Maternal sensitivity during infancy and subsequent life events relate to attachment representation at early adulthood.

A prospective longitudinal research study of 86 prematurely born children from birth to age 18 years provided empirical evidence for continuity from infancy experience to representations of attachment at age 18 years. Young adults whose representation of attachment was dismissing had been objectively observed during infancy, 16-17 years earlier, to receive less sensitive maternal care than those infants who were later judged at early adulthood to have secure or preoccupied representations. Infancy experience alone did not differentiate young adults with secure representations from those with preoccupied representations. Rather, adverse life events through age 12, particularly parental divorce, reduced the likelihood of secure representations and increased the likelihood of preoccupied representations. The absence of adverse life events did not increase the likelihood of security for those who had not experienced early sensitive caregiving.     

母亲积极养育行为对儿童顺从行为的早期预测与双向作用:从婴儿到学步儿

顺从是儿童早期重要的社会化成就。传统理论关注父母控制策略对顺从的作用,但实证结果表明其解释率有限;当前理论更加关注积极养育行为在顺从发展中具有发展适宜性的作用机制。本研究采用追踪设计考察了84个家庭从儿童6个月到3岁时母亲的敏感性和鼓励自主两种积极养育行为与学步儿顺从发展的关系。结果表明:(1)1岁前母亲敏感性对学步儿2岁时的合作性顺从有正向预测作用,对2岁到3岁合作性顺从的变化没有预测作用;(2)1岁前母亲敏感性对学步儿2岁时的情境性顺从和2岁到3岁的情境性顺从的变化均有负向预测作用;(3)在2岁到3岁期间,母亲的鼓励自主与学步儿的合作性顺从水平有双向正向预测作用,但与情境性顺从不存在双向预测关系。     

Trajectory of Adolescent Obesity: Exploring the Impact of Prenatal to Childhood Experiences

This study examined longitudinal associations of prenatal exposures as well as childhood familial experiences with obesity status from ages 10 to 18. Hierarchical generalized linear modeling was applied to examine 5,156 adolescents from the child sample of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Higher maternal weight, maternal smoking during pregnancy, lower maternal education, and lack of infant breastfeeding were contributors to elevated adolescent obesity risk in early adolescence. However, maternal age, high birth weight of child, and maternal annual income exhibited long-lasting impact on obesity risk over time throughout adolescence. Additionally, childhood familial experiences were significantly related to risk of adolescent obesity. Appropriate use of family rules in the home and parental engagement in children’s daily activities lowered adolescent obesity risk, but excessive television viewing heightened adolescent obesity risk. Implementation of consistent family rules and parental engagement may benefit adolescents at risk for obesity.     

Maternal and paternal parenting during adolescence: forecasting early adult psychosocial adjustment

This study investigated the relationship of maternal and paternal parenting behavior (acceptance and firm control) during adolescence to four domains of early adult functioning (internalizing problems, externalizing problems, prosocial competence, and cognitive competence). Twenty-one females and 29 males from intact families, along with their mothers and fathers, participated. Assessments were conducted in adolescence and early adulthood, separated by approximately five and one-half years. Higher levels of maternal firm control during adolescence were associated with more secure early adult romantic attachment and lower levels of educational achievement. There were no main effects for fathers, but paternal parenting behavior interacted with maternal parenting behavior to predict both early adult romantic attachment and delinquency. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Examining Maternal Elaborative Reminiscing as a Protective Factor in the Intergenerational Transmission of Psychopathology

Most research examining the impact of early parental depression on the developing child has focused on the nature of parenting practices observed in depressed adults. Maternal elaborative reminiscing, or the extent to which mothers elaboratively discuss past shared experiences with their children, has a considerable influence on children’s emotional and social development and is understudied within the context of maternal depression. The current study is the first to examine whether maternal elaborative reminiscing in middle childhood mediates the association between exposure to maternal depressive symptoms in infancy and later internalizing and externalizing problems. The study included 206 mother–child dyads recruited from the community who participated in a prospective longitudinal study. Maternal depressive symptoms were assessed when offspring were 6-months old. At 5-years old, dyads were observed during a free play task to measure sensitive and harsh-intrusive parenting and during a reminiscing task to measure maternal elaboration. Teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing problems were collected at age 7. A saturated path model revealed that maternal elaborative reminiscing, but not sensitive or harsh-intrusive parenting, fully mediated the association between maternal depression in infancy and externalizing, but not internalizing, problems. Reduced maternal elaboration during parent–child reminiscing constitutes one way in which risk from early maternal depression is associated with later externalizing problems.

     

Early attachment quality moderates eating disorder risk among adolescent girls

Objective: There is growing evidence that children’s early relational environment has lasting implications for physical and mental health. In this paper, we test whether attachment insecurity in early childhood is associated with increased responsivity to risk factors for eating disorders (EDs; e.g. pubertal weight gain, maternal negative affect) during adolescence.

Design: Hypotheses were tested with longitudinal data from 447 girls (final mean age?=?15.1?years) over a 12-year period. Tests of direct effects, moderation and moderated mediation were conducted using nested structural equation models and bootstrapped estimates of direct and indirect effects.

Results: Early attachment quality was not directly associated with disordered eating attitudes and behaviours (DEABs), but did moderate relations between adolescent ED risk factors and DEABs. Specifically, among girls with an insecure attachment history, higher BMI at age 15 directly predicted more DEABs, while maternal negative affect and pubertal weight gain indirectly predicted DEABs via greater preoccupation with parental relationships. These same direct and indirect paths did not emerge among adolescent girls with a secure attachment history.

Conclusion: Results delineate one way early attachment quality may contribute to EDs among some adolescent girls, and support recent efforts to incorporate relational components into obesity and ED prevention programmes.     

God Attachment,Mother Attachment,and Father Attachment in Early and Middle Adolescence

The present study examined the interplay of attachment to God, attachment to mother, and attachment to father with respect to adjustment (hope, self-esteem, depression) for 130 early and 106 middle adolescents in Singapore. Results showed that the parental attachments were generally linked (in expected directions) to adjustment. God attachment, however, had unique results. At the bivariate level, God attachment was only linked to early adolescents’ self-esteem. When considered together with parental attachments (including interactions), God attachment did not emerge as the key moderator in attachment interactions and yielded some unexpected results (e.g., being positively linked to depression). These results are discussed viz-a-viz the secure base and safe haven functions that God and parental attachments may play during adolescence.     

Origins of adolescents’ earliest memories

ABSTRACT

This prospective longitudinal study traced changes and individual differences in childhood amnesia over adolescence. A sample of 58 adolescents were followed from age 1-1/2 to age 16 years across 8 timepoints. At ages 12 (n?=?46) and 16 (n?=?51), adolescents completed an early memory interview. Early childhood measures included children’s self-awareness, attachment security, nonverbal memory, verbal memory, language, theory of mind, narrative, and the early reminiscing environment (mothers’ elaborative reminiscing). Adolescents continued to forget their earliest memories over adolescence, such that the age of first memory increased from 40 to 52 months from ages 12 to 16. The sole unique contributor to individual differences in age of earliest memory at both 12 and 16 years was mothers’ elaborative reminiscing, with adolescents recalling earlier memories if their mothers had reminisced more elaboratively with them during early childhood. At age 16, the role of maternal reminiscing was moderated by self-awareness at age 1-1/2. Mothers’ elaborative reminiscing mattered for the age of adolescents’ earliest memories only for children who showed lower levels of self-awareness as toddlers. This pattern suggests a buffering effect for the role of maternal reminiscing in children’s earliest memories, and supports integrated theories of childhood amnesia.     

Maternal depression and children's attachment representations during the preschool years

This longitudinal study aimed to investigate the impact of chronic and transient maternal depression on children's attachment representations at 4 years of age measured with the Attachment Story Completion Task ( Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990 ). The impact of concurrent maternal depressive symptoms was also considered. A secondary aim was to investigate the continuity of attachment classification at 15 months with child attachment representations at 4 years. Children of mothers who were concurrently depressed were more likely to have attachment representations characterized by uncontained physical aggression. In contrast, there were no significant relationships between exposure to prior chronic maternal depression and children's attachment representations at 4 years, nor were there any significant relationships between behavioural assessments of attachment during infancy and later representational assessments. Findings are discussed in the context of caregiving behaviours that may foster secure attachment relationships and influence a child's social‐emotional development, limitations of representational measures, as well as poor attachment stability.     

Early life predictors of callous-unemotional and psychopathic traits

Psychopathy is a disorder that occurs primarily in males. Offenders with psychopathic traits are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in society, particularly violent crime. Early childhood is a time when individual differences in empathy and guilt—key indicators of the construct of psychopathy—are first evident. A growing number of longitudinal studies have begun to investigate how factors in infancy and early childhood predict psychopathic-like traits in later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. These studies have suggested that parenting styles during infancy (parental sensitivity, maternal harsh intrusion, commenting on the emotional state of the child) as well as attachment styles are predictive of later psychopathic-like traits. In addition, child characteristics such as temperament and the functioning of biological systems such as the autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis are predictive. Overall, studies have suggested that at least some of the origins of psychopathic traits are present in infancy and early childhood, which is consistent with the perspective of psychopathy as a neurodevelopmental disorder. A recent evolutionary-developmental model provides hypotheses regarding how psychopathy may develop and why it is more common in males than females. This model, and its implications for intervention, is discussed in the context of the longitudinal studies that have been conducted on psychopathy.     

Maternal sensitivity and language in early childhood: a test of the transactional model

This study examined the relation between mothers' sensitive responsiveness to their children and the children's expressive language skills during early childhood. Reciprocal effects were tested with dyads of mothers and their children participating in the National Institute of Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. Sensitive maternal interactions positively affected children's later expressive language in the second and third years of life. Although maternal sensitivity predicted later language skills in children, children's language did not affect later maternal sensitivity as indicated in a structural equation model. These results do not support the 1975 transactional model of child development of Sameroff and Chandler. A consistent pattern of sensitivity throughout infancy and early childhood indicates the importance of fostering maternal sensitivity in infancy for prevention or remediation of expressive language problems in young children.     

From Parent to Child to Parent…: Paths In and Out of Problem Behavior

This study used data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to examine relations between parenting, self-control and externalizing behavior from early childhood to mid-adolescence (N?=?956; 49.9 % male). Results indicated that maternal sensitivity, parental harshness and productive activity are related to externalizing problems but that patterns of relations change from early childhood to middle childhood to adolescence, with evidence suggesting that externalizing behavior influences parenting more than the reverse from middle childhood onward. Self-control measured during early adolescence partially mediated relations between maternal sensitivity and adolescent-reported externalizing behavior. Parental monitoring during adolescence was also related to externalizing behavior at age 15. Monitoring partially mediated the relation between externalizing behavior in early adolescence and externalizing at age 15.     

Childhood precursors of adolescent drug use: a longitudinal analysis.

Childhood and adolescent intrapersonal and interpersonal influences on older adolescents' drug use were examined with an interactional approach. Data were obtained when subjects were 5-10, 13-18, and 15-20 years old. Latent-variable confirmatory factor analysis was used to determine the fit of the variables to the latent constructs. Next, a structural model was hypothesized and tested to assess the influences of childhood and earlier adolescent factors on later adolescent drug use. Childhood aggression and parental sociopathy affected drug use in late adolescence. Unconventionality during early and middle adolescence had an important and pervasive impact on all aspects of middle and late adolescent functioning. Finally, both intrapersonal and interpersonal factors from childhood and early adolescence affected self-drug use during middle and late adolescence.     

Externalizing problems in fifth grade: relations with productive activity, maternal sensitivity, and harsh parenting from infancy through middle childhood

This study used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to examine relations between parenting, self-control, and externalizing behavior from infancy through 5th grade. Results indicate that self-control measured during middle childhood mediates relations between maternal sensitivity, opportunity for productive activity, and parental harshness and both mother-reported and teacher-reported externalizing behavior. Results showed that parenting measured during middle childhood was more strongly related to 5th-grade externalizing behavior compared with parenting measured during infancy and early childhood. However, there was evidence that parenting during the preschool years was related to 5th-grade externalizing behavior through later parenting and self-control.     

Cognitive Performance in Adolescence: Links With Early Maternal Stimulation and Children’s Anxious Behaviors

Abstract

This study tested a developmental model of cognitive performance in adolescence and explored potential mechanisms explaining the relations of early maternal stimulation and children’s anxious behaviors with adolescents’ cognitive performance. We utilized the NICHD SECCYD dataset (n?=?1,112). Measures included questionnaires, coded observations, and self-report measures from infancy to adolescence. Results revealed that children who experienced greater early maternal stimulation and less anxious behaviors had better cognitive performance at age 15. Children’s English self-efficacy, the quality of child–teacher relationships, and children’s behavioral classroom engagement in middle childhood mediated the relation between early maternal stimulation and adolescent cognitive performance. Identifying pathways from earlier maternal and children’s characteristics to children’s later cognitive performance is an important step toward further understanding why early precursors have a long lasting impact on cognitive performance, and has implications for educational settings.     

情侣依恋与情感投入：性别的调节作用

考察情侣依恋、情感投入和性别之间的关系。结果发现,承诺和满意度与焦虑依恋和逃避依恋相关显著,对两种依恋预测作用显著。性别调节作用仅存在于承诺和满意度与焦虑依恋的关系中:男生的承诺与焦虑依恋关系较强;女生的满意度与焦虑依恋关系较强。承诺和满意度与逃避依恋的关系没有性别差异。焦虑依恋和逃避依恋相对独立。性别对承诺和满意度与焦虑依恋和逃避依恋的关系中有不同调节作用。     

Attachment and the experience and expression of emotions in romantic relationships: a developmental perspective

In this longitudinal study, the authors tested a developmental hypothesis derived from attachment theory and recent empirical findings. Target participants were 78 individuals who have been studied intensively from infancy into their mid-20s. When targets were 20-23 years old, the authors tested the way in which interpersonal experiences at 3 pivotal points in each target's earlier social development--infancy/early childhood, early elementary school, and adolescence--predicted the pattern of positive versus negative emotions experienced with his or her romantic partner. A double-mediation model revealed that targets classified as securely attached at 12 months old were rated as more socially competent during early elementary school by their teachers. Targets' social competence, in turn, forecasted their having more secure relationships with close friends at age 16, which in turn predicted more positive daily emotional experiences in their adult romantic relationships (both self- and partner-reported) and less negative affect in conflict resolution and collaborative tasks with their romantic partners (rated by observers). These results are discussed in terms of attachment theory and how antecedent life experiences may indirectly shape events in current relationships.     

Psychosocial vulnerability from adolescence to adulthood: a prospective study of attachment style differences in relationship functioning and partner choice

Using a prospective research design, this study explored whether attachment style during adolescence forecasts the nature and quality of romantic relationships in early adulthood and investigated two general pathways for explaining these effects. Black and White community residents were first interviewed in adolescence at which time they completed a self-report measure of attachment style. Approximately 6 years later, they participated in a follow-up interview along with their current romantic partners (N = 224 couples). Results revealed that insecure attachment in adolescence was a risk factor for adverse relationship outcomes in adulthood, although the effects were most consistent for avoidant attachment. Avoidant adolescents were involved in relationships that they (and their partners) rated as less satisfying overall; they also engaged in fewer pro-relationship behaviors, and perceived that their partners engaged in fewer pro-relationship behaviors. In addition, avoidant adolescents were involved with partners who had less healthy personality profiles. Results for anxious-ambivalent and secure attachment were weaker, more complex, and moderated by gender. This study provides the first prospective evidence that avoidant attachment places individuals at risk for adverse relationship outcomes and highlights potential pathways through which this occurs.     

Play it again: neural responses to reunion with excluders predicted by attachment patterns

Reunion behavior following stressful separations from caregivers is often considered the single most sensitive clue to infant attachment patterns. Extending these ideas to middle childhood/early adolescence, we examined participants' neural responses to reunion with peers who had previously excluded them. We recorded event‐related potentials among nineteen 11‐ to 15‐year‐old youth previously classified on attachment interviews (11 secure and 8 insecure‐dismissing) while they played a virtual ball‐toss game (Cyberball) with peers that involved fair play, exclusion and reunion phases. Compared to secure participants, dismissing participants displayed a greater increment in the N2 during reunion relative to fair play, a neural marker commonly linked to expectancy violation. These data suggest a greater tendency toward continued expectations of rejection among dismissing children, even after cessation of social exclusion. In turn, the link between self‐reported ostracism distress and neural signs of negative expectancy at reunion was moderated by attachment, such that self‐reports were discordant with the neural index of expectancy violation for dismissing, but not for secure children. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzoRel5c-4s .