Negotiation styles in mother—child narrative co-construction in middle childhood: Associations with early attachment

This study examined associations between infant—mother attachment, assessed using Ainsworth's Strange Situation at 12-months, and mother—child narrative co-construction in 110 Israeli mothers and their 71/2 year-old children to examine aspects of Bowlby's (1973) notion of Goal-Corrected Partnerships. Narrative co-constructions were classified into a mutual-balanced style or one of two non-mutual/unbalanced styles of affective negotiation. Dyads with children classified as secure were more likely to be classified as mutual-balanced than dyads with children classified as insecure (ambivalent or disorganized). The latter were likely to be classified into one of the two Non-mutual/Unbalanced classifications (i.e., Disengaged or Overwhelming). Contributions of this study to broadening our understanding of secure-base in the post-infancy years, and for increasing our knowledge about goal-corrected partnerships, are discussed.

Infants' vocal engagement oriented towards mother versus stranger at 3 months and avoidant attachment behavior at 12 months

The aim of the present study was to demonstrate that mother avoidance in infants at the age of 12 months can be predicted by the infants' differential vocal engagement to mother versus a female stranger at the age of 3 months. Differential engagement in favor of the mother was supposed to relate to low future avoidance. The vocal behavior of 26 infants was assessed during face-to-face interactions with their mothers and with a strange woman at the age of 3 months. Differential vocal engagement was measured in terms of the time difference the infants spent vocalizing during eye contact with mother and stranger. At the age of 12 months avoidance of the mother was assessed during the reunion episodes of Ainsworth's Strange Situation. The result confirmed the assumption. Differential engagement in 3-month-olds is discussed as an indicator of the early infant–mother relationship.

Stability of Attachment across Time and Context in a Dutch Sample

Children were observed twice in Ainsworth's Strange Situation to measure the stability of their attachment relationship with the caregiver across 1 mo. To get some insight into the ecological validity of the procedure, the children were randomly divided over four sets of conditions: the home-home, home-lab, lab-home, and lab-lab conditions. The test-retest reliability of the interactive scores was high as was the stability of the classifications. The results of the Strange Situation at home and in the laboratory remain non-comparable.