Poster #145 - Child-Mother Attachment Relationships and Preschoolers’ Social Competence in a Colombian Sample

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - International Section

Integrative Statement

A central hypothesis in attachment theory is concerned with the link between the quality of child-mother relationships and children’s social competence. Indeed, when mothers respond sensitively to children’s signals and communications, children gain social skills that facilitate use of mother as a secure base (i.e., security) and foster smooth social exchanges with others (i.e., social competence; e.g., Fraley et al., 2013; Groh et al, 2014; Raby et al., 2015). Researchers have typically studied either the association between sensitivity and social competence, or the associations between security and social competence. Here, we investigated the associations among the three constructs: quality of mothers’ caregiving (sensitivity), organization of children’s secure base behavior (security), and social competence. We further investigated the extent to which sensitivity and security contribute uniquely to the prediction of social competence during the preschool period. We conducted the study in a cultural context different from that where research is typically done (Western industrialized countries) to test the generalizability of the hypothesis linking attachment relationships to social competence.
Participants were 86 child-mother dyads from different SES sectors in Bogotá, Colombia. Children were 39-48 month-olds, approximately half girls (51.8%). Dyads participated in one 2-hour home visit and two 1.5-hour playground visits. Maternal secure base support was observed in the home and during the second park visit. Child secure base behavior was observed at home and during the first playground visit. Maternal and child behavior were independently reported by trained observers. Maternal caregiving behavior was described with the Maternal Behavior for Preschoolers Q-set (Posada et al., 1998). Children’s behavior during interactions with their mothers was described with the Attachment Behavior Q-Set (Waters, 1995). Observers’ q-descriptions were correlated to criterion sorts of the ideally sensitive mother or secure child, respectively; this resulted in composite sensitivity and security scores for the park and home contexts, as well as general aggregate scores for both mother and child. Preschool teachers provided information about children’s behavior during interactions with peers by completing the social competence subscale (average of 10 items) of the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation scale (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1995). Descriptives can be found in Table 1.
After controlling for covariates (see note Table 1), partial correlational analyses indicate that the variables of interest were significantly related to each other (sensitivity and competence, r = .36, p = .001; sensitivity and security, r = .47, p < .001; and security and competence, r = .26, p = .019). Regression analyses show that sensitivity continues to significantly contribute to the prediction of children’s social competence beyond the contributions of security, whereas security does not contribute unique information to the prediction of competence once sensitivity has been entered in the analyses (see Table 2). Results support the link between child-mother attachment relationships and competence in a different cultural context. Implications of maternal sensitivity for both child security and social competence and the need to disentangle specific mechanisms (e.g., mother-child conversations about how to navigate the peer world) that account for the attachment relationships – competence link will be discussed.

Authors

• German Posada, Purdue University
  Presenting Author

• Sandra Juliana Plata, Universidad Javeriana
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jill M Trumbell, University of New Hampshire
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Anaya, Gonzaga University
  Non-Presenting Author