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The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is a widely used measure in developmental science that assesses adults’ current states of mind regarding early attachment-related experiences with their primary caregivers. The standard system for coding the AAI recommends classifying individuals categorically as having an autonomous, dismissing, preoccupied, or unresolved attachment state of mind. However, previous factor and taxometric analyses suggest that: (a) adults’ attachment states of mind are captured by two weakly correlated factors reflecting adults’ dismissing and preoccupied states of mind and (b) individual differences on these factors are continuously rather than categorically distributed. The current study revisited these suggestions about the latent structure of AAI scales by leveraging individual participant data from 40 studies (N = 3,218), with a particular focus on the controversial observation from prior factor analytic work that indicators of preoccupied states of mind and indicators of unresolved states of mind about loss and trauma loaded on a common factor. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that: (a) a 2-factor model with weakly correlated dismissing and preoccupied factors and (b) a 3-factor model that further distinguished unresolved from preoccupied states of mind were both compatible with the data. The preoccupied and unresolved factors in the 3-factor model were highly correlated. Taxometric analyses suggested that individual differences in dismissing, preoccupied, and unresolved states of mind were more consistent with a continuous than a categorical model. The importance of additional tests of predictive validity of the various models is emphasized.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States have been exacerbated by pre-existing inequities in resources and opportunities, leaving the most vulnerable to face a multitude of hardships. The goal of the current study was to characterise COVID-19-related stressful life events in specific life domains and to identify the sociodemographic characteristics of individuals who are more likely to experience such events. Participants (n = 372, 57% female) in a follow-up study of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development completed the Epidemic-Pandemic Impacts Inventory (June-August 2020) to assess COVID-19-related stressors. Sociodemographic factors (gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and wealth) were examined simultaneously as predictors of the number of stressful life events in separate categories of work/finances, home life, social activity, health and healthcare, adjusted for covariates (household size, community COVID-19 transmission risk). In negative binomial regression analyses, being female (vs. male) predicted a 31%, 64%, 13% and 94% increase in the number of stressful life events in domains of work/finances, home life, social activity and healthcare, respectively, whereas each one standard deviation increase in wealth predicted a 17%, 16% and 21% reduction in the number of stressful life events in domains of work/finances, COVID-19 infection and healthcare, respectively. Findings highlight the pronounced and far-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on women as well as the unique role wealth may play in lessening such impacts. This new knowledge may be leveraged to develop intervention and policy-related strategies to remediate impacts of COVID-19-related stressors on those most vulnerable.

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Attached is the preregistration document.

Ever since Main et al. (1985)’s discovery that parents’ attachment representations are associated with parent-child attachment, the intergenerational transmission of attachment has intrigued researchers across the globe. Research has focused on sensitive caregiver behavior as the mediating mechanism through which a parent’s attachment state of mind expresses itself leading to child-parent attachment, but meta-analytic evidence showed that sensitive responsiveness explained only 25% of the intergenerational association (Van IJzendoorn, 1995; Verhage et al., 2016). Solving this so-called ‘transmission gap’ has been a major focus of the last two decades, but adding mediating variables has not brought the field closer to a solution for closing this gap. A possible explanation is that the mediating pathway may differ between parent-child dyads based on the differential susceptibility hypothesis that children are not all equally susceptible to their rearing environment (Ellis et al., 2011). This hypothesis states that some children are more susceptible to their environment than others based on their genetic make-up or on temperamental characteristics, mostly negative emotionality. Thus, the current study aims to examine the moderating role of individual differences in child negative emotionality in the intergenerational transmission of attachment.

A core premise of attachment theory is that the quality of early care shapes the development and consolidation of later constructed mental representations, which in turn influence mental health (Bowlby, 1973, 1980; Sroufe et al., 2005). Following this premise, this set of pre-registered analyses aims to build on a programmatic line of research (Dagan et al., 2018; Dagan et al., 2021) to investigate the predictive significance of attachment representations in general, and scripted attachment representations (i.e., secure base script knowledge) more specifically, on depressive symptoms in adulthood.

This project contains a document preregistering a research project that uses secondary data.

This project contains a document preregistering a research project that uses secondary data investigating the antecedents of adult attachment representations.

Attachment theorists claim that the quality of parental support is internalized as a mental representation of early relationship experiences. Increasingly, the content of attachment representations is evaluated by studying the extent to which adults demonstrate knowledge of the secure base script during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAIsbs). Preliminary evidence from a high-risk sample showed that AAIsbs was more strongly associated with the quality of antecedent caregiving than was the more traditional approach to the measurement of adult attachment focused on the coherence of adults’ AAI discourse (Waters, et al., 2017). Drawing on new data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we will extend existing findings by estimating how strongly AAIsbs is associated with antecedent observed caregiving and early attachment security relative to more traditional assessments of adult attachment. Exploratory analyses examine the generalizability of these antecedents of AAIsbs, along with the moderating role of family risk.

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Data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) were utilized to provide the first investigation into the early childhood antecedents of dehumanization (i.e., treating another as less than human) in adult romantic relationships. Drawing on a sample of 109 MLSRA participants, multiple assessments of maternal care and empathy were collected during infancy and early childhood. In adulthood, MLSRA participants and their romantic partners engaged in video recorded conflict discussions in which dehumanization perpetration was coded. Maternal hostility was a significant and unique predictor of dehumanization perpetration. This longitudinal association remained even when controlling for the partner’s displays of dehumanization and several demographic covariates. This study provides the first evidence of early childhood antecedents of dehumanization and highlights how experiences during the first few years of life can have enduring downstream consequences for people’s romantic relationships 20–30 years later.

Attachment theory posits that early experiences with caregivers are made portable across development in the form of mental representations of attachment experiences. These representations, the secure base script included, are thought to be stable across time. Here, we present data from two studies. Study 1 (

Waters, Ruiz, and Roisman (2017) recently published evidence based on the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) that sensitive caregiving during childhood is associated with higher levels of secure base script knowledge during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAIsbs). At present, however, little is known about the role of variation in atypical caregiving, including abuse and/or neglect, in explaining individual differences in AAIsbs. This study revisited data from the MLSRA (N = 157) to examine the association between experiencing abuse and/or neglect in the first 17.5 years of life and secure base script knowledge measured at ages 19 and 26 years. Several aspects of abuse and/or neglect experiences were assessed, including perpetrator identity, timing, and type. Regressions revealed that childhood abuse and/or neglect was robustly associated with lower AAIsbs scores in young adulthood, above and beyond previously documented associations with maternal sensitivity and demographic covariates. Follow-up analyses provided evidence that the predictive significance of abuse for secure base script knowledge was specific to perpetration by parental figures, rather than non-caregivers. Exploratory analyses indicated that abuse and/or neglect: (a) in middle childhood and adolescence (but not infancy and early childhood) and (b) physical abuse (but not sexual abuse or neglect) were uniquely associated with lower AAIsbs scores.

The claim that insecure attachment predisposes individuals to anxiety was put forth by attachment theorists more than 45 years ago, yet evidence of this association has produced mixed results. By conducting a series of meta-analyses ( k = 53, N = 4,970), we found that individuals with secure and insecure attachment representations did not differ in their reported anxiety symptoms. However, individuals with preoccupied ( d = 0.35) but not dismissing attachment representations ( d = −0.02) endorsed significantly more anxiety symptoms than secure individuals. Individuals with preoccupied attachment representations also endorsed greater anxiety symptoms than people with dismissing attachment representations ( d = 0.31), and this difference was stronger when assessed in high-risk samples than low-risk samples. Unresolved individuals were more anxious than nonunresolved individuals ( d = 0.29), but exploratory analysis suggested that secondary preoccupied attachment subtype drove this effect. Results highlight the relevance of attachment representations for prevention and intervention efforts targeting anxiety.

Attachment theory and research are drawn upon in many applied settings, including family courts, but misunderstandings are widespread and sometimes result in misapplications. The aim of this consensus statement is, therefore, to enhance understanding, counter misinformation, and steer family-court utilisation of attachment theory in a supportive, evidence-based direction, especially with regard to child protection and child custody decision-making. The article is divided into two parts. In the first, we address problems related to the use of attachment theory and research in family courts, and discuss reasons for these problems. To this end, we examine family court applications of attachment theory in the current context of the best-interest-of-the-child standard, discuss misunderstandings regarding attachment theory, and identify factors that have hindered accurate implementation. In the second part, we provide recommendations for the application of attachment theory and research. To this end, we set out three attachment principles: the child’s need for familiar, non-abusive caregivers; the value of continuity of good-enough care; and the benefits of networks of attachment relationships. We also discuss the suitability of assessments of attachment quality and caregiving behaviour to inform family court decision-making. We conclude that assessments of caregiver behaviour should take center stage. Although there is dissensus among us regarding the use of assessments o attachment quality to inform child custody and child-protection decisions, such assessments are currently most suitable for targeting and directing supportive interventions. Finally, we provide directions to guide future interdisciplinary research collaboration. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Increasingly, attachment representations are being assessed via secure base script knowledge—the degree to which individuals show awareness of the temporal-causal schema that summarizes the basic features of seeking and receiving effective support from caregivers during times of need. Limited research has assessed the links between secure base script knowledge and aspects of adult functioning or the role that secure base script knowledge may play in accounting for associations between early caregiving quality and adulthood functioning. We used follow-up assessments of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development cohort (N = 585) to examine whether secure base script knowledge as measured by the adolescent version of the Attachment Script Assessment at age 18 years: (a) is associated with later romantic relationship quality (assessed via perceived partner’s warmth and hostility), depressive symptoms, and body mass index (BMI) at age 26 years, and (b) mediates expected associations between the quality of maternal and paternal sensitivity across the first 15 years of life and age-26 outcomes. More access to and elaborated knowledge of the secure base script predicted less extreme hostility with romantic partners, and better emotional and physical health (i.e., fewer depressive symptoms and lower BMI). Moreover, secure base script knowledge mediated links between early maternal and paternal sensitivity and both later romantic partner hostility and depressive symptoms, but not BMI.

The role of early child care experiences on the development of the mother-child attachment relationship has been studied extensively. However, no prospective studies of early child care have addressed how these experiences might be reflected in the content of attachment representations during adolescence and beyond. The goal of this study was to estimate relatively precise associations between child care quality, child care quantity, and type of care in the first 54 months of life and the content of adolescents' attachment representations around age 18 years (N = 857; 51% female; 78% White, non-Hispanic; M income-to-needs ratio = 4.13), leveraging data from the longitudinal NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). We identified a small positive association between the observed quality of early child care (but not quantity or type of care) and secure attachment states of mind as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview (but not the Attachment Script Assessment) at age 18 years that was robust to demographic covariates and observations of maternal and paternal sensitivity during childhood. We observed no significant interactions among child care variables. Associations between early child care experiences and indicators of adolescent attachment were likewise not moderated by maternal sensitivity from infancy to mid-adolescence or by maternal reports of child temperament in early childhood.

Generations of researchers have tested and used attachment theory to understand children’s development. To bring coherence to the expansive set of findings from small-sample studies, the field early on adopted meta-analysis. Nevertheless, gaps in understanding intergenerational transmission of individual differences in attachment continue to exist. We discuss how attachment research has been addressing these challenges by collaborating in formulating questions and pooling data and resources for individual-participant-data meta-analyses. The collaborative model means that sharing hard-won and valuable data goes hand in hand with directly and intensively interacting with a large community of researchers in the initiation phase of research, deliberating on and critically reviewing new hypotheses, and providing access to a large, carefully curated pool of data for testing these hypotheses. Challenges in pooling data are also discussed.

Although abuse and neglect in the early years of life have been reliably linked to poor mental health outcomes in childhood, only a few studies have examined whether the predictive significance of childhood abuse and neglect endures for symptoms of psychopathology into adulthood. Here we examined to what extent prospectively assessed child abuse and neglect is associated with self-reported symptoms of psychopathology measured from ages 23 through 39 years, controlling for early demographic covariates and self-reported symptoms of psychopathology measured at age 16 years. The sample included 140 participants from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation. Participants were 49% female and 69% White/non-Hispanic. At the time of their child's birth, 48% of the mothers were teenagers (M = 20.5 years, SD = 3.74), 65% were single, and 42% had completed less than a high school education. Results indicated that childhood abuse and neglect was robustly associated with symptoms of psychopathology in adulthood. Exploratory analyses focusing on specific parametrizations of abuse/neglect suggested that abuse perpetrated by maternal figures (rather than paternal or nonparental figures) was uniquely associated with high levels of self-reported symptoms of psychopathology in adulthood. We found no evidence that any subtype of abuse and/or neglect or abuse/neglect during any particular phase of development uniquely predicted symptoms of psychopathology after controlling for relevant covariates. These results highlight the long-lasting significance of childhood abuse and neglect for reports of mental health in adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

An unsettled question in attachment theory and research is the extent to which children’s attachment patterns with mothers and fathers jointly predict developmental outcomes. In this study, we used individual participant data meta-analysis to assess whether early attachment networks with mothers and fathers are associated with children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Following a pre-registered protocol, data from 9 studies and 1,097 children (mean age: 28.67 months) with attachment classifications to both mothers and fathers were included in analyses. We used a linear mixed effects analysis to assess differences in children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms as assessed via the average of both maternal and paternal reports based on whether children had two, one, or no insecure (or disorganized) attachments. Results indicated that children with an insecure attachment relationship with one or both parents were at higher risk for elevated internalizing symptomatology compared with children who were securely attached to both parents. Children whose attachment relationships with both parents were classified as disorganized had more externalizing symptoms compared to children with either one or no disorganized attachment relationship with their parents. Across attachment classification networks and symptoms, findings suggest (a) a multiplicative effect when children have insecure or disorganized attachment to both parents, and (b) that mother-child and father-child attachment relationships may not differ in the roles they play in children’s development of internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

Retrospective self-report assessments of adults’ childhood experiences with their parents are widely employed in psychological science, but such assessments are rarely validated against actual parenting experiences measured during childhood. Here, we leveraged prospectively acquired data characterizing mother–child and father–child relationship quality using observations, parent reports, and child reports covering infancy through adolescence. At age 26 years, approximately 800 participants completed a retrospective measure of maternal and paternal emotional availability during childhood. Retrospective reports of childhood emotional availability demonstrated weak convergence with composites reflecting prospectively acquired observations ( R2s = .01–.05) and parent reports ( R2s = .02–.05) of parenting quality. Retrospective parental availability was more strongly associated with prospective assessments of child-reported parenting quality ( R2s = .24–.25). However, potential sources of bias (i.e., depressive symptoms and family closeness and cohesiveness at age 26 years) accounted for more variance in retrospective reports (39%–40%) than did prospective measures (26%), suggesting caution when using retrospective reports of childhood caregiving quality as a proxy for prospective data.

If you have come here in search of the submission requirements at Child Development, this is perhaps not the editorial you are looking for. Consider visiting instead our revised instructions to authors. Nor does this essay simply detail the priorities of the incoming board and the initiatives we will be implementing over the next 6 years, though these are summarized in Table 1. Rather, this editorial was written to articulate clearly the scientific values underlying current plans and policies at the journal in support of publishing the highest quality and highest impact research on child development. I emphasize two interrelated themes: (a) our plans for continuing to emphasize and enhance diversity and inclusion in research on child development and (b) our policies that remove impediments to cumulative developmental science. Discussion focuses primarily on how we are incentivizing efforts to achieve these widely held yet too often neglected goals, taking as its point of departure emerging challenges to a fair and efficient editorial process at the journal. In so doing, I mean to highlight the essential work of continuously cultivating editorial structures that firmly embed in developmental science fundamental scientific values, principles that make it possible for research on child development to flourish in both the best and worst of times.

Contains fulltext : 219590.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Stressful experiences affect biological stress systems, such as the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. Life stress can potentially alter regulation of the HPA axis and has been associated with poorer physical and mental health. Little, however, is known about the relative influence of stressors that are encountered at different developmental periods on acute stress reactions in adulthood. In this study, we explored three models of the influence of stress exposure on cortisol reactivity to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) by leveraging 37 years of longitudinal data in a high-risk birth cohort (N = 112). The cumulative stress model suggests that accumulated stress across the lifespan leads to dysregulated reactivity, whereas the biological embedding model implicates early childhood as a critical period. The sensitization model assumes that dysregulation should only occur when stress is high in both early childhood and concurrently. All of the models predicted altered reactivity, but do not anticipate its exact form. We found support for both cumulative and biological embedding effects. However, when pitted against each other, early life stress predicted more blunted cortisol responses at age 37 over and above cumulative life stress. Additional analyses revealed that stress exposure in middle childhood also predicted more blunted cortisol reactivity. 12 p.

A core premise of attachment theory is that the quality of early care shapes the development and consolidation of later constructed mental representations, which in turn influence mental health (Bowlby, 1973, 1980; Sroufe et al., 2005). Following this premise, this set of pre-registered analyses aims to build on a programmatic line of research (Dagan et al., 2018; Dagan et al., 2020) to investigate the predictive significance of attachment representations in general, and scripted attachment representations (i.e., secure base script knowledge) more specifically, on depressive symptoms in adulthood.

Research suggests that, among other things, attachment representations take the form of a cognitive script. Evidence in support of this perspective suggests that this `secure base script' is learned in the context of early caregiving experiences, stable across time and context in adulthood, and a guide for adult attachment behavior. However, in a field as mature as adult attachment, newer constructs such as secure base script must address the `old wine in a new bottle' critique. This article presents a brief overview of the extant literature on the secure base script and concludes by framing these findings in the larger context of adult attachment research aimed at addressing this critique.

Since the seminal 1992 paper by van IJzendoorn, Sagi, and Lambermon, putting forward the “The multiple caretaker paradox”, relatively little attention has been given to the potential joint effects of the role early attachment network to mother and father play in development. Recently, Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz (2018) have published a paper that attempts to revive this unsettled issue, calling for research on the subject and offering a framework for posing attachment network hypotheses. This Collaboration for Attachment Research Synthesis project attempts to use an Individual Participant Data meta-analyses to test the hypotheses put forward in Dagan and Sagi-Schwartz (2018). Specifically, we test (a) whether the number of secure attachments (0,1, or 2) matter in predicting a range of developmental outcomes, and (b) whether the quality of attachment relationship with one parent contributes more than the other to these outcomes.

Contains fulltext : 214433.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Major life stress often produces a flat diurnal cortisol slope, an indicator of potential long-term health problems. Exposure to stress early in childhood or the accumulation of stress across the life span may be responsible for this pattern. However, the relative impact of life stress at different life stages on diurnal cortisol is unknown. Using a longitudinal sample of adults followed from birth, we examined three models of the effect of stress exposure on diurnal cortisol: the cumulative model, the biological-embedding model, and the sensitization model. As its name implies, the cumulative model focuses on cumulative life stress. In contrast, the biological-embedding model implicates early childhood stress, and the sensitization model posits that current life stress interacts with early life stress to produce flat diurnal cortisol slopes. Our analyses are consistent with the sensitization model, as they indicate that the combination of high stress exposure early in life and high current stress predict flat diurnal cortisol slopes. These novel findings advance understanding of diurnal cortisol patterns and point to avenues for intervention. 9 p.

This study examined the predictive significance of maternal sensitivity in early childhood for electrophysiological responding to and cognitive appraisals of infant crying at midlife in a sample of 73 adults (age = 39 years; 43 females; 58 parents) from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation. When listening to an infant crying, both parents and nonparents who had experienced higher levels of maternal sensitivity in early childhood (between 3 and 42 months of age) exhibited larger changes from rest toward greater relative left (vs. right) frontal EEG activation, reflecting an approach-oriented response to distress. Parents who had experienced greater maternal sensitivity in early childhood also made fewer negative causal attributions about the infant's crying; the association between sensitivity and attributions for infant crying was nonsignificant for nonparents. The current findings demonstrate that experiencing maternal sensitivity during the first 3½ years of life has long-term predictive significance for adults' processing of infant distress signals more than three decades later. (PsycINFO Database Record

This paper serves as an Introduction by the co-editors to a Special Section of Child Development entitled "Meta-analysis and Individual Participant Data Synthesis in Child Development." First, the co-editors emphasize that the work contained in the Special Section was selected to highlight the value of meta-analysis not only for synthesizing study-level published and unpublished data but also as regards its ability to support programmatic, replicable, and cumulative developmental science. Second, the co-editors identify some of the cross-cutting themes of the papers featured in the Special Section, including the value of meta-analysis for summarizing and interrogating the full range of developmental science and in potentially transforming conventional wisdom in given domains along with the importance of recent innovations for improving standard meta-analytic practice-particularly in the context of developmental questions. Emphasized especially are contributions to the Special Section that extend classic meta-analysis to individual participant data synthesis.

Parents' attachment representations and child-parent attachment have been shown to be associated, but these associations vary across populations (Verhage et al., 2016). The current study examined whether ecological factors may explain variability in the strength of intergenerational transmission of attachment, using individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis. Analyses on 4,396 parent-child dyads (58 studies, child age 11-96 months) revealed a combined effect size of r = .29. IPD meta-analyses revealed that effect sizes for the transmission of autonomous-secure representations to secure attachments were weaker under risk conditions and weaker in adolescent parent-child dyads, whereas transmission was stronger for older children. Findings support the ecological constraints hypothesis on attachment transmission. Implications for attachment theory and the use of IPD meta-analysis are discussed.

Previous research suggests that the experience of abuse and neglect in childhood has negative implications for physical health in adulthood. Using data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (N = 115), the present research examined the predictive significance of childhood physical abuse, sexual abuse, and physical/cognitive neglect for multilevel assessments of physical health at midlife (age 37–39 years), including biomarkers of cardiometabolic risk, self-reports of quality of health, and a number of health problems. Analyses revealed that childhood physical/cognitive neglect, but not physical or sexual abuse, predicted all three health outcomes in middle adulthood, even when controlling for demographic risk factors and adult health maintenance behaviors. We discuss possible explanations for the unique significance of neglect in this study and suggest future research that could clarify previous findings regarding the differential impact of different types of abuse and neglect on adult health.

The present study used data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) to investigate how multiple dimensions of childhood abuse and neglect predict romantic relationship functioning in adulthood. Several dimensions of abuse and neglect (any experience, type, chronicity, co-occurrence, and perpetrator) were rated prospectively from birth through age 17.5 years. Multimethod assessments of relational competence and violence in romantic relationships were conducted repeatedly from ages 20 to 32 years. As expected, experiencing childhood abuse and neglect was associated with lower romantic competence and more relational violence in adulthood. Follow-up analyses indicated that lower romantic competence was specifically associated with physical abuse, maternal perpetration, chronicity, and co-occurrence, whereas more relational violence was uniquely associated with nonparental perpetration. We discuss these novel prospective findings in the context of theory and research on antecedents of romantic relationship functioning.

Attachment is a key subfield in the area of parenting and parent-child relationships research. In this brief overview, we summarise what we consider to be the state-of-the-art of attachment research, focusing primarily on the nature and significance of attachment in infancy and early childhood. We review 4 major topics that are central issues in the scientific literature on attachment: (1) the role of the environment in the development of attachment, (2) the intergenerational transmission of patterns of attachment, (3) the stability of attachment patterns through early adulthood, and (4) the role of attachment in adjustment and maladjustment. We conclude by highlighting several critical unresolved issues and priorities for future research.

This paper reports the first large-sample investigation of the maltreatment-related correlates of low-income adolescents’ narratives about their childhood experiences with primary caregivers, as assessed with a modified version of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and based on official reports of abuse and neglect (maltreatedn= 214, nonmaltreatedn= 140;Mage = 16.7 years). Drawing on factor-analytic and taxometric evidence indicating that AAI narratives vary along two state of mind (i.e., dismissing and preoccupied) and two inferred childhood experience (i.e., maternal and paternal) dimensions, here we demonstrate that the experience of maltreatment, particularly when chronic, is associated with increased risk for dismissing and preoccupied states of mind and more negative inferred childhood experiences. Although such maltreatment-related associations were generally not specific to any of the four AAI dimensions, the experience of physical and/or sexual abuse was uniquely associated with preoccupied states of mind and negative inferred paternal experiences even after controlling for the other AAI dimensions. More extensive paternal perpetration of maltreatment also was uniquely related to more negative inferred paternal experiences.

The present report used data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation to investigate the factor structure and childhood abuse and/or neglect related antecedents of adults’ attachment states of mind in a high-risk sample. Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs) were collected when participants were age 26 years (N= 164) and Current Relationship Interviews (CRIs) were collected from participants (N= 116) and their romantic partners when target participants were between ages 20 and 28 years (M= 25.3 years). For both the AAI and the CRI, exploratory factor analyses revealed that (a) attachment state of mind scales loaded on two weakly correlated dimensions reflecting dismissing and preoccupied states of mind and (b) ratings of unresolved discourse loaded on the same factor as indicators of preoccupied states of mind. Experiencing any subtype of abuse and/or neglect, especially during multiple developmental periods, and experiencing multiple subtypes of abuse and/or neglect during childhood were associated with risk for preoccupied (but not dismissing) AAI states of mind regarding childhood relationships with caregivers. Analyses focused on the particular subtypes, and perpetrators indicated that the predictive significance of childhood abuse/neglect for adult's AAI preoccupied states of mind was specific to experiences of abuse (but not neglect) perpetrated by primary caregivers. In addition, experiencing chronic or multiple subtypes of childhood abuse and/or neglect increased risk for dismissing (but not preoccupied) CRI states of mind regarding adult romantic partners.

The proposed pre-registered analyses extend previous work on the links between attachment representations of early caregiving experiences coded via the AAI and romantic relationship quality in adulthood. Specifically, in this study we aim to (a) examine the predictive significance of two AAI-derived attachment representation coding methods at age 18 on romantic relationship adjustment around age 30 years in the subsample of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2005) who participated in the recent age 30 year assessments and were romantically partnered at that time, and (b) compare the magnitude of these associations.

Although teacher-student relationships are assumed to in part reflect early caregiving quality, their social provisions also undergo notable normative change over the course of primary school, shifting from a secure base for social exploration to an instrumental relationship centered on achieving academic goals. This report leveraged prospective, longitudinal data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,306, 52% male, 77% White/non-Hispanic) to investigate whether the association between early caregiving and subsequent teacher-student relationship quality remains stable or diminishes in magnitude over time. Associations between early maternal sensitivity and teacher-student closeness faded from Kindergarten to Grade 6. In contrast, associations between early caregiving and teacher-student conflict endured and were partially accounted for by child externalizing problems.

Background Longitudinal investigations of relatively large typical-risk (e.g., Booth-LaForce & Roisman, 2014) and higher-risk samples (e.g., Raby et al., 2017; Roisman et al., 2017) have produced evidence consistent with the claim that attachment states of mind in adolescence and young adulthood, as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), are associated with the quality of caregiving experienced during childhood. None of these studies, however, has examined whether such associations are consistent across sex and/or race, as would be expected in light of the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory. Methods We examine whether sex or race moderates previously reported links between caregiving and AAI states of mind in two longitudinal studies (pooled N = 1,058) in which caregiving was measured either within (i.e., observed [in]sensitive care) or outside (i.e., childhood maltreatment) of the normative range of caregiving experiences. Results Hierarchical moderated regression analyses in both longitudinal cohorts provided evidence that maternal insensitivity and experiences of maltreatment were prospectively associated with dismissing and preoccupied states of mind in adolescence, as hypothesized. Moreover, these associations were generally comparable in magnitude for African American and White/non-Hispanic participants and were not conditional on participants' biological sex. Conclusions Both maternal insensitivity and the experience of maltreatment increased risk for insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. Moreover, our analyses provided little evidence that either participant race or participant sex assigned at birth moderated these nontrivial associations between measures of the quality of experienced caregiving and insecure attachment states of mind in adolescence. These findings provide support for the sensitivity hypothesis of attachment theory and inform the cultural universality hypothesis of attachment processes.

Increasing evidence suggests that attachment representations take at least two forms: a secure base script and an autobiographical narrative of childhood caregiving experiences. This study presents data from the first 26 years of the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (N = 169), examining the developmental origins of secure base script knowledge in a high-risk sample and testing alternative models of the developmental sequencing of the construction of attachment representations. Results demonstrated that secure base script knowledge was predicted by observations of maternal sensitivity across childhood and adolescence. Furthermore, findings suggest that the construction of a secure base script supports the development of a coherent autobiographical representation of childhood attachment experiences with primary caregivers by early adulthood.