A Computational Narrative Analysis of Children-Parent Attachment Relationships

Children narratives implicitly represent their experiences and emotions. The relationships infants establish with their environment will shape their relationships with others and the concept of themselves. In this context, the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT) contains a series of unfinished stories to project the self in relation to attachment. Unfinished story procedures present a dilemma which needs to be solved and a codification of the secure, secure/insecure or insecure attachment categories. This paper analyses a story-corpus to explain 3 to 6 year old children-parent attachment relationships. It is a computational approach to exploring attachment representational models in two unfinished story-lines: "The stolen bike" and "The present". The resulting corpora contains 184 stories in one corpus and 170 stories in the other. The Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) computational frameworks observe the emotions which children project. As a result, the computational analysis of the children mental representational model, in both corpora, have shown to be comparable to expert judgements in attachment categorization

Parental Co‐Construction of 5‐ to 13‐Year‐Olds\u27 Global Self‐Esteem Through Reminiscing About Past Events

The current study explored parental processes associated with children\u27s global self‐esteem development. Eighty 5‐ to 13‐year‐olds and one of their parents provided qualitative and quantitative data through questionnaires, open‐ended questions, and a laboratory‐based reminiscing task. Parents who included more explanations of emotions when writing about the lowest points in their lives were more likely to discuss explanations of emotions experienced in negative past events with their child, which was associated with child attachment security. Attachment was associated with concurrent self‐esteem, which predicted relative increases in self‐esteem 16 months later, on average. Finally, parent support also predicted residual increases in self‐esteem. Findings extend prior research by including younger ages and uncovering a process by which two theoretically relevant parenting behaviors impact self‐esteem development

Constructing an understanding of mind : the development of children's social understanding within social interaction

Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991; 1999). It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction

Theories of the development of human communication

This article considers evidence for innate motives for sharing rituals and symbols from animal semiotics, developmental neurobiology, physiology of prospective motor control, affective neuroscience and infant communication. Mastery of speech and language depends on polyrhythmic movements in narrative activities of many forms. Infants display intentional activity with feeling and sensitivity for the contingent reactions of other persons. Talk shares many of its generative powers with music and the other ‘imitative arts’. Its special adaptations concern the capacity to produce and learn an endless range of sounds to label discrete learned understandings, topics and projects of intended movement

The School Attachment Monitor—A novel computational tool for assessment of attachment in middle childhood

© 2021 Rooksby et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.Background Attachment research has been limited by the lack of quick and easy measures. We report development and validation of the School Attachment Monitor (SAM), a novel measure for largescale assessment of attachment in children aged 5–9, in the general population. SAM offers automatic presentation, on computer, of story-stems based on the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task (MCAST), without the need for trained administrators. SAM is delivered by novel software which interacts with child participants, starting with warm-up activities to familiarise them with the task. Children’s story completion is video recorded and augmented by ‘smart dolls’ that the child can hold and manipulate, with movement sensors for data collection. The design of SAM was informed by children of users’ age range to establish their task understanding and incorporate their innovative ideas for improving SAM software. Methods 130 5–9 year old children were recruited from mainstream primary schools. In Phase 1, sixty-one children completed both SAM and MCAST. Inter-rater reliability and rating concordance was compared between SAM and MCAST. In Phase 2, a further 44 children completed SAM complete and, including those children completing SAM in Phase 1 (total n = 105), a machine learning algorithm was developed using a “majority vote” procedure where, for each child, 500 non-overlapping video frames contribute to the decision. Results Using manual rating, SAM-MCAST concordance was excellent (89% secure versus insecure; 97% organised versus disorganised; 86% four-way). Comparison of human ratings of SAM versus the machine learning algorithm showed over 80% concordance. Conclusions We have developed a new tool for measuring attachment at the population level, which has good reliability compared to a validated attachment measure and has the potential for automatic rating–opening the door to measurement of attachment in large populations.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Young children learning with mobile devices: Research on design and implementation

The increasing growth and usage of mobile devices, such as tablets and iPads, by young children has not yet been accompanied by systematic research about the effects they have on children's learning and the conditions that facilitate or hinder learning and engagement. As a result, only few empirically-based guidelines exist to guide parents, educators, and application (app) designers when choosing or designing apps for young children, often leading to non-evidence-based decisions, or the design of apps with little educational value. This symposium aims to bring together researchers from Australia, the UK and USA to discuss what evidence exist about the learning potential of mobile devices and apps for young children and how it could be used to inform relevant stakeholders

A Narrative Study of Emotions Associated with Negative Childhood Experiences Reported in the Adult Attachment Interview

Attachment patterns, which tend to be stable over time, are passed from one generation to the next. Secure attachment has been linked to adaptive social functioning and has been identified as a protective factor against mental illness. The parents’ state of mind with regard to attachment—as measured with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2002)—predicts the attachment classification for the infant in Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Procedure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Earned-secure individuals have overcome negative childhood experiences to achieve a secure state of mind in adulthood. Earned security, like continuous security, strongly predicts infant security in the next generation. Preoccupied anger is one of the main constructs measured in the AAI that may lead to classification of an insecure, preoccupied state of mind. The current study was an analysis of the narratives of eight individuals whose AAIs indicated mild to high scores for preoccupied anger. All of these individuals have spent considerable energy and resources in grappling with negative childhood experiences. Participants were interviewed regarding how their feelings changed over time and what, if any, events contributed to how their feelings changed. For most participants, the emergence of sustained subjective anger was reported in late adolescence, or even adulthood. Those whose transcripts were judged earned-secure at the time of the study were associated with narratives that indicated progressive gains in Hoffman’s (2008) stages of empathy and Perry’s (1968) scheme for intellectual and ethical development. Reappraisal was identified as a key emotional regulation strategy that contributed to security. Supports for executive function also featured as important factors in the attainment of therapeutic goals. Attachment researchers may be especially interested that Hoffman’s stages emerged as a possible link between metacognitive processes for earned- and continuous-secure individuals alike. In contrast, the study’s findings regarding integrative processes associated with post-formal cognitive development, and mediators for implicit learning as predictors of behavior, suggest that earned security may be a different construct from continuous security. The results of this study hold important implications for treatment and social policy. The electronic version of this dissertation is at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/e

A Study Of Stability: Maternal Reflective Functioning From Pregnancy To Seven Months Postpartum

This study examined the stability of parental reflective functioning from the third trimester of pregnancy to seven months postpartum, as well as possible factors that impact stability. The current sample included a subsample of 47 mothers who participated in a larger study examining fetal brain connectivity and infant outcomes. Parental reflective functioning was assessed using the Pregnancy Interview-Revised (Slade, Grunebaum, Huganir, & Reeves, 1987; Slade, 2011) and the Parent Development Interview-Revised Short form (Slade et al., 2003). Additional measures assessed parity, adult romantic attachment, and demographic factors. Stability of reflective functioning was assessed in two ways, continuously and categorically. Findings indicate that indeed, reflective functioning remained stable in the current sample from pregnancy to postpartum. This finding was regardless of parity, romantic attachment avoidance or anxiety, or demographic risk. Significant differences in prenatal reflective functioning were found based on mothers’ education and marital status. There were also differences in the relationship between prenatal and postnatal reflective functioning scores for mothers who had varying levels of cumulative risk, and education. Findings from the current study support the need for more research to examine the stability and change of reflective functioning over time, as they have important implications for understanding intervention effects. Future research in this area can aid in establishing the degree of change in reflective functioning scores which results in a meaningful change in parenting behavior which positively impacts on infant behavior and development

Supporting resilience in chldren and youth impacted by complex trauma

Exposure to repeated traumatic events, including abuse, neglect, and domestic and community violence is often referred to as complex trauma. This research was conducted to better understand the developmental impact of complex trauma on children and adolescents, and to consider what treatment approach might best serve this population. The author first examined the impact of repeated victimization on child neurobiological development, with particular attention to the areas of attachment, affect regulation, behavioral control, cognition, and self-esteem. Complex trauma treatments that are more individually focused and grounded in cognitive-behavioral theory were then compared to those that are more systems-focused and stem from attachment and intersubjective theories. This author found that most of the literature agrees on the following core components of treatment for youth with complex trauma histories: safety, selfregulation, self-reflective information processing, traumatic experiences integration, and relational engagement. An area that seems to be getting increasing attention is treatment directed at fostering strengths and building competencies. The author concluded that including a caregiver in as much of the treatment as possible can support attachment and lead to longer-term positive gains. The author found that both approaches offer potentially effective interventions, and combining components from both can result in a more comprehensive treatment approach. This study includes a case example and a discussion of implications for clinical social work practice with a focus on cultural considerations as well as recommendations for further research