C; ATTACHMENT RESEARCH

1.17. The predictions of attachment theory

Central to attachment theory is the notion that early relationship experiences exert an important influence upon development. Correspondingly, much o f the attachment research has been devoted to documenting the developmental sequelae o f infant-parent attachment patterns. The security o f a child’s attachment to his mother in infancy has been correlated with future child behaviours at every point o f development for which longitudinal data exists. The available data as o f 1995 extend fi*om the first year o f life to adolescence. Developmental correlates o f attachment security now include fiustration tolerance, developmental quotient, interactions with peers, fiiends and siblings; relations with strange adults, teachers and parents; language corcpetence, ego resihence, behaviour problems, exploration o f a novel environment and play competence. Particular attention is paid here to the Minnesota study, headed by Alan Sroufe, which was one o f the first to illustrate the predictive capacity o f

infant-mother attachment, and has continued to be a key contributor this area o f research.

1.18. The predictive validity of early attachment patterns

The data from Sroufe and his colleagues’ ongoing longitudinal study provide some o f the most striking evidence for the view that early infant-mother attachment is predictive o f children’s cognitive and social development in future years. In one o f their early reports on a sanq)le o f 48 children, Matas, Arend & Sroufe (1978) found that two-year-old children who had been classified as securely attached at 12 months, and/or 18 months, approached simple tool-using tasks with more confidence than their peers who had previously been coded as anxiously attached. When challenged with more difficult tool-using tasks, the children with secure histories were more likely to enhst their mother’s help in order to achieve a solution. The two-year-olds who had previously been coded as anxiously resistant, were frustrated, wbiny and negativistic, regardless o f vriiether they were trying to solve the ‘easy’ or ‘difficult’ problems. Their counterparts, who had been classified as anxiously avoidant, sought Httle help from their mothers even when unable to find a solution on their own. As Bretherton (1985) has pointed out, this study suggests that confidence in the mother’s physical and psychological availabihty (together with an expectation that if needed, help is not far away) seems to constitute the foundation for autonomous exploration. This would in^ly that trait- Hke quahties such as attention span and persistence may in some ways be a result o f security or insecurity existing in the early infant-mother attachment relationship.

Several studies by the same group o f researchers have found correlations between Strange Situation classifications and later social functioning in preschool children (aged three to five years). This evidence points to a strong correlation with peers and teachers independent o f mother’s presence. Children classified as securely attached to their mothers

at 12 or 18 months were rated higher on positive afifect and lower on negative affect by their pre-school teachers (Sroufe, Schork, Motti, Lawroski & LaFreniere, 1984). This group o f children were also rated more empathie and comphant than their peers who had been coded insecurely attached at one year (LaFreniere & Sroufe, 1985; Waters, Wippman & Sroufe, 1979). Independent coders, blind to previous and current assessments o f the children, provided reliable and revealing data on the patterns o f teacher-child interactions for 40 children. For example, teachers treated children with secure histories in a matter-of-fact yet warm fashion, exercising little control but expecting compliance with instructions, and generally expecting autonomy and maturity from them Conversely, in their interactions with children o f anxious histories, teachers behaved in a more authoritarian way. They would repeat and intensify directives even before the children had a chance to reply; their anger was almost exclusively directed towards the avoidant group, while ratings o f nurturance and tolerance for immature behaviour were highest for the resistant group. Another element o f social functioning in these children was examined by Pancake (1985), who reports that children with secure histories had friendships which both observers and teachers described as “deeper and less likely to be tinged with hostility”.

Findings concerning differences in play between peers who exhibited optimal or non- optimal attachment patterns at 12 and 18 months have also been reported (Sroufe, 1983). Children classified as resistant on the basis o f their reunion behaviour in the Strange Situation showed ineptness in their transactions with peers, whereas the children classified as avoidant tended to be hostile or distant. A recent report (Troy & Sroufe, 1989) examined in detail an e?q)loitative aspect o f preschoolers’ social relations that they term ‘Victimization”. This data showed that children with histories o f secure attachment, according to naive observers’ ratings, neither victimized playmates nor became the object o f victimization. In sharp

contrast, children with avoidant histories were quite likely to victimize either other children with avoidant histories, or children with resistant histories. Victimization occurred m each o f five play-pairs observed Wiere the avoidant pattern was combined with either the avoidant or the resistant pattern. It was conspicuously absent from the interactions observed in the other 14 play-pairs.

Although this review o f the developmental sequelae o f infant-parent attachment has been necessarily selective, there can be httle doubt that indices o f attachment security in mfency and early childhood are related to a wide variety o f developmental ‘outcomes’. Even though the data do not by any means chronicle causal processes and are open to a variety o f interpretations (effects o f early attachment, ten^erament, continuity in environment), it should be abundantly clear that attachment theory and the measurement o f individual differences in attachment security has generated a huge hterature with many provocative findings.