The child attachment interview: A psychometric study of reliability and discriminant validity

While well-established attachment measures have been developed for infancy, early childhood, and adulthood, a "measurement gap" has been identified in middle childhood, where behavioral or representational measures are not yet sufficiently robust. This article documents the development of a new measure-the Child Attachment Interview (CAI)-which seeks to bridge this gap. The CAI is a semistructured interview, in which children are invited to describe their relationships with their primary caregivers. The coding system is informed by the Adult Attachment Interview and the Strange Situation Procedure, and produces 4 attachment categories along with a continuous measure of attachment security based on ratings of attachment-related dimensions. The main psychometric properties are presented, including interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, and concurrent and discriminant validities, both for normally developing children and for those referred for mental health treatment. The CAI correlates as expected with other attachment measures and predicts independently collected ratings of social functioning. The findings suggest that the CAI is a reliable, valid, and promising measure of child-parent attachment in middle childhood. Directions for improvements to the coding system are discussed

A multi assessment approach to attachment in middle childhood and early adolescence in two clinical groups

Whilst it is widely recognised that attachment is a fundamental aspect of psychological wellbeing, there is little research on attachment in specific psychopathological conditions, in middle childhood and early adolescence. This study seeks to evaluate the role of attachment in patients (8-15 years) with somatic symptom disorders (SSDs) and with disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs). A battery of assessments was completed: Child Attachment Interview, Separation Anxiety Test, and Kerns Security Scale. Findings on \u201cattachment models\u201d showed an over-representation of insecure attachment patterns with a preponderance of disorganized attachment in both clinical groups. On \u201cperceived security,\u201d SSD participants viewed their parents as safer than DBD participants, but, regarding \u201cseparation anxiety,\u201d they didnot show higher separation anxiety. Therefore, a multi-assessment approach is likely to yield a more accurate picture of attachment organization at this age, and to capture attachment processes in SSDs and DBD

Reflective Functioning and Adolescent Psychological Adaptation: The Validity of the Reflective Functioning Scale-Adolescent Version

Adolescence is a critical period of rapid biological and social development and early signs of adult mental disorders emerge during this life stage. Previous studies suggest that mentalizing failures, specifically difficulties in reflective functioning (RF) are linked with psychological symptoms. However, relatively little is known about the association between RF and psychological adaptation in typical development. In this study, the relationship between RF, internalizing and externalizing symptoms were investigated in 95 adolescents using the revised Reflective Functioning Scale–Adolescent version. Results indicate that RF is associated with more self-reported internalizing symptoms. Moreover, the relationship between RF and externalizing symptoms are accounted for by the co-occurrence of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in typically developing adolescents. The implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions for future studies are presented

The strength of the strongest ties in collaborative problem solving

Complex problem solving in science, engineering, and business has become a highly collaborative endeavor. Teams of scientists or engineers collaborate on projects using their social networks to gather new ideas and feedback. Here we bridge the literature on team performance and information networks by studying teams' problem solving abilities as a function of both their within-team networks and their members' extended networks. We show that, while an assigned team's performance is strongly correlated with its networks of expressive and instrumental ties, only the strongest ties in both networks have an effect on performance. Both networks of strong ties explain more of the variance than other factors, such as measured or self-evaluated technical competencies, or the personalities of the team members. In fact, the inclusion of the network of strong ties renders these factors non-significant in the statistical analysis. Our results have consequences for the organization of teams of scientists, engineers, and other knowledge workers tackling today's most complex problems

Eliminating Recursion from Monadic Datalog Programs on Trees

We study the problem of eliminating recursion from monadic datalog programs on trees with an infinite set of labels. We show that the boundedness problem, i.e., determining whether a datalog program is equivalent to some nonrecursive one is undecidable but the decidability is regained if the descendant relation is disallowed. Under similar restrictions we obtain decidability of the problem of equivalence to a given nonrecursive program. We investigate the connection between these two problems in more detail

Attachment representations in school-age children: the development of the Child Attachment Interview (CAI)

This paper introduces a new measure of attachment in middle childhood (8-13 years), an interview extensively adapted from the AAI and with a new coding system. We report data from a series of studies with clinical and normal populations, in which the psychometric properties of reliability, stability and validity are tested and found to be satisfactory. Although work remains to be done, we see the Child Attachment Interview as a promising new attachment measure

Apego y estrés en niños con diabetes tipo 1 y sus madres

Objective: To understand the relationship between attachment and diabetes and the stress mediating role in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM1) and their mothers. Material and Method: Assessment instruments corresponding to Attachment Scales (ECR-R), Perceived stress (PSS), Safety (SS) and Stress in children (SiC) were applied, as self-report measures completed by children and their mothers. Demographic variables, time of onset of diabetes, and the average of the last 3 measurements of glycated hemoglobin HbA1c were analyzed as a parameter of the metabolic control of the last year. Results: Maternal and infant attachment strategies and maternal stress showed a significant association with the results of the child's diabetes, although with important gender differences. Conclusions: Attachment strategies, infantile and maternal, are relevant in the course of diabetes

High Spatial Resolution Fast-Neutron Imaging Detectors for Pulsed Fast-Neutron Transmission Spectroscopy

Two generations of a novel detector for high-resolution transmission imaging and spectrometry of fast-neutrons are presented. These devices are based on a hydrogenous fiber scintillator screen and single- or multiple-gated intensified camera systems (ICCD). This detector is designed for energy-selective neutron radiography with nanosecond-pulsed broad-energy (1 - 10 MeV) neutron beams. Utilizing the Time-of-Flight (TOF) method, such a detector is capable of simultaneously capturing several images, each at a different neutron energy (TOF). In addition, a gamma-ray image can also be simultaneously registered, allowing combined neutron/gamma inspection of objects. This permits combining the sensitivity of the fast-neutron resonance method to low-Z elements with that of gamma radiography to high-Z materials.Comment: Also published in JINST: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-0221/4/05/P0501