Predicting secure infant
attachment
Daniel Messinger, Ph.D.
Review
In the presence of a consistent caregiver
almost all infants form an attachment
 We’ve reviewed the classification of infant
security of attachment in the strange
situation.
 But what predicts a secure versus an
insecure attachment?

Messinger
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Predicting attachment security

What different roles might infant
temperament have in predicting security of
attachment?
What is the experimental evidence that
caregiver sensitivity factors predicts secure
attachment?
What is the meta-analytic evidence that
caregiver sensitivity factors predicts secure
attachment?
Messinger
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Big picture




What produces secure attachment?
Infant – Temperament
Caregiver – Sensitivity
Social situation – divorce, daycare, social support
–
May affect infant directly

–
Situation - infant
Or affect infant indirectly:

Situation – caregiver sensitivity - infant
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Infant Attachment and Maternal
Depression

Mixed evidence
–
–
–

Some studies show effects, others do not
Chronicity of depression may be key
More consistent influence on day-to-day interaction
Sample study
–
Attachment insecurity significantly associated with
maternal depression among infants and preschoolers.
–
Disorganized attachment especially common among
mothers with more chronic depression.
•
Teti, Gelfand, Messinger, & Isabella (1995). Maternal depression and the
quality of early attachment: An examination of infants, preschoolers, and
their mothers. Developmental Psychology, 31(3), 364-376
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Orthodox View

Caregiver (Mother) Driven System
–
–
–
Sensitive caregiving yields secure attachment
Caregiver can adapt to any child temperament
Who’s has responsibility according to this
systerm?
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What is sensitivity?
Responsive
 Understands and accepts the child’s
individual proclivities
 Orchestrates harmonious interactions

–

“especially involving the soothing of distress”
In a variety of situations
–
On a relatively consistent basis
•
Belsky, 1999, p. 249
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Just the right amount

Unresponsive caregiving  Avoidant attachment
–

Sensitive caregiving  Secure attachment
–

Attachment behaviors responded to appropriately
Inconsistent/intrusive caregiving  Resistant
attachment
–

Attachment behaviors are suppressed (extinguished)
Attachment behaviors only work when they are strong
and insistent (intermittent reinforcement)
But little empirical evidence distinguishing
parent behaviors distinguishing A & C
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Mother or child?


Meta-analysis of 34 clinical studies indicates that
maternal problems such as mental illness lead
to more deviating attachment classification
distributions than child problems such as
deafness.
In clinical samples, the mother appears to play a
more important role than the child in shaping the
quality of the infant-mother attachment
relationship
•
Van IJzendoorn, Goldberg, Kroonenberg, & Frenkel (1992).
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Temperament & Care giving

Child characteristics and care giving
–
–
Continuously and reciprocally impact each
other in day-to-day interaction and
development.
Little information on the process through which
this occurs
Seifer et al.

But lots of information on strength of
respective caregiver and child influences
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Effects of child care on infantmother attachment security
Significant effects of maternal sensitivity
and responsiveness.
 No significant effects of child-care
experience (amount, age entry, or type of
care) on attachment security or avoidance.

–
–
Interaction: more insecure when low maternal
sensitivity/responsiveness combined with poor
quality child care, more than minimal child
care, or more than one care arrangement
1,153 infants
–
NICHD study of early child care. Child Development. 1997. 68(5) 860-879
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Same at 36 months
No child-care factors (quantity, quality, or
type) predicted attachment security
 Maternal sensitivity was strongest predictor
of preschool attachment classification.
 Interaction: Low maternal sensitivity &
more hours per week in care somewhat
increased the risk of insecure (C).

–
Significant but modest stability of attachment
classifications from 15 to 36 months
 especially
for children with A and C classifications.
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Where does security lie?
In the infant or in the caregiver-infant dyad?
 A meta-analysis of infant-father attachment
shows weak but significant association
between security of attachment to mother
and father.

–
Does this suggest a role for temperament?
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Two Temperamental Pathways

Indirect effect
–

Temperament  Caregiver-Infant interaction
 Attachment security
Direct effect (Not empirically supported)
–
–
–
Temperament  Strange Situation Behavior 
“Attachment Security”
Less prone to distress  “Avoidant”
More prone to distress  “Resistant”
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Messinger
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Genetic and Caregiving-Based
Contributions to Infant Attachment

Two contrasting explanations of differences in
attachment:
–
–


Quality of infant-caregiver relationship
Reflection of infants’ temperament
Emphasis on emotional reactivity vs. emotion
regulation
Proposed reconciliation: distress reactivity
during SSP shaped by predispositions for
negative emotionality
Gangi
Distress and the Strange Situation
Belsky and Rovine’s 1987 Grouping
Low Distress:
Securely Attached B1
Securely Attached B2
Insecure Avoidant
High Distress:
Securely Attached B3
Securely Attached B4
Insecure Resistant
Billingsley
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Empirical Findings
Initial results positive
Subsequent results mixed
Inconsistency attributed to methodological
variation & complexity of infant
emotion
Proposed solution: molecular genetics
Billingsley
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5-HTTLPR
Serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region
Short (S) vs. Long (L) alleles
S allele associated with:
diminished transcription
reduced serotonin uptake
heightened amygdala activity
Billingsley
23
Genetic and Caregiving-Based
Contributions to Infant Attachment
155 infants and mothers
 Measures of:

–
–
–
–
–
Maternal responsiveness at 6 months
Attachment at 12 and 18 months
Emotional distress in SSP (Belsky’s grouping)
5-HTTLPR variation
Raby et al., 2012
Gangi
Genetic and Caregiving-Based
Contributions to Infant Attachment


Maternal responsiveness predicted attachment
5-HTTLPR predicted distress during SSP
–

No prediction to attachment security, but subtypes
Genetic variation and caregiving context make
unique contributions to differences in
attachment behavior
–
–
Caregiving  secure vs. insecure
5-HTTLPR  how this is manifested
Gangi
Disorganized attachment
predicted by parent behavior
Strongly related to parental maltreatment, &
moderately related to sensitivity
 Unrelated to difficult infant temperament
 2 studies have linked frightening parental
behavior to disorganized attachment

 Though
–
not significantly related to depression
van IJzendoorn, M. H., Schuengel, C., & Bakermans Kranenburg, M. J.
(1999). Disorganized attachment in early childhood: Meta-analysis of
precursors, concomitants, and sequelae. Development and
Psychopathology, 11(2), 225-249.
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More evidence for care-giving
effects
Experimental
 Observational

–
Meta-analysis of quasi-experiments
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Experiment 1: Sensitivity
training
100 irritable, low-SES Dutch infants
 50 mothers in experimental group

–

receive 3 home visits to foster “contingent,
consistent, and appropriate responses to + and infant signals”
50 control mothers are observed only
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Results




Experimental infants 36/50 (72%) secure
Control infants: 16/50 (32%) secure
Sensitivity training for mother decreases rates of
insecurity among irritable infants
Meta-analysis of intervention studies showed a
moderately large effect size, d = .48
–
Van den Boom
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Experiment 2: Replicate the Snuggly
Effect!



49 low-socioeconomic status (SES) mothers of
newborn infants
Given soft baby carriers (more physical contact)
or infant seats (less contact).
More experimental (83%) than control infants
(38%) were securely attached at 13 mo.
–

3.5 mo, mothers in the experimental group were more
contingently responsive than control mothers to their
infants' vocalizations.
Low cost experimentally-validated intervention?
•
Anisfeld, Casper, Nozyce, & Cunningham (1990). Does infant carrying promote attachment? An
experimental study of the effects of increased physical contact on the development of attachment. Child
Development, 61(5), 1617-1627.
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Conclusions

Sensitivity is important
–
Temperament may also be a factor
Does sensitive interaction make a difference
in naturalistic settings
 Many studies have been done

–

using many measures of interaction
Meta-analysis can help sort them out
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Sensitivity Studies Only

Perceive signals accurately and respond
promptly and appropriately
–

22% (r = .22), 7,223 infants in 123 comparisons
Original Ainsworth subscale
–
–
24% (r = .24), 837 infants in subset of 16
studies
Socioeconomic class is a moderator
 Middle
(r = .27); lower (r = .15)
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Conclusions
Sensitivity and quality of interaction are
important and consistent (but not
exclusive) predictors of attachment
security.
 Sensitivity important but not only factor

–
Orthodox hypothesis supported weakly
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Can infant attention studies shed light on
caregiving (or temperamental) roots of
attachment security?
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What infant expects:
Evidence for
Infants’
Internal
Working
Models of
Attachment.
2007.
Susan C. Johnson,
Carol S. Dweck, and
Frances S. Chen
46
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7 month old infants grouped by
attachment security
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7 month fear bias score and
disorganization
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However, interactions with genes
reported by Barry et al. 2008
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Autism challenges attachment theory

55 toddlers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), mental
retardation, language delay, and typical development.
–



Parents of children with ASD =y sensitive as other parents
But children show more disorganization, less involvement.
More sensitive parents had more secure children,
–

diagnosed at 4 years. Two years before, attachment, sensitivity assessed
but only in group without ASD.
Less severe autistic symptoms in the social domain
predicted more attachment security..
•
van Ijzendoorn, M. H., Rutgers, A. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van Daalen, E., Dietz, C., Buitelaar,
J. K., et al. (2007). Parental sensitivity and attachment in children with autism spectrum disorder:
Comparison with children with mental retardation, with language delays, and with typical development.
Child Development, 78, 597-608.
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Autism challenges attachment theory
Subtle attachment differences:
More distance security
27%
73%
42%
58%
Haltigan et al., 2010
FFSF Mid-range models



In pilot analyses based on continuous ratings of affect, for
example, mid-range levels of mother responsiveness
(infant-to-mother interactive influence) were associated
with 15-month attachment security, the highest levels were
associated with resistance, and the lowest levels with
avoidance and disorganized attachment classifications,
F(3,23) = 3.55, p = .03, estimated ω2 = .24.
Builds on Beebe et al.
But where is the evidence that early measured interaction
predicts attachment?
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Sensitivity

Sensitive caregiving promotes attachment.
–
But effects are not universally found
 Seifer
et al., 1996
Sensitive caregiving is underspecified
 What does sensitivity look like crossculturally and in different subcultures?

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Attachment & social play
What does sensitivity look like in different
caregiving domains such as playmate and
attachment figure?
 Attachment theory is not clear as to whether
the concepts are distinguishable and what
type of association is to be expected.

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Cross-cultural evidence

Among dyads living in subsistence societies
secure attachment exists in relationships in
which social play between caregiver and
child was not observed and was seen as
frivolous.
 Gusii,

Ganda, etc.
Secure attachment without play
–
The anthropological veto
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Meta-analytic results

De Wolff and van Ijzendoorn also found
that Ainsworth-based measures of
sensitivity were stronger predictors of
attachment security in middle-class r = .27)
than lower-class dyads (r = .15).
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Variability

Characterizes the association between
security of attachment and quality of social
play cross-culturally
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Attachment as organizer

Attachment is pre-eminent "affective bond"
that organizes interaction between infant
and caregiver (organizational construct
perspective)
–
If attachment is secure,
 Positive
play should be possible or
 play should be positive
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‘Limited relations between attachment
security and quality of social
interaction.’
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The Paradox of Sensitivity
Strongly predictive of many outcomes
 But somewhat subjective in content

–
A joystick resolution?
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In a teaching situation, student non-experts
rate teaching even if you ask them to rate
supportiveness


Sensitive structuring (“the degree to which the parent is involved in
providing appropriate structure and teaching for the child”),
–
ICC = .75, and concordance with expert ratings, r = .71
But emotional supportiveness (“the degree to which the parent is
warm, positive, responsive and supportive to her child, while also
respecting the child’s independence”).
–

ICC = .47, r = .36, ns.
In fact, non-expert emotional supportiveness ratings exhibited high
associations with the structuring ratings of experts,
–
r =.78, p < .001, and non-experts, r =.70, p < .01.
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Sensitivity in the SS

Lower levels of maternal sensitivity (Behrens, Parker, &
Haltigan, 2011; Leerkes, Parade, & Gudmundson, 2011;
Smith & Pederson, 1988) and more frequent maternal
displays of atypical behaviors (e.g., lower responsivity,
inappropriate responses to child affect, disrupted
communication; Goldberg, Benoit, Blokland, & Madigan,
2003; Goldberg, MacKay-Soroka, & Rochester, 1994;
Lyons-Ruth, Bronfman, & Parsons, 1999) have been
documented most often amongst insecurely attached
children and children with disorganized attachment when
maternal behavior and child attachment were assessed
concurrently in the SSP
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References






Interactional and contextual determinants of attachment security (Belsky, 1999)
The Nature of the Child’s Ties (Cassidy, 1999)
Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysis on parental antecedents of infant
attachment (De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997)
Van IJzendoorn, Goldberg, Kroonenberg, & Frenkel (1992). The relative effects of
maternal and child problems on the quality of attachment - a meta-analysis of
attachment in clinical-samples. Child Development, 63, 840-858.
Van IJzendoorn, & Kroonenberg (1988). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: A
meta-analysis of the strange situation. Child Development, 59, 147-156.
1) van den Boom DC. Do first-year intervention effects endure? Follow-up during
toddlerhood of a sample of Dutch irritable infants. Child Development
1995;66(6):1798-1816.
2) van den Boom DC. The influence of temperament and mothering on attachment
and exploration: an experimental manipulation of sensitive responsiveness among
lower-class mothers with irritable infants Child Development 1994;65(5):1457-77.
65(6):
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