Bowlby's (1982) attachment theory has generated an enormous body of research and conceptual elaborations. Although attachment theory and research propose that attachment security provides a person with many adaptive advantages, during all phases of the life cycle, numerous studies indicate that almost half of the human species can be classified as insecurely attached or insecure with respect to...

OBJECTIVE At times, caregivers make life-and-death decisions for loved ones. Yet very little is known about the factors that make caregivers more or less accurate as surrogate decision makers for their loved ones. Previous research suggests that in low stress situations, individuals with high attachment-related anxiety are attentive to their relationship partners' wishes and concerns, but get o...

Attachment research has shown the emergence of individual differences in the security of infant-mother attachment during the first year of life as well as their importance for later social-emotional development. A biobehavioral perspective may help settle disagreements about the validity and interpretation of 12-month-old infants' different behavioral patterns of attachment assessed by Ainswort...

In this article, we address how and why parent-child attachment is related to anxiety in children. Children who do not form secure attachments to caregivers risk developing anxiety or other internalizing problems. While meta-analyses yield different findings regarding which insecurely attached children are at greatest risk, our recent studies suggest that disorganized children may be most at ri...

This study examined the association between insecure attachment, behavioral inhibition, and anxiety in an at risk sample of preschool children. The relationship between maternal anxiety and child anxiety was also assessed. Participants were 104 children aged 3-4 years who were assessed for behavioral inhibition and mother-child attachment (using the Strange Situation procedure). DSM-IV criteria...

The relations between early infant-mother attachment and children's social competence and behavior problems during the preschool and early school-age period were examined in more than 1,000 children under conditions of decreasing, stable, and increasing maternal parenting quality. Infants' Strange Situation attachment classifications predicted mothers' reports of children's social competence an...

MEDIATING ROLES OF ATTACHMENT AND DESTRUCTIVE DISAGREEMENT BELIEFS by TARA ELIZABETH SUTTON (Under the Direction of Leslie Gordon Simons) ABSTRACT The current study expands the current literature on the intergenerational transmission of violence by examining insecure attachment styles and destructive disagreement beliefs as mediators in the relationship between family of origin factors, like ho...