Secure Base Provision: A New Approach to Examining Links Between Maternal Caregiving and Infant Attachment.

This observational study addressed a critical gap in the understanding of the precursors of infant attachment by examining whether a new conceptualization of maternal caregiving behavior, secure base provision (SBP), explained variance in attachment above and beyond variance explained by sensitivity. Participants included 83 low-socioeconomic status (SES), 4.5-month-old infants (56% male) and their mothers.

Attachment-based interventions for families with young children.

Given a large body of research indicating links between child attachment and later mental health outcomes, interventions that promote children's secure attachment to their caregivers have the potential to contribute to prevention of psychopathology and promotion of well-being. A number of attachment-based interventions have been developed to support parents, enhance caregiving quality, and promote children's attachment security with the aim of improving children's mental health. There is now a growing evidence base to support the efficacy of a number of these interventions.

Learning to provide children with a secure base and a safe haven: The Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P) group intervention.

Insecure attachment is linked to a host of negative child outcomes, including internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Circle of Security-Parenting (COS-P) is a manualized, video-based, eight unit, group parenting intervention to promote children's attachment security. COS-P was designed to be easily implemented, so as to make attachment interventions more widely available to families.

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.

Circle of Security-Parenting: A randomized controlled trial in Head Start.

Although evidence shows that attachment insecurity and disorganization increase risk for the development of psychopathology (Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, & Roisman, 2010; Groh, Roisman, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Fearon, 2012), implementation challenges have precluded dissemination of attachment interventions on the broad scale at which they are needed. The Circle of Security-Parenting Intervention (COS-P; Cooper, Hoffman, & Powell, 2009), designed with broad implementation in mind, addresses this gap by training community service providers to use a manualized, video-based program to help caregivers provide a secure base and a safe haven for their children. The present study is a randomized controlled trial of COS-P in a low-income sample of Head Start enrolled children and their mothers.

Attachment status and mother-preschooler parasympathetic response to the strange situation procedure.

Background: Early attachment relationships are important for children's development of behavioral and physiological regulation strategies. Parasympathetic nervous system activity, indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), is a key indicator of self-regulation, with links to numerous developmental outcomes. Attachment-related changes in and associations between mother and child RSA during the Strange Situation procedure (SSP) can elucidate individual differences in physiological response to stress that are important for understanding the development of and intervention for psychopathology.

Psychotherapy process and relationship in the context of a brief attachment-based mother-infant intervention.

The present study investigated links between the observer-rated process of psychotherapy and 2 key psychotherapy relationship constructs (i.e., working alliance and attachment to the therapist) in the context of a brief, attachment-based, home-visiting, mother-infant intervention that aimed to promote later secure infant attachment.

Attachment-related biases in adolescents' memory.

Attachment theorists propose that individuals' internal working models influence their social information processing. This study explored links between attachment representations and social information processing by examining adolescents' (n = 189; Mage  = 16.5 years) attachment-related memory biases.

Attachment-related differences in perceptions of an initial peer interaction emerge over time: evidence of reconstructive memory processes in adolescents.

This study examined whether attachment, assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1996) was linked to how adolescents reconstructed their memory for an initial interaction with an unfamiliar peer. Adolescents (N = 189, 62% female) completed a 10-min laboratory task with a student whom they did not know. Immediately following this task, adolescents rated their perceptions of the interaction.

Clinical writing: additional ethical and practical issues.

The recommendations by Sieck (2011, Obtaining clinical writing informed consent versus using client disguise and recommendations for practice, Psychotherapy, 49, pp. 3-11.) are a helpful starting point for considering the ethical issues involved in the decision to seek or not to seek informed consent from clients before writing about them.

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.

Do adolescents and parents reconstruct memories about their conflict as a function of adolescent attachment?

This study examined whether 17-year-old adolescents (n=189) and their parents reconstructed their memory for an adolescent-parent laboratory conflict over a 6-week period as a function of adolescent attachment organization. It also compared participants' perceptions of conflict over time to observational ratings of the conflict to further characterize the nature of the attachment-related memory biases that emerged. Secure adolescents reconstructed interactions with each parent more favorably over time, whereas insecure adolescents showed less favorable reconstructive memory.

The role of adolescent attachment in moderating and mediating the links between parent and adolescent psychological symptoms.

The present study examined whether adolescent attachment security and attachment-related representations moderate and mediate, respectively, the link between parent symptoms (depressive and anxiety) and adolescent depressive symptoms. Participants were 189 (118 girls) eleventh graders and their parents in a community sample. Results showed that adolescent attachment moderated the connection between parent and adolescent symptoms; in most cases attachment security was more protective if both parents were high on anxiety symptoms or if one parent was high on anxiety but the other parent was low on depressive symptoms.

Dyadic interactions as precursors to attachment security: implications for intervention and research.

This commentary focuses on the important contributions of the Beebe et al. (present issue) study to understanding precursors to attachment, including the addition of a particular focus on infant contributions to the dyadic interactions related to attachment outcomes, as well as a better understanding of the precursors specific to insecure-ambivalent attachment and attachment disorganization. In addition, limitations of the time series methodology for interpreting the meaning of maternal interactive contingency findings from an attachment perspective are discussed.

Perceptions of secure base provision within the family.

The present study examined three sets of questions about secure base provision in the context of the family, including (1) relations between inter-parental perceptions of secure base provision and parents' adult romantic attachment and marital satisfaction, (2) interrelations among family members' perception of secure base provision, and (3) links between both adolescents' and parents' perceptions of secure base provision and adolescent symptoms. Participants were 189 adolescents from two-parent families (mean age = 17 years; 118 girls) and their parents. We found partial support for theorized links between perceptions of spousal secure base provision and spousal romantic attachment, as well as full support for expected associations between secure base provision and marital satisfaction.

Narrative assessment of attachment representations: links between secure base scripts and adolescent attachment.

We explored the notion that adolescents possess mental secure base scripts of attachment-related events and examined, for the first time, whether these scripts were linked to adolescent attachment security. Results indicated that adolescents possessed a general script for mother and for father, and that they drew upon these scripts across different contexts. Adolescents' scripts for mother and for father were related, but only the scripts for mother predicted unique variance in adolescents' scripts for nonspecific others.