Attachment Security Priming Decreases Children's Physiological Response to Threat.

Ninety 6- and 7-year-olds (49.3% White, mostly middle class) from greater Washington, DC were randomly assigned to a subliminal priming condition (secure, happy, or neutral) to determine if attachment security priming decreases physiological, expressive, and self-reported fear reactions to threatening stimuli. Dispositional attachment security was also assessed.

Rounding the bases with a secure base.

Parental availability and responsiveness were experimentally manipulated to determine the effects on children's athletic performance. Fifty children (3-12-year-olds) ran as fast as possible around a softball diamond twice: once while parents were available and responsive and once while parents were unavailable and unresponsive (engrossed in mobile phone; order randomized and counterbalanced). Children ran about three seconds faster and were 17% less likely to trip, fall, or false start in the parental available and responsive condition.

The development of negative reactivity in irritable newborns as a function of attachment.

This longitudinal study builds on existing research exploring the developmental course of infants' negative reactivity to frustration in a sample of 84 irritable infants. We investigated whether infants' negative reactivity to frustration differed during the first year as a function of infant attachment classification. Various elements of the designs of previous studies investigating negative reactivity and attachment preclude the strong conclusion that negative reactivity develops differently as a function of attachment.

Newborn irritability moderates the association between infant attachment security and toddler exploration and sociability.

This longitudinal investigation of 84 infants examined whether the effect of 12-month attachment on 18- and 24-month exploration and sociability with unfamiliar adults varied as a function of newborn irritability. As expected, results revealed an interaction between attachment (secure vs. insecure) and irritability (highly irritable vs.

Enhancing infant attachment security: an examination of treatment efficacy and differential susceptibility.

This randomized controlled trial examined (a) the efficacy of a brief intervention designed to increase the rate of secure infant attachment, (b) the differential susceptibility hypothesis, and (c) whether maternal attachment styles moderated the expected Treatment x Irritability interaction in predicting infant attachment outcomes. Although there was no main effect of treatment, a significant Treatment x Irritability interaction revealed intervention effects for the highly irritable infants only, thus supporting one of two predictions of the differential susceptibility hypothesis: highly irritable infants would have disproportionately better outcomes than moderately irritable infants in better conditions (i.e.

Enhancing attachment security in the infants of women in a jail-diversion program.

Pregnant female offenders face multiple adversities that make successful parenting difficult. As a result, their children are at risk of developing insecure attachment and attachment disorganization, both of which are associated with an increased likelihood of poor developmental outcomes. We evaluated the outcomes of participants in Tamar's Children, a 15-month jail-diversion intervention for pregnant, nonviolent offenders with a history of substance abuse.