Poster #35 - Middle Childhood Attachment in Japan: Correlations Between 6-Year-Olds' Attachment behaviors and Developmental Skills.

• In Event: Poster Session 16

Abstract

Despite continuous growth in the sheer number of attachment studies world-wide, middle childhood attachment research is still comparatively scarce, especially data from non-Western cultures. While significant contributions to the field in this age group have begun to emerge in highly industrialized Asian countries such as Singapore or Japan (e.g., Behrens et al., 2007, Kondo-Ikemura et al. 2018), the administration of validated measures of attachment by researchers who are well-trained in the West while still fluent or well-versed in the target culture of study is rare. To better understand attachment in non-Western societies, more data, including those collected with user-friendly measures such as questionnaires, are needed.
This study examined the correlates between 6-year-olds’ attachment behaviors and security assessed by the Main-Cassidy Reunion measure, and a series of questionnaire data that the mothers filled out about their child’s developmental skills in four domains. We used the Tsumori Developmental Test Questionnaire, the behavioral outcome questionnaire most commonly utilized in Japan. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of 6-year-olds in Japan that investigated the associations between child attachment behaviors during the reunion procedure, attachment security, and developmental outcomes/skills.
Thirty-two of the original 44 mother-child dyads participated in this longitudinal study (the longitudinal data were previously reported elsewhere). Results are shown in Table 1. For example, within the Main-Cassidy Reunion assessment, 6-year-olds’ Avoidant scores were significantly correlated to Controlling/Disorganized scores, indicating that children who showed Controlling/Disorganized behaviors were more likely to also show Avoidant behaviors. Both Avoidant behaviors and Controlling/Disorganized behaviors were independently, negatively correlated to Security as expected. Avoidant scores were also found to be negatively correlated with overall Developmental skills in total, and more specifically with “Cognitive”, “Social”, and “Language” skills. Controlling/Disorganized scores were negatively correlated to overall Developmental skills, and specifically with “Social” skills. Overall Security scores were correlated with overall Developmental skills as expected, and more specifically with “Social” and “Language” skills.
Despite a reduced sample size, this study makes important contributions to the field because this is the first study in Japan that reports correlations between 6-year-olds’ attachment behaviors exhibited during the lab procedure and their developmental skills in meaningful ways. As stated above, we found that Japanese children who showed Controlling/Disorganized behaviors are more likely to avoid their mothers during the reunion and are unlikely to show affectionate behaviors by approaching or maintaining proximity. Also, children who showed Controlling/Disorganized behaviors toward their mothers during the reunion procedure are more likely to influence their interactive behaviors, perhaps compromising “Social” skills, in other social situations. The findings also confirm the importance of attachment security at six years of age particularly in the domains of “Social” skills as well as “Language” development but evidently not in the “Life-skill” domain that basically assess their self-care skills without relational or social aspects of development.

Authors

• Kiyomi Kondo-Ikemura, Teikyo University
  Presenting Author

• Kazuko Y. Behrens, State University of New York Polytechnic Institue

• Karen M. Jones-Mason, University of California, San Francisco