Notes how preceding articles expand the repertoire of theory-relevant assessments of attachment, with a special emphasis on Ainsworth's concept of the secure base. Focuses on a number of issues raised by this collection that are particularly promising for theory development, including assessment of secure-base behavior and maternal sensitivity,…

This presentation describes research on families with mentally retarded children, focusing on trends since 1983, the year that family research issues were reconceptualized in a paper titled "A Model of Stress, Coping, and Family Ecology" by Keith Crnic and others. The trend analysis concentrates on four issues: (1) the magnitude of the impact of…

This study used behavioral measures of family interaction to examine four traditional explanatory models for the influence of parents on their children's self-esteem. The four models examined were: (1) identification/modeling, (2) directiveness, (3) reinforcement, and (4) warmth/involvement. A total of 98 fourth- and fifth-grade girls and boys…