Attachment in childhood

Today and next time, I am presenting a series of articles on attachment, all published in Developmental Science. First, Misch, Kramer & Paulus (2024) published “The Relationship between Attachment Representations and Minimal Intergroup Bias in Preschool-Aged Children in Developmental Science. Here are edited excerpts:

Attachment theory proposes that young children's experience with their caregivers has a tremendous influence on how children navigate their social relationships. By the end of early childhood, intergroup contexts play an important role in their social life and children build strong ties to their ingroups. Although both domains relate to the same psychological processes—children's affective ties to others—surprisingly very little research has addressed how children's attachment relates to their intergroup attitudes and behavior. In this study, we investigate the link. For that purpose, 5-year-old children (n = 100) first underwent the German Attachment Story Completion Task (GEV-B). Then we allocated children into minimal groups based on T-Shirt color and assessed their intergroup attitudes and intergroup behavior. Results showed that while most children showed a strong and robust ingroup bias in their attitudes and behavior, children with an insecure-ambivalent attachment representation treated in- and outgroup similarly. Discrimination, racism, sexism, and other forms of intergroup conflicts are major problems in our globalized world, and plenty of research has shown that the roots of these cognitions and behaviors evolve early in childhood. By the end of early childhood, young children are embedded in intergroup contexts and children's relation to and preference of their in-group plays an important role in their social life. 

Overall, the present study revealed an interesting effect of attachment representation on children's intergroup bias, albeit in a different direction than expected: Whereas we found no difference regarding intergroup cognition and behavior in children who had formed a secure, insecure-ambivalent, and disorganized attachment representation, children in the insecure-ambivalent category stood out across all intergroup measurements: They displayed no intergroup bias in their negative behavior and displayed significantly less intergroup bias in their positive behavior. Descriptively, they gave out both more negative resources and more positive resources, independent of group membership. Thus, children with insecure-ambivalent attachment did not seem to identify with (or attach to) their minimal group as readily as all the other children. According to attachment theory, children with insecure-ambivalent attachment have experienced that their caregiver is unreliable and unpredictive in their support and care for the child. As a consequence, the child forms an insecure representation of attachment that is characterized by a lack of trust in their caregiver, and a conflict between engagement and resistance against the caregiver. This internalized attachment pattern might lead children to also distrust their ingroup members and therefore can explain their lack of ingroup bias. As a consequence, they behave indifferent towards both ingroup and outgroup members. 

I found this study interesting in its focus on insecure-ambivalent children. As Misch et al. note, the theory is that these children have had parent figures they learned to not trust and extend that mistrust to peers in situations when even avoidant and disorganized children show identification with their group. It’s interesting that these children don’t even differentiate my group from their group even though their cognitions and behaviors are comparable to other children. While this study looks at a negative effect of insecure attachment, the next looks at secure attachment. Xu et al. (2024) published “A Context-Dependent Perspective to Understand the Relation between Parent–Child Physiological Synchrony and Child Socioemotional Adjustment” in Developmental Science. Here’s the edited abstract

Physiological synchrony is an important biological process during which parent–child interaction plays a significant role in shaping child socioemotional adjustment. The present study held a context-dependent perspective to examine the conditional association between parent–child physiological synchrony and child socioemotional adjustment (i.e., relationship quality with parents and child emotion regulation) under different (i.e., from highly unsupportive to highly supportive) emotional contexts. One hundred and fifty school-age Chinese children (Mage = 8.64 years, 63 girls) and their primary caregivers participated in this study. After attaching electrocardiogram (ECG) electrodes, parent–child dyads were instructed to complete a 4-minute conflict discussion task. Parent–child physiological synchrony was calculated based on the within-dyad association between parents’ and children's respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) levels across eight 30-second epochs. Parental emotional support, child relationship quality with parents, and child emotion regulation during the discussion task were coded by trained research assistants. Supporting our hypotheses, parental emotional support moderated the relations of parent–child RSA synchrony with both child relationship quality with parents and child emotion regulation. Furthermore, the Johnson-Neyman technique of moderation indicated that the associations between parent and child RSA synchrony and child socioemotional adjustment indicators shifted from negative to positive as the parental emotional support became increasingly high. Our findings suggest that parent–child physiological synchrony may not be inherently adaptive or maladaptive, highlighting the importance of understanding the function of parent–child physiological synchrony under specific contexts.

I like this study because it emphasizes that parent-child physiological synchrony can be maladaptive, but, when it is accompanied by parent emotional support, RSA synchrony enhances the child’s emotion regulation. The next study looks further at parent-child ineteraction. Brummelman, Bos, de Boer, Nevecka & Sedkides (2024) published ”Reciprocal Self-Disclosure Makes Children Feel More Loved by Their Parents in the Moment: A proof-of-concept experiment” in Developmental Science. Here are edited excerpts:

Feeling loved by one's parents is critical for children's health and well-being. How can such feelings be fostered? A vital feature of loving interactions is reciprocal self-disclosure, where individuals disclose intimate information about themselves. In a proof-of-concept experiment, we examined whether encouraging reciprocal self-disclosure in parent-child dyads would make children feel more loved during the conversation. Participants were 218 children (ages 8–13, 50% girls, 94% Dutch) and one of their parents (ages 28–56, 62% women, 90% Dutch). Parent-child dyads received a list of 14 questions and took turns asking them each other for 9 min. Dyads were assigned randomly to engage in self-disclosure (questions invoking escalated intimacy) or small talk (questions invoking minimal intimacy). Before and after, children reported how loved they felt by their parent during the conversation. Self-disclosure made children feel more loved during the conversation than did small talk. Compared to small talk, self-disclosure did not instigate conversations that were lengthier or more positive; rather, it instigated conversations that were more emotionally charged (reflecting anger, anxiety, and sadness), social (discussing family and friends), reflective (creating insight), and meaningful (addressing deeply personal topics, including the passing of loved ones). The dyad's gender composition did not significantly moderate these effects. Our research suggests that reciprocal self-disclosure can make children feel more loved in the moment, uncovers linguistic signatures of reciprocal self-disclosure, and offers developmental scientists a tool to examine causal effects of reciprocal self-disclosure in parent-child dyads. Future work should examine long-term effects in everyday parent-child interactions.

It is important to emphasize what our work does—and does not—demonstrate. Our work shows that when parent-child dyads are instructed to engage in self-disclosure rather than small talk, they have different types of conversations, and children feel more loved during these conversations. To be sure, our work does not speak to the long-term effects of self-disclosure on the parent-child relationship or children's enduring feeling of being loved by their parent. Although feeling loved by one's parents is critical for children's health and well-being, self-disclosure may, in some cases, instigate conversations that undercut children's health and well-being. For example, self-disclosure may cause emotional parentification when the parent shares too much intimate information, thereby creating role confusion; and it may cause parental co-rumination when parent and child reinforce each other's expressions of negative emotions. We call for research that examines the long-term effects of self-disclosure in everyday parent-child interactions, examining both its promises (e.g., sparking feelings of love) and its perils (e.g., causing emotional parentification or parental co-rumination). 

When we asked parents in the reciprocal self-disclosure condition how they themselves experienced the conversation, many described a growing sense of love. One parent wrote: “I felt a bond and realized how special he is to me, which evoked a warm, loving feeling!” Another noted: “Throughout the conversation, I felt a growing pride and fondness of my child.” 

Sharing one's deepest thoughts and feelings with another person may feel daunting, especially if this other person is one's child. Our proof-of-concept experiment shows that reciprocal self-disclosure in parent-child dyads can contribute to children's feeling of being loved by their parent during the conversation. An exciting direction for future research will be to unravel the causal long-term effects of reciprocal self-disclosure in everyday parent-child interactions.

This one doesn’t use attachment status but the findings are important in illustrating the power of meaningful parent-child conversations in helping a child feel loved and parents feel more love for their child. I thought it was especially important that they point out the possible downside of too much sharing if it produces parentification and co-rumination.