This study examined early adolescent romantic "churning," defined here as having a large number of boyfriends/girlfriends by age 13, as a problematic marker likely to predict hostility, abuse, and avoidance during conflict in later relationships. A sample of 184 adolescents was followed through age 24 to assess predictions of hostility,…

Attachment theory suggests that early experiences with caregivers are carried forward across development in the form of mental representations of attachment experiences. Researchers have investigated at least two representation-based constructs when studying attachment and successful adaptation in adulthood: (a) coherence of autobiographical…

One of the most striking pieces of evidence in attachment research is that attachment security is transmitted from 1 generation to the next. Although there has been an enormous advance in the understanding of this process, this area of research suffers from some significant gaps, as for example the transmission across 3 generations when…

We examined the extent to which new mothers' recollections of their mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood predict sensitive/supportive responses to their own toddlers in distressing situations both directly and indirectly via effects on mothers' social information processing about infant cry signals. Mothers' adult attachment…

John Bowlby's (1982) attachment theory can be applied to an existing therapeutic framework to enhance the effectiveness of therapy. Using the Adult Attachment Inventory (AAI), a therapist can identify the type of attachment the client formed with his/her caregivers, and use this to navigate an authentic attachment between client and therapist.…

This study aimed to explore the self-protective strategies of six parents with ADHD and the sensitivity they displayed in dyadic interaction with their under 3-years-old children. The parents were interviewed using the Adult Attachment Interview. Parental sensitivity was assessed using the CARE-Index. The study showed a variation of the parents'…

This study investigates whether individual differences in attachment status can be detected by electrophysiological responses to loss-themed pictures. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was used to identify discourse/reasoning lapses during the discussion of loss experiences via death that place speakers in the Unresolved/disorganized AAI…

A longstanding question for attachment theory and research is whether genetically based characteristics of the child influence the development of attachment security and its stability over time. This study attempted to replicate and extend recent findings indicating that the developmental stability of attachment security is moderated by oxytocin…

This paper reports on the longitudinal links between first-time mothers (N = 48) Adult Attachment Interviews (AAIs), provided during pregnancy, and their first-born children's AAIs, provided at age 16 years. The AAIs from the adolescents were scored for reflective functioning (RF), and this was found to be significantly linked to whether their…

In this commentary, Spangler evaluates the Steele, Perez, Segal, and Steele report that arguede that reflective functioning in adolescence could not be predicted by quality of early infant attachment, but was associated with maternal (but not paternal) attachment representation, assessed before the adolescents' birth. Assuming that parental…

In this commentary, Soares and Baptista state that the Steele, Perez, Segal, and Steele (2016) article contributed with an informative study that adolescents' reflective functioning (RF) is predicted by maternal attachment representation, which was assessed even before the youth were born by using the Adult Attachment Interview. The authors assert…

Epistemological development and attachment theory have been independent frameworks for understanding psychological development. This study examined the association between epistemological development (using the Measure of Epistemological Reflection) and attachment (using the Adult Attachment Interview) in a sample of 60 pre- and postgraduated…

This study examined the developmental significance of mothers' adult attachment representations assessed prenatally with the Adult Attachment Interview in relation to observed maternal sensitivity at 6 months postpartum in an ethnically diverse sample (N = 131 African American; N = 128 European American). Multiple-group confirmatory factor…

The Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS) was developed to assess individual differences in the ability to mentalize attachment relationships. The RFS assesses mentalization from transcripts of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). A global score is given by trained coders on an 11-point scale ranging from antireflective to exceptionally reflective.…

Background: Longitudinal research has demonstrated that individual differences in attachment security show only modest continuity from infancy to adulthood. Recent findings based on retrospective reports suggest that individuals' genetic variation may moderate the developmental associations between early attachment-relevant relationship…