Poster #75 - Mother-Child Reminiscing and Preschoolers’ Internal Working Models of Attachment Security among Maltreating and Nonmaltreating Families

• In Event: Poster Session 18

Abstract

Mother-led conversations about emotional experiences with their children (i.e., reminiscing) become a central avenue through which preschoolers refine internal working models of relationships. Mothers who encourage open discussion of emotions and guide children towards successfully resolving negative emotions act as a secure base for emotional exploration and expression. The co-construction of coherent, balanced, and emotionally adequate narratives has been observed, both concurrently and prospectively, as being associated with children’s attachment security among typically developing families.
Child maltreatment disrupts children’s formation of secure attachments. It remains unclear whether individual differences in reminiscing are associated with children’s developing internal working models of attachment security in a similar manner among maltreating versus nonmaltreating families. Because reminiscing is a modifiable behavior, understanding how reminiscing relates to children’s internal working models of attachment among at-risk and maltreating families has theoretical and translational implications. We examined associations between mother-child reminiscing and children’s internal working models of attachment among maltreating and nonmaltreating families.
Participants included 83 nonmaltreated and 165 maltreated 3- to 6-year-olds and their mothers. During a laboratory visit, mothers and children reminisced about times the child felt happy, sad, scared, and angry. In a separate room, children completed the MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB) to assess children’s internal working models of attachment security within the mother-child relationship. Children also completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, which was used to exclude children with PPVT scores less than two standard deviations below the mean given the language-based tasks. The final sample included 231 dyads.
Mother-child reminiscing was coded according to the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue Classification system (Koren-Karie et al., 2003). Dyads were designated as Emotionally Matched or Emotionally Unmatched (k>.76). Emotionally Matched dyads demonstrated patience, engagement, and reciprocity and created narratives that included positive resolution of negative emotions. Emotional Unmatched dyads were disengaged, hostile, and intolerant of emotional expression and created incoherent narratives that lacked focus.
Following Speidel et al. (2022), video recording of the MSSB were coded for maternal competence, attachment security, conflict escalation, avoidance, and behavioral dysregulation (kw/ICCs > .68). A latent class analysis identifying profiles in children’s internal working models suggested a 3-class solution, with profiles interpreted as secure (n=113), insecure dysregulated (n=47), and insecure avoidant (n=71). One “insecure” group was created because cells for our main analysis involving insecure dysregulated profile were too small for statistical analyses.
To examine whether mother-child reminiscing was associated with children’s attachment profiles among maltreating versus nonmaltreating families, a 3-way chi-square test was conducted on a 2(Reminiscing: Emotionally Matched/Unmatched) X 2(Attachment: Secure/Insecure) cross-tabulation layered by maltreatment status. Among nonmaltreating families, the odds of being secure were 5.65 times higher when dyads were Emotionally Matched, X2(1)=12.93,p<.001. Mother-child reminiscing was not statistically associated with children’s security among maltreating families, X2(1)=0.56,p=.45. Given maltreated children were 1.83 times more likely to be in the insecure profile than nonmaltreated children, X2(1)=4.74,p=.03, the findings suggest that maltreatment is a robust predictor of preschoolers’ internal working models of attachment and typical developmental processes associated with children’s developing attachment security are disrupted within maltreating families.

Authors

• Monica Lawson, University of Texas at San Antonio
  Presenting Author

• Ruth Speidel, University of Toronto

• Brigid M Behrens, University of Notre Dame

• Katherine Edler, University of Notre Dame

• Kristin Valentino, University of Notre Dame