THE ROLE OF PARENT STATE OF MIND AND PARENT BEHAVIOR ON INFANT ATTACHMENT AND CHILD EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
Date
2018-05
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Infant attachment quality reflects a child’s expectations of parent availability, and has been shown to predict aspects of social functioning over development (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Previous studies have found that insecure attachment is associated with higher rates of depression and anxiety in adulthood than secure attachment (Widom, Czaja, Kozakowski, & Chauhan, 2017). Much of the literature has shown that the strongest predictor of attachment is parent state of mind, which refers to a parent’s mental representation of his or her own attachment experiences (van IJzendoorn, 1995). The present study aims to examine the relationship between parent state of mind, parent behavior, attachment quality, and child executive functioning among adopted and foster infant-parent dyads. I hypothesized that autonomous state of mind would be associated with greater likelihood of secure child attachment, and higher child executive functioning relative to non-autonomous states of mind. I also hypothesized that parents with autonomous states of mind would exhibit higher sensitivity and lower intrusiveness than parents with non-autonomous states of mind. No significant associations were found between parent state of mind and infant attachment. Children of unresolved parents showed significantly higher EXF scores than children of parents who were not unresolved. Lastly, parents with autonomous states of mind were found to have significantly higher sensitivity and intrusiveness than non-autonomous parents.
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Keywords
Psychology, infant attachment, child executive functioning, parent state of mind, parent behavior