Middle Childhood Attachment From a Cognitive Perspective: The role of interpretation processing biases

Over the years, attachment theory has demonstrated its importance for understanding relationships between children and caregivers and the impact of such relationships on future adjustment. Attachment experiences are stored in the Internal Working Model (IWM). Children who receive consistent responsive care are likely to develop a secure IWM. In contrast, those who lack responsive caregivers, most likely develop an insecure IWM. Recent research has proposed that the IWM consists, at least partly, of a cognitive script about (lack of) caregivers’ secure base support in times of distress (Secure Base Script; SBS). Furthermore, research has demonstrated that the SBS is associated with information processing biases in attention and memory for attachment-related information. The current dissertation aimed to expand these novel insights by investigating (1) the extent to which children’s interpretations of attachment-related information are biased based on their self-reported expectations of trust in maternal support, (2) the extent to which this attachment-related interpretation bias is linked with externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors, (3) the extent to which attachment-related interpretation bias has an impact on the content of attachment-related expectations and representations. These questions were investigated in four studies. Results showed that (1) children with less trust in maternal support also had more insecure interpretations about ambiguous maternal behavior, even after controlling for depressive mood. Furthermore, (2) this insecure attachment-related interpretation bias interacted with children’s temperament and parenting in the explanation of childhood problem behaviors. Children with a difficult temperament, who had less responsive mothers, and an insecure attachment-related interpretation bias, demonstrated significantly more problem behaviors. Next, in order to examine the causal role of attachment-related interpretation bias in the attachment system, a novel training paradigm was developed that allowed the manipulation of attachment-related interpretation bias. Results showed that (3) the training successfully changed attachment-related interpretation bias, which in turn affected children’s self-reported expectations of trust in maternal support. Furthermore, (4) it was found that the training also affected the recollection of attachment-related memories, but not secure base script knowledge. In other words, attachment-related interpretation bias appears to causally influence both attachment expectations and representations. In all, these findings provide support for the relevance of attachment-related interpretation bias in the attachment system and suggest that attachment-related processing biases might be important mechanisms behind attachment-related developmental outcomes and attachment (in)stability.status: publishe