Loading...
3 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
- Scripted knowledge about attachment and social competence in preschoolers: overviewPublication . Vaughn, Brian E.; Posada, German; Verissimo, ManuelaThe papers in this special issue of Attachment & Human Development address questions concerning relations between attachment representations and social competence during early childhood in samples from five different countries. All studies examined these questions using the concept of the "secure base script" that has been widely studied in samples of adults, adolescents, and school-age children. In all samples, the secure base script was scored from attachment-relevant narratives elicited from children in a doll-play task. Consistent with existing literatures, the secure base script score had positive and significant associations with adult ratings of child social competence, even in the presence of potential confounding covariates.
- Assessing and quantifying the secure base script from narratives produced by preschool age children: justification and validation testsPublication . Vaughn, Brian E.; Posada, German; Verissimo, Manuela; Lu, Ting; Nichols, Olivia I.Building on aframework presented by Bretherton and associates, Waters and associates argued that interaction sequences relevant to children's access to and use of asecure base for exploration during infancy/toddlerhood become internalized as script-like representations. For adults, these scripted representations are readily assessed using word-prompt lists d to elicit attachment relevant narratives. However, this method is not appropriate during early childhood. Waters and associates used stories from Bretherton's Attachment Story Completion Task for this purpose. However, the method they used to score secure base script use is not efficient for larger samples (e.g. over 50), and new approaches for scoring have been designed. We describe two approaches to story selection and scoring for access to and use of the secure base script. The two scoring methods show substantial and significant overlap and also have significant associations with other methods of measuring attachment security during early childhood.
- Preschoolers’ secure base script representations predict teachers’ ratings of social competence and externalizing behaviorPublication . Fernandes, M.; Verissimo, Manuela; Santos, António; Fernandes, Carla; Antunes, Marta; Vaughn, Brian E.Recent meta-analyses have reported significant effects of attachment quality on social competence, mostly using observational assessments of attachment behavior to assess security. We analyze the associations between attachment security - assessed as a secure base script, and social competence with peers - measured by teachers' ratings on two self-report instruments, in a Portuguese sample of 82 preschool children (34 boys and 48 girls). We also tested the association between children's secure base script scores and teacher ratings for externalizing and internalizing symptomatology. Results show significant sex differences. Girls had higher scores on secure base script and were rated by teachers as more socially competent, while boys received higher ratings for aggressive/externalizing behaviors. Nonetheless, when the effect of child sex was controlled, attachment representations were positively associated with child social competence and negatively associated with ratings of externalizing behaviors.