Poster #131 - Adult Attachment Predicting Maternal Sensitivity: Role of Maternal Causal Attributions

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Attachment, according to Bowlby (1985) is a lifelong construct that guides thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in relationships, and he predicted parental caregiving is influenced through a parent’s own attachment experiences and representations. Bowlby extensively discussed behavior in terms of robust interacting behavioral systems, and proposed that cognitive representations affect all future interactions with others. Infant crying is the main form of communication from newborns, and is considered an early attachment behavior (Bell & Ainsworth,1972). Infant crying is known to be demanding and stressful for mothers, and may strain effortful regulatory resources, limiting the social cognitive ability to organize and respond to situations (Leerkes, 2010). We test the extent to which mothers’ states of mind with respect to attachment predict their causal attributions about crying, which in turn predict maternal sensitivity. We hypothesized that dismissing and preoccupied states of mind would be associated with more minimizing and negative causal attributions and less situational/emotional causal attributions about infant crying, which in turn would predict lower maternal sensitivity.

Mothers (n= 195; 50% African American and 50% European American) and their infants (50% female) participated. Expectant mothers completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) during their third trimester of pregnancy. Two continuous scores, reflecting dismissing and preoccupied states of mind, were created using procedures outlined by Haltigan, et al., 2014. When infants were 6 months old, mothers rated the extent to which they agreed with 18 causal attributions about why their infant was crying, yielding 3 measures: negative attributions (baby is spoiled and crying on purpose), minimizing attributions, (baby in a bad mood), and situation/emotional attributions (baby is upset by situation) (Leerkes & Siepak, 2006). Maternal sensitivity was rated during fear and frustration eliciting tasks when infants were 1 and 2 years of age; these were averaged.

Results of the path model are summarized in Figure 1. Dismissing and preoccupied states of mind were associated with more negative maternal attributions about infant crying, and negative attributions were associated with lower maternal sensitivity at 1 and 2 years of age. Both dismissing and preoccupied AAI had an indirect effect on maternal sensitivity at 1 and 2 years through negative attributions at 6 months (B= -.05, CI= [-.42, -.03]; B= -.06, CI= [-.13, -.01] respectively, p < .05). In addition, both dismissing and preoccupied states of mind were directly negatively associated with maternal sensitivity.
Minimizing and situational/emotional attributions were not significantly associated with adult attachment of maternal sensitivity.

In sum, mothers with dismissing and preoccupied AAI classifications are more likely to misinterpret infant crying, making negative causal attributions about crying, even in situations that are clearly upsetting. This negative interpretation bias then contributes to less sensitive caregiving. Thus, biased social information processing is one mechanism that explains the well-documented association between adult attachment and maternal sensitivity. That the direct effects were apparent over and above social cognitions indicates other mechanisms play a role in explaining the association between adult attachment and sensitivity as well.

Authors

• Pamela Linton Norcross, UNCG
  Presenting Author

• Esther Leerkes, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
  Non-Presenting Author