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Three‐year‐olds' attachment play narratives and their associations with internalizing problems
Author(s) -
Miljkovitch Raphaële,
Pierrehumbert Blaise,
Halfon Olivier
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
clinical psychology and psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.315
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0879
pISSN - 1063-3995
DOI - 10.1002/cpp.535
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , anxiety , narrative , association (psychology) , distress , depression (economics) , clinical psychology , psychotherapist , psychiatry , linguistics , philosophy , economics , macroeconomics
Representational strategies of emotion regulation during play are believed to protect children against behaviour problems. Yet, before the age of 4, it appears that children rely more on their attachment figure than on representational strategies to assuage distress. The study was aimed at testing whether 3‐year‐olds' narrative features during the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT) could predict concurrent internalizing problems assessed by the mothers' and fathers' ratings of the child, using the Child Behaviour Checklist. Regression analyses including gender, IQ, socio‐economic status and ASCT dimensions revealed that representations of supportive caregiving predicted mother‐reported internalizing problems (negative association), whereas positive resolution and attachment strategies (security, deactivation, hyperactivation, disorganization) did not. Results were interpreted with reference to Bowlby's hypotheses regarding the aetiology of depression and anxiety disorders. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.