Mother-Child Discourse, Attachment Security, Shared Positive Affect, and Early Conscience Development (original) (raw)
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The parent?infant dyad and the construction of the subjective self
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2007
Developmental psychology and psychopathology has in the past been more concerned with the quality of self-representation than with the development of the subjective agency which underpins our experience of feeling, thought and action, a key function of mentalization. This review begins by contrasting a Cartesian view of pre-wired introspective subjectivity with a constructionist model based on the assumption of an innate contingency detector which orients the infant towards aspects of the social world that react congruently and in a specifically cued informative manner that expresses and facilitates the assimilation of cultural knowledge. Research on the neural mechanisms associated with mentalization and social influences on its development are reviewed. It is suggested that the infant focuses on the attachment figure as a source of reliable information about the world. The construction of the sense of a subjective self is then an aspect of acquiring knowledge about the world through the caregiver's pedagogical communicative displays which in this context focuses on the child's thoughts and feelings. We argue that a number of possible mechanisms, including complementary activation of attachment and mentalization, the disruptive effect of maltreatment on parent-child communication, the biobehavioural overlap of cues for learning and cues for attachment, may have a role in ensuring that the quality of relationship with the caregiver influences the development of the child's experience of thoughts and feelings.
Universality claim of attachment theory: Children’s socioemotional development across cultures
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018
The first part of this paper reviews the basic tenets of attachment theory with respect to differences in cultural socialization strategies. In one strategy infants have the lead, and the social environment is responsive to the infant’s wishes and preferences. In another strategy the caregivers—children or adults—are experts who know what is best for a baby without exploring his or her mental states. Accordingly, the definition of attachment is conceived as a negotiable emotional bond or a network of responsibilities. Attachment theory represents the Western middle-class perspective, ignoring the caregiving values and practices in the majority of the world. However, attachment theory claims universality in all its components. Since the claim of universality implies moral judgments about good and bad parenting, ethical questions need to be addressed. These issues are discussed in the second part of the paper. It is first demonstrated that sensitive responsiveness in attachment theory...
The focus of this chapter is on the relationship between child development and socio-cultural context from a discursive practice approach. It addresses the central and constructive role played by language in the forming and structuring of self and identity. Specifically, it aims at investigating how communicative practices in early family conversations can be considered as reflecting cultural models that will also become evident in the narrative self in adulthood. Our intention is to identify developmental precursors of identity formation with regard to the dimensions of autonomy and relatedness. In doing this, we hope to contribute to the understanding of the dialogical relationship between culture and self. We will first give a theoretical outline of the interplay between self, narrative, and culture from a developmental perspective, followed by some empirical evidence from a longitudinal study to support our claim. We will conclude with a discussion of the presented data in light of the dynamic nature of culture and self over the lifespan.
International Journal of Behavioral Development
There are many postulates of a relation between quality of attachment with theory of mind and language functions (e.g., . The current study examined in longitudinal design how different patterns of attachment are associated with usage of internal state language at ages 17, 23, 30 and 36 months. Transcripts of mother-child play situations were coded for eleven categories of internal state language: positive emotion, negative emotion, valence reversal, physiology, ability, volition, obligation, moral, cognition, emotion-modulatory particles and cognitivecontrast particles. Repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed that securely attached children exhibit more frequent utterances of positive emotion, valence reversal, physiology, ability, cognition, emotionmodulatory, and cognitive-contrast particles at relatively earlier times. Negative emotion terms were more frequently uttered by avoidant-insecure children at 30 months and by disorganized children at 36 months.
Early Education & Development, 2001
Participants were 45 mostly African-American or Latino young children (25 boys, 20 girls, mean age = 56.4 months), with about half recruited from a mental health facility and half from preschool settings. Children were administered two separate interviews examining their affectively-charged moral narratives regarding acts of victimization (Moral MSSB) and their attachment-related narratives (SAT). In addition, children's teachers or therapists completed assessments of the attachmentlike aspects of their relationships with children (STRS), and a measure of children's behavior problems and competencies (C-TRF). Overall, after controlling for child age, gender, SES, and expressive language ability, children with more externalizing problems were more likely to describe aggressive themes, and less likely to mention adult aid or taking responsibility for transgressions in their moral narratives. In addition, more positive attachments (both the SAT and STRS) were associated with fewer externalizing problems. More than half of the total variance in children's externalizing scores could be predicted from a combination of the attachment and Moral MSSB variables. These findings have implications for understanding the affective origins of young children's externalizing behavior problems involving both peers and adults.