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Background Scientific knowledge on the quality of caregiving/maternal sensitivity among mothers with mild intellectual disabilities (ID) is limited and subject to many methodological shortcomings, but seems to suggest that these mothers are less sensitive than mothers without intellectual disabilities. Methods In this matched-comparison study (N = 48), the present authors observed maternal sensitivity for 20 min in four different laboratory play situations. The study also included semi-structured interviews to assess maternal experiences of maltreatment and child attachment. Results The present authors found significantly lower sensitivity among mothers with intellectual disabilities than among a comparison group of mothers without intellectual disabilities. Among mothers with intellectual disabilities, low sensitivity was related to maternal experiences of maltreatment and predictive of disorganized child attachment. In the comparison group, high maternal sensitivity was related to partner presence and social support, and predictive of child intelligence. Conclusions The present authors highlight the importance of attending to intellectual disabilities mothers' history of receiving care to understand their capacity for giving adequate care.

It is because the removal of a young child from his home to the care of strangers is usually productive of intense anxiety, misery, and anger (often even when the home he leaves is a bad one), and ...

The aim of the present study (N = 69) was to examine whether middle childhood attachment, measured using the Separation Anxiety Test (Slough, Goyette & Greenberg, 1988), predicts aspects of social functioning (social initiative, prosocial orientation, social anxiety, loneliness) in young adulthood. Insecurity-avoidance at age 8.5 years was, as expected, negatively related to social initiative and prosocial orientation, and was also positively related to social anxiety and loneliness at age 21 years. In addition, insecurity-avoidance contributed to developmental change in social anxiety from middle childhood to young adulthood. Contrary to our expectations, the two security scales were generally unrelated to future social functioning. Taken together, these results extend previous research by showing that insecurity-avoidance is related to social functioning also beyond childhood and adolescence, and that it contributes to developmental change in social functioning over time. The scarcity of prospective links for the attachment security scales points to the need for future studies addressing when and why attachment does not contribute to future social functioning.

Maternal intellectual disability (ID) is regarded a risk factor in child development, but there is no scientific evidence on maternal ID in relation to children's attachment. Using a matched comparison design, a small group (n = 23) of mothers diagnosed with ID was studied to help fill this gap. Besides maternal ID, we examined the role of abuse/trauma/maltreatment (ATM) in the mothers' biographies, along with potential confounds. Comparison group mothers (n = 25) had normal variations in intelligence and matched mothers with ID on residential area, income, child age, and sex. History of maternal ATM was assessed using a semi-structured interview and was found to be significantly more likely in the ID group mothers' experience than the comparison group mothers. Children's (M age = 77 months) attachment representations were assessed with the Separation Anxiety Test. Among children of mothers with ID, a substantial minority (35%) had a secure and the vast majority (80%) an organized attachment representation. Mothers with ID who had suffered elevated ATM were significantly more likely to have children who were scored high on disorganization and insecurity. We discuss possible implications of our findings for societal considerations regarding parenting and child attachment in the context of parental ID status.

In this paper, we examine concurrent and prospective links between attachment and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality from middle childhood to young adulthood (n = 66). At age 8.5 years, attachment was measured with the Separation Anxiety Test and at 21 years with the Adult Attachment Interview, whereas the personality dimensions were assessed with questionnaires at both time points. The results showed that attachment and personality dimensions are meaningfully related, concurrently and longitudinally. Attachment security in middle childhood was positively related to extraversion and openness, both concurrently and prospectively. Unresolved/disorganized (U/d) attachment was negatively related to conscientiousness and positively related to openness in young adulthood. U/d attachment showed a unique contribution to openness above the observed temporal stability of openness. As attachment security was also associated with openness, the duality of this factor is discussed together with other theoretical considerations regarding attachment theory in relation to the FFM.

The current research reports that mothers' security of attachment predicts their children's sense of God's closeness. A total of 71 mother-child dyads participated (children's M age = 7.5). Mothers' attachment organization was studied with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2003 ) and their religiosity and attachment to God were measured with questionnaires. Children were told stories about visually represented children in attachment-activating and attachment-neutral situations, and placed a God symbol on a felt board to represent God's closeness to the fictional children. Children of secure mothers placed the God symbol closer (d = .78) than children of insecure mothers across both types of situations, suggesting that children's experiences with secure-insecure mothers generalize to their sense of God's closeness. Also, girls (but not boys) placed the God symbol closer in attachment-activating than in attachment-neutral situations, giving partial support for an attachment normative God-as-safe-haven model. Finally, mothers' religiosity and attachment to God were unrelated to child outcomes.

We seek to understand why a relatively high percentage (39%; vs the meta-analytic average, 15-18%) of disorganized/disoriented (D) classifications has accrued in the low-risk Uppsala Longitudinal Study (ULS) study, using experienced D coders. Prior research indicates that D behaviours do not always indicate attachment disorganization stemming from a history of frightening caregiving. We examined the role of two other presumed factors: participation in a previous strange situation and overstress. Our findings indicate that both factors were highly prevalent in the ULS sample and that they jointly predicted higher rates of D. First, participation in a previous strange situation was associated with significantly higher distress displays during the second visit than occurred among previously untested children, suggesting that prior participation in the strange situation had a sensitizing effect on child distress during the second visit. Second, unless separations were cut short in lieu of high distress during the second visit, re-tested children were disproportionately likely (ca 60%) to be classified D. We argue that these findings have important implications for theory, research, and practice. In particular, we conclude that practitioners must refrain from misattributing the appearance of any D behaviors observed to a history of maltreatment.

The development of children's ability to identify facial emotional expressions has long been suggested to be experience dependent, with parental caregiving as an important influencing factor. This study attempts to further this knowledge by examining disorganization of the attachment system as a potential psychological mechanism behind aberrant caregiving experiences and deviations in the ability to identify facial emotional expressions. Typically developing children (N = 105, 49.5% boys) aged 6-7 years (M = 6 years 8 months, SD = 1.8 months) completed an attachment representation task and an emotion identification task, and parents rated children's negative emotionality. The results showed a generally diminished ability in disorganized children to identify facial emotional expressions, but no response biases. Disorganized attachment was also related to higher levels of negative emotionality, but discrimination of emotional expressions did not moderate or mediate this relation. Our novel findings relate disorganized attachment to deviations in emotion identification, and therefore suggest that disorganization of the attachment system may constitute a psychological mechanism linking aberrant caregiving experiences to deviations in children's ability to identify facial emotional expressions. Our findings further suggest that deviations in emotion identification in disorganized children, in the absence of maltreatment, may manifest in a generally diminished ability to identify emotional expressions, rather than in specific response biases.

In this article, the authors argue that mystical experiences are linked to disorganized attachment via a proposed mediator—the propensity to enter altered states of consciousness (absorption). Using a sample of predominantly religious/spiritual participants (N = 62), they report that disorganized attachment, as identified with the Adult Attachment Interview, predicted lifetime occurrence of mystical experiences and that this link was mediated by absorption. Alternative mediational models received less conclusive support. Also, more conventional aspects of religion (theistic beliefs and degree of general religiousness) were not related to disorganized attachment or absorption, supporting the discriminant validity of the mediational model. In the discussion, the authors argue that mystical experiences represent a nonpathological and potentially self-reparative “outcome” of disorganized attachment and the related propensity to experience alterations in consciousness.

Four studies examined implications of attachment theory for psychological aspects of religion among Israeli Jews. Study 1 replicated previous correlational findings indicating correspondence among interpersonal attachment orientations, attachment to God, and image of God. Studies 2-4 were subliminal priming experiments, which documented both normative and individual-difference effects. Regarding normative effects, findings indicated that threat priming heightened cognitive access to God-related concepts in a lexical decision task (Study 2); priming with "God" heightened cognitive access to positive, secure base-related concepts in the same task (Study 3); and priming with a religious symbol caused neutral material to be better liked (Study 4). Regarding individual differences, interpersonal attachment-related avoidance reduced the normative effects (i.e., avoidant participants had lower implicit access to God as a safe haven and secure base). Findings were mostly independent of level of religiousness. The present experiments considerably extend the psychological literature on connections between attachment constructs and aspects of religion.

This study examined the contributions of several important domains of functioning to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and conduct problems. Specifically, we investigated whether cognitive inhibition, emotion regulation, emotionality, and disorganized attachment made independent and specific contributions to these externalizing behaviour problems from a multiple pathways perspective. The study included laboratory measures of cognitive inhibition and disorganized attachment in 184 typically developing children (M age = 6 years, 10 months, SD = 1.7). Parental ratings provided measures of emotion regulation, emotionality, and externalizing behaviour problems. Results revealed that cognitive inhibition, regulation of positive emotion, and positive emotionality were independently and specifically related to ADHD symptoms. Disorganized attachment and negative emotionality formed independent and specific relations to conduct problems. Our findings support the multiple pathways perspective on ADHD, with poor regulation of positive emotion and high positive emotionality making distinct contributions to ADHD symptoms. More specifically, our results support the proposal of a temperamentally based pathway to ADHD symptoms. The findings also indicate that disorganized attachment and negative emotionality constitute pathways specific to conduct problems rather than to ADHD symptoms.

This prospective longitudinal study investigated whether and in what way different functions of attachment relationships are transferred from parents to reciprocal relationship partners in adolescence. Furthermore, the impact of nationality, romantic relationship status, and individual differences in perceived attachment history and current attachment orientation on the timing and extent of transfer was examined. Adolescents from Sweden and Germany were studied over a 12- to 15-month time span. As predicted, the transfer generally unfolded in a step-by-step process in cross-sectional analyses. However, the predicted direction of transfer from parents to peers could not be confirmed in the prospective analyses. Adolescents who had formed a romantic relationship between assessments showed a stronger transfer from parents to peers compared to those who had not. German adolescents had transferred to a larger extent at Time Point 1, but Swedish adolescents caught up by Time Point 2. Finally, the combination of an insecure history with mother and high current anxiety was linked to a particularly high degree of prospective attachment transfer, whereas an insecure history with mother combined with high current avoidance predicted a particularly low degree of prospective transfer.

M. A. Persinger (2002) claimed that transcranial magnetic stimulation with weak, complex magnetic fields evokes mystical experiences. However, in a double-blind experiment, P. Granqvist, M. Fredrikson, P. Unge, A. Hagenfeldt, S. Valind., et al. (2005) found no effects of field exposure on mystical experiences (N = 89), though a minority of participants reported spontaneous mystical experiences. Following the conclusion of null effects from magnetic field exposure, the setup of this experiment, including pre-experimental assessments of religiousness and sensory deprivation, can be viewed as a prime/setting for such experiences. The authors analyzed subsets of experimental data from P. Granqvist and colleagues with emphasis on the contribution of religiousness in the prediction and interpretation of mystical experiences. They found that a higher degree of religiousness predicted a higher occurrence of mystical experiences with a religious quality, but not of mystical experiences without such a quality. The authors discuss findings in terms of the experimental setup serving as a prime/setting activating the religious schemas of religious participants.

In this article we review previous work on religious conversions, relate this work to attachment system dynamics, and present a meta-analysis of results from 11 cross-national questionnaire studies (N = 1465) that have investigated links between religious conversions and perceived childhood attachment history with parents. Two general hypotheses derived from attachment theory were tested. Based on the compensation hypothesis, it was predicted that sudden religious conversions would be associated on average with insecure, rather than secure, attachment histories. Based on the 2-level correspondence hypothesis, it was predicted that nonsudden conversions and gradual religious changes would be associated with a secure attachment history. Both predictions were supported in the meta-analyses, with small to medium effect sizes. It was concluded that attachment theory is a valuable framework for integrating previous findings and guiding future research on religious conversions, but that several methodological im...

Attachment theoretical studies have increased our understanding of the socioemotional foundations for religious development. However, because these studies have been correlational and based on self-reports, they are vulnerable to concerns of self-presentation bias and lack of basis for causal inference. Three subliminal stimulation experiments were therefore performed, where activation of the attachment system was attempted by way of unconsciously administered separation stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 3 (N = 29 and 89), the separation stimulus alluded to God, and in Experiment 2 (N = 47), it alluded to mother. Responses were moderated by perceived attachment history with parents in all experiments. Participants with secure histories increased in religious attachment behaviors, whereas those with insecure histories decreased following attachment system activation compared with control stimulation. There also were suggestions of experimental group increase in proximity seeking in relation to God. The main conclusion supports correspondence between internal working models of parents and God.

The purpose of the study was to test our (Granqvist, 2002a) emotional compensation and two-level correspondence hypotheses by examining longitudinal associations of attachment and change in romantic relationship status in relation to religious change. Questionnaires were filled out by 196 adolescents in Stockholm (mean age = 16 years); 72% completed the 15-month follow-up. Virtually no main effects on religious change as a function of either attachment or relationship status were obtained. However, in line with the interaction predictions, an insecure attachment history and insecure adult attachment in romantic relationships predicted increased religiousness for those who had experienced a separation and decreased religiousness for those who had formed a new romantic relationship. The pattern of relations for a secure attachment history and romantic attachment was in the opposite direction. The findings imply that attachment predicts religious change primarily in the context of changes in romantic relationships. These findings may explain why previous studies in the separate domains of attachment and relationship status in relation to religiousness have yielded weak or inconsistent results, and suggest that the two fields need to be integrated. Implications for romantic attachment theory and research in general are discussed.

The study offers the first investigation of cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between attachment and religiosity with adolescent participants. Adolescence is a life period linked to attachment transitions and religious changes. The research was conducted to help resolve inconsistent results from previous cross-sectional versus longitudinal studies and studies on attachment to parents versus peer attachment. Time 1 questionnaire data was collected from 196 Swedish adolescents (M age = 16 years); 143 participants completed the 15-month follow-up. Results from the cross-sectional analyses generally supported the socialized correspondence and emotional compensation hypotheses, particularly in relation to attachment to mother. Results from the longitudinal analyses were more mixed. The discussion integrates the hypotheses with Kirkpatrick’s previous proposal, argues for a main focus on attachment to parents rather than peer attachment, and offers suggestions for future attachment and religion studies.

The purpose of this cross-sectional, questionnaire study was to investigate the links of adult attachment style and relationship status to various indexes of religiosity. The sample consisted of 156 students at Uppsala University, Sweden. In line with a hypothesis of concurrent correspondence between adult attachment style and religiosity, results showed a modest positive association between adult attachment security and those religiosity variables that tapped features of the individual's relationship with God. In support of a compensation hypothesis, singles, as compared to lovers, were found to be more religiously active, perceive a personal relationship with God, have experienced changes implying increased importance of religious beliefs, and have experienced a religiosity that is based on affect regulation to a larger extent. It was argued that an attachment framework focusing on other aspects of attachment than individual differences in attachment quality may be equally fruitfully implemented within ...

The authors review findings from the psychology of religion showing that believers’ perceived relationships with God meet the definitional criteria for attachment relationships. They also review evidence for associations between aspects of religion and individual differences in interpersonal attachment security and insecurity. They focus on two developmental pathways to religion. The first is a “compensation” pathway involving distress regulation in the context of insecure attachment and past experiences of insensitive caregiving. Research suggests that religion as compensation might set in motion an “earned security” process for individuals who are insecure with respect to attachment. The second is a “correspondence” pathway based on secure attachment and past experiences with sensitive caregivers who were religious. The authors also discuss conceptual limitations of a narrow religion-as-attachment model and propose a more inclusive framework that accommodates concepts such as mindfulness and “nonattachment” from nontheistic religions such as Buddhism and New Age spirituality.

Based on the idea that believers' perceived relationships with God develop from their attachment-related experiences with primary caregivers, the authors explored the quality of such experiences and their representations among individuals who differed in likelihood of experiencing a principal attachment to God. Using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), they compared attachment-related experiences and representations in a group of 30 Catholic priests and religious with a matched group of lay Catholics and with the worldwide normal distribution of AAI classifications. They found an overrepresentation of secure-autonomous states regarding attachment among those more likely to experience a principal attachment to God (i.e., the priests and religious) compared with the other groups and an underrepresentation of unresolved-disorganized states in the two groups of Catholics compared with the worldwide normal distribution. Key findings also included links between secure-autonomous states regarding attachment and estimated experiences with loving or nonrejecting parents on the one hand and loving God imagery on the other. These results extend the literature on religion from an attachment perspective and support the idea that generalized working models derived from attachment experiences with parents are reflected in believers' perceptions of God.

This study was the first to examine relations between attachment and religion-spirituality in adults using a developmentally validated attachment assessment, the Adult Attachment Interview. Security of attachment was expected to be linked to a religiosity-spirituality that is socially based on the parental relationships and reflects extrapolation of attachment experiences with sensitive parents to perceived relationships with a loving God. Insecurity of attachment was expected to be related to religiosity- spirituality via emotional compensation for states of insecurity. Participants (N=84; 40% men; mean age=29 years) were drawn from religious-spiritual groups. Religiousness-spirituality was assessed with questionnaires. Results generally supported the hypotheses (ps

This chapter focuses on social-psychological, personality, and developmental research which the authors have independently carried out in Britain and Sweden using participants drawn from New Age settings and other groups of religious and non-religious people. It starts out by briefly mentioning some motivational aspects associated with the New Age, such as individualist/collectivist orientations and values, which have been a matter of considerable sociological debate. The chapter describes the conceptual framework and evidence on the cognitive and personality dispositions associated with magical thinking and proceeds to report a study which tested the association between New Age endorsement and such dispositions. Attachment theory, as formulated by Bowlby.J and extended by others, is a well-established framework for the study of child-parent relations and their implications for development. Keywords: attachment theory; New Age; non-religious people; Sweden

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with weak (micro Tesla) complex waveform fields have been claimed to evoke the sensed presence of a sentient being in up to 80% in the general population. These findings have had a questionable neurophysiological foundation as the fields are approximately six orders of magnitude weaker than ordinary TMS fields. Also, no independent replication has been reported. To replicate and extend previous findings, we performed a double-blind experiment (N = 89), with a sham-field control group. Personality characteristics indicating suggestibility (absorption, signs of abnormal temporal lobe activity, and a "new age"-life-style orientation) were used as predictors. Sensed presence, mystical, and other somatosensory experiences previously reported from the magnetic field stimulation were outcome measures. We found no evidence for any effects of the magnetic fields, neither in the entire group, nor in individuals high in suggestibility. Because the personality characteristics significantly predicted outcomes, suggestibility may account for previously reported effects. Our results strongly question the earlier claims of experiential effects of weak magnetic fields. (Less)

Tinnitus is the experience of sound in the absence of external stimulation, causing great distress in 2-3%, and fewer problems in about 8-12% of the general population. The present study investigated associations of adult attachment to tinnitus-related problems and perceived family support among 102 clinical tinnitus patients. Multiple regression analyses showed avoidant attachment to be related to both tinnitus-related problems and perceived punitive family responses. In addition, avoidant attachment generally predicted tinnitus-related problems independently of perceived family support. Although coping was not directly investigated in the present study, it was suggested that attachment theory may fill an important explanatory void underlying previously observed connections between coping, perceived support, and experienced severity of tinnitus.