Attachment Narratives and Behavioral and Emotional Symptoms in an Ethnically Diverse, At-Risk Sample

doi:10.1097/CHI.0b013e31816bff65

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Volume 47, Issue 6, June 2008, Pages 709-718

https://doi.org/10.1097/CHI.0b013e31816bff65 Get rights and content

ABSTRACT

Objective:

To examine the clinical correlates and predictions from attachment narratives in a sample of early school-age children from a high psychosocial risk, ethnically diverse sample.

Method:

A total of 113 children were assessed using the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task, a semistructured assessment of children's attachment representations. Parents and teachers provided data using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Peer nominations of popularity and antisocial behavior were also obtained.

Results:

Significant associations that were modest to moderate in magnitude were obtained between attachment narrative scales indexing security, coherence, and disorganization with multiple indices of children's behavioral and emotional adjustment, prosocial behavior and competence; these associations held across ethnic groups and were independent of psychosocial risk.

Conclusions:

The findings build on and extend support for the use of attachment narrative assessments in the clinical context and demonstrate their applicability and validity across a broad range of ethnicity and social contexts.

Section snippets

ATTACHMENT THEORY MODEL OF ASSESSING NARRATIVES

There are several conceptual strategies for assessing children's social constructions or narratives.⁶ We adopted a strategy based on attachment theory, a clinical-developmental model that has an established and growing prominence in the clinical literature. In brief, the attachment theory model of narratives proposes that children's experiences with caregivers are gradually internalized so that the child develops an internal representation of the caregiver and of the self.⁷ According to the

Sample

Data for the study are based on the Primary Age Learning Skills study, a community-based preventive intervention project for low-income and ethnically diverse families in a large urban setting in England.¹⁶ Data from the pretreatment phase of the study are analyzed in this report. Children were sampled from four primary schools serving one of the most disadvantaged areas in a defined urban region. A two-stage sampling process involved the screening of students in reception and year 1 classes

Preliminary Analyses

There was no evidence that children on whom MCAST data were not available (n = 13) were different from those on whom MCAST data were available (n = 126) on any demographic indicator, including maternal education, income, ethnicity, and eligibility for free school meals; in addition, there were no differences in parent or teacher reports of behavior problems between those with and without MCAST data after adjusting for the number of tests conducted (this was true for both the 13 children on whom

DISCUSSION

The use of attachment theory in clinical settings is increasing, a testament to Bowlby's original clinical aims and the substantial evidence base that has been amassed over decades of rigorous investigation. Attachment theory is now a basis for several clinical interventions23, 24 and attachment theory is seen as a major contributor to clinical decision making in diverse settings, including adoption and foster care and custody and placement considerations.²⁵ Despite the availability of several

Engagement

Engagement: The quality of engagement of the child with the story stem task.

Arousal: The quality of the child's arousal modulation and affect regulation during the introduction of the vignette and generation of distress.

Positive Content

Maternal Responsiveness: The quality of represented responsive and sensitive caregiving in the vignette completion.

Maternal Warmth: The quality of represented maternal warmth during the child's vignette completion.

Child-Reported Assuagement: Child's report of the extent to which

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: The work was funded in part by grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Jacobs Foundation, the Psychiatry Research Trust, and the UK National Academy of Parenting Practitioners.

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NEW RESEARCHAttachment Narratives and Behavioral and Emotional Symptoms in an Ethnically Diverse, At-Risk Sample

ABSTRACT

Objective:

Method:

Results:

Conclusions:

Section snippets

ATTACHMENT THEORY MODEL OF ASSESSING NARRATIVES

Sample

Preliminary Analyses

DISCUSSION

Engagement

Positive Content

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry.

J Exp Child Psychol.

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry.

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry.

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry.

J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry.

Infant Behav Dev.

Open communication and internal working models: their role in the development of attachment relationships

Children's narrative representations of mothers: their development and associations with child and mother adaptation

Child Dev.

Representations of self and other in the narratives of neglected, physically abused, and sexually abused preschoolers

Dev Psychopathol.

Relational schemas and the processing of social information

Psychol Bull.

Internal working models in attachment relationships: a construct revisited

Attachment theory as a framework for understanding sequelae of severe adolescent psychopathology: an 11-year follow-up study

J Consult Clin Psychol.

Generalized and relationship-specific models of social cognition: explaining the overlap and discrepancies

J Child Psychol Psychiatry.

NEW RESEARCH
Attachment Narratives and Behavioral and Emotional Symptoms in an Ethnically Diverse, At-Risk Sample