Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Psychology, Developmental, Psychology, attachment, secure base script, middle childhood, psychopathology, TRANSMISSION GAP, DISORGANIZED ATTACHMENT, EXTERNALIZING BEHAVIOR, INTERNALIZING SYMPTOMS, SCRIPT KNOWLEDGE, ADOLESCENCE, COHERENCE, VALIDITY, LIFE, METAANALYSIS, Adult, Behavior Rating Scale, Belgium, Child, Female, Humans, Intergenerational Relations, Male, Middle Aged, Mother-Child Relations, Object Attachment, United States, 1303 Specialist Studies in Education, 1701 Psychology, 1702 Cognitive Sciences, Developmental & Child Psychology, 3904 Specialist studies in education, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology

Abstract:

Recent work examining the content and organization of attachment representations suggests that 1 way in which we represent the attachment relationship is in the form of a cognitive script. This work has largely focused on early childhood or adolescence/adulthood, leaving a large gap in our understanding of script-like attachment representations in the middle childhood period. We present 2 studies and provide 3 critical pieces of evidence regarding the presence of a script-like representation of the attachment relationship in middle childhood. We present evidence that a middle childhood attachment script assessment tapped a stable underlying script using samples drawn from 2 western cultures, the United States (Study 1) and Belgium (Study 2). We also found evidence suggestive of the intergenerational transmission of secure base script knowledge (Study 1) and relations between secure base script knowledge and symptoms of psychopathology in middle childhood (Study 2). The results from this investigation represent an important downward extension of the secure base script construct.