Teachers as a Secure Base: Relationships Among Children’s Behavior and Mental Representation of Attachment and Teacher-Child Interaction

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

Attachment theory underlines the role of primary caregivers as a secure base from which children explore and learn about their surroundings and as a key arena for the development of skills and expectations about interactions and relationships with others. Bowlby (1982) argued that children whose main caregiver is available and responsive to their signals (i.e., a sensitive caregiver) learn to trust that figure. Further, he argued that those children approach their social world with confidence and navigate effectively the obstacles they face by solving them or seeking help from others who could assist them in sorting those challenges. In brief, by participating in secure attachment relationships, children construct secure base representations and become committed to patterns of interaction that are enacted in social exchanges with others. Based on those notions, we investigated whether (1) maternal sensitivity was associated with preschoolers’ secure base behavioral and representational organization, and (2) whether preschoolers’ secure base organization (both representation and behavior) was associated with their behavioral organization when interacting with their teacher at the preschool setting; if that were the case, (3) we would explore the role of children’s attachment representations (i.e., secure base script) as a mediator of that association.

Sixty-seven mothers with their 3.7-year-olds (52% girls) completed all assessments. Mothers’ mean age was 34 years; mean maternal education was 16.66 years. Mean annual house income was $71,960. Mother-child interaction was observed during three visits: a home visit (2 hours) and two park visits (1 hour each). Child secure base behavior (i.e., security) and maternal sensitivity were assessed with the Attachment Behavior Q-set (Waters, 1995) and the Maternal Behavior for Preschoolers Q-set (Posada et al., 2007), respectively. Observers for maternal and child behavior were independent. Children’s secure base script was measured with the MacArthur Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT; Bretherton et al., 1991) at home. The stories in the ASCT (i.e., Spilled Juice, Hurt Knee, and Monster in the Bedroom) intended to bring out narratives relevant to the use of caregivers as a secure base. Children’s narratives were videotaped for later transcription and scored on a five-point scale by trained independent researchers. Scores on the three narratives were composited. Use of teacher as a secure base was assessed with the “Interactions at school Questionnaire" (a = .90) by preschool teachers.

Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. Zero-order correlations indicated that (1) maternal sensitivity was significantly associated with the organization of child secure base behavior and children’s secure base scripts (i.e., representations). (2) Child secure base behavior was significantly related to child use of teacher as a secure base in a preschool setting. However, children’s secure base scripts were not significantly related to the use of teacher as a secure base. Thus, the mediational model was not tested (Table 2). Findings will be discussed in light of the security-competence hypothesis, the relevance of (secure base) behavioral organization, and the discrepancy between behavioral and representational aspects of attachment relationships.

Authors

• Geurim Kim, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Presenting Author

• Muqing Liu, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jill M Trumbell, University of New Hampshire
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Y Anaya, Ounce of Prevention Fund
  Non-Presenting Author

• German E Posada, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Non-Presenting Author