Reports two studies conducted at an infants' residential center. Study 1 assesses whether infants already attached to a favorite nurse could transfer allegiance to an adoptive mother within a two-week adaptation period and evaluates growing attachment to the new mother; Study 2 explores infant fear of a strange infant, and infant attachment to a…

Argues that a single life event has the capacity to affect not one but several lives. This thesis is related to theories on attachment, roles, and convoys. The concept of life-event webs is introduced to explain complex relations among individuals within networks such as families. (Author/RH)

Discusses implications of a study of middle-class infants seen in the Ainsworth strange situation at 12.5 and 19.5 months; the investigation produced results inconsistent with the corpus of previous findings. (Author/RH)

Attachment development and disorder of handicapped populations was reviewed categorically by handicap and by procedures studying attachment and analogous behavior. Evidence suggests that attachment between young handicapped children and their mothers or caretakers may be delayed, dulled, or even absent. Implicatons for service delivery and child…

The influence of 10 days of maternal separation on behavior and physiology was studied in monkey infants. Individual variability in behavioral and physiological response was marked and showed only minimal correlation with measures of early behavioral development and early mother-infant interaction. Implications for understanding pathophysiology of…

Designed with procedural and methodological controls which were not always adequate in earlier studies, this study tests the hypothesis that early and enhanced contact between mothers and infants after delivery facilitates maternal attachment behavior. Thirty mother-infant pairs from a lower-middle-class population were studied. (Author/MP)

Relates Bowlby's original conceptualization of attachment to recently developed theories subsumed under the label of sociobiology. (MP)

Studied adolescent-pet bonding and bereavement following pet loss (n=55). Hypothesized that highly-bonded adolescents experience more intense grief when a pet dies than do those less bonded; degree of bonding is greater for girls than for boys; and intensity of bereavement is greater for girls than for boys. Results supported the hypotheses. (RB)

Considers whether attachment theory as it is applied to child sexual abuse might be susceptible to biases that reflect the larger sociocultural context. Although this paper concludes that attachment theory can potentially add an important dimension to the conceptualization of child sexual abuse and its dynamics, it is also suggested that…

Presents a response to Bolen's article, "Child Sexual Abuse and Attachment Theory: Are We Rushing Headlong into Another Controversy?" (this issue). Heralds the article as a welcome addition to the child abuse field and further explores the issues pertaining to attachment theory and child abuse. (GCP)

Presents results of a study of the graphic indicators in drawings by patients with substance abuse disorders. The Bird's Nest Drawing, an assessment task previously devised to elicit pictorial representations of attachment security, was used to examine attachment patterns of volunteers. Results showed that those with substance abuse diagnoses were…

Examined attachment classification of children with cleft lip and palate (CLP) and isolated cleft palate (ICP) and comparison group at 12 months of age; found no significant differences. Findings suggest that infants with clefts, despite special needs and caregiving requirements, seem not to have elevated risk for insecure attachments at the end…

Examined associations among mothers' insightfulness into their 12-month-olds' internal experience as assessed through interviews regarding mothers' videotaped interaction with their infant, mothers' sensitivity to infant's signals during laboratory and home play sessions, and infant's security of attachment to mothers in the Strange Situation.…

Proposes a battery of semi-structured interviews, global assessment scales, attachment-specific scales, and behavioral observations to help mental health counselors identify Reactive Attachment Disorder, a syndrome associated with extreme attachment problems. (Contains 25 references and 2 tables.) (GCP)