Does Child Temperament Affect Attachment Transmission? - Testing a Moderated Mediation Model Using IPD Meta-Analysis

• In Event: Attaining greater insight into determinants of parent-child attachment: one (conceptual) model does not fit all

Abstract

Introduction
Ever since Main et al. (1985)’s discovery that parents’ attachment representations are associated with parent-child attachment, the intergenerational transmission of attachment has intrigued researchers across the globe. Research has focused on sensitive caregiver behavior as the mechanism through which attachment may be transmitted to children, but meta-analytic evidence showed that sensitive responsiveness explained only 25% of the association (Van IJzendoorn, 1995; Verhage et al., 2016). Solving this so-called ‘transmission gap’ has been a major focus of the last two decades, but adding mediating variables have not brought the field closer to a solution. A possible explanation is that the mediating pathway may differ between parent-child dyads based on their background characteristics. Several moderators have been found to affect the association between parents’ attachment representations and parent-child attachment, such as high-risk background, teenage parenthood, and age of the children (Verhage et al., 2018). More recently, the impact of high-risk background on the mediational pathways of attachment transmission has been shown as well (Verhage et al., 2019): within high-risk dyads, the association between parental sensitivity and secure attachment was weaker than in low-risk dyads (Figure 1). Based on the differential susceptibility hypothesis that children are not all equally susceptible to their rearing environment (Ellis et al., 2011), the current study aims to extend this moderated mediation model of attachment transmission by including individual differences in child temperament.
Research question
Does negative emotionality in the children affect the association between parental sensitivity and parent-child attachment in the intergenerational transmission of attachment?
Study population
The current study is performed with the Collaboration on Attachment Transmission Synthesis (CATS) dataset (Verhage et al., 2018), in which 61 studies (total N=4,521 parent-child dyads) with data on parental attachment representations and parent-child attachment were collated. The analyses for this research question will be based on a subset of approximately 1,800 parent-child dyads (from 15 studies) for whom additional data on parental sensitivity and child temperament was reported.
Methods
Before conducting the analyses, data on child temperament needed to be harmonized across studies. We did this by comparing the different theoretical dimensions underlying temperament assessments to evaluate whether different operationalizations of temperament could be considered operationalizations of the same underlying construct. We found a common denominator in the dimension of ‘negative emotionality’, which was defined (under different names) similarly in each approach to temperament. We have just finished harmonization of all temperament data in the different studies to a common 7-point scale to be used in the analyses.
Results
As a final step, the same analysis strategy of multilevel moderated mediation modeling as used to determine the moderating effect of risk background (Verhage et al., 2019) will be employed to determine moderation of the mediating pathways by child temperament. We are currently working on the pre-registration document of these analyses, after which these will be carried out.
Knowledge on how children can be differentially affected by the sensitivity of their parents in the development of the attachment relationship may help to tailor support for new parents.

Group Authors

Collaboration on Attachment Transmission Synthesis

Authors

• Marije L. Verhage, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Presenting Author

• Carlo Schuengel, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pasco Fearon, University College London (UCL)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, University College London (UCL)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marian J Bakermans-Kranenburg, ISPA Lisbon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sheri Madigan, University of Calgary (U of C)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Glenn I. Roisman, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mirjam Oosterman, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author