Relación entre exposición a tabaco, desarrollo de EPOC e

Children's security of attachment to mother at one year has been correlated with future child behaviours at every point of development for which longitudinal comparisons exist. The available data as of 1990 extend from the first to the tenth year of life, with assessments of relevant adolescent behavior currently being collected in three independent laboratories in Minnesota, California, and West Germany. Particular attention is paid to the Minnesota study in that it comprises two large samples, one of middle-class and one of lower-class disadvantaged families, each beginninng with Strange Situation assessments of 200 children.

Alan Sroufe and colleagues' ongoing longitudinal study in Minnesota focuses on continuity in development and adaptation where despite discontinuous advances in developmental level and dramatic changes in the behavioural repetoire, there is continuity in the quality of individual adaptation. Their data provide some of the most striking evidence for the view that the early mother-child attachment is predictive of children's cognitive and social development in future years. In one of their early reports

found that two year-old children who had been classified as securely attached at 12 months, and/or at 18 months, approached simple tool-using tasks with more confidence than their peers who had been previously coded anxiously attached. When challenged with more difficult tool-using tasks, the children with secure histories were more likely to enlist their mother's help in order to achieve a solution. The two-year olds who had previously been coded anxiously resistant, were frustrated, whiny and negative, regardless of whether they were trying to solve the "easy" or "difficult" problems. Their counterparts, who had been classified anxiously avoidant, sought little help from their mothers even when unable to find a solution on their own. It is interesting to note that mothers of these avoidantly attached children showed little affective investment in their children's activities, offering only minimal support even with the difficult tasks. This study, as Bretherton (1985) has pointed out, suggests that confidence in mother's physical and psychological availability, together with an expectation that if needed— help is not far away, seems to constitute the foundation for autonomous exploration. This would imply that trait­ like qualities such as attention span and persistence may in some ways be a result of security or insecurity the early infant-mother relationship.

researchers have found correlations between Strange Situation classifications and later social functioning in preschool children, aged three to five. This evidence points to a strong correlation between the early relationship to mother and future relations with peers and teachers independent of mother's presence. Children classified as securely attached to their mothers' at 12 or 18 months were rated higher on positive affect and lower on negative affect by their pre-school teachers. As well this group were rated more empathic and compliant than their peers who had been coded insecurely attached at one year. Independent coders, blind to previous and current assessments of the children, provided reliable and revealing data on the patterns of teacher-child interactions for 40 children. For example, teachers treated children with secure histories in a matter-of-fact yet warm fashion, exercising little control but expecting compliance with directions, and made demands on them which indicated high expectations of their maturity. Sroufe (1988) notes the similarity between this pattern of adult- child behaviour and Baumrind's (1967) ''authoritative'' parenting. Teachers, in their interactions with children of anxious histories, behaved in a more authoritarian way: they would repeat and increase their demands even before the children had a chance to comply. Their anger was almost exclusively directed towards the avoidant group, while ratings of teacher's nurturance and tolerance for immature behaviour were highest for the resistant group. Another

examined by Pancake (1985) who reports that children with secure histories had friendships that both observers and teachers described as "deeper and less likely to be tinged with hostility." A recent report (Troy & Sroufe, 1989), examined in detail an exploitative aspect of preschoolers' social relations that they term "victimization." This data showed that children with histories of secure attachment, according to naive observers reliable ratings, neither victimized nor were the object of others' victimization by assigned playmates. In sharp contrast, children with avoidant histories, were quite likely to victimize either other children with avoidant histories or children with resistant histories, and the latter group being most likely to find themselves the victim. In each of 5 play-pairs observed where the avoidant pattern was combined with either the avoidant or resistant pattern, victimization occurred— while it was conspicuously absent from the interactions observed in the other 14 securely attached play-pairs.

Data from longitudinal studies correlating security of attachment to mother at 12 months with children's reunion behaviours with mother (in a Strange Situation-like procedure) at six years have been provided by work in two independent laboratories at Berkeley (Main et al., 1985) and Regensburg (Wartner et al, 1988). The behavioural and language-based correlates at six years, thought to

correspond with the three infant classifications, were as follows: security at six is described by children who treat their parents in a relaxed and friendly way, who enter into easy enough and subtle intimacies with them, and who engage in free-flowing conversation. Anxious resistance at six is described as showing a mixture of insecurity including sadness and fear, and of intimacy alternating with hostility which can be either subtle or overt. Anxious avoidance at six is described as a tendency to quietly keep the parent at a distance, topics of converstation are impersonal and the child tends to keep busy with toys and ignore or even dismiss parents* initiatives. For the 32 child-mother pairs studied in the Berkeley investigation, the agreement between early security versus insecurity with mother and six-year olds' behavioural/discourse groupings (secure versus insecure) was 90% (Main et al., 1985). There was an 81% match for the 36 child-mother pairs studied in the Regensburg follow-up (Wartner et al., 1988). The impressive overlap between attachment security as assessed by non-verbal behavioural methods in infancy and behavioural/discourse classifications discovered 5 years later has established new foundations for the study of individual and dyadic differences in speech patterns as an index of security of attachment. Assessment of the attachment status of older children, adolescents and adults is increasingly thought to depend on how speakers use language to communicate and/or to censor information regarding feelings and relationships.

SUMMARY

The theories and findings reviewed in this chapter underline the fundamental importance of the early mother- child relationship for later personality development and functioning. The empirical validity and reliability of Ainsworth's Strange Situation (1978), as a behavioural- based index of security or insecurity of mother-child attachment and the persistence of attachment patterns identified in the Strange Situation, has been reviewed. The continuity of attachment patterns is thought to derive from the underlying organization of the internal working model of self, other and world (Craik, 1943? Bowlby,

1969/1982). The mode of expression of behaviour (as assessed during infancy with the Strange Situation) and language (as assessed in discourse analyses) are immediately accessible to empirical enquiry. Specifically, the focus is on the degree to which communication of attachment needs expressed through behavior or language is free-flowing. For the one-year old in the Strange Situation, this is characterized by the ease with which the child seeks and utilizes comfort when distressed. For the older child, adolescent and adult, secure attachment patterns are characterized by the ease and coherence with which attachment-related feelings are communicated.

CHAPTER 2