Elaine Scharfe | Trent University (original) (raw)
Papers by Elaine Scharfe
Page 86. Stability and Change of Attachment Representations from Cradle to Grave ELAINE SCHARFE T... more Page 86. Stability and Change of Attachment Representations from Cradle to Grave ELAINE SCHARFE Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis [Times change, and we change with them]. —ANONYMOUS Plus (a change, plus ...
The purpose of this study is to explore how our views of our relationships, our childhood experie... more The purpose of this study is to explore how our views of our relationships, our childhood experiences, and our feelings of distress influence our tendency to follow the rules. We believe that the quality of our close relationships may be important in understanding rule following. In particular, our view of ourselves and our view of others with respect to attachment may be associated with a disregard of some rules or our perceptions of breaking rules. These effects may be exacerbated depending on our childhood experiences (e.g., abuse or neglect) or our current symptoms (e.g., feelings of distress after a particularly traumatic experience), or current guidance around rules (i.e., current public health directives and adherence to covid restrictions). We are also interested in the effects of early separations on attachment representations. We will compare the associations between attachment models and other measures of distress, including dark personality traits and response to trauma ...
The aim of this research project is to bring together two divergent areas of research that each e... more The aim of this research project is to bring together two divergent areas of research that each explore contributions to criminal behaviours. Social science researchers have explored factors that lead to criminal behaviour over the last few decades. Psychologists have suggested abuse and maltreatment contribute to deviance. The association is strengthened when accompanied by insecure attachments (Baer, & Martinez, 2006; Corcoran, & McNulty, 2018; Erozkan, 2016; Murphy et al., 2014). Criminologists have found similar patterns. Specifically, lived experiences and interpersonal relationships relate to deviance (Butler, Fearon, Atkinson, & Parker, 2007; Savage, 2014). Though both research areas have made progress towards understanding individual factors that contribute to criminal behaviours, to date, no one has explored attachment, adversity, and criminal behaviour collectively. To advance the literature, this study along with the data collected in study 1 (see OSF registration, The pr...
The goal of this research project is to further understand the interactive effects of childhood a... more The goal of this research project is to further understand the interactive effects of childhood adversity and adult attachment on posttraumatic stress symptoms in adulthood. Psychologists have found that both factors influence how individuals interpret and respond to traumatic events. Attachment researchers have reported that the models of the self and other, which are developed through early experiences with attachment figures, contribute to the strategies we use both during and after trauma (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Mikulincer et al., 2015). These models determine how capable we find ourselves to be (model of the self) and whether we seek external support (model of others) to overcome experiences of trauma. Furthermore, psychologists have found that frequent adverse childhood experiences may cause individuals to be vulnerable to the effects of stress in adulthood and therefore more likely to develop posttraumatic stress symptoms (Heim & Nemeroff, 2001; Schalinski et al., 2016). To date,...
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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2021
This project evaluated the viability of shared course development (SCD) and identified the necess... more This project evaluated the viability of shared course development (SCD) and identified the necessary baseline mechanisms, principles, policies, and procedures for future joint course development collaborations. Although collaborative course design is still relatively new in Ontario, our institutionally-based project teams identified and researched a number of successful examples from Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These successful models demonstrated the transformative possibilities of blended learning, expanded course variety, maintained or enhanced the breadth of course offerings, and reduced institution-specific development costs while maintaining delivery autonomy. They also focused on enhancing student learning and produced momentum for instructional improvement and course redesign among collaborating institutions. This report concludes that there is considerable value to the development of collaborative institutional cultures in and of itself, and that collaborative capacity will become an increasingly important core competency in the more differentiated and change-oriented university sector that is emerging. Context appears to play a key role in the frequency and sustainability of successful SCD collaborations. SCD has been most successful, and its products most sustainable, in contexts where policy frameworks, infrastructure, and resources facilitate or demand collaboration, institutions share common curricular understandings and quality assurance practices, and there are mechanisms for stakeholder and employer engagement in programme and course development. 6 I Project Overview Context In Fall 2013, the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) invited representatives of Ontario universities to take part in a discussion about a possible Productivity and Innovation Fund (PIF) grant to explore how Ontario universities might collaborate on the development of technology-enhanced courses. Preliminary discussions suggested that in theory, a collaborative approach to hybrid course development (which we will call "shared course design" [SCD] in this report) might be a good fit for these challenges. Ultimately, five institutions
Child Welfare, 2017
Parent-Child Mother Goose (PCMG) is a communitybased parent-child program that focuses on mutual ... more Parent-Child Mother Goose (PCMG) is a communitybased parent-child program that focuses on mutual sharing of songs, nursery rhymes, and stories. Scharfe (2011) previously found that mothers who attended the 10-week program perceived their children to be more secure six months later than mothers in the waitlist-control group. Following Scharfe’s work, the purpose of this study was to explore what made PCMG so successful from the perspective of past participants. Results demonstrated that, as a group, mothers who attended PCMG reported overwhelmingly positive experiences in the program. Commonalities in reports were grouped into the following themes: (a) the mothers reported that PCMG helped facilitate bonding with their child; (b) PCMG was identified as a resource for gaining new parenting skills; (c) PCMG was an important outlet for socialization; (d) mothers in the program spoke warmly of PCMG facilitators and/or child-minders; and (e) mothers expressed that they would have liked to...
Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 2020
Hazan and Zeifman were the first to explore Bowlby’s proposition that adults would organize their... more Hazan and Zeifman were the first to explore Bowlby’s proposition that adults would organize their attachment relationships into a hierarchy and since then considerable research has explored both the structure and function of attachment hierarchies using different methodologies. In this study, previous findings establishing an association between attachment and networks were replicated and the associations between network members were explored. First, consistent with expectations, the findings provided additional evidence that romantic partners do not necessarily jump to the top of the hierarchy and young adults continue to place parents, in particular mothers, at the top of their hierarchy. Consistent with previous work, security was associated with placing others closer to the self and attachment avoidance was associated with placing others farther from the self on an electronic bull’s eye. Furthermore, to date, this is the first study to examine the association between attachment ...
Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 2020
Despite considerable evidence that attachment theory is a valuable framework for understanding ed... more Despite considerable evidence that attachment theory is a valuable framework for understanding educational outcomes, associations between attachment representations, academic burnout, engagement, and drop-out have been largely overlooked. In this study, 290 first-year post-secondary students completed attachment, academic burnout, and academic engagement questionnaires; 15% of the 290 students did not return for their second year. Using Structural Equation Modelling, we were able to simultaneously test the associations among variables while controlling for measurement error which may attenuate or overestimate the associations between variables. We also tested whether the associations were similar when the decision to drop-out was added to the model. Attachment anxiety, but not attachment approach-avoidance, was found to be associated with higher burnout and lower engagement. Furthermore, higher burnout increased chances of drop-out. Implications of these findings for universities in...
Journal of Relationships Research, 2019
Despite concerns about bias, student evaluations of teaching continue to be significant to facult... more Despite concerns about bias, student evaluations of teaching continue to be significant to faculty career advancement in academia. In a recent study, attachment representations were shown to be associated with students’ perceptions of instructors (Henson & Scharfe, 2011); students with insecure-anxious representations were more likely to rate their professors negatively. These data, however, were cross-sectional, and the role of distress in this association was not examined. To examine the influence of anxiety and depressive symptoms on the association between attachment representations and evaluations of instructors’ teaching performance, 102 undergraduate students (91% female, 17–38 years old) completed questionnaires at two time points during the semester. Interestingly, both attachment anxiety and avoidance measured at the beginning of the semester were negatively associated with teaching evaluations at the end of the semester, and this effect was stronger for participants who r...
Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 2017
An important cornerstone of Bowlby’s attachment theory (1969/1997) is the proposal that moving aw... more An important cornerstone of Bowlby’s attachment theory (1969/1997) is the proposal that moving away from parents and toward peers is an indication of healthy development. In this study, we explored the benefit of the shift, not the shift itself, in a sample of emerging adults experiencing a stressful life event (i.e., the transition from university). Although the shift from parents to peers is an important cornerstone of Bowlby’s theory, this study is one of the first to test the differential effects of parent and peer networks on adjustment. In this longitudinal study, 73 participants completed surveys to assess attachment, social networks, and distress one month before completing their undergraduate degree and 6 months later. We found that participants experiencing the transition from university, who chose a peer as the first person in their network, tended to report stable scores over time whereas participants who chose a family member reported more variable scores. Interestingly...
Journal of Relationships Research, 2019
Although there is considerable support for the influence of maternal attachment on children's... more Although there is considerable support for the influence of maternal attachment on children's development (see Gerhardt, 2015), this is one of the first studies to examine the effects of maternal prenatal reports of attachment representations with close others on reports of infants’ health. Mothers (N = 483) completed surveys to assess attachment and depression in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, infants’ health over the first 6 months, and depression and infant temperament when infants were 6 months old. We found that insecure mothers, as compared to secure mothers, were more likely to report that their infants experienced colic and illnesses associated with immune, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. It may be that secure mothers experience less anxiety associated with parenting and, as expected, were consistently found to report lower levels of infant illness symptoms. Alternatively, secure mothers would be expected to provide more consistent and responsive ca...
Personal Relationships, 2015
Measurement issues have plagued attachment research over the past 30 years. Concerns range from l... more Measurement issues have plagued attachment research over the past 30 years. Concerns range from limitations of the original paragraph measure (C. Hazan & P. R. Shaver, 1987), low reliability of continuous scales of Bartholomew's 4-category measure, limited interpretation of the 2 dimensions of the Experience of Close Relationships and the Experience of Close Relationships-Revised (ECR/ECR-R; K. A. Brennan, C. L. Clark, & P. R. Shaver, 1998; R. C. Fraley, N. G. Waller, & K. A. Brennan, 2000), and time-consuming coding of attachment interviews. In this article, a revision of the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ) is introduced. The new 4-category scales were found to have improved internal consistency when compared with the original RSQ scales as well as moderate to high test–retest reliability and good construct validity, thereby providing an alternative measure for researchers who are interested in assessing the effects of the 4-category model of attachment.
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2017
Page 86. Stability and Change of Attachment Representations from Cradle to Grave ELAINE SCHARFE T... more Page 86. Stability and Change of Attachment Representations from Cradle to Grave ELAINE SCHARFE Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis [Times change, and we change with them]. —ANONYMOUS Plus (a change, plus ...
The purpose of this study is to explore how our views of our relationships, our childhood experie... more The purpose of this study is to explore how our views of our relationships, our childhood experiences, and our feelings of distress influence our tendency to follow the rules. We believe that the quality of our close relationships may be important in understanding rule following. In particular, our view of ourselves and our view of others with respect to attachment may be associated with a disregard of some rules or our perceptions of breaking rules. These effects may be exacerbated depending on our childhood experiences (e.g., abuse or neglect) or our current symptoms (e.g., feelings of distress after a particularly traumatic experience), or current guidance around rules (i.e., current public health directives and adherence to covid restrictions). We are also interested in the effects of early separations on attachment representations. We will compare the associations between attachment models and other measures of distress, including dark personality traits and response to trauma ...
The aim of this research project is to bring together two divergent areas of research that each e... more The aim of this research project is to bring together two divergent areas of research that each explore contributions to criminal behaviours. Social science researchers have explored factors that lead to criminal behaviour over the last few decades. Psychologists have suggested abuse and maltreatment contribute to deviance. The association is strengthened when accompanied by insecure attachments (Baer, & Martinez, 2006; Corcoran, & McNulty, 2018; Erozkan, 2016; Murphy et al., 2014). Criminologists have found similar patterns. Specifically, lived experiences and interpersonal relationships relate to deviance (Butler, Fearon, Atkinson, & Parker, 2007; Savage, 2014). Though both research areas have made progress towards understanding individual factors that contribute to criminal behaviours, to date, no one has explored attachment, adversity, and criminal behaviour collectively. To advance the literature, this study along with the data collected in study 1 (see OSF registration, The pr...
The goal of this research project is to further understand the interactive effects of childhood a... more The goal of this research project is to further understand the interactive effects of childhood adversity and adult attachment on posttraumatic stress symptoms in adulthood. Psychologists have found that both factors influence how individuals interpret and respond to traumatic events. Attachment researchers have reported that the models of the self and other, which are developed through early experiences with attachment figures, contribute to the strategies we use both during and after trauma (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Mikulincer et al., 2015). These models determine how capable we find ourselves to be (model of the self) and whether we seek external support (model of others) to overcome experiences of trauma. Furthermore, psychologists have found that frequent adverse childhood experiences may cause individuals to be vulnerable to the effects of stress in adulthood and therefore more likely to develop posttraumatic stress symptoms (Heim & Nemeroff, 2001; Schalinski et al., 2016). To date,...
See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2021
This project evaluated the viability of shared course development (SCD) and identified the necess... more This project evaluated the viability of shared course development (SCD) and identified the necessary baseline mechanisms, principles, policies, and procedures for future joint course development collaborations. Although collaborative course design is still relatively new in Ontario, our institutionally-based project teams identified and researched a number of successful examples from Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These successful models demonstrated the transformative possibilities of blended learning, expanded course variety, maintained or enhanced the breadth of course offerings, and reduced institution-specific development costs while maintaining delivery autonomy. They also focused on enhancing student learning and produced momentum for instructional improvement and course redesign among collaborating institutions. This report concludes that there is considerable value to the development of collaborative institutional cultures in and of itself, and that collaborative capacity will become an increasingly important core competency in the more differentiated and change-oriented university sector that is emerging. Context appears to play a key role in the frequency and sustainability of successful SCD collaborations. SCD has been most successful, and its products most sustainable, in contexts where policy frameworks, infrastructure, and resources facilitate or demand collaboration, institutions share common curricular understandings and quality assurance practices, and there are mechanisms for stakeholder and employer engagement in programme and course development. 6 I Project Overview Context In Fall 2013, the Council of Ontario Universities (COU) invited representatives of Ontario universities to take part in a discussion about a possible Productivity and Innovation Fund (PIF) grant to explore how Ontario universities might collaborate on the development of technology-enhanced courses. Preliminary discussions suggested that in theory, a collaborative approach to hybrid course development (which we will call "shared course design" [SCD] in this report) might be a good fit for these challenges. Ultimately, five institutions
Child Welfare, 2017
Parent-Child Mother Goose (PCMG) is a communitybased parent-child program that focuses on mutual ... more Parent-Child Mother Goose (PCMG) is a communitybased parent-child program that focuses on mutual sharing of songs, nursery rhymes, and stories. Scharfe (2011) previously found that mothers who attended the 10-week program perceived their children to be more secure six months later than mothers in the waitlist-control group. Following Scharfe’s work, the purpose of this study was to explore what made PCMG so successful from the perspective of past participants. Results demonstrated that, as a group, mothers who attended PCMG reported overwhelmingly positive experiences in the program. Commonalities in reports were grouped into the following themes: (a) the mothers reported that PCMG helped facilitate bonding with their child; (b) PCMG was identified as a resource for gaining new parenting skills; (c) PCMG was an important outlet for socialization; (d) mothers in the program spoke warmly of PCMG facilitators and/or child-minders; and (e) mothers expressed that they would have liked to...
Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 2020
Hazan and Zeifman were the first to explore Bowlby’s proposition that adults would organize their... more Hazan and Zeifman were the first to explore Bowlby’s proposition that adults would organize their attachment relationships into a hierarchy and since then considerable research has explored both the structure and function of attachment hierarchies using different methodologies. In this study, previous findings establishing an association between attachment and networks were replicated and the associations between network members were explored. First, consistent with expectations, the findings provided additional evidence that romantic partners do not necessarily jump to the top of the hierarchy and young adults continue to place parents, in particular mothers, at the top of their hierarchy. Consistent with previous work, security was associated with placing others closer to the self and attachment avoidance was associated with placing others farther from the self on an electronic bull’s eye. Furthermore, to date, this is the first study to examine the association between attachment ...
Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 2020
Despite considerable evidence that attachment theory is a valuable framework for understanding ed... more Despite considerable evidence that attachment theory is a valuable framework for understanding educational outcomes, associations between attachment representations, academic burnout, engagement, and drop-out have been largely overlooked. In this study, 290 first-year post-secondary students completed attachment, academic burnout, and academic engagement questionnaires; 15% of the 290 students did not return for their second year. Using Structural Equation Modelling, we were able to simultaneously test the associations among variables while controlling for measurement error which may attenuate or overestimate the associations between variables. We also tested whether the associations were similar when the decision to drop-out was added to the model. Attachment anxiety, but not attachment approach-avoidance, was found to be associated with higher burnout and lower engagement. Furthermore, higher burnout increased chances of drop-out. Implications of these findings for universities in...
Journal of Relationships Research, 2019
Despite concerns about bias, student evaluations of teaching continue to be significant to facult... more Despite concerns about bias, student evaluations of teaching continue to be significant to faculty career advancement in academia. In a recent study, attachment representations were shown to be associated with students’ perceptions of instructors (Henson & Scharfe, 2011); students with insecure-anxious representations were more likely to rate their professors negatively. These data, however, were cross-sectional, and the role of distress in this association was not examined. To examine the influence of anxiety and depressive symptoms on the association between attachment representations and evaluations of instructors’ teaching performance, 102 undergraduate students (91% female, 17–38 years old) completed questionnaires at two time points during the semester. Interestingly, both attachment anxiety and avoidance measured at the beginning of the semester were negatively associated with teaching evaluations at the end of the semester, and this effect was stronger for participants who r...
Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 2017
An important cornerstone of Bowlby’s attachment theory (1969/1997) is the proposal that moving aw... more An important cornerstone of Bowlby’s attachment theory (1969/1997) is the proposal that moving away from parents and toward peers is an indication of healthy development. In this study, we explored the benefit of the shift, not the shift itself, in a sample of emerging adults experiencing a stressful life event (i.e., the transition from university). Although the shift from parents to peers is an important cornerstone of Bowlby’s theory, this study is one of the first to test the differential effects of parent and peer networks on adjustment. In this longitudinal study, 73 participants completed surveys to assess attachment, social networks, and distress one month before completing their undergraduate degree and 6 months later. We found that participants experiencing the transition from university, who chose a peer as the first person in their network, tended to report stable scores over time whereas participants who chose a family member reported more variable scores. Interestingly...
Journal of Relationships Research, 2019
Although there is considerable support for the influence of maternal attachment on children's... more Although there is considerable support for the influence of maternal attachment on children's development (see Gerhardt, 2015), this is one of the first studies to examine the effects of maternal prenatal reports of attachment representations with close others on reports of infants’ health. Mothers (N = 483) completed surveys to assess attachment and depression in the second or third trimester of pregnancy, infants’ health over the first 6 months, and depression and infant temperament when infants were 6 months old. We found that insecure mothers, as compared to secure mothers, were more likely to report that their infants experienced colic and illnesses associated with immune, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems. It may be that secure mothers experience less anxiety associated with parenting and, as expected, were consistently found to report lower levels of infant illness symptoms. Alternatively, secure mothers would be expected to provide more consistent and responsive ca...
Personal Relationships, 2015
Measurement issues have plagued attachment research over the past 30 years. Concerns range from l... more Measurement issues have plagued attachment research over the past 30 years. Concerns range from limitations of the original paragraph measure (C. Hazan & P. R. Shaver, 1987), low reliability of continuous scales of Bartholomew's 4-category measure, limited interpretation of the 2 dimensions of the Experience of Close Relationships and the Experience of Close Relationships-Revised (ECR/ECR-R; K. A. Brennan, C. L. Clark, & P. R. Shaver, 1998; R. C. Fraley, N. G. Waller, & K. A. Brennan, 2000), and time-consuming coding of attachment interviews. In this article, a revision of the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ) is introduced. The new 4-category scales were found to have improved internal consistency when compared with the original RSQ scales as well as moderate to high test–retest reliability and good construct validity, thereby providing an alternative measure for researchers who are interested in assessing the effects of the 4-category model of attachment.
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 2017