The quality of the maternal communication plays a critical role in the development of secure infant-caregiver attachment. This relationship may be mediated by the caregivers' capacity to recognize and appropriately respond to the child's mental states (i.e., mind-mindedness). To specifically explore the role of mind-mindedness in the relationship…

Background and objectives: The stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic spurred alarming levels of stress and anxiety in college students. It is important to identify factors that attenuate the negative effect of stress on anxiety. Framed by the attachment diathesis-stress process perspective, this study examined how the two dimensions of insecurity in…

The relevance of the quality of parent-child interactions for child development has long been established. Nevertheless, research on beliefs about maternal sensitivity is still scarce, to an even greater extent in the context of child disability. This inquiry aimed to describe beliefs about sensitive parenting among mothers of children with…

The present study examined the relationships between childhood attachment, adult attachment, self-esteem, and psychological distress; specifically, it investigated the multiple mediating roles of self-esteem and adult attachment on the association between childhood attachment and psychological distress. Using 1,708 adult participants, a…

Based on self-reported questionnaires from 2040 pre-service early childhood education (ECE) teachers from three provinces in China, the researcher explored a structural model of the link between adult anxious attachment and mental health through negative coping style and social support. Moreover, the moderating role of social support was tested in…

Caregivers' mentalization has gained importance in recent years, but most studies only include parental figures. Given empirical evidence showing the importance of educators in the development of preschoolers, this paper aims to assess how the mentalization and stress levels of parents and educational staff are related to attachment, ToM and…

Divorce often creates significant stress that can have an impact on parent-child relationship satisfaction. The purpose of this study was to examine the predictive relationship between parental stress as measured by the Parenting Stress Index, 4th Edition, Short Form (PSI-4-SF) and the parent-child relationship satisfaction as measured by the…

Although the social-emotional competence of preservice early childhood professionals (ECPs) has been associated with the quality of their interactions with young children, there is limited understanding of these associations during preservice training. Utilizing a sample of students with career goals in early childhood (N=473), we examined the…

The purpose of the current study was to explore whether selfcompassion predicted psychological distress over and above childhood maltreatment and attachment orientation in high-risk youths. Fifty-one youths (31 males, 20 females) aged 17 to 24, recruited from a community non-profit organization in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada,…

Existing research on human-animal interactions has established that engaging with an animal may reduce anxiety-like behaviors (Acheson et al., 2013; Sobota, Mihara, Forrest, Featherstone, & Siegel, 2015; Yates, 2012) and lower physiological response in stressful situations (Campo & Uchino, 2013). This quantitative research study expanded…

Many military families are experiencing the effects of deployment in an effort to support the mission of the US Armed Forces. The purpose of this descriptive, qualitative study was to provide a description of how families living in the Southeastern United States who have experienced military deployment perceive parental deployment influences their…

Internal working models of social relationships are based on the earliest attachment bonds we make with caregivers (Bowlby, 1969, 1973), and relate to a number of later outcomes in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. In education, attachment styles map on to young children's educational journey but finding evidence in older groups has been…

Teaching is a complex process which includes multiple aspects; similarly learning to teach requires a system of multiple components interacting to support pre-service teachers to become effective teachers. One aspect of teaching which has implications for teacher development is the practicum student-supervising teacher relationship. The current…

The Bird's Nest Drawing (BND; Kaiser, 1996) is an art-based technique developed to assess attachment security. In an attempt to expand the BND's validity, the authors explored the possible associations between parental representations and the BND's dimensions and attachment classifications in a sample of 80 young Israeli mothers. Positive…

We examined the prediction that the interaction between Glucocorticoid Receptor Gene ("NR3C1") methylation, stress, and experienced maternal support predicts anxious and avoidant attachment development. This was tested in a general population sample of 487 children and adolescents (44% boys, M[subscript age] = 11.84, SD[subscript age] =…