Attachment 2: The Internal Working Model

This lecture covered the internal working model, the effects of early attachment on later development and the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI).

The internal working model (of self and relationships): Bowlby (1980)

Key points:

• The IWM is a set of cognitive representations of your caregiver’s responsiveness and accessibility and of your own deservingness of care
• It is built up through early experiences of sensitive or insensitive care
• According to Bowlby, the IWM influences how the baby behaves in a strange situation and how the child relates to people in late development
• The IWM is built up by the first intimate relationship of your life (with your caregiver) and this provides the initial template for all future close relationships
• According to Bowlby, those with secure IWMs expect people to be supportive and they behave in a way that elicits such support
• Conversely, those with insecure IWMs are less trusting and do not expect good care and do not believe they are worthy of good care. Their distrust, coldness, or hostility can elicit more negative responses from others, which in turn confirms their belief that they are not worthy of care

Evidence that early attachment affects later development:
Following up infants who were rated secure or insecure at 1 year old Bretherton (1985) observed them at age 2 in a nursery setting.

• Secure infants had greater attention span, more positive emotion, used tools confidently
• Insecure-ambivalent were less socially able, more dependant on teacher
• Insecure-avoidant were more hostile and distant with peers

Following up infants who were rated secure or insecure at 1 year old Grossman and Grossman (1991) observed them at age 5 at preschool.

• Secure children played with more concentration and were more socially skilled at handling conflict

Following up infants who were rated secure or insecure at 1 year old Main (1991) asked them to speak about their lives so far.

• Those rated as secure had coherent memories and more self-awareness
• Insecure-ambivalent had incoherent stories and no resolution of sadness
• Insecure-avoidant had poor recall poor self-awareness

The Adult Attachment Interview

Developed by Main et al (1985)

• A semi-structured, hour long interview consisting of 18 questions which is taped and transcribed verbatim
• Eg, “give me five adjectives to describe your mother/father”; “what memories or experiences led you to choose each one?”
• The subject is asked how parents responded when they were upset; about separations, losses, rejections, threats
• “How do you think your early experiences affected your adult personaility?”
• The AAI measures your “state of mind with regard to attachment”. It measures the way a person presents their attachment history
• The task is to reflect upon memories related to attachment, while maintaining a coherent discourse with the interviewer
• It does not measure whether you had a good or bad childhood nor (specifically) whether you had good or bad parents
• Some people report very negative experiences but in a coherent way and are therefore secure in the AAI (sometimes called “earned secure”)
• Those participants who represent a positive view (idealized) which is insufficiently backed up are scored as “dismissive”
• Beckwith et al (2000) found tha 18 year olds who gave the most idealized view of their mothers were found to have had the mothers with the lowest sensitivity scores 17 years earlier
• Interviews are scored for coherence or incoherence
• You cannot self-report your attachment type. Hesse (1999) found that insecure people are more likely to say they are secure (and vice versa)

AAI classifications

Secure/autonomous

• Coherent
• Description of attachment-related experiences is consistent, whether favourable or unfavourable

Dismissing

• Not coherent
• Dismissing of attachment related experiences
• Normalizing and idealizing
• Very brief

Preoccupied

• Not coherent
• Preoccupied with past attachments
• Very long answers
• Speaker often gets fearful or angry

Unresolved/disorganized

• striking lapses of reasoning, prolonged silences

Correspondence between AAI and Infant Strange Situation

Predicting infant strange situation response from parental AAIs

[I thought this a strange way of saying “Can we use AAIs on adults to predict how their children will develop particularly in regard to attachment (using the SS)?”]
Several studies have shown a very high match (70-90%) between an adult’s classification on the AAI and their child’s classification in the SS.
Van Ijzendoorn (1995) reviewed 14 studies and found a very high correlation. Some studies have taken this further and looked at pregnant mothers and found that their AAI can be used to predict their child’s behaviour in the SS more than a year later (eg, Fonagy, Steele and Steele, 1991)

This leads to the concept of intergenerational transfer; secure parents produce secure children. (Slater and Bremner, p. 164)

Finally…

Your attachment classification is not completely fixed: a traumatic loss can harm your IWM and therapy can improve it.