The Sydney Family Development Project: A Longitudinal Study of Children's Emotional Development in the First Three Years of Life

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy A. Ungerer ◽  
Brent Waters ◽  
Bryanne Barnett ◽  
Robyn Dolby ◽  
Rachelle Bouffard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Emotional Development ◽  
Coping Styles ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Family Development ◽  
Personal Distress ◽  
Infant Attachment ◽  
Attachment Quality

ABSTRACTA longitudinal study of early emotional development is in progress in Sydney, and preliminary results from the first three years of the study are reported. Antenatal assessment of parental personality, interpersonal relationships, and parental expectations identified different habitual ways of managing negative affect. Thus far, postnatal assessment of a subsample of the infants has differentiated emotion regulation at 4 months and empathy and mother-infant attachment quality at 12 months. Coping styles to manage emotionallly distressing or challenging situations showed individual differerences. Some 4-month-old infants used an immature strategy to cope with the stress of a non-responsive mother in the Still-Face Procedure, withdrawing and engaging in arousal-containing behaviours. At 12 months of age, these infants also tended to respond with immature personal distress reactions to a videotape of a distressed peer and to demonstrate insecure attachment. Assessment of coping behaviour at 30 months in a semistructured play situation aims to determine whether earlier continuity of withdrawal and emotionall containment versus engagement and emotional coping is maintained.

Attachment Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Watson
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Parent Attachment ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Attachment Relationships ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mary Ainsworth

The origins of attachment theory and the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth are described. Four types of child–parent attachment relationships—secure, insecure/anxious, insecure/ambivalent, and insecure/disorganized—are outlined along with the ways each type might manifest itself in the classroom. A longitudinal study, conducted by Alan Sroufe and his colleagues, of the development and effects on learning and interpersonal relationships of different child–parent attachment relationships is described. Teachers too have a history of attachment relationships that can affect how they relate to their students. The chapter describes adult attachment and how one’s attachment history might, positively or negatively, affect one’s ability to build positive, nurturing relationships with students. Specific examples of ways teachers can offset the negative effects of a student’s or their own history of insecure attachment are described.

Attachment Theory and Brief Psychotherapy: Applying Current Research to Clinical Interventions

1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 369-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm West ◽  
Adreenne Sheldon ◽  
Linda Redtfer
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Clinical Intervention ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Brief Psychotherapy ◽  
Attachment Figure ◽  
Attachment Relationships ◽  
Attachment Research ◽  
Representational Model ◽  
The Individual

Recent advances in attachment research provide a framework for defining the content and process of brief psychotherapy with adults. Attachment theory emphasizes a number of issues crucial to therapeutic work. Specifically, attachment relationships are enduring components of a individual's pattern of interpersonal behaviours. Functionally, attachment relationships address security needs. Insecure attachment arises from a representational model based on feared loss of the attachment figure, which predisposes the individual to have little confidence in the attachment figure's availability, responsiveness, and permanence. Behavioural responses to insecure attachment can lead to specific patterns of interpersonal relationships which, in turn, strengthen the representational model. Thus, a relatively stable, self-reinforcing system evolves and results in a consistent inability to experience security within attachment relationships. In this article, the authors describe the current framework for understanding adult attachment relationships and present clinical vignettes illustrating the saliency of attachment theory to common clinical presentations. The goal of the clinical intervention is defined as increasing the “permeability” of the individual's working model of attachment through affective and cognitive re-assessment of attachment experiences and expectations. Finally, the utility of this approach in evaluating the outcome and effectiveness of psychotherapy is highlighted.

scholarly journals The Impact of Secure Attachment on Interpersonal Relationship: A Review

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oladiti Olawale
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Interpersonal Relationship ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Psychological Interventions ◽  
Secure Attachment ◽  
Family Crisis ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
The Impact ◽  
To Receive

Attachment has been defined as the psychological bond between a growing child and a caregiver. It is a relationship that develops over a period of time between a child and the caregiver, or any other significant person in the life of a child. It is characterized by intimacy, warmth, and continuity thus eventually becoming the hallmark of all other relationships in the life of a human being. Research has shown that when children experienced secure attachment during their early stages of development in life, they are likely to develop capabilities in exploring the world of interpersonal relationships. Some of the factors that contribute to the diminishing of attachment between children and their caregivers include modernism and post-modernism, family crisis, disability in the life of the mother, death of the caregiver and the scourge of debilitating sicknesses and diseases which incapacitate caregivers. And so it is not uncommon to find individuals who experienced insecure attachment in their childhood having difficulties in their interpersonal relationship as adults. Some of the manifestations of interpersonal relationship difficulty and insecure attachment include low self-esteem, anxiety, inability to trust others, unwillingness to receive help from others, dependence syndrome, aggression, and feeling unloved, among others. However, with timely and appropriate psychological interventions, some of these challenges can be overcome although more research is encouraged in the area of attachment especially in Asia and Africa.

Major depression as a predictor of the intergenerational transmission of attachment security: Findings from a pregnancy cohort study

2021 ◽  
pp. 000486742110607
Author(s):  
Megan Galbally ◽  
Stuart J Watson ◽  
Anne Tharner ◽  
Maartje Luijk ◽  
Gaynor Blankley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Major Depression ◽  
Adult Attachment ◽  
Attachment Security ◽  
Maternal Sensitivity ◽  
Adult Attachment Interview ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Parent Attachment ◽  
Strange Situation ◽  
Infant Attachment ◽  
Strange Situation Procedure

Objective: Understanding the relationship between attachment and mental health has an important role in informing management of perinatal mental disorders and for infant mental health. It has been suggested that experiences of attachment are transmitted from one generation to the next. Maternal sensitivity has been proposed as a mediator, although findings have not been as strong as hypothesised. A meta-analysis suggested that this intergenerational transmission of attachment may vary across populations with lower concordance between parent and infant attachment classifications in clinical compared to community samples. However, no previous study has examined major depression and adult attachment in pregnancy as predictors of infant–parent attachment classification at 12 months postpartum. Methods: Data were obtained on 52 first-time mothers recruited in early pregnancy, which included 22 women who met diagnostic criteria for current major depression using the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The Adult Attachment Interview was also administered before 20 weeks of pregnancy. A history of early trauma was measured using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and maternal sensitivity was measured at 6 months postpartum using the observational measure of the Emotional Availability Scales. Infant–parent attachment was measured using the Strange Situation Procedure at 12 months. Results: Overall, we found no significant association between the Adult Attachment Interview and the Strange Situation Procedure classifications. However, a combination of maternal non-autonomous attachment on the Adult Attachment Interview and major depression was a significant predictor of insecure attachment on the Strange Situation Procedure. We did not find that maternal sensitivity mediated parental and infant attachment security in this sample. Conclusion: While previous meta-analyses identified lower concordance in clinical samples, our findings suggest women with major depression and non-autonomous attachment have a greater concordance with insecure attachment on the Strange Situation Procedure. These findings can guide future research and suggest a focus on depression in pregnancy may be important for subsequent infant attachment.

The Depressive Position in Normal Emotional Development

2016 ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Donald W. Winnicott
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Emotional Development ◽  
Depressive Mood ◽  
Oedipus Complex ◽  
Depressive Position ◽  
Healthy Infants ◽  
Weaning Age ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Individual

This paper is Winnicott’s account of the Depressive Position as a normal stage in the development of healthy infants, an achievement mostly belonging to the weaning age. It does not mean healthy infants pass through a stage of depression. Emotionally unhealthy, depersonalized babies lack the preconditions for this achievement. The mother holds the situation in time, so that the baby may experience ‘excited’ relationships and meet the consequences. Integration in the child’s mind of the split between the child-care environment and the exciting environment (the two aspects of mother) depends on good-enough mothering and the mother’s survival. The baby experiences this while the mother is holding the situation and the infant realizes that the ‘quiet’ mother was involved in the full tide of instinctual experience, and has survived. Instinctual experience brings anxiety and guilt but clinically children are sometimes without a sense of guilt, although they can go on to develop it. In the inner world of the individual who has achieved the depressive position there is on balance a reduced depressive mood and their reaction to loss is grief, or sadness. Where there is some degree of failure at the depressive position the result of loss is depression. The child who has reached the depressive position can get on with the problem of triangular interpersonal relationships: the classical Oedipus complex.

scholarly journals Izvori stresa kod odgojiteljica predškolske djece i njihove osobine ličnosti

Sigurnost ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-310
Author(s):  
Joško Sindik ◽  
Žana Pavlović
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Emotional Competence ◽  
Coping Styles ◽  
Measurement Instruments ◽  
Coping With Stress ◽  
Dispositional Coping ◽  
Experience Of Stress ◽  
Children’S Behaviour

SUMMARY: The interaction of the personalities of teachers (including her/his disposition coping skills) and social, physical and technical environment contributes to the experience of stress at work, as well as the daily operation of teachers and the quality of their relationship with children. The aim of this study was to examine the possibility of forecasting the general perceived stress and sources of stress based on criteria describing teachers' personality traits (optimism/pessimism, emotional competence, self-efficacy), seniority and variables of dispositional and situational style of coping with stress. The study included 336 preschool teachers in Split-Dalmatia County. Multiple measurement instruments were used: scale for the assessment of stressfulness, optimism-pessimism scale, general self-efficacy scale, social desirability scale, emotional competence questionnaire EUK-15, questionnaire on coping styles in stressful situations, and questionnaire on coping with stressful situations. Results show that the statistically significant predictors for two criteria, general experience of stress and interpersonal relationships as sources of stress, are work experience and dispositional coping with stress, focused on emotions. Statistically significant predictors for the criteria covering relationships with parents, children's behaviour and working conditions as sources of stress are self-efficacy and dispositional coping focused on emotions. These findings could help design and improve programs that aim to prevent stress, but also promote adoption of effective strategies for situational coping with stress, along with developing the skills of social interaction.

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