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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Children’s conceptualizations of attachment and caregiving Head, Timothy L.
Abstract
A new measure, the Revised Permitting-Blocking Access Inventory (PBAR) was developed to assess patterns of young children's conceptualizations of their relationships with caregivers. It focuses on distress in the context of potential child-caregiver psychological separation. Each set of line drawings depicts a same-sex child in a concrete distress situation (e.g., hurt knee) with the mother, and separately, with the father. In each set of four drawings the parent is depicted as responding in one of four different ways: from sensitively permitting access, through mildly ignoring, to strongly ignoring, and finally, angrily blocking access. The child is first asked the general question, "which one is most like".the parent when the child is in that situation. Later, the same pictures are presented again/ with a more specific question intended to give the child a sense of permission to choose the less ideal categories. The participants in this study were 19 female and 23 male children (aged 5.0 to 7.0, mean 6.0) and their primary caregiver (38 mothers, 4 fathers). During a separation of over an hour, the parent was given the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), and, in the context, of a play session, the child did the PBAR. Together they then went through Crittenden's Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA), using a videotaped Strange Situation Procedure. A priori hypotheses about patterns-of PBAR responses identified 81% of the children who were securely versus insecurely attached to their primary caregiver on the PAA, based on the children's selections for the 28 child-parent and 3 child-teacher scenarios (drawings). Specificity, the ability to identify securely attached children, was 57%, and sensitivity, the ability to identify insecurely attached children, was 86%. With the child-teacher scenarios omitted, a priori hypotheses identified 83% of the children at the secure-insecure level. Moreover, specificity improved to 86%, whereas sensitivity dropped only slightly to 83%. In addition, with ad hoc, but rationally consistent, scoring changes, predictability improved to 95%. The PBAR identified three empirically distinguishable response styles, including a secure response style and two others common to the. main insecurely attached (A and C) groups of children.
Item Metadata
Title |
Children’s conceptualizations of attachment and caregiving
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1996
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Description |
A new measure, the Revised Permitting-Blocking Access Inventory (PBAR) was developed to assess patterns of young
children's conceptualizations of their relationships with caregivers. It focuses on distress in the context of potential child-caregiver psychological separation. Each
set of line drawings depicts a same-sex child in a concrete distress situation (e.g., hurt knee) with the mother, and
separately, with the father. In each set of four drawings the parent is depicted as responding in one of four different ways: from sensitively permitting access, through
mildly ignoring, to strongly ignoring, and finally, angrily blocking access. The child is first asked the general question, "which one is most like".the parent when the child
is in that situation. Later, the same pictures are presented again/ with a more specific question intended to give the child a sense of permission to choose the less
ideal categories. The participants in this study were 19 female and 23 male children (aged 5.0 to 7.0, mean 6.0) and their primary
caregiver (38 mothers, 4 fathers). During a separation of over an hour, the parent was given the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), and, in the context, of a play session, the child did the PBAR. Together they then went through Crittenden's Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA), using a videotaped Strange Situation Procedure. A priori hypotheses about patterns-of PBAR responses identified 81% of the children who were securely versus
insecurely attached to their primary caregiver on the PAA, based on the children's selections for the 28 child-parent
and 3 child-teacher scenarios (drawings). Specificity, the ability to identify securely attached children, was 57%, and
sensitivity, the ability to identify insecurely attached children, was 86%. With the child-teacher scenarios omitted, a priori hypotheses identified 83% of the children at the secure-insecure level. Moreover, specificity improved to 86%, whereas sensitivity dropped only slightly
to 83%. In addition, with ad hoc, but rationally consistent, scoring changes, predictability improved to 95%. The PBAR identified three empirically distinguishable
response styles, including a secure response style and two others common to the. main insecurely attached (A and C) groups of children.
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Extent |
16666403 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-03-16
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0099173
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1996-11
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.