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Security of Attachment as a Predictor of Symbolic and Mentalising Abilities: A Longitudinal Study
Author(s) -
Meins Elizabeth,
Fernyhough Charles,
Russell James,
ClarkCarter David
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
social development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.078
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1467-9507
pISSN - 0961-205X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9507.00047
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , cognition , task (project management) , cognitive development , management , neuroscience , economics
The development of symbolic and mentalising abilities was examined in 33 children whose security of attachment had been assessed in infancy. It was found that securely attached children: (i) were better able to incorporate an experimenter’s play suggestions into their sequences of symbolic play at 31 months; and (ii) performed better on a version of Wimmer and Perner’s (1983) unexpected transfer task at age 4. There was also evidence of superior mentalising abilities among the secure group at age 5, despite no group differences being found in general cognitive ability. We suggest that these security‐related differences might be related to mothers’ propensity to treat their securely attached children as individuals with minds. In support of this hypothesis, mothers in the secure group adopted more sensitive tutoring strategies, and were more likely to describe their children in terms of their mental characteristics. Possible developmental pathways linking security of attachment in infancy with subsequent development were investigated using path analyses.