Secure Base Scripts and Preschoolers’ Behavioral Adjustment: A Comparison Between the United States and Singapore

• In Event: Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

According to attachment theory, children form mental representations of how social interactions transpire and are organized, based on their early interaction experiences with their primary caregivers (Bowlby, 1988). Similar to cognitive scripts formed around routine events, Waters and Waters (2006) proposed that these representations may be assessed using measures that trigger the secure base script (SBS). Using this approach, past research has shown that preschoolers’ attachment representations are positively related to their social competence (Vaughn et., 2019). However, less is known about whether individual differences in SBS knowledge are linked to children’s behavioral problem outcomes, especially for samples outside of the United States. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated 1) the associations between preschoolers’ SBS and externalizing and internalizing behaviors, and 2) whether these associations are consistent in samples from the United States and Singapore.

The US sample consisted of 86 children (52% girls, M=3.1 years, SD=1.01) while the Singaporean sample consisted of 159 children (49.7% girls, M=4.03 years, SD=1.03). Child SBS knowledge was assessed using the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT; Bretherton et al., 1991) in both samples. Three stories were used (“Spilled Juice”, “Hurt Knee”, and “Monster in the bedroom”), each intended to elicit a narrative germane to the use of caregivers as a secure base. The stories were coded on a 5-point scale, using a revised coding scheme developed by Posada & Waters (2018), where higher scores suggested a greater degree of SBS content. Mothers reported child behaviors on the Behavioral Assessment System for Children (Reynolds, Cecil, Kamphaus & Randy, 2004) in the US, and the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 1.5-5 (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) in Singapore. Subscales for internalizing or externalizing symptoms in children that were common to both measures were analyzed.

Table 1 shows the Pearson correlations between all three ASCT stories in the US and Singapore, where “Spilled Juice” was more weakly correlated to the other two stories in the US sample. It was also noted that “Spilled Juice” appeared qualitatively different as the potential distress in the story was elicited by a possible secure base figure (i.e., mother or father). Taken together, two separate ASCT total scores were computed (with and without “Spilled Juice”) to examine if there were differences in the associations with selected outcomes. For the US sample, both ASCT scores were negatively associated with symptoms of hyperactivity, attention problems, and depression, indicating that children with high SBS scores showed less externalizing and internalizing problematic behaviors. While for the Singaporean sample, both ASCT scores were negatively correlated to symptoms of hyperactivity, whereas ASCT scores without “Spilled Juice” were negatively correlated to symptoms of aggression and attention problems (see Table 2). We discuss the implications of using the ASCT in Singapore, including possible reasons as to why the “Spilled Juice” story may not be appropriate culturally, and the need for contextual adaptations when selecting prompts to assess SBS representations.

Authors

• Kelly MY Chan, National University of Singapore
  Presenting Author

• Geurim Kim, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hoi Shan Cheung, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University
  Non-Presenting Author