at the mother and makes positive vocalization and those centred on negative engagement, such as active protest, in which the infant cries, distances him/herself from the mother, exhibiting anger, and withdrawal, in which the infant appears sad and looks away from the mother, whining. Through such methods of communication, which are frequently expressed through a combination of facial expression, tone of voice, look and gestures (Weinberg & Tronick, 1994), the infant communicates his/her emotional state to the caregiver in order to obtain support in modulating his/her emotions. The caregiver responds by attuning to the infant and acting as regulator of such states. In the same period the strategies which the infant adopts to actively redirect (self-distraction) his/her attention to the environment and objects with respect to stressful stimuli (Kopp, 1989) become important in concomitance with the development of the system of executive attention (Sheese, Rothbart, Posner, White, & Fraundorf, 2008).

According to these studies during the second year the infant appears to have different emotion regulation strategies which may be sub-divided into three groups: the first group centred on physical self-comforting, the second on hetero-regulation through the adult, the third on self-distraction through orientation to the environment (Grolnick et al., 1996, Mangelsdorf et al., 1995). At the end of the second year such strategies become more complex thanks to the infant's increasing symbolic and cognitive skills. Of these, the significant skills are the use of the transitional object, symbolic play and self-talk, which the infant may use to calm himself, for example when the mother is absent (Feldman, 2007a). Regulatory strategies thus developed are organized in a hierarchical system in which the earliest regulatory behavior, such as self-comforting, already present in the first months, remains into adult life (Bridges & Grolnick, 1995). At the same time hetero-regulatory strategies used by the infant appear to remain important in the course of development, with the result that flexible alternating between self-regulation and dyadic co-regulation of the emotions, based on the use of the other (a friend, a partner, etc.) as a regulator, characterizes adulthood (Coan, 2008, Diamond and Aspinwall, 2003).

Many researchers agree that the development of emotion regulation depends both on the infant's individual, neurobiological and temperamental characteristics, and on his/her relational resources in the first years, as well as on the interaction of these variables (Calkins and Hill, 2007, Crockenberg and Leerkes, 2004, Kopp, 1989, Mangelsdorf et al., 1995, Propper and Moore, 2006, Rothbart, 1994, Schore, 2001, Thompson, 1994). The regulatory skills which he/she originally possesses must, in fact, interact with the regulatory functions which the parent is called on to perform in order to fully develop. On the basis of the communication of the infant, who requests help from the parent in modulating his/her emotion, the parent attunes to him and helps to regulate his/her emotional states, both positive and negative (Stern, 1999, Tronick, 2004). Thus, during the first 2 years, a system of dyadic regulation is created whose characteristics depend both on the infant's early regulatory skills and the scaffolding function effected by the caregiver, aimed at promoting in the infant the development of more mature regulatory skills through the internalization of the caregivers’ regulation strategies (Sroufe, 1995, Tronick, 2007).

On the other hand dysregulation in the mother–infant system may be present early on, when excessive regulation on the part of the mother may lead to problems in the infant's development of his/her self-regulatory skills. Failure on the part of the mother to regulate may, on the other hand, promote in the infant excessive self-regulation to the detriment of hetero-regulation (Beebe et al., 2000). Furthermore the mother's inability to regulate the negative emotions of the infant and to help him maintain organization of positive emotions during the first year may be predictive of disorganized attachment on the part of the infant (Lyons-Ruth, 2003). The regulatory strategies which the infant develops in interaction with the mother appear in fact to influence his subsequent attachment patterns (Beebe et al., 2010, Evans and Porter, 2009, Feldman, 2007a, Feldman, 2007b). The research of Braungart-Rieker (Braungart-Rieker, Garwood, Powers, & Wang, 2001) also shows how the various self- and hetero-regulatory strategies adopted by the infant during the Still Face Paradigm at 4 months are effective predictors of the type of attachment which the infant will demonstrate to the mother at 12 months. Koulomzin (Koulomzin et al., 2002) in her study also showed how infants assessed as insecure avoidant at 12 months use regulatory strategies when interacting with the mother centred on self-comforting (hand, finger in mouth, etc.) in order to remain focused on the mother's face more than secure infants at 4 months.

The development of emotion regulation has also been the subject of privileged study in attachment research. Main, 1995, Main, 2000 in her writings hypothesized that attachment patterns may be considered as both adaptive and defensive strategies (working defensive strategies) adopted by the infant in the face of the emotional availability demonstrated to him/her by attachment figures. According to this hypothesis, secure attachment denotes good adaptation of the infant to the emotional availability demonstrated by the mother with respect to the entire range of his/her emotions; insecure attachment patterns, on the other hand, imply an alteration in the attentive and emotional states of the infant with regard to his/her attachment relations.

From this perspective different attachment patterns imply specific styles of communication and emotion regulation which the infant constructs in relation to an attachment figure, adapting himself to the latter's availability and ability to regulate emotions (Cassidy, 1994, Cassidy and Kobak, 1988, Fonagy et al., 2002, Kobak and Sceery, 1988, Mikulincer et al., 2003, Pierrehumbert, 2002, Zimmermann, 1999). In this regard, secure attachment corresponds to the ability of the infant to openly communicate each emotion, both positive and negative, to a caregiver perceived as emotionally available. On the contrary, insecure avoidant attachment seems to imply the partial de-activation of the attachment system and reduction in the expression of negative emotions, through the infant shifting his/her attention from the non-responsive and rejecting parent to the surrounding environment, with the aim of defending himself against the feelings of anger activated by maternal rejection (Ainsworth et al., 1978, Main, 1995, Main, 2000). It needs to be remembered in this regard that, in the course of the Strange Situation, the absence of displayed negative emotions in avoidant infants – who do not express stress in the episodes of separation from the mother and ignore her in the episodes of reunion – is inconsistent with the results of physiological measurements taken during this procedure. During the experiment avoidant infants display strong activation as shown by an increase in the cardiac rate – see the seminal study of Sroufe (Sroufe & Waters, 1977) – and a high cortisol level (Spangler & Grossmann, 1993). It may, therefore, be hypothesized that the avoidant infant has learnt not to express to the mother negative emotions connected to separation, having had experience of her rejecting his/her attachment signals during the first year, albeit feeling such emotions as is demonstrated by physiological activation (Main, 1995, Main, 2000).

Insecure resistant attachment appears, for its part, to be based on maximization of the attachment system through the infant's hyper-vigilance and emphasizing the expression of negative emotions with respect to an unpredictably non-responsive parent in order to attract their intermittent attention and availability, resulting in disinvestment in the surrounding environment (Cassidy and Berlin, 1994, Main, 1995, Main, 2000).

From the end of the second year the dyadic regulation which substantiates attachment bonds makes room for the formation of individual styles of emotion regulation, strongly influenced by the quality of previous dyadic forms (Siegel, 2001, Sroufe, 1995). Strategies of expression and regulation of the emotions which are thus formed in connection with different attachment patterns tend to remain stable in the course of development. Various research has demonstrated in this regard that a restriction in the expression of the negative emotions linked to insecure avoidant attachment patterns, seen at 12 months, tends to stabilize leading in the pre-school and school age infant to a restriction in the expression of negative emotions (anger and sadness) to his interlocutors (Grossmann & Grossmann, 1991). The different attachment models therefore appear to regulate the systems of expression of basic emotions by the infant, organizing their trajectory of development as shown by Kochanska (2001). The latter demonstrated how the expression of some primary emotions in infants with different attachment patterns differed significantly in the course of development, particularly with regard to the difference between positive and negative emotions. Other studies conducted with pre-adolescents (Kerns, Abraham, Schlegelmilch, & Morgan, 2007) and adolescents (Kobak et al., 1993, Kobak and Sceery, 1988) show the continuation of the relationship between attachment models and styles of regulation and expression of the emotions. At the same time, the studies currently available on adult attachment show how, even in adult subjects, different styles of emotion regulation are associated with different attachment models (Magai, 1999, Mikulincer et al., 2003, Shaver and Mikulincer, 2002). According to these studies, a number conducted with the priming paradigm with the aim of evoking stressful situations with respect to attachment, avoidant subjects minimize expression of negative emotions, inhibiting worries about attachment, and do not activate representations of attachment figures in this condition; in the same conditions resistant subjects maximize the expression of negative emotions and worries and the memory of negative events; secure subjects are able to express the unease felt by evoking representations of available attachment figures. These researchers hypothesize that insecure adult subjects adopt hyper-activation strategies (resistant) or deactivation strategies (avoidant) with respect to the regulation of emotions similar to those strategies identified by Main, 1995, Main, 2000, Cassidy (1994) and Dozier and Kobak (1992) for infants assessed with the Strange Situation as avoidant insecure and resistant insecure. Such strategies, centred on the restriction of information relating to attachment experiences and emotions, have a defensive function allowing the infant to maintain the attachment bond with the caregiver, despite the partial emotional unavailability of the latter (Main, 1995, Main, 2000). From this perspective avoidant infants partially deactivate attachment signals directed at the mother, experienced previously as rejecting, in order to maintain the relationship with her. In the same way, insecure resistant infants maximize their attachment signals in order to activate maternal responsiveness, experienced as unreliable in previous interaction.

The study of emotion regulation strategies linked to different attachment patterns is therefore an important theme in the analysis of the socio-emotional and relational development of the child. However, only a few empirical research studies have examined this link in the first stages of development. These include that of Braungart and Stifter (1991) which highlights a number of particularities in the regulatory strategies used by infants with different attachment patterns during the Strange Situation. The research shows up the prevalence in secure infants (B3 and B4) of regulatory strategies used both with people and objects, the prevalence in avoidant infants of self-comforting behavior and object orientation and finally the prevalence in resistant infants of a more limited repertory of regulatory strategies, with fewer strategies centred on objects. The research of Diener (Diener et al., 2002) also demonstrated the existence of significant differences in styles of emotion regulation used by insecure infants and secure infants with the father but not with the mother. According to this research, avoidant infants favor self-regulatory behavior or behavior oriented to the environment, while resistant infants seem to use multiple strategies, both self-regulatory and oriented towards objects and caregivers; finally, secure infants seem to display a greater tendency to use hetero-regulatory than self-regulatory strategies. In the cited studies hetero-regulatory strategies used with an adult are not differentiated according to whether the infant communicates with the adult through the expression of positive or negative emotions. Another study (Volling, McElwain, Notaro, & Herrera, 2002) found significant association for father–infant secure attachment, but none for mother–infant secure attachment, with respect to the ability of the infant to regulate negative emotions and to keep attention focused on objects in a stressful situation.

To sum up, given that strategies of emotion regulation linked to attachment patterns seem to have a strong impact on subsequent infant socio-emotional and relational development, it would be of particular interest to study in more depth than previous research the relationship between attachment patterns and strategies of emotion regulation in the first stage of its structuring. Another useful question, not examined in previous studies, would be to examine the possible different strategies of hetero-regulation which the infant adopts with the adult, based on the expression of positive or negative emotions. The operationalization of this difference – as noted by Cassidy (1999) – could be important given that the various attachment patterns seem to be correlated to different ways of expressing emotions: the avoidant way aims to minimize the expression of emotions, in particular negative emotions, the resistant way based on the maximization of negative emotions and finally the secure way which can express both according to context.

Bearing in mind the above, the main aim of our study was to identify any differences in emotion regulation strategies adopted within the ambit of the Strange Situation by 13 months infants classified as secure, insecure resistant and insecure avoidant with respect to the mother. We considered the use of this experimental condition to be of especial interest as it is particularly suitable for showing emotion regulation strategies. In fact it consists of averagely stressful episodes connected to different factors, presence/absence of the mother, appearance of a stranger, newness of the environment, which can elicit specific emotion regulation strategies.

In relation to this aim and based on previous findings we therefore posited the following main questions: (1) How do the attachment groups differ with respect to hetero-regulatory strategies based on positive and negative engagement? On the basis of previous findings we hypothesized that avoidant infants would use adult-focused positive and negative hetero-regulatory strategies less than other groups and that resistant infants would use adult-focused negative hetero-regulatory strategies more than other groups; (2) How do the three groups differ with respect to orientation towards objects? We hypothesized that avoidant infants and secure infants would use object regulatory strategies more than resistant infants. We then asked, in an exploratory fashion as we do not have unequivocal findings in this regard: (3) How do attachment groups differ in their display of self-regulatory strategies and particularly in self-comforting strategies? (4) How do the emotion regulation strategies used by the different attachment groups vary with respect to the different level of stress involved in the episodes of the Strange Situation, divided into three groups; episodes of pre-separation with low level of stress, episodes of separation with high level of stress, episodes of reunion with an intermediate level of stress?

Section snippets

Participants

The infants in this study are part of a longitudinal study which examined the relationship between maternal and infant attachment and the styles of interaction and emotion regulation of both from infant age 3–24 months (Riva Crugnola, 2007, Riva Crugnola et al., 2009). The 39 mother–baby dyads were recruited at infant age 3 months at the beginning of a program organized by a service of a Milan hospital to follow infants during their first year; the service was intended for mothers of infants

Results

The data relating to categories and not to individual sub-categories was analyzed.

Two types of analysis were carried out. The first compared the activation of regulatory strategies of the 3 groups considering the Strange Situation in its entirety. The second examined the variation of regulation strategies within each group according to the type of episode. For this second series of analyses we put the 7 episodes into three groups: episodes of pre-separation (episodes 2, 3), with a low level of

Discussion and conclusion

The results show specific differences in the emotion regulation strategies used by the infants during the Strange Situation Procedure according to the quality of their attachment to their mother.

On the basis of the available data we may first of all observe that the differences between the three groups of attachment are constituted by both positive and negative hetero-regulatory emotion regulation strategies and by those based on orientation towards objects. The self-regulatory strategies such

Acknowledgements

This study was financed by the University of Milano-Bicocca (Fondi FAR 2008). We would like to thank Professor Carlo Lenti for allowing data relating to this research project to be collected at the Infant Neuropsychiatry Unit of the San Paolo Hospital of Milano and Laura Boati and Margherita Moioli for collecting the data.

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